A Letter Book

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES (1803-1849)

Beddoes belongs to the small but remarkable company of authors who, making little mark in their own time and none at all for some time afterwards, before very long come into something like their due, though they never can be exactly popular. He was certainly very eccentric and possibly quite mad: the circumstances of his suicide do more than justify the hopes of charity and the convention of coroners' juries, as to the latter conclusion. But he was an extremely poetical poet and a letter-writer of remarkable individuality and zest. Little notice seems to have been taken, by any save a very few elect, of the first collected publication of his work just after his death: though a single piece, The Bride's Tragedy, not by any means his best, had obtained praise in 1822 – a time between the great poetical outburst of the early nineteenth century and the revival of its middle period. But Mr. Gosse's reissue in completer form of the Poems in 1890 and the Letters four years later, lodged him at once in the affection of all competent critics. With something of the more eccentric spirit of the seventeenth century in him, and something of the Romantic revival as shown in Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, he had much of his own, though he never got it thoroughly or sustainedly organised and expressed. His mingled passion and humour (especially the latter) "escape" – make fitful spurts and explosions – in his correspondence. Latterly this reflects his mental breakdown, increasingly in the prose; though only a few years before the end it contains wonderful verse such as the song, "The swallow leaves her nest," which is a link between Blake and Canon Dixon. But earlier, as in the following, there is nothing beyond oddity. Of this there may seem to be a good share, but a few notes will make it intelligible. It clearly heralds, though the thing is first definitely indicated in a later letter, Beddoes' marvellous tragedy Death's Jest-book, which he wrote and re-wrote till it became like the picture in Balzac's story an "Unknown [and Unknowable] Masterpiece." The letter is further remarkable as combining intense admiration for the old masterpieces with a quite "modern" insistence on "begetting" rather than "reviving" – on "giving the literature of the age a spirit of its own," etc. For details: "Sulky" (compare the French désobligeante, celebrated by Sterne) – an obsolete form of chaise. "Breaking Priscian's head" is familiar enough for "using bad grammar," which the book-keeper very likely did; but the explanation may be more remote. "Like a ghost from the tomb" though not "quoted" is, of course, his beloved Shelley's ("The Cloud"). "Biped knock" = merely "double" – the peculiar rat-tat which postmen have mostly forgotten or not learnt – perhaps regarding it as a badge of slavery like "tips." The Fatal Dowry– attributed to (Field and) Massinger, and spoilt by Rowe into his nevertheless popular Fair Penitent, – is one of the finest examples of the second stage of Elizabethan drama. Ultracrepidarian– a term derived from the Latin proverb ne sutor supra (or ultra) crepidam and specially applied to the unpopular critic Gifford who had been a shoemaker – meaning generally "some one who does go beyond his last and meddles with things he does not understand." "McCready's" (Macready, the famous actor and manager) friend Walker was probably Sidney Walker the Shakespearian critic.

42. To Thomas Forbes Kelsall

Dear Kelsall —

Day after day since Christmas I have intended to write or go to London, and day after day I have deferred both projects; and now I will give you the adventures and mishaps of this present sunday. Remorse, and startling conscience, in the form of an old, sulky, and a shying, horse, hurried me to the 'Regulator' coach-office on Saturday: 'Does the Regulator and its team conform to the Mosaic decalogue, Mr. Book-keeper?' He broke Priscian's head, and through the aperture, assured me that it did not: I was booked for the inside: – "Call at 26 Mall for me." – "Yes, Sir, at 1/2 past five, a. m." – At five I rose like a ghost from the tomb, and betook me to coffee. No wheels rolled through the streets but the inaudible ones of that uncreated hour. It struck six, – a coach was called, – we hurried to the office but the coach was gone. Here followed a long Brutus-and-Cassius discourse between a shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post alighted on the door at twelve, and two letters were placed upon my German dictionary, – your own, which I at first intended to reply to vivâ voce, had not the second informed me of my brother's arrival in England, his short leave of absence, and his intention to visit me here next week. This twisted my strong purpose like a thread, and disposed me to remain here about ten days longer. On the 21st at latest I go to London. Be there and I will join you, or, if not, pursue you to Southampton.

The Fatal Dowry has been cobbled, I see, by some purblind ultra-crepidarian – McCready's friend, Walker, very likely; but nevertheless, I maintain 'tis a good play, and might have been rendered very effective by docking it of the whole fifth act, which is an excrescence, – re-creating Novall, and making Beaumelle a great deal more ghost-gaping and moonlightish. The cur-tailor has taken out the most purple piece in the whole web – the end of the fourth Act – and shouldered himself into toleration through the prejudices of the pit, when he should have built his admiration on their necks. Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold trampling fellow, no creeper into worm-holes, no reviver even, however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold. Such ghosts as Marloe, Webster &c. are better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, than any contemporary of ours, but they are ghosts; the worm is in their pages; and we want to see something that our great-grandsires did not know. With the greatest reverence for all the antiquities of the drama, I still think that we had better beget than revive; attempt to give the literature of this age an idiosyncrasy and spirit of its own, and only raise a ghost to gaze on, not to live with – just now the drama is a haunted ruin.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)

Mrs. Browning was in the habit of using rather extravagant language herself: and she has certainly been the victim of language extravagant enough both in praise (the more damaging of the two) and blame from others. FitzGerald's unlucky exaggeration (see Introduction) in one way may be set off by such opposite assertions as that some of her poems are "the best of their kind in the English language." But her letters need cause no such alarums and excursions. If they are sometimes what is called by youth "Early Victorian" – "Early Anything," and "Middle Anything" and "Late Anything," are sure to be found sooner or later by all wise persons to have their own place in life and history. And sentimentalism has, in private prose, an infinitely less provocative character than when it is displayed in published verse. A distinguished Scotch philosopher of the last generation laid it down that, in literature, for demonstrative exhibitions of affection and sorrow "the occasion should be adequate, and the actuality rare." But letter-writing, though it can be eminently literary, is always literature with a certain license attached to it: arising from the fact that it was not – or ought not to have been – intended for publication. And that naturalness of which so much has been said is displayed constantly and by no means disagreeably in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epistles. In fact, you cannot help liking her the better for them – which in one way at least is the supreme test. The following, written soon after her marriage – an elopement of a kind, but certainly justifiable if ever one was – is a very pleasant specimen in more ways than one, as regards taste, temper, and descriptive powers. It also contains no criticism, which in her case was apt to be extremely uncertain.

43. To Mrs. Martin

It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine, and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted your claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised you too entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so much the more reason there was that I should justify it as far as I could, and with as much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to you) as was possible from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that you have believed in me and loved me, and, for the sake of the past and of the present, your affection and your esteem are more to me than I could afford to lose, even in these changed and happy circumstances. So I thank you once more, my dear kind friends, I thank you both – I never shall forget your goodness. I feel it, of course, the more deeply, in proportion to the painful disappointment in other quarters… Am I bitter? The feeling, however, passes while I write it out, and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my case is not to be classed with other cases – what happened to me could not have happened, perhaps, with any other family in England… I hate and loathe everything too which is clandestine – we both do, Robert and I; and the manner the whole business was carried on in might have instructed the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing perpetually on my table for the last two years were brought there by one hand, as everybody knew; and really it would have argued an excess of benevolence in an unmarried man with quite enough resources in London, to pay the continued visits he paid to me without some strong motive indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in the house as well as with me? He desired it; but no – that was not to be. The endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof of his attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him – how grateful it makes me! He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We have been married two months, and every hour has bound me to him more and more; if the beginning was well, still better it is now – that is what he says to me, and I say back again day by day. Then it is an 'advantage' to have an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of all things in heaven and earth, and shows besides as perpetual a good humour and gaiety as if he were – a fool, shall I say? or a considerable quantity more, perhaps. As to our domestic affairs, it is not to my honour and glory that the 'bills' are made up every week and paid more regularly 'than bard beseems,' while dear Mrs. Jameson laughs outright at our miraculous prudence and economy, and declares that it is past belief and precedent that we should not burn the candles at both ends, and the next moment will have it that we remind her of the children in a poem of Heine's who set up housekeeping in a tub, and inquired gravely the price of coffee. Ah, but she has left Pisa at last – left it yesterday. It was a painful parting to everybody. Seven weeks spent in such close neighbourhood – a month of it under the same roof and in the same carriages – will fasten people together, and then travelling shakes them together. A more affectionate, generous woman never lived than Mrs. Jameson123 and it is pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart, and not only du bout des lèvres. Think of her making Robert promise (as he has told me since) that in the case of my being unwell he would write to her instantly, and she would come at once if anywhere in Italy. So kind, so like her. She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate, month at Florence, and we are to keep tryst with her somewhere in the spring, perhaps at Venice. If not, she says that she will come back here, for that certainly she will see us. She would have stayed altogether perhaps, if it had not been for her book upon art which she is engaged to bring out next year, and the materials for which are to be sought. As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is so beautiful and so full of repose, yet not desolate: it is rather the repose of sleep than of death. Then after the first ten days of rain, which seemed to refer us fatally to Alfieri's 'piove e ripiove' came as perpetual a divine sunshine, such cloudless, exquisite weather that we ask whether it may not be June instead of November. Every day I am out walking while the golden oranges look at me over the walls, and when I am tired Robert and I sit down on a stone to watch the lizards. We have been to your seashore, too, and seen your island, only he insists on it (Robert does) that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, and that Corsica is not in sight. Beautiful and blue the island was, however, in any case. It might have been Romero's instead of either. Also we have driven up to the foot of the mountains, and seen them reflected down in the little pure lake of Ascuno, and we have seen the pine woods, and met the camels laden with faggots all in a line. So now ask me again if I enjoy my liberty as you expect. My head goes round sometimes, that is all. I never was happy before in my life. Ah, but, of course, the painful thoughts recur! There are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under their displeasure, or even under their injustice. Only it seems to me that with time and patience my poor dearest papa will be melted into opening his arms to us – will be melted into a clear understanding of motives and intentions; I cannot believe that he will forget me, as he says he will, and go on thinking me to be dead rather than alive and happy. So I manage to hope for the best, and all that remains, all my life here, is best already, could not be better or happier. And willingly tell dear Mr. Martin I would take him and you for witnesses of it, and in the meanwhile he is not to send me tantalising messages; no, indeed, unless you really, really, should let yourselves be wafted our way, and could you do so much better at Pau? particularly if Fanny Hanford should come here. Will she really? The climate is described by the inhabitants as a 'pleasant spring throughout the winter,' and if you were to see Robert and me threading our path along the shady side everywhere to avoid the 'excessive heat of the sun' in this November (?) it would appear a good beginning. We are not in the warm orthodox position by the Arno because we heard with our ears one of the best physicians of the place advise against it. 'Better,' he said, 'to have cool rooms to live in and warm walks to go out along.' The rooms we have are rather over-cool perhaps; we are obliged to have a little fire in the sitting-room, in the mornings and evenings that is; but I do not fear for the winter, there is too much difference to my feelings between this November and any English November I ever knew. We have our dinner from the Trattoria at two o'clock, and can dine our favourite way on thrushes and Chianti with a miraculous cheapness, and no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah or the lilies of the field took as little thought for their dining, which exactly suits us. It is a continental fashion which we never cease commending. Then at six we have coffee, and rolls of milk, made of milk, I mean, and at nine our supper (call it supper, if you please) of roast chestnuts and grapes. So you see how primitive we are, and how I forget to praise the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is, or would be to some persons, that, socially speaking, it has its dullnesses; it is not lively like Florence, not in that way. But we do not want society, we shun it rather. We like the Duomo and the Campo Santo instead. Then we know a little of Professor Ferucci, who gives us access to the University library, and we subscribe to a modern one, and we have plenty of writing to do of our own. If we can do anything for Fanny Hanford, let us know. It would be too happy, I suppose, to have to do it for yourselves. Think, however, I am quite well, quite well. I can thank God, too, for being alive and well. Make dear Mr. Martin keep well, and not forget himself in the Herefordshire cold – draw him into the sun somewhere. Now write and tell me everything of your plans and of you both, dearest friends. My husband bids me say that he desires to have my friends for his own friends, and that he is grateful to you for not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And let me be throughout all changes,

Your ever faithful and most affectionate,

EDWARD FITZGERALD (1809-1883)

Not much need be added to what was said in the Introduction about this famous translator and almost equally, though less uniquely, remarkable letter-writer. His life was entirely uneventful and his friendships have been already commemorated. The version of Omar Khayyàm appeared in 1859; was an utter "drug" – remainder copies going at a few pence – for a time; but became one of the most admired books of the English nineteenth century before very long. Some of his Letters were published at various times from 1889 to 1901 (those to Fanny Kemble in 1895). It is not perhaps merely fanciful to suggest that the "uniqueness" above glanced at does supply a sort of connection between the Letters and the Works. The faculty of at once retaining the matter of a subject and transforming it in treatment has perhaps never, as regards translation, been exhibited in such transcendence as in the English Rubaiyàt. But something of this same faculty must belong to every good letter-writer – and a good deal of it certainly is shown by FitzGerald in his letters. Indeed one of the processes of letter-and memoir-study (the memoir as has been said is practically an "open" letter) is that of comparing the treatments of the same subject by different persons – say of the Great Fire by Pepys and Evelyn, of the Riots of '80 by Walpole and Johnson. He himself, as will be seen, calls the letter given below "not very interesting." It seems to me very interesting indeed: and likely to be increasingly so as time goes on. Few things could be more characteristic of the writer than his way of "visiting his sister" by living alone in lodgings all day for a month. The "old age" – forty-five – is hardly less so. The allusions to "Alfred" (Tennyson); "old" Thackeray, for whom he constantly keeps the affectionate school and college use of the adjective; Landor124 (who unluckily did not die at Bath though he might have done so but for one of the last and least creditable of his eccentricities); Beckford ("Old Vathek"), and a fourth "old," Rogers (who was one of FitzGerald's aversions); Oxford (as yet almost unstained by any modernities spiritual or material); and Bath125 (to remain still longer a "haunt of ancient peace") – are precious. The fifth "old," Spedding, who devoted chiefly to Bacon talents worthy of more varied exercise, was one of the innermost Tennyson set, as was "Harry" Lushington, who died very soon after this letter was written. "Your Book" is F. Tennyson's Days and Hours, a volume of poetry while reading which probably many people have wondered in what respect it came short of really great poetry, though they felt it did so.

44. To Frederic Tennyson

My dear Frederic,

You see to what fashionable places I am reduced in my old Age. The truth is however I am come here by way of Visit to a sister I have scarce seen these six years; my visit consisting in this that I live alone in a lodging of my own by day, and spend two or three hours with her in the Evening. This has been my way of Life for three weeks, and will be so for some ten days more: after which I talk of flying back to more native counties. I was to have gone on to see Alfred in his "Island Home" from here: but it appears he goes to London about the same time I quit this place: so I must and shall defer my Visit to him. Perhaps I shall catch a sight of him in London; as also of old Thackeray who, Donne writes me word, came suddenly on him in Pall Mall the other day: while all the while people supposed The Newcomes were being indited at Rome or Naples.

If ever you live in England you must live here at Bath. It really is a splendid City in a lovely, even a noble, Country. Did you ever see it? One beautiful feature in the place is the quantity of Garden and Orchard it is all through embroidered with. Then the Streets, when you go into them, are as handsome and gay as London, gayer and handsomer because cleaner and in a clearer Atmosphere; and if you want the Country you get into it (and a very fine Country) on all sides and directly. Then there is such Choice of Houses, Cheap as well as Dear, of all sizes, with good Markets, Railways etc. I am not sure I shall not come here for part of the Winter. It is a place you would like, I am sure: though I do not say but you are better in Florence. Then on the top of the hill is old Vathek's Tower, which he used to sit and read in daily, and from which he could see his own Fonthill, while it stood. Old Landor quoted to me 'Nullus in orbe locus, etc.,' apropos of Bath: he, you may know, has lived here for years, and I should think would die here, though not yet. He seems so strong that he may rival old Rogers; of whom indeed one Newspaper gave what is called an 'Alarming Report of Mr. Rogers' Health' the other day, but another contradicted it directly and indignantly, and declared the Venerable Poet never was better. Landor has some hundred and fifty Pictures; each of which he thinks the finest specimen of the finest Master, and has a long story about, how he got it, when, etc. I dare say some are very good: but also some very bad. He appeared to me to judge of them as he does of Books and Men; with a most uncompromising perversity which the Phrenologists must explain to us after his Death.

By the bye, about your Book, which of course you wish me to say something about. Parker sent me down a copy 'from the Author' for which I hereby thank you. If you believe my word, you already know my Estimation of so much that is in it: you have already guessed that I should have made a different selection from the great Volume which is now in Tatters. As I differ in Taste from the world, however, quite as much as from you, I do not know but you have done very much better in choosing as you have; the few people I have seen are very much pleased with it, the Cowells at Oxford delighted. A Bookseller there sold all his Copies the first day they came down: and even in Bath a Bookseller (and not one of the Principal) told me a fortnight ago he had sold some twenty copies. I have not been in Town since it came out: and have now so little correspondence with literati I can't tell you about them. There was a very unfair Review in the Athenaeum; which is the only Literary Paper I see: but I am told there are laudatory ones in Examiner and Spectator.

I was five weeks at Oxford, visiting the Cowells in just the same way that I am visiting my Sister here. I also liked Oxford greatly: but not so well I think as Bath: which is so large and busy that one is drowned in it as much as in London. There are often concerts, etc., for those who like them; I only go to a shilling affair that comes off every Saturday at what they call the Pump Room. On these occasions there is sometimes some Good Music if not excellently played. Last Saturday I heard a fine Trio of Beethoven. Mendelssohn's things are mostly tiresome to me. I have brought my old Handel Book here and recreate myself now and then with pounding one of the old Giant's Overtures on my sister's Piano, as I used to do on that Spinnet at my Cottage. As to Operas, and Exeter Halls, I have almost done with them: they give me no pleasure, I scarce know why.