Mrs. Kemble’s daughter, Frances Butler, was married to the Hon. and Rev. James Wentworth Leigh, now Dean of Hereford, 29th June 1871. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 126. Fitzgerald’s Lives of the Kembles was reviewed in the AthenÆum, 12th August 1871, and the ‘Memoirs of Mr. Harness,’ 28th October. Macbeth, ii. 2, 21. In writing to Sir Frederick Pollock on November 17th, 1871, FitzGerald says:— ‘The Game-dealer here telling me that he has some very good Pheasants, I have told him to send you a Brace—to go in company with Braces to Carlyle, and Mrs. Kemble. This will, you may think, necessitate your writing a Reply of Thanks before your usual time of writing: but don’t do that:—only write to me now in case the Pheasants don’t reach you; I know you will thank me for them, whether they reach you or not; and so you can defer writing so much till you happen next upon an idle moment which you may think as well devoted to me; you being the only man, except Donne, who cares to trouble himself with a gratuitous letter to one who really does not deserve it. ‘Donne, you know, is pleased with Everybody, and with Everything that Anybody does for him. You must take his Praises of Woodbridge with this grain of Salt to season them. It may seem odd to you at first—but not perhaps on reflection—that I feel more—nervous, I may say—at the prospect of meeting with an old Friend, after all these years, than of any indifferent Acquaintance. I feel it the less with Donne, for the reason aforesaid—why should I not feel it with you who have given so many tokens since our last meeting that you are well willing to take me as I am? If one is, indeed, by Letter what one is in person.—I always tell Donne not to come out of his way here—he says he takes me in the course of a Visit to some East-Anglian kinsmen. Have you ever any such reason?—Well; if you have no better reason than that of really wishing to see me, for better or worse, in my home, come—some Spring or Summer day, when my Home at any rate is pleasant. This all sounds mock-modesty; but it is not; as I can’t read Books, Plays, Pictures, etc. and don’t see People, I feel, when a Man comes, that I have all to ask and nothing to tell; and one doesn’t like to make a Pump of a Friend.’
At the Royal Institution, on ‘The Theatre in Shakespeare’s Time.’ The series consisted of six lectures, which were delivered from 20th January to 24th February 1872. On 18th February 1872, Mrs. Kemble wrote: ‘My dear old friend Donne is lecturing on Shakespeare, and I have heard him these last two times. He is looking ill and feeble, and I should like to carry him off too, out of the reach of his too many and too heavy cares.’—‘Further Records,’ ii. 253. 27th February, 1872, for the recovery of the Prince of Wales. Mr. Jenney, the owner of Bredfield House, where FitzGerald was born. See ‘Letters,’ i. 64. H. F. Chorley died 16th February 1872. Perhaps Widmore, near Bromley. See ‘Further Records,’ ii. 253. ‘Old Kensington,’ the first number of which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for April 1872. He came May 18th, 1872, the day before Whitsunday. F. T. came August 1st, 1872. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 142-3. Miss Harriet St. Leger. April 14th, 1873. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 154. Probably the piece beginning— ‘On plante des pommiers Ès bords
Des cimitieres, prÈs des morts, &c
Olivier Basselin (‘Vaux-de-Vire,’ ed Jacob, 1858, xv. p. 28) On Oct 13th, 1879, FitzGerald wrote of a copy of Olivier (ed. Du Bois, 1821) which he had sent by me to Professor Cowell: “If Cowell does not care for Olivier—the dear Phantom!—pray do you keep him. Read a little piece—the two first Stanzas—beginning ‘Dieu garde de deshonneur,’ p. 184—quite beautiful to me; though not classed as Olivier’s. Also ‘Royne des Flours, &c,’ p. 160. These are things that BÉranger could not reach with all his Art; but Burns could without it.” De Damoyselle Anne de Marle (Marot, ‘CimetiÈre,’ xiv ):— ‘Lors sans viser au lieu dont elle vint,
Et desprisant la gloire que l’on a
En ce bas monde, icelle Anne ordonna,
Que son corps fust entre les pauures mys
En cette fosse. Or prions, chers amys,
Que l’ame soit entre les pauures mise,
Qui bien heureux sont chantez en l’Église.’
On March 30, 1873, FitzGerald wrote to Sir Frederick Pollock:— “At the beginning of this year I submitted to be Photo’ed at last—for many Nieces, and a few old Friends—I must think that you are an old Friend as well as a very kind and constant one; and so I don’t like not to send you what I have sent others.—The Artist who took me, took (as he always does) three several Views of one’s Face: but the third View (looking full-faced) got blurred by my blinking at the Light: so only these two were reproduced—I shouldn’t know that either was meant for [me]: nor, I think, would any one else, if not told: but the Truth-telling Sun somehow did them; and as he acted so handsomely by me, I take courage to distribute them to those who have a regard for me, and will naturally like to have so favourable a Version of one’s Outward Aspect to remember one by. I should not have sent them if they had been otherwise. The up-looking one I call ‘The Statesman,’ quite ready to be called to the Helm of Affairs: the Down-looking one I call The Philosopher. Will you take which you like? And when next old Spedding comes your way, give him the other (he won’t care which) with my Love. I only don’t write to him because my doing so would impose on his Conscience an Answer—which would torment him for some little while. I do not love him the less: and believe all the while that he not the less regards me.”
Again on May 5, he wrote: “I think I shall have a word about M[acready] from Mrs. Kemble, with whom I have been corresponding a little since her return to England. She has lately been staying with her Son in Law, Mr. Leigh (?), at Stoneleigh Vicarage, near Kenilworth. In the Autumn she says she will go to America, never to return to England. But I tell her she will return. She is to sit for her Photo at my express desire, and I have given her Instructions how to sit, derived from my own successful Experience. One rule is to sit—in a dirty Shirt—(to avoid dangerous White) and another is, not to sit on a Sunshiny Day: which we must leave to the Young. “By the by, I sent old Spedding my own lovely Photo (the Statesman) which he has acknowledged in Autograph. He tells me that he begins to ‘smell Land’ with his Bacon.” See ‘Letters,’ ii. 165-7. See letter of April 22nd, 1873. Shakespeare, Ant. & Cl., v. 2, line 6:— ‘Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change.’
In his ‘Half Hours with the Worst Authors’ FitzGerald has transcribed ‘Le Bon Pasteur,’ which consists of five stanzas of eight lines each, beginning:— ‘Bons habitans de ce Village,
PrÊtez l’oreille un moment,’ &c.
Each stanza ends:— ‘Et le bon Dieu vous benira.’
He adds: ‘One of the pleasantest remembrances of France is, having heard this sung to a Barrel-organ, and chorus’d by the Hearers (who had bought the Song-books) one fine Evening on the Paris Boulevards, June: 1830.’ Haydon entered these verses in his Diary for May, 1846: ‘The struggle is severe, for myself I care not, but for her so dear to me I feel. It presses on her mind, and in a moment of pain, she wrote the following simple bit of feeling to Frederick, who is in South America, on Board The Grecian.’ There are seven stanzas in the original, but FitzGerald has omitted in his transcript the third and fourth and slightly altered one or two of the lines. He called them ‘A poor Mother’s Verses.’ See ‘Letters,’ ii. 280. Burns, quoted from memory as usual. See Globe Edition, p. 214; ed. Cunningham, iv. 293. Greville Sartoris was killed by a fall from his horse, not in the hunting-field, 23 Oct. 1873. ‘Rage’ in the original. See Tales of the Hall, Book XII. Sir Owen Dale. Quoting from Peacock’s ‘Headlong Hall’:— ‘Nature had but little clay
Like that of which she moulded him.’
See ‘Letters,’ i. 75, note. 18 April 1874. Professor Hiram Corson endeavoured to maintain the correctness of the reading of the Folios in Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. 86-88: ‘For his Bounty,
There was no winter in ’t. An Anthony it was,
That grew the more by reaping.’
Spedding admirably defended Theobald’s certain emendation of ‘autumn’ for ‘Anthony.’ These lines are not to be found in Crabbe, so far as I can ascertain, but they appear to be a transformation of two which occur in the Parish Register, Part II., in the story of Phebe Dawson (Works, ii. 183): ‘Friend of distress! The mourner feels thy aid;
She cannot pay thee, but thou wilt be paid.’
They had taken possession of FitzGerald’s memory in their present shape, for in a letter to me, dated 5 Nov. 1877, speaking of the poet’s son, who was Vicar of Bredfield, he says: “It is now just twenty years since the Brave old Boy was laid in Bredfield Churchyard. Two of his Father’s Lines might make Epitaph for some good soul:— ‘Friend of the Poor, the Wretched, the Betray’d;
They cannot pay thee—but thou shalt be paid.’
Pas mal Ça, eh!” In a letter to me dated October 29th, 1871, FitzGerald says:— “A suggestion that casually fell from old Spedding’s lips (I forget how long ago) occurred to me the other day. Instead of ‘Do such business as the bitter day,’
read ‘better day’—a certain Emendation, I think. I hope you take Spedding into your Counsel; he might be induced to look over one Play at a time though he might shrink from all in a Body; and I scarce ever heard him conning a page of Shakespeare but he suggested something which was an improvement—on Shakespeare himself, if not on his Editors—though don’t [tell] Spedding that I say so, for God’s sake.” In ‘Notes and Queries,’ April 18th, 1874. Lord Hertford Frank Carr Beard, the friend and medical adviser of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. See Lockhart’s ‘Life of Scott,’ vii. 394. ‘About half-past one, p.m., on the 21st of September, [1832], Sir Walter breathed his last, in the presence of all his children. It was a beautiful day—so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.’ Dryburgh. The North West Passage. The ‘Old Sea Captain’ was Trelawny. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 173-4. E. F. S. Pigott. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 172. Not Macmillan, but Cornhill Magazine, Dec. 1863, ‘On the Stage.’ See Letter of 24 Aug. 1875. “Pasta, the great lyric tragedian, who, Mrs. Siddons said, was capable of giving her lessons, replied to the observation, ‘Vous avez dÛ beaucoup Étudier l’antique.’ ‘Je l’ai beaucoup senti.’”—From Mrs. Kemble’s article ‘On the Stage’ (‘Cornhill,’ 1863), reprinted as an Introduction to her Notes upon some of Shakespeare’s Plays. ‘Causeries du Lundi,’ xiv. 234. Lettre de Viard a M. Walpole, in ‘Lettres de Madame du Deffand,’ iv. 178 (Paris, 1824). FitzGerald probably read it in Ste. Beuve, ‘Causeries du Lundi,’ i. 405. Cedars, not yew. See Memoirs of Chorley, ii. 240. In Tales of the Hall, Book XI. (‘Works,’ vi. 284), quoted from memory. Virgil, Æn. vi. 127. Referring to the well-known print of ‘Remarkable Characters who were at Tunbridge Wells with Richardson in 1748.’ James Spedding. In the original draft of Tales of the Hall, Book VI. See Memoirs of Chateaubriand, written by himself, Eng. trans. 1849 p. 123. At the ChÂteau of Combourg in Brittany, ‘When supper was over, and the party of four had removed from the table to the chimney, my mother would throw herself, with a sigh, upon an old cotton-covered sofa, and near her was placed a little stand with a light. I sat down by the fire with Lucile; the servants removed the supper-things, and retired. My father then began to walk up and down, and never ceased until his bedtime. He wore a kind of white woollen gown, or rather cloak, such as I have never seen with anyone else. His head, partly bald, was covered with a large white cap, which stood bolt upright. When, in the course of his walk, he got to a distance from the fire, the vast apartment was so ill-lighted by a single candle that he could be no longer seen, he could still be heard marching about in the dark, however, and presently returned slowly towards the light, and emerged by degrees from obscurity, looking like a spectre, with his white robe and cap, and his tall, thin figure.’ ‘The Mighty Magician’ and ‘Such Stuff as Dreams are made of.’ See Winter’s Tale, iv. 4, 118-120. ‘Euphranor.’ See ‘Letters,’ ii. 180. Sir Arthur Helps died March 7th, 1875. The Passage of Carlyle to which FitzGerald refers is perhaps in ‘Anti-Dryasdust,’ in the Introduction to Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. ‘By very nature it is a labyrinth and chaos, this that we call Human History; an abatis of trees and brushwood, a world-wide jungle, at once growing and dying. Under the green foliage and blossoming fruit-trees of To-day, there lie, rotting slower or faster, the forests of all other Years and Days. Some have rotted fast, plants of annual growth, and are long since quite gone to inorganic mould; others are like the aloe, growths that last a thousand or three thousand years.’ Ste. Beuve, in his ‘Nouveaux Lundis’ (iv. 295), has a similar remark: ‘Pour un petit nombre d’arbres qui s’ÉlÈvent de quelques pieds au-dessus de terre et qui s’aperÇoivent de loin, il y a partout, en littÉrature, de cet humus et de ce dÉtrius vÉgÉtal, de ces feuilles accumulÉes et entassÉes qu’on ne distingue pas, si l’on ne se baisse.’ At the end of his copy FitzGerald has referred to this as ‘Carlyle’s Peat.’ In The Gamester. See ‘Macready’s Reminiscences,’ i. 54-57. In Rowe’s Tamerlane. See ‘Macready’s Reminiscences,’ i. 202. Probably the English Tragedy, which was finished in October 1838. See ‘Records of Later Days,’ ii. 168. In the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society for 1875-76. The surviving editor of the ‘Cambridge Shakspeare’ does not at all feel that Spedding’s criticism ‘smashed’ the theory which was only put forward as a tentative solution of a perhaps insoluble problem. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 177. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 198, 228, and Boswell’s ‘Johnson’ (ed. Birkbeck Hill), iv. 193. FitzGerald wrote to me about the same time: “Spedding has (you know) a delicious little Paper about the Merchant of Venice in July Fraser:—but I think he is wrong in subordinating Shylock to the Comedy Part. If that were meant to be so, Williams [‘the divine Williams,’ as some Frenchman called Shakespeare] miscalculated, throwing so much of his very finest writing into the Jew’s Mouth, the downright human Nature of which makes all the Love-Story Child’s play, though very beautiful Child’s play indeed.”
‘On the Stage,’ in the Cornhill Magazine for December 1863 Reprinted as an Introduction to Mrs. Kemble’s ‘Notes upon some of Shakespeare’s Plays.’ See his ‘Life and Letters,’ p. 46. In the Cornhill Magazine for July 1875, The Merchant of Venice at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre. ‘The Enterprising Impresario’ by Walter Maynard (Thomas Willert Beale), 1867, pp 273-4. Beginning, ‘A spirit haunts the year’s last hours.’ It first appeared in the poems of 1830, p. 67, and is now included in Tennyson’s Collected Works. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 256. By Sir Gilbert Elliot, father of the first Lord Minto. The query appeared 25 Sept. 1875 (‘N. & Q.’ 5th Series, iv. 247), and two answers are given at p. 397, but not by E. F.G. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 185. The Atlantic Monthly for August, September, and October 1875. Atlantic Monthly, August 1875, p. 167, by T. S. Perry. Ibid., p. 240. From Oct. 30 to Nov. 4. The Trial of Queen Katharine in Henry VIII. Charles Kemble acted Cromwell. Atlantic Monthly, August 1875, p. 165. ‘The Exile,’ quoted from memory. See letter of August 24, 1875. Atlantic Monthly, August 1875, p. 156. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright. De Quincey’s account of him is in his essay on Charles Lamb (‘Works,’ ed. 1862, viii. 146). His career was the subject of a story by Dickens, called ‘Hunted Down.’ Minnie Thackeray (Mrs. Leslie Stephen) died Nov. 28. About the same time he wrote to me:— ‘A dozen years ago I entreated Annie Thackeray, Smith & Elder, &c., to bring out a Volume of Thackeray’s better Drawings. Of course they wouldn’t—now Windus and Chatto have, you know, brought out a Volume of his inferior: and now Annie T. S. & E. prepare a Volume—when it is not so certain to pay, at any rate, as when W. M. T. was the Hero of the Day. However, I send them all I have: pretty confident they will select the worst; of course, for my own part, I would rather have any other than copies of what I have: but I should like the World to acknowledge he could do something beside the ugly and ridiculous. Annie T. sent me the enclosed Specimen: very careless, but full of Character. I can see W. M. T. drawing it as he was telling one about his Scotch Trip. That disputatious Scotchman in the second Row with Spectacles, and—teeth. You may know some who will be amused at this:—but send it back, please: no occasion to write beside.’
When I was preparing the first edition of FitzGerald’s Letters I wrote to Mrs. Kemble for permission to quote the passage from her Gossip which is here referred to. She replied (11 Dec. 1883):— ‘I have no objection whatever to your quoting what I said of Edward Fitzgerald in the Atlantic Monthly, but I suppose you know that it was omitted from Bentley’s publication of my book at Edward’s own desire. He did not certainly knock me on the head with Dr. Johnson’s sledge-hammer, but he did make me feel painfully that I had been guilty of the impertinence of praising.’
I did not then avail myself of the permission so readily granted, but I venture to do so now, in the belief that the publicity from which his sensitive nature shrank during his lifetime may now without impropriety be given to what was written in all sincerity by one of his oldest and most intimate friends. It was Mrs. Kemble who described him as ‘an eccentric man of genius, who took more pains to avoid fame than others do to seek it,’ and this description is fully borne out by the account she gave of him in the offending passage which follows:— “That Mrs. Fitzgerald is among the most vivid memories of my girlish days. She and her husband were kind and intimate friends of my father and mother. He was a most amiable and genial Irish gentleman, with considerable property in Ireland and Suffolk, and a fine house in Portland Place, and had married his cousin, a very handsome, clever, and eccentric woman. I remember she always wore a bracelet of his hair, on the massive clasp of which were engraved the words, ‘Stesso sangue, stessa sorte.’ I also remember, as a feature of sundry dinners at their house, the first gold dessert and table ornaments that I ever saw, the magnificence of which made a great impression upon me; though I also remember their being replaced, upon Mrs. Fitzgerald’s wearying of them, by a set of ground glass and dead and burnished silver, so exquisite that the splendid gold service was pronounced infinitely less tasteful and beautiful. One member of her family—her son Edward Fitzgerald—has remained my friend till this day. His parents and mine are dead. Of his brothers and sisters I retain no knowledge, but with him I still keep up an affectionate and to me most valuable and interesting correspondence. He was distinguished from the rest of his family, and indeed from most people, by the possession of very rare intellectual and artistic gifts. A poet, a painter, a musician, an admirable scholar and writer, if he had not shunned notoriety as sedulously as most people seek it, he would have achieved a foremost place among the eminent men of his day, and left a name second to that of very few of his contemporaries. His life was spent in literary leisure, or literary labours of love of singular excellence, which he never cared to publish beyond the circle of his intimate friends: Euphranor, Polonius, collections of dialogues full of keen wisdom, fine observation, and profound thought; sterling philosophy written in the purest, simplest, and raciest English; noble translations, or rather free adaptations of Calderon’s two finest dramas, The Wonderful Magician and Life’s a Dream, and a splendid paraphrase of the Agamemnon of Æschylus, which fills its reader with regret that he should not have Englished the whole of the great trilogy with the same severe sublimity. In America this gentleman is better known by his translation or adaptation (how much more of it is his own than the author’s I should like to know if I were Irish) of Omar KhayyÁm, the astronomer-poet of Persia. Archbishop Trench, in his volume on the life and genius of Calderon, frequently refers to Mr. Fitzgerald’s translations, and himself gives a version of Life’s a Dream, the excellence of which falls short, however, of his friend’s finer dramatic poem bearing the same name, though he has gallantly attacked the difficulty of rendering the Spanish in English verse. While these were Edward Fitzgerald’s studies and pursuits, he led a curious life of almost entire estrangement from society, preferring the companionship of the rough sailors and fishermen of the Suffolk coast to that of lettered folk. He lived with them in the most friendly intimacy, helping them in their sea ventures, and cruising about with one, an especially fine sample of his sort, in a small fishing-smack which Edward Fitzgerald’s bounty had set afloat, and in which the translator of Calderon and Æschylus passed his time, better pleased with the fellowship and intercourse of the captain and crew of his small fishing craft than with that of more educated and sophisticated humanity. He and his brothers were school-fellows of my eldest brother under Dr. Malkin, the master of the grammar school of Bury St. Edmunds.”
Mrs. Kemble’s letter was written with a typewriter (see ‘Further Records,’ i. 198, 240, 247). It was given by FitzGerald to Mr. F. Spalding, now of the Colchester Museum, through whose kindness I am enabled to quote it:— ‘York Farm, Branchtown.
‘Tuesday, Dec. 14. 1875. ‘My dear Edward FitzGerald, ‘I have got a printing-machine and am going to try and write to you upon it and see if it will suit your eyes better than my scrawl of handwriting. Thank you for the Photographs and the line of music; I know that old bit of tune, it seems to me. I think Mr. Irving’s face more like Young’s than my Father’s. Tom Taylor, years ago, told me that Miss Ellen Terry would be a consummate comic actress. Portia should never be without some one to set her before the Public. She is my model woman.’ See ‘Letters,’ ii. 192 See the AthenÆum for Jan. 1, 15, 22, 29, 1876. In her ‘Further Records,’ i. 250, Mrs. Kemble wrote, March 11th, 1876:— ‘Last week my old friend Edward Fitzgerald (Omar Kyam, you know), sent me a beautiful miniature of my mother, which his mother—her intimate friend—had kept till her death, and which had been painted for Mrs. Fitzgerald. It is a full-length figure, very beautifully painted, and very like my mother. Almost immediately after receiving this from England, my friend Mr. Horace Furness came out to see me. He is a great collector of books and prints, and brought me an old engraving of my mother in the character of Urania, which a great many years ago I remember to have seen, and which was undoubtedly the original of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s miniature. I thought the concidence of their both reaching me at the same time curious.’
On July 22nd, 1880, he wrote to me:—“I am still reading her! And could make a pretty Introduction to her; but Press-work is hard to me now, and nobody would care for what I should do, when done. Mrs. Edwards has found me a good Photo of ‘nos pauvres Rochers,’ a straggling old ChÂteau, with (I suppose) the Chapel which her old ‘Bien Bon’ Uncle built in 1671—while she was talking to her Gardener Pilois and reading Montaigne, MoliÈre, Pascal, or Cleopatra, among the trees she had planted. Bless her! I should like to have made Lamb like her, in spite of his anti-gallican Obstinacy.” Mrs. Charles Donne, daughter of John Mitchell Kemble, died April 15th, 1876. First acted April 18th, 1876. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 293. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 198. Atlantic Monthly, June 1876, p. 719. Which opened May 10th, 1876. In one of his Common Place Books FitzGerald has entered from the Monthly Mirror for 1807 the following passage of Rousseau on Stage Scenery—‘Ils font, pour Épouventer, un Fracas de Decorations sans Effet. Sur la scene mÊme il ne faut pas tout dire À la Vue: mais Ébranler l’Imagmation.’ For April and May 1876: ‘The Latest Theory about Bacon.’ See letter of October 4th, 1875 See ‘Letters,’ ii. 202-205. This card is now in my possession, ‘Mr. Alfred Tennyson. Farringford.’ On it is written in pencil, “Dear old Fitz—I am passing thro’ and will call again. [The last three words are crossed out and ‘am here’ is written over them]. A.T.” FitzGerald enclosed it to Thompson (Master of Trinity) and wrote on the back, ‘P.S. Since writing, this card was sent in: the Writer followed with his Son: and here we all are as if twenty years had not passed since we met.’ About the same time he wrote to me:—“Tennyson came here suddenly ten days ago—with his Son Hallam, whom I liked much. It was a Relief to find a Young Gentleman not calling his Father ‘The Governor’ but even—‘Papa,’ and tending him so carefully in all ways. And nothing of ‘awfully jolly,’ etc. I put them up at the Inn—Bull—as my own House was in a sort of Interregnum of Painting, within and without: and I knew they would be well provided at ‘John Grout’s’—as they were. Tennyson said he had not found such Dinners at Grand Hotels, etc. And John (though a Friend of Princes of all Nations—Russian, French, Italian, etc.—who come to buy Horse flesh) was gratified at the Praise: though he said to me ‘Pray, Sir, what is the name of the Gentleman?’” On September 11th, 1877, he wrote to me: ‘You ought to have Hugo’s French Shakespeare: it is not wonderful to see how well a German Translation thrives:—but French Prose—no doubt better than French Verse. When I was looking over King John the other day I knew that Napoleon would have owned it as the thing he craved for in the Theatre: as also the other Historical Plays:—not Love of which one is sick: but the Business of Men. He said this at St. Helena, or elsewhere.’ It was in 1867. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 90, 94. Life, vi. 215. Letter to Lockhart, January 15th, 1826. These expressions must not be looked for in the Decameron, as ‘emendato secondo l’ordine del Sacro Concilio di Trento.’ See ‘Letters,’ ii. 203. In a letter to me dated November 4th, 1876, he says:— “I have taken refuge from the Eastern Question in Boccaccio, just as the ‘piacevoli Donne’ who tell the Stories escaped from the Plague. I suppose one must read this in Italian as my dear Don in Spanish: the Language of each fitting the Subject ‘like a Glove.’ But there is nothing to come up to the Don and his Man.” Book XVIII., vol. vii. p. 188. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 208. Gillies’ Memoirs of a Literary Veteran. See Letters, ii. 197, 199. An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876. Mr. Wade, author of The Jew of Aragon, which failed. Mrs. Kemble says (Atlantic Monthly, December 1876, p. 707):— “I was perfectly miserable when the curtain fell, and the poor young author, as pale as a ghost, came forward to meet my father at the side scene, and bravely holding out his hand to him said, ‘Never mind, Mr. Kemble, I’ll do better another time.’”
Francisco Javier Elio, a Spanish General, was executed in 1822 for his seventies against the liberals dining the reactionary period 1814-1820. Atlantic Monthly, February 1877, p. 222. Holbrook, near Ipswich. That she had also some of the family humour is evident from what she wrote to Mr. Crabbe of her brother’s early life. ‘As regards spiritual advantages out of the house he had none; for our Pastor was one of the old sort, with a jolly red nose caused by good cheer. He used to lay his Hat and Whip on the Communion Table and gabble over the service, running down the Pulpit Stairs not to lose the opportunity of being invited to a good dinner at the Hall.’ It was with reference to his sister’s husband that FitzGerald in conversation with Tennyson used the expression ‘A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman.’ ‘Why, Fitz,’ said Tennyson, ‘that’s a verse, and a very bad one too.’ And they would afterwards humorously contend for the authorship of the worst line in the English language. Atlantic Monthly, February 1877, pp. 210, 211, and pp. 220, 221. See note to Letter of Dec. 29th 1875. For November 1875, in an article called ‘The Judgment of Paris,’ p. 400. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 217. This is in my possession. It came to an end in April 1877. In a letter to Miss St. Leger, December 31st, 1876 (‘Further Records,’ ii. 33), Mrs. Kemble says, ‘You ask me how I mean to carry on the publication of my articles in the Atlantic Magazine when I leave America; but I do not intend to carry them on. The editor proposed to me to do so, but I thought it would entail so much trouble and uncertainty in the transmission of manuscript and proofs, that it would be better to break off when I came to Europe. The editor will have manuscript enough for the February, March, and April numbers when I come away, and with those I think the series must close. As there is no narrative or sequence of events involved in the publication, it can, of course, be stopped at any moment; a story without an end can end anywhere.’ See letter of December 29th, 1875. 15, Connaught Square. See ‘Further Records,’ ii. 42, etc. Valentia Donne marred the Rev. R. F. Smith, minor Canon of Southwell, May 24th, 1877. ‘We might say in a short word, which means a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashions his characters from the heart outwards, your Scott fashions them from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them.’—Carlyle, ‘Miscellanies,’ vi. 69 (ed. 1869), ‘Sir Walter Scott’ Procter, ‘Autobiographical Fragments,’ p. 154. February 9th, 1878. It was not in the Fortnightly but in the Nineteenth Century. This portrait is in my possession. FitzGerald fastened it in a copy of the ‘Poems chiefly Lyrical’ (1830) which he gave me bound up with the ‘Poems’ of 1833. He wrote underneath, ‘Done in a Steamboat from Gravesend to London, Jan: 1842.’ Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus by H. A. J. Munro. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 233, 235, 236, 238, 239. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 247. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 243. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 248. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 265. II. 166 (ed. 1826). John Purcell FitzGerald died at Boulge, May 4th, 1879. See letter of May 5th, 1877. In a letter to me dated May 7th, 1879, he says:— ‘I see by AthenÆum that Charles Tennyson (Turner) is dead. Now people will begin to talk of his beautiful Sonnets: small, but original, things, as well as beautiful. Especially after that somewhat absurd Sale of the Brothers’ early Editions.’
Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Act III, Air 57. Professor Skeat’s Inaugural Lecture, in Macmillan’s Magazine for February 1879, pp. 304-313. Mrs. Sartoris, Mrs. Kemble’s sister, died August 4, 1879. See ‘Further Records,’ ii. 277. Edwin Edwards, who died September 15. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 277. In a letter to me of September 29 1879, he says, “My object in going to London is, to see poor Mrs. Edwards, who writes me that she has much collapsed in strength (no wonder!) after the Trial she endured for near three years more or less, and, you know, a very hard light for the last year . . . “Besides her, Mrs. Kemble, who has lately lost her Sister, and returned from Switzerland to London just at a time when most of her Friends are out of it—she wants to see me, an old Friend of hers and her Family’s, whom she has not seen for more than twenty years. So I do hope to do my ‘petit possible’ to solace both these poor Ladies at the same time.” On September 11 he wrote to me, ‘Ah, pleasant Dunwich Days! I should never know a better Boy than Edwards, nor a braver little Wife than her, were I to live six times as long as I am like to do.’ See letter of October 4, 1875. Mrs. Leigh’s son, Pierce Butler, was born on Sunday, November 2, 1879. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 326. Mrs. Kemble appears to have adopted this suggestion. In her ‘Records of a Girlhood,’ ii. 41, she says of Sir Thomas Lawrence, ‘He came repeatedly to consult with my mother about the disputed point of my dress, and gave his sanction to her decision upon it. The first dress of Belvidera [in Venice Preserved], I remember, was a point of nice discussion between them. . . . I was allowed (not, however, without serious demur on the part of Lawrence) to cover my head with a black hat and white feather.’ William Mason. November 10, 1879. Mrs. De Soyres died at Exeter, December 11, 1879. Played at St. James’s Theatre, December 18, 1879. ‘The Duke’s Children.’ Probably the ‘Records of Later Life,’ published in 1882. On 1st February 1880, FitzGerald wrote to me:—“Do you know what ‘Stub Iron’ is? (I do), and what ‘Heel-taps’ derives from, which Mrs. Kemble asks, and I cannot tell her.” This is probably the query referred to. Beginning ‘As men may children at their sports behold!’—Tales of the Hall, book xxi., at the end of ‘Smugglers and Poachers.’ In the Cornhill Magazine, March 1880, ‘The Story of the Merchant of Venice.’ ‘An Eye-witness of John Kemble,’ by Sir Theodore Martin. The eye-witness is Tieck. This letter was written on a Tuesday, and April 6 was a Tuesday in 1880. Moreover, in 1880, at Easter, Donne’s house was in quarantine. FitzGerald probably had the advanced sheets of the Atlantic Monthly for May from Professor Norton as early as the beginning of April. The Atlantic Monthly for May 1880, contained an article by Mr. G. E. Woodberry on Crabbe, ‘A Neglected Poet.’ See letter to Professor Norton, May 1, 1880, in ‘Letters,’ ii. 281. No. 39, where FitzGerald’s father and mother lived. See ‘Records of a Girlhood,’ iii. 28. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 138. It was Queen Catharine. When Mrs. Siddons called upon Johnson in 1783, he “particularly asked her which of Shakespeare’s characters she was most pleased with. Upon her answering that she thought the character of Queen Catharine, in Henry the Eighth, the most natural:—‘I think so too, Madam, (said he;) and when ever you perform it, I will once more hobble out to the theatre myself.’”—Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’ (ed. Birkbeck Hill), iv. 242. See letters of February and December 1881. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 244, 249. On June 30, 1880, he wrote to me, ‘Half her Beauty is the liquid melodiousness of her language—all unpremeditated as a Blackbird’s.’ See letter of May 5, 1877. In a letter to me of the same date he wrote: ‘Last night when Miss Tox was just coming, like a good Soul, to ask about the ruined Dombey, we heard a Splash of Rain, and I had the Book shut up, and sat listening to the Shower by myself—till it blew over, I am sorry to say, and no more of the sort all night. But we are thankful for that small mercy. ‘I am reading through my SÉvignÉ again—welcome as the flowers of May.’ On June 9, 1879, FitzGerald wrote to me: “I was from Tuesday to Saturday last in Norfolk with my old Bredfield Party—George, not very well: and, as he has not written to tell me he is better, I am rather anxious. You should know him; and his Country: which is still the old Country which we have lost here; small enclosures, with hedgeway timber: green gipsey drift-ways: and Crome Cottage and Farmhouse of that beautiful yellow ‘Claylump’ with red pantile roof’d—not the d---d Brick and Slate of these parts.” See ‘Letters,’ ii. 290. See letter of Madame de SÉvignÉ to Madame de Grignan, June 15, 1689. In one of FitzGerald’s Common Place Books he gives the story thus: “When Chancellor Cheverny went home in his Old Age and for the last time, ‘Messieurs’ (dit-il aux Gentilshommes du Canton accourus pour le saluer), ‘Je ressemble au bon LiÈvre qui vient mourir au GÎte.’” Tom Taylor died July 12, 1880. On July 16 FitzGerald wrote to me: ‘Not being assured that you were back from Revision, I wrote yesterday to Cowell asking him—and you, when returned—to call on Professor Goodwin, of American Cambridge, who goes to-morrow to your Cambridge—to see—if not to stay with—Mr. Jebb. Mr. Goodwin proposed to give me a look here before he went to Cambridge: but I told him I could not bear the thought of his coming all this way for such a purpose. I think you can witness that I do not wish even old English Friends to take me except on their way elsewhere: and for an American Gentleman! It is not affectation to say that any such proposal worried me. So what must I do but ask him to be sure to see Messrs. Wright and Cowell when he got to Cambridge: and spend part of one of his days there in going to Bury, and (even if he cared not for the Abbey with its Abbot Samson and Jocelyn) to sit with a Bottle of light wine at the Angel window, face to face with that lovely Abbey gate. Perhaps Cowell, I said, might go over with him—knowing and loving Gothic—that was a liberty for me to take with Cowell, but he need not go—I did not hint at you. I suppose I muddled it all. But do show the American Gentleman some civilities, to make amends for the disrespect which you and Cowell told me of in April.’ The defeat of General Burrows by Ayoub Khan, announced in the House of Commons, July 28, 1880. On July 29 further telegrams reported that General Burrows and other officers had arrived at Candahar after the defeat. The date should be September 19, which was a Sunday in 1880. Full moon was on September 18. In her ‘Further Records,’ i. 295, Mrs. Kemble says, ‘Russia leather, you know, is almost an element of the atmosphere of my rooms, as all the shades of violet and purple are of their colouring, so that my familiar friends associate the two with their notions of my habitat.’ See ‘Life of Crabbe,’ p. 262. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 295. On ‘The Story of the Merchant of Venice’ in the Cornhill Magazine for March 1880. ‘Ballads and other Poems,’ 1880. Kelter, condition, order. Forby’s ‘Vocabulary of East Anglia.’ See ‘Letters,’ ii. 110 ‘Medusa and other Tales’ (1868), republished in 1880 with a preface by her daughter, Mrs. Gordon. Full moon February 14th. Acted at the Lyceum, January 3rd, 1881. For February 1881. See letters of April 23rd, 1880, and December 1881. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 180, 320. Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 298-301. Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 305-7. Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 310-312. April 17th was Easter Day in 1881. Madame de SÉvignÉ writes from Chaulnes, April 17th, 1689, ‘A peine le vert veut-il montrer le nez; pas un rossignol encore; enfin, l’hiver le 17 d’Avril.’ In Macmillan’s Magazine for April 1881. Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 313. Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 312. On Madame de SÉvignÉ. Published in 1882 as ‘Records of Later Life.’ See letter of August 24th, 1875. Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 320-1. The correct date is 1794-1805. ‘Evenings with a Reviewer.’ The Reviewer was Macaulay, and the review the Essay on Bacon. At Boulge. He was in London from February 17th to February 20th. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 324-6. Full moon April 3rd, 1882. ‘Thomas Carlyle. The Man and His Books.’ By W. H. Wylie. 1881, p. 363. On May 7 FitzGerald wrote to me from Lowestoft: “I too am taking some medicine, which, whatever effect it has on me, leaves an indelible mark on Mahogany: for (of course) I spilled a lot on my Landlady’s Chiffonier, and found her this morning rubbing at the ‘damned Spot’ with Turpentine, and in vain.”
And two days later: “I was to have gone home to-day: but Worthington wishes me to stay, at any rate, till the week’s end, by which time he thinks to remove what he calls ‘a Crepitation’ in one lung, by help of the Medicine which proved its power on the mahogany. Yesterday came a Cabinet-maker, who was for more than half an hour employed in returning that to its ‘sound and pristine health,’ or such as I hope my Landlady will be satisfied with.”
Serjeant Ballantine’s ‘Experiences of a Barrister’s Life’ appeared in March 1882. Full moon was June 1st, 1882. W. B. Donne died June 20th, 1882. This letter is in my possession, and as it indicates what Mr. Froude’s plan originally was, though he afterwards modified it, I have thought it worth while to give it in full. ‘5 Onslow Gardens, S.W.
‘May 19. ‘Dear mr. FitzGerald, ‘Certainly you are no stranger to me. I have heard so often from Carlyle, and I have read so much in his letters, about your exertions, and about your entertainment of him at various times, that I can hardly persuade myself that I never saw you. ‘The letters you speak of must be very interesting, and I would ask you to let me see them if I thought that they were likely to be of use to me; but the subject with which I have to deal is so vast that I am obliged to limit myself, and so intricate that I am glad to be able to limit myself. I shall do what Carlyle desired me to do, i.e. edit the collection of his wife’s letters, which he himself prepared for publication. ‘This gift or bequest of his governs the rest of my work. What I have already done is an introduction to these letters. When they are published I shall add a volume of personal recollections of his later life; and this will be all. Had I been left unencumbered by special directions I should have been tempted to leave his domestic history untouched except on the outside, and have attempted to make a complete biography out of the general materials. This I am unable to do, and all that I can give the world will be materials for some other person to use hereafter. I can explain no further the conditions of the problem. But for my own share of it I have materials in abundance, and I must avoid being tempted off into other matters however important in themselves. ‘I may add for myself that I did not seek this duty, nor was it welcome to me. C. asked me to undertake it. When I looked through the papers I saw how difficult, how, in some aspects of it, painful, the task would be. ‘Believe me,
‘faithfully yours,
‘J. A. Froude.’
Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 332. July 30th. Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 333. Here begins second half-sheet, dated ‘Monday, Sept. 5.’ Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 335. See letter of June 23rd, 1880. Reprinted in ‘A Book of Sibyls,’ 1883. The Promise of May was acted at the Globe Theatre, November 11th, 1882. See letter of November 13th, 1879. Mrs. Wister’s son. See letter of March 28th, 1880. ‘John Leech and other Papers,’ 1882. November 18th, 1882. See ‘Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle,’ ii. 249. For May 1883: ‘Mrs. Carlyle.’ Tennyson’s ‘Brook.’ In a letter to Sir Frederick Pollock, March 16th, 1879, he says:— “I have had Sir Walter read to me first of a Night, by way of Drama; then ten minutes for Refreshment, and then Dickens for Farce. Just finished the Pirate—as wearisome for Nornas, Minnas, Brendas, etc., as any of the Scotch Set; but when the Common People have to talk, the Pirates to quarrel and swear, then Author and Reader are at home; and at the end I ‘fare’ to like this one the best of the Series. The Sea scenery has much to do with this preference I dare say.”
See ‘Letters,’ ii. 344. |
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