Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

I am getting on with ‘The Bothie,’ acting on a criticism which appeared to me correct, that the letters and sermonising parts were too long and least to the point. I believe I may have cut out something which for old acquaintance you may regret, but the general effect to a new reader will, I think, be improved; and a reduction in the amount of disquisition was certainly required.

Excuse this letter all about my own concerns. I am pretty busy, and have time for little else; such is our fate after forty. My figure forty stands nearly three months behind me on the roadway, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung; an octavum lustrum bound up and laid on the shelf. ‘So-and-so is dead,’ said a friend to Lord Melbourne, of some author. ‘Dear me, how glad I am! Now I can bind him up.’

Here is a jest of Lord Derby’s to a friend who told him he was in a great mess. ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘but Benjamin’s mess is five times greater than those of his brethren.’

We have been having deaths lately for our news, as for example that of William Arnold, who, after lying ill for some time at Cairo, started and sailed from Alexandria just as one of his brothers was coming in to see him; just set his foot on Europe, and died, at St. Roque, a few miles from Gibraltar; a great loss, I think, public and private.

To the same.

May 27, 1859.

As for the war, alas! to whom can we desire success? Garibaldi is the only person I sympathise with. I hope he will do something. But how can it end otherwise than ill?

Here is the dictum of the Duc de Malakhoff: ‘Nous les battrons, nous leur offrirons des conditions bien douces. Ils les refuseront. Puis, nous les battrons encore, et nous leur offrirons des conditions bien dures. Ils les accepteront.’ Meantime, the French feeling has become, it appears, universally warlike; and the wise people think that the dynasty, which must have fallen otherwise, will, unless the Austrians drive all before them, be secured.

I have never thanked you for your article on Sleeman’s ‘Oude,’ which came safely to hand, and which I fear is only too favourable to British rule. Let us, however, hope for the best, though the climate is so sadly against any fair development of English qualities, and the war has left behind it a fierce and insulting spirit.

Disraeli, in answer to some friendly regrets at his fall, said it could only be a check for a time. But I think Palmerston may regain the general confidence of the country, as he has in a great measure of the Liberal members, or at any rate the Liberal statesmen, and may perhaps maintain himself, even if Lord John secede. The new Ministry will be strongly Italian in composition; Lord John and Gladstone in addition to Palmerston. It is almost to be feared that they will outrun the national feeling, and go too much in the track of Louis Napoleon. We who live nearer to Louis Napoleon, with only the Channel, and not the whole Atlantic to divide and protect us from him, do not feel quite the same liberty to indulge the natural feelings of enthusiasm in witnessing his aggrandisement in Europe, though it be merely as a liberator that he affects it at present. One thing I devoutly hope; that, with French influence predominating in Italy, the Pope will go to the dogs, with all his canaille accompanying. Evidently the conclave fear this, and there is no doubt at all that instructions came from Rome to the Roman Catholic leaders that they should support Lord Derby, who would support Austria. It has not been uniformly obeyed, but that the order was issued is, I believe, certain.