Boulge Hall, Woodbridge.
[21 March, 1841.]
Dear Frederic Tennyson,
I was very glad indeed to get a letter from you this morning. You here may judge, by the very nature of things, that I lose no time in answering it. I did not receive your Sicilian letter: and have been for a year and half quite ignorant of what part of the world you were in. I supposed you were alive: though I don’t quite know why. De non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem est ratio. I heard from Morton three months ago: he was then at Venice: very tired of it: but lying on such luxurious sofas that he could not make up his mind to move from them. He wanted to meet you: or at all events to hear of you. I wrote to him, but could tell him nothing. I have also seen Alfred once or twice since you have
gone: he is to be found in certain conjunctions of the stars at No. 8 Charlotte Street. . . . All our other friends are in statu quo: Spedding residing calmly in Lincoln’s Inn Fields: at the Colonial all day: at the play and smoking at night: occasionally to be found in the Edinburgh Review. Pollock and the Lawyer tribe travel to and fro between their chambers in the Temple and Westminster Hall: occasionally varying their travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the Courts in Lincoln’s Inn. As to me, I am fixed here where your letter found me: very rarely going to London: and staying there but a short time when I do go. You, Morton, Spedding, Thackeray, and Alfred, were my chief solace there: and only Spedding is now to be found. Thackeray lives in Paris.
From this you may judge that I have no such sights to tell of as you have. Neither do mortaletti ever go off at Boulge: which is perhaps not to be regretted. Day follows day with unvaried movement: there is the same level meadow with geese upon it always lying before my eyes: the same pollard oaks: with now and then the butcher or the washerwoman trundling by in their carts. As you have lived in Lincolnshire I will not further describe Suffolk. No new books (except a perfectly insane one of Carlyle, [82] who is becoming very obnoxious now that he is become popular), nor new pictures, no music. A game at picquet of two hours duration closes each day. But
for that I might say with Titus—perdidi diem. Oh Lord! all this is not told you that you may admire my philosophic quietude, etc.; pray don’t think that. I should travel like you if I had the eyes to see that you have: but, as Goethe says, the eye can but see what it brings with it the power of seeing. If anything I had seen in my short travels had given me any new ideas worth having I should travel more: as it is, I see your Italian lakes and cities in the Picturesque Annuals as well as I should in the reality. You have a more energetic, stirring, acquisitive, and capacious soul. I mean all this seriously, believe me: but I won’t say any more about it. Morton also is a capital traveller: I wish he would keep notes of what he sees, and publish them one day.
I must however tell you that I am becoming a Farmer! Can you believe in this? I hope we shall both live to laugh over it together. When do you mean to come back? Pray do not let so long a time elapse again without writing to me: never mind a long letter: write something to say you are alive and where. Rome certainly is nearer England than Naples: so perhaps you are coming back. Bring Morton back with you. I will then go to London and we will smoke together and be as merry as sandboys. We will all sit under the calm shadow of Spedding’s forehead. People talk of a war with America. Poor dear old England! she makes a gallant shew in her old age. If Englishmen are to
travel, I am glad that such as you are abroad—good specimens of Englishmen: with the proper fierté about them. The greater part are poor wretches that go to see oranges growing, and hear Bellini for eighteen-pence. I hope the English are as proud and disagreeable as ever. What an odd thing that the Italians like such martial demonstrations as you describe—not at all odd, probably—their spirit begins and goes off in noise and smoke. It is like all other grand aspirations. So ---’s Epics crepitate in Sonnets. All I ask of you is to write no Sonnets on what you see or hear—no sonnets can sound well after Daddy Wordsworth, ---, etc., who have now succeeded in quite spoiling one’s pleasure in Milton’s—and they are heavy things. The words ‘subjective and objective’ are getting into general use now, and Donne has begun with æsthetics and exegetical in Kemble’s review. Kemble himself has written an article on the Emperor Nicholas which must crush him. If you could read it, no salvos of mortalletti could ever startle you again. And now my paper is almost covered: and I must say Good bye to you. This is Sunday March 21—a fine sunny blowing day. We shall dine at one o’clock—an hour hence—go to Church—then walk—have tea at six, and pass rather a dull evening, because of no picquet. You will be sauntering in St. Peter’s perhaps, or standing on the Capitol while the sun sets. I should like to see Rome after all. Livy’s lies (as the æsthetics prove them to be) do at least animate one so far—
how far?—so far as to wish, and not to do, having perfect power to do.
Oh eloquent, just, and mighty Theory of Mortaletti!