My dear Frederic,
I am surprised you think my scanty letters are worth encouraging, especially with such long and excellent answers as that I have just got from you. It has found its way down here: and oddly enough does your Italian scenery, painted, I believe, very faithfully upon my inner eye, contrast with the British barrenness of the Field of Naseby. Yet here was fought a battle of some interest to Englishmen: and I am persuading farmers to weed well the corn that grows over those who died there. No, no; in spite of your Vesuviuses and sunshine, I love my poor dear brave barren ugly country. Talk of your Italians! why, they are extinguished by the Austrians because they don’t blaze enough of themselves to burn the extinguisher. Only people who deserve despotism are forced to suffer it. We have at last good weather: and the harvest is just drawing to a close in this place. It is a bright brisk morning, and the loaded waggons are rolling cheerfully past my window. But since I wrote what is above a whole day has passed: I have
eaten a bread dinner: taken a lonely walk: made a sketch of Naseby (not the least like yours of Castellamare): played for an hour on an old tub of a piano: and went out in my dressing-gown to smoke a pipe with a tenant hard by. That tenant (whose name is Love, by the bye) was out with his folks in the stack yard: getting in all the corn they can, as the night looks rainy. So, disappointed of my projected ‘talk about runts’ and turnips, I am come back—with a good deal of animal spirits at my tongue’s and fingers’ ends. If I were transported now into your room at Castellamare, I would wag my tongue far beyond midnight with you. These fits of exultation are not very common with me: as (after leaving off beef) my life has become of an even grey paper character: needing no great excitement, and as pleased with Naseby as Naples. . . .
I am reading Schlegel’s lectures on the History of Literature: a nice just book: as also the comedies of Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar: the latter very delightful: as also D’Aubigné’s History of the Reformation, a good book. When I am tired of one I take up the other: when tired of all, I take up my pipe, or sit down and recollect some of Fidelio on the pianoforte. Ah Master Tennyson, we in England have our pleasures too. As to Alfred, I have heard nothing of him since May: except that some one saw him going to a packet which he believed was going to Rotterdam. . . . When shall you and I go to an Opera again, or hear one of Beethoven’s Symphonies together? You
are lost to England, I calculate: and I am given over to turnips and inanity. So runs the world away. Well, if I never see you again, I am very very glad I have seen you: and got the idea of a noble fellow all ways into my head. Does this seem like humbug to you? But it is not. And that fine fellow Morton too. Pray write when you can to me: and when my stars shine so happily about my head as they do at this minute, when my blood feels like champagne, I will answer you. . .
When you go to Florence, get to see a fresco portrait of Dante by Giotto: newly discovered in some chapel there. Edgeworth saw it, and has brought home a print which is (he says) a tolerable copy. It is a most awful head: Dante, when about twenty-five years old. The likeness to the common portraits of him when old is quite evident. All his great poem seems in it: like the flower in the bud. I read the last cantos of the Paradiso over and over again. I forget if you like him: but, if I understand you at all, you must. Farewell!
P.S. Just heard from Edgeworth that Alfred is in London ‘busy preparing for the press’!!!
To Bernard Barton.
London, November 27/41.
Dear Barton,