Whether this letter will ever reach you, I don’t know. I am going in two days to Naseby for a little while, and shall then find my way home to Suffolk for the greater part of the Winter and Spring, I suppose.
O beate Sesti,
Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.
I think of hiring a house in some country town like this, but nearer Suffolk, and there have my books, etc. I want a house much: and a very small one will content me, with a few old women close by to play cards with at night. What a life, you will say!
His virtues walked then humble round,
Nor knew a pause, nor felt a void:
And sure the Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ’d.
That was not in playing picquet, I doubt. What fine lines of Johnson’s [125] these!
* * * * *
On the 15th of September 1842 FitzGerald first made Carlyle’s personal acquaintance. He always spoke of his having first gone to Chelsea in company with Thackeray, and in the Notes which he left of his excavations at Naseby he repeats what he frequently told myself and others. But his memory was clearly at fault, for in a letter to Pollock, written on the 16th, but dated by mistake the 17th, of September, he says, ‘I have come up to London for two days on a false errand: and am therefore going back in a pet, to Naseby. . . . I enquired at Spedding’s rooms to-day: he is expected by the 20th, which is near. Laurence is the only person I know in town. . . . He and I went to see Carlyle at Chelsea yesterday. That genius has been surveying the field of battle of Naseby in company with Dr. Arnold, who died soon after, poor man! I doubt (from Carlyle’s description) if they identified the very ground of the carnage. . . . I have heard nothing of Thackeray for these two months. He was to have visited an Irish brother of mine: but he has not yet done so. I called at Coram Street yesterday, and old John seemed to think he was yet in Ireland.’ With this correction I
now give the Memorandum referred to, which FitzGerald entrusted to my keeping together with several of Carlyle’s letters. An attempt to put up a monument on the real site of the battle proved abortive, as will appear hereafter.
‘About the middle of September 1842, W. M. Thackeray took me to tea with Carlyle whom I had not previously known. He was then busy with Cromwell; had just been, he told us, over the Field of Naseby in company with Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and had sufficiently identified the Ground of the Battle with the contemporaneous Accounts of it. As I happened to know the Field well—the greater part of it then belonging to my Family—I knew that Carlyle and Arnold had been mistaken—misled in part by an Obelisk which my Father had set up as on the highest Ground of the Field, but which they mistook for the centre-ground of the Battle. This I told Carlyle, who was very reluctant to believe that he and Arnold could have been deceived—that he could accept no hearsay Tradition or Theory against the Evidence of his own Eyes, etc. However, as I was just then going down to Naseby, I might enquire further into the matter.
‘On arriving at Naseby, I had spade and mattock taken to a hill near half a mile across from the “Blockhead Obelisk,” and pitted with several hollows, overgrown with rank Vegetation, which Tradition had always pointed to as the Graves of the Slain. One of these I had opened; and there, sure enough, were the remains of Skeletons closely packed together—chiefly teeth—but some remains of Shinbone, and marks of Skull in the Clay. Some of these, together with some sketches of the Place, I sent to Carlyle.
‘The Naseby Monument, already advised by Carlyle, was not executed at the time: and some how or other was not again talked of till 1855 when the Estate was to be sold from us. I was told however by the Lawyers, etc., that it was better not to interfere while that Business was going on. So the Scheme went to sleep again till 1872, when, Carlyle renewing the subject in some Letter, I applied to the Agent of the Estate who was willing to help us in getting permission to erect the Stone, and to a neighbouring Mason to fashion it as Carlyle desired. We had some difficulty in this latter point, but at last all was settled, when suddenly Agent and Lawyer informed us the thing must not be done—for one reason, that Stone and Inscription were considered too plain.’
Before the excavations were begun, however, FitzGerald received the following letter of instructions from Carlyle, written three days after their interview.