I have heard from Alfred also, who hates his water life—βιος αβιος he calls it—but hopes to be cured in March. Poor fellow, I trust he may. He is not in a happy plight, I doubt. I wish I lived in a pleasant country where he might like to come and stay with me—but this is one of the ugliest places in
England—one of the dullest—it has not the merit of being bleak on a grand scale—pollard trees over a flat clay, with regular hedges. I saw a stanza in an old book which seemed to describe my condition rather—
Far from thy kyn cast thee:
Wrath not thy neighbour next thee,
In a good corn country rest thee,
And sit down, Robin, and rest thee. [152]
Funny advice, isn’t it? I am glad to hear Septimus is so much improved. I beg you will felicitate him from me: I have a tacit regard of the true sort for him, as I think I must have for all of the Tennyson build. I see so many little natures about that I must draw to the large, even if their faults be on the same scale as their virtues. You and I shall I suppose quarrel as often as we meet: but I can quarrel and never be the worse with you. How we pulled against each other at Gravesend! You would stay—I wouldn’t—then I would—then we did. Do you remember the face of that girl at the Bazaar, who kept talking to us and looking all round the room for fresh customers—a way women have—that is, a way of doing rather gracefully? Then the gentleman who sang Ivy green; a very extraordinary accentuation, it seemed to me: but I believe you admired it very much. Really, if these little excursions in the company of one’s friends leave such a pleasant taste behind in the memory, one should court them oftener.
And yet then perhaps the relish would grow less: it is the infrequency that gives them room to expand. I shall never get to Italy, that seems clear. My great travel this year will be to Carlisle. Quid prosit ista tua longa peregrinatio, etc. Travelling, you know, is a vanity. The soul remains the same. An amorem possis fugare, an libidinis exsiccari, an timorem mortis depellere? What then will you say to Pollock’s being married! I hear he is to be. Ad matrimonium fugis? Miser! Scævola noster dicere solebat, etc. Excuse my overflowing with philosophy. I am going this evening to eat toasted cheese with that celebrated poet Bernard Barton. And I must soon stir, and look about for my great coat, brush myself, etc. It blows a harrico, as Theodore Hook used to say, and will rain before I get to Woodbridge. Those poor mistaken lilac buds there out of the window! and an old Robin, ruffled up to his thickest, sitting mournfully under them, quite disheartened. For you must know the mild winter is just giving way to a remarkably severe spring. . . . I wish you were here to smoke a pipe with me. I play of evenings some of Handel’s great choruses which are the bravest music after all. I am getting to the true John Bull style of music. I delight in Handel’s Allegro and Penseroso. Do you know the fine pompous joyous chorus of ‘These pleasures, Mirth, if thou canst give, etc.’? Handel certainly does in music what old Bacon desires in his Essay on Masques, ‘Let the songs be loud and cheerful, not puling, etc.’ One
might think the Water music was written from this text.
* * * * *
About this time FitzGerald was engaged in collecting information for Carlyle on the subject of Cromwell’s Lincolnshire campaign, and it is to this he refers in the following fragment of a letter to Mrs. Charlesworth and the letters which follow.
But as Carlyle is like to make good use of what we can find him, and make a good English Hero of Oliver—something of a Johnsonian figure—I hope you will try and pester these Lincoln ladies and gentlemen. I wrote to Livesey: who once, he says, had a butler named Oliver Cromwell. That is the nearest approach to history I make through him.
My brother John, after being expected every day this week, wrote positively to say he could not come to day: and accordingly was seen to drive up to the Hall two hours ago. *
Believe me, dear Mrs. Charlesworth, yours thankfully,
E. FitzGerald.