‘Lors sans viser au lieu dont elle vint,
Et desprisant la gloire que l’on a
En ce bas monde, icelle Anne ordonna,
Que son corps fust entre les pauures mys
En cette fosse. Or prions, chers amys,
Que l’ame soit entre les pauures mise,
Qui bien heureux sont chantez en l’Église.’
[25] On March 30, 1873, FitzGerald wrote to Sir Frederick Pollock:—
“At the beginning of this year I submitted to be Photo’ed at last—for many Nieces, and a few old Friends—I must think that you are an old Friend as well as a very kind and constant one; and so I don’t like not to send you what I have sent others.—The Artist who took me, took (as he always does) three several Views of one’s Face: but the third View (looking full-faced) got blurred by my blinking at the Light: so only these two were reproduced—I shouldn’t know that either was meant for [me]: nor, I think, would any one else, if not told: but the Truth-telling Sun somehow did them; and as he acted so handsomely by me, I take courage to distribute them to those who have a regard for me, and will naturally like to have so favourable a Version of one’s Outward Aspect to remember one by. I should not have sent them if they had been otherwise. The up-looking one I call ‘The Statesman,’ quite ready to be called to the Helm of Affairs: the Down-looking one I call The Philosopher. Will you take which you like? And when next old Spedding comes your way, give him the other (he won’t care which) with my Love. I only don’t write to him because my doing so would impose on his Conscience an Answer—which would torment him for some little while. I do not love him the less: and believe all the while that he not the less regards me.”
Again on May 5, he wrote: “I think I shall have a word about M[acready] from Mrs. Kemble, with whom I have been corresponding a little since her return to England. She has lately been staying with her Son in Law, Mr. Leigh (?), at Stoneleigh Vicarage, near Kenilworth. In the Autumn she says she will go to America, never to return to England. But I tell her she will return. She is to sit for her Photo at my express desire, and I have given her Instructions how to sit, derived from my own successful Experience. One rule is to sit—in a dirty Shirt—(to avoid dangerous White) and another is, not to sit on a Sunshiny Day: which we must leave to the Young.
“By the by, I sent old Spedding my own lovely Photo (the Statesman) which he has acknowledged in Autograph. He tells me that he begins to ‘smell Land’ with his Bacon.”
[28a] See ‘Letters,’ ii. 165-7.
[28b] See letter of April 22nd, 1873.
[30] Shakespeare, Ant. & Cl., v. 2, line 6:—
‘Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change.’
[31] In his ‘Half Hours with the Worst Authors’ FitzGerald has transcribed ‘Le Bon Pasteur,’ which consists of five stanzas of eight lines each, beginning:—