Tennyson and his friends

by Unknown

Spedding’s Bacon seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at the little Interest, and less Conviction, that his two first volumes carried; Thompson told me they had convinced him the other way; and that Ellis had long given up Bacon’s Defence before he died.

And so it continued to the end. When the sixth volume appeared in 1872 FitzGerald wrote:

And here is Spedding’s vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old Spedding’s pleading for him for ever; that is old Spedding’s simple statement of the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh business is quite delightful, better than Old Kensington.

Carlyle alone of all the critics was unstinted, though rather patronizing, in his praise. Writing to FitzGerald, he says:

Like yourself I have gone through Spedding, seven long long volumes, not skipping except when I had got the sense with me, and generally reading all of Bacon’s own that was there: I confess to you I found it a most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect and complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy-work I have ever met with in this generation. Bacon is washed down to the natural skin; and truly he is not, nor ever was, unlovely to me; a man of no culpability to speak of; of an opulent and even magnificent intellect, but all in the magnificent prose vein. Nothing or almost nothing of the “melodies eternal” to be traced in him. There is a grim strength in Spedding, quietly, very quietly invincible, which I did not quite know of till this Book; and in all ways I could congratulate this indefatigably patient, placidly invincible and victorious Spedding.

But for the last eight years he had given up his rooms in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and gone to live with his nieces at 80 Westbourne Terrace, where he remained till his death. Thompson, in succession to Dr. Whewell, had been appointed Master of Trinity, and in writing to congratulate him Spedding says:

I was not unprepared for your news, having just returned from Kitlands, where the Pollocks were, and the rumour was under discussion and generally thought to be well-founded, and the thing if true very much rejoiced over. I have great pleasure in adding my own congratulations, as well to yourself as to Trinity. It was all that was wanted to make one of the last acts of Lord Russell a complete success. I should be very glad to think that I had as much to do with it as you suppose: but I was only one of many, and not by any means the most influential, and as the thing is done, no matter how it was brought about.

I am myself preparing for a shift of position, though the adventure is of a milder kind. My nephew (J. J. S.) is going to be married within a month or so: and it has been settled that he is to live at Greta Bank, and that the rest of the party now living there are to take a house in London: where I am invited to join them, with due securities for liberties and privileges. Though the exertion incident to dislodgment from quarters overgrown with so many superfetations of confusion and disorder, is formidable to contemplate, the proposed arrangement is so obviously convenient and desirable, that I am going to encounter it. And though the place is not yet settled, it seems probable that before the end of the year I shall be transferred or transferring myself and my goods to the western part of London, and preparing to remodel my manners and customs (in some respects) according to the usages of civilized society. Though I shall live among women, they will be women of my own house, and therefore not worshippers, which is a great advantage, and though there may be some danger for an obedient uncle in being where he can always be caught, I hope to be able to preserve as much independence as is good for a man.

I have four proof sheets to settle, and have just been interrupted by an engraver with a proof [of] the D. of Buccleugh’s miniature of Bacon, which will be the best portrait that has yet been done of him in black and white.

This was the miniature which was reproduced at the beginning of the third volume of the Life and Letters, and which Spedding regarded as the original of Van Somer’s portrait.