To Mrs. Tennyson.
November 4/67.
To think of Alfred’s approving my old Omar! I never should have thought he even knew of it. Certainly I should never have sent it to him, always supposing that he would not approve anything but a literal Prose translation—unless from such hands as can do original work and therefore do not translate other People’s! Well: now I have got Nicolas and sent a copy to Cowell, and when he is at liberty again we shall beat up old Omar’s Quarters once more.
I’ll tell you a very pretty Book. Alfred Tennyson’s Pastoral Poems, or rather Rural Idylls (only I must hate the latter word) bound up in a volume, Gardener’s, Miller’s, Daughters; Oak; Dora; Audley Court, etc.
Oh the dear old 1842 days and editions! Spedding thinks I’ve shut up my mind since. Not to “Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud.” When I ask People what Bird says that of an evening, they say “The Thrush.”
I wish you would make one of your Boys write out the “Property” Farmer Idyll. Do now, pray.
E. F. G.
When he had first “discovered” Omar, and was beginning to work upon him, Tennyson (who was then finishing the early “Idylls of the King”) had been one of the first to whom he wrote. It is worth remembering that FitzGerald was then in deep depression. It was the middle of the sad period of his brief, unhappy married life. This had proved a failure in London. It was proving a failure now in the country. He wrote:
Gorlestone, Great Yarmouth,
July 1857.
My dear old Alfred—Please direct the enclosed to Frederick. I wrote him some months ago getting Parker to direct; but have had no reply. You won’t write to me, at which I can’t wonder. I keep hoping for King Arthur—or part of him. I have got here to the seaside—a dirty, Dutch-looking sea, with a dusty Country in the rear; but the place is not amiss for one’s Yellow Leaf. I keep on reading foolish Persian too: chiefly because of it’s connecting me with the Cowells, now besieged in Calcutta. But also I have really got hold of an old Epicurean so desperately impious in his recommendations to live only for To-day that the good Mahometans have scarce dared to multiply MSS. of him. He writes in little quatrains, and has scarce any of the iteration and conceits to which his people are given. One of the last things I remember of him is that—“God gave me this turn for drink, perhaps God was drunk when he made me”—which is not strictly pious. But he is very tender about his roses and wine, and making the most of this poor little life.