Volume I Part 7 (1/2)

DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . We have had much rain which has hindered the sporting part of our company: but has not made much difference to me. One or two suns.h.i.+ny days have made me say within myself, 'how felicitously and at once would Laurence hit off an outline in this clear atmosphere.' For this fresh sunlight is not a mere dead medium of light, but is so much vital champagne both to sitter and to artist. London will become worse as it becomes bigger, which it does every hour.

I don't see much prospect of my going to c.u.mberland this winter: though I should like to go snipe-shooting with that literary shot James Spedding.

Do you mean to try and go up Skiddaw? You will get out upon it from your bedroom window: so I advise you to begin before you go down to breakfast.

There is a mountain called Dod, which has felt me upon its summit. It is not one of the highest in that range. Remember me to Grisedale Pike; a very well-bred mountain. If you paint--put him not only in a good light, but to leeward of you in a strong current of air. . . .

Farewell for the present.

_To F. Tennyson_.

LONDON, _Jan_. 16, 1841.

DEAR FREDERIC,

I have just concluded, with all the throes of imprudent pleasure, the purchase of a large picture by Constable, of which, if I can continue in the mood, I will enclose you a sketch. It is very good: but how you and Morton would abuse it! Yet this, being a sketch, escapes some of Constable's faults, and might escape some of your censures. The trees are not splashed with that white sky-mud, which (according to Constable's theory) the Earth scatters up with her wheels in travelling so briskly round the sun; and there is a dash and felicity in the execution that gives one a thrill of good digestion in one's room, and the thought of which makes one inclined to jump over the children's heads in the streets. But if you could see my great enormous Venetian Picture you would be extonished. Does the thought ever strike you, when looking at pictures in a house, that you are to run and jump at one, and go right through it into some behind-scene world on the other side, as Harlequins do? A steady portrait especially invites one to do so: the quietude of it ironically tempts one to outrage it: one feels it would close again over the panel, like water, as if nothing had happened. That portrait of Spedding, for instance, which Laurence has given me: not swords, nor cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan b.u.t.ting at it, could, I feel sure, discompose that venerable forehead. No wonder that no hair can grow at such an alt.i.tude: no wonder his view of Bacon's virtue is so rarefied that the common consciences of men cannot endure it. Thackeray and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea of Spedding's forehead: we find it somehow or other in all things, just peering out of all things: you see it in a milestone, Thackeray says. He also draws the forehead rising with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the lake of Geneva. We have great laughing over this. The forehead is at present in Pembrokes.h.i.+re, I believe: or Glamorgans.h.i.+re: or Monmouths.h.i.+re: it is hard to say which. It has gone to spend its Christmas there.

[A water-colour sketch of Constable's picture.]

This you see is a sketch of my ill.u.s.trious new purchase. The two animals in the water are cows: that on the bank a dog: and that in the glade of the wood a man or woman as you may choose. I can't say my drawing gives you much idea of my picture, except as to the composition of it: and even that depends on the colour and disposition of light and shade. The effect of the light breaking under the trees is very beautiful in the original: but this can only be given in water-colours on thick paper, where one can scratch out the lights. One would fancy that Constable had been looking at that fine picture of Gainsborough's in the National: the Watering Place: which is superior, in my mind, to all the Claudes there.

But this is perhaps because I am an Englishman and not an Italian.

_To W. H. Thompson_. {79a}

[18_th_ _Feb._ 1841.]

* BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.

* Doesn't this name express heavy clay? {79b}

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

I wish you would write to me ten lines to say how you are. You are, I suppose, at Cambridge: and I am buried (with all my fine parts, what a shame) here: so that I hear of n.o.body--except that Spedding and I abuse each other about Shakespeare occasionally: a subject on which you must know that he has lost his conscience, if ever he had any. For what did Dr. Allen . . . say when he felt Spedding's head? Why, that all his b.u.mps were so tempered that there was no merit in his sobriety--then what would have been the use of a Conscience to him? Q. E. D.

Since I saw you, I have entered into a decidedly agricultural course of conduct: read books about composts, etc. I walk about in the fields also where the people are at work, and the more dirt acc.u.mulates on my shoes, the more I think I know. Is not this all funny? Gibbon might elegantly compare my retirement from the cares and splendours of the world to that of Diocletian. Have you read Thackeray's little book--the second Funeral of Napoleon? If not, pray do; and buy it, and ask others to buy it: as each copy sold puts 7.5_d._ in T.'s pocket: which is very empty just now, I take it. I think this book is the best thing he has done. What an account there is of the Emperor Nicholas in Kemble's last Review, {80a} the last sentence of it (which can be by no other man in Europe but Jack himself) has been meat and drink to me for a fortnight. The electric eel at the Adelaide Gallery is nothing to it. Then Edgeworth fires away about the Odes of Pindar, {80b} and Donne is very aesthetic about Mr.

Hallam's Book. {80c} What is the meaning of 'exegetical'? Till I know that, how can I understand the Review?

Pray remember me kindly to Blakesley, Heath, and such other potentates as I knew in the days before they 'a.s.sumed the purple.' I am reading Gibbon, and see nothing but this d---d colour before my eyes. It changes occasionally to bright yellow, which is (is it?) the Imperial colour in China, and also the ant.i.thesis to purple (_vide_ Coleridge and Eastlake's Goethe)--even as the Eastern and Western Dynasties are ant.i.thetical, and yet, by the law of extremes, potentially the same (_vide_ Coleridge, etc.) Is this aesthetic? is this exegetical? How glad I shall be if you can a.s.sure me that it is. But, nonsense apart and begged-pardon-for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place.

'The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover--requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc.' This is not an unpleasing style on Agricultural subjects--nor an uncommon one.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.

[21 March, 1841.]

DEAR FREDERIC TENNYSON,

I was very glad indeed to get a letter from you this morning. You here may judge, by the very nature of things, that I lose no time in answering it. I did not receive your Sicilian letter: and have been for a year and half quite ignorant of what part of the world you were in. I supposed you were alive: though I don't quite know why. De non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem est ratio. I heard from Morton three months ago: he was then at Venice: very tired of it: but lying on such luxurious sofas that he could not make up his mind to move from them. He wanted to meet you: or at all events to hear of you. I wrote to him, but could tell him nothing. I have also seen Alfred once or twice since you have gone: he is to be found in certain conjunctions of the stars at No. 8 Charlotte Street. . . . All our other friends are in statu quo: Spedding residing calmly in Lincoln's Inn Fields: at the Colonial all day: at the play and smoking at night: occasionally to be found in the Edinburgh Review. Pollock and the Lawyer tribe travel to and fro between their chambers in the Temple and Westminster Hall: occasionally varying their travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the Courts in Lincoln's Inn. As to me, I am fixed here where your letter found me: very rarely going to London: and staying there but a short time when I do go. You, Morton, Spedding, Thackeray, and Alfred, were my chief solace there: and only Spedding is now to be found. Thackeray lives in Paris.