Volume I Part 21 (2/2)
MY DEAR COWELL,
How is it I have not heard from you these two months? Surely, I was the last who wrote. I was told you had influenza, or cold: but I suppose that is all over by this time. How goes on Sanscrit, Athenaeus, etc. I am reading the sixth Book of Thucydides--the Sicilian expedition--very interesting--indeed I like the old historian more and more and shall be sorry when I have done with him. Do you remember the fine account of the great armament setting off from the Piraeus for Sicily--B. 6, ch. 30, etc? If not, read it now.
One day I mean to go and pay you another visit, perhaps soon. I heard from Miss Barton you were reading, and even liking, the Princess--is this so? I believe it is greatly admired in London coteries. I remain in the same mind about [it]. I am told the Author means to republish it, with a character of each speaker between each canto; which will make the matter worse, I think; unless the speakers are all of the Tennyson family. For there is no indication of any change of speaker in the cantos themselves.
What do you say to all this?
Can you tell me any pa.s.sages in the Romans of the Augustan age, or rather before, telling of decline in the people's morals, hardihood, especially as regards the youth of the country?
Kind remembrances to Miladi, and I am yours ever,
E. FITZGERALD.
_To F. Tennyson_.
BEDFORD, _Dec._ 7/49.
MY DEAR OLD FREDERIC,
Your note came to me to-day. I ought to have written to you long ago: and indeed did half do a letter before the summer was half over: which letter I mislaid. I shall be delighted indeed to have your photograph: insufficient as a photograph is. You are one of the few men whose portrait I would give a penny to have: and one day when you are in England we must get it done by Laurence; half at your expense and half at mine, I think. I wish you had sent over to me some of your poems which you told me you were printing at Florence: and often I wish I was at Florence to give you some of my self-satisfied advice on what you should select. For though I do not pretend to write Poetry you know I have a high notion of my judgment in it.
Well, I was at Boulge all the summer: came up thence five weeks ago: stayed three weeks with my mother at Richmond; a week in London: and now am come here to try and finish a money bargain with some lawyers which you heard me beginning a year ago. They utterly failed in any part of the transaction except bringing me in a large bill for service unperformed. However, we are now upon another tack. . . .
In a week I go to London, where I hope to see Alfred. Oddly enough, I had a note from him this very day on which I receive yours: he has, he tells me, taken chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Moxon told me he was about to publish another edition of his Princess, with interludes added between the parts: and also that he was about to print, but (I think) not to publish, those Elegiacs on Hallam. I saw poor old Thackeray in London: getting very slowly better of a bilious fever that had almost killed him. Some one told me that he was gone or going to the Water Doctor at Malvern. People in general thought Pendennis got dull as it got on; and I confess I thought so too: he would do well to take the opportunity of his illness to discontinue it altogether. He told me last June he himself was tired of it: must not his readers naturally tire too?
Do you see d.i.c.kens' David Copperfield? It is very good, I think: more carefully written than his later works. But the melodramatic parts, as usual, bad. Carlyle says he is a showman whom one gives a s.h.i.+lling to once a month to see his raree-show, and then sends him about his business.
I have been obliged to turn Author on the very smallest scale. My old friend Bernard Barton chose to die in the early part of this year. . . .
We have made a Book out of his Letters and Poems, and published it by subscription . . . and I have been obliged to contribute a little dapper {251} Memoir, as well as to select bits of Letters, bits of Poems, etc.
All that was wanted is accomplished: many people subscribed. Some of B.
B.'s letters are pleasant, I think, and when you come to England I will give you this little book of incredibly small value. I have heard no music but two concerts at Jullien's a fortnight ago; very dull, I thought: no beautiful new Waltzes and Polkas which I love. It is a strange thing to go to the Casinos and see the coa.r.s.e wh.o.r.es and apprentices in bespattered morning dresses, pea-jackets, and bonnets, twirl round clumsily and indecently to the divine airs played in the Gallery; 'the music yearning like a G.o.d in pain' indeed. I should like to hear some of your Florentine Concerts; and I do wish you to believe that I do constantly wish myself with you: that, if I ever went anywhere, I would a.s.suredly go to visit the Villa Gondi. I wish you to believe this, which I know to be true, though I am probably further than ever from accomplis.h.i.+ng my desire. Farewell: I shall hope to find out your Consul and your portrait in London: though you do not give me very good directions where I am to find them. And I will let you know soon whether I have found the portrait, and how I like it.
_To John Allen_.
BEDFORD, _Dec._ 13/49.
MY DEAR OLD ALLEN,
. . . I am glad you like the Book. {252a} You are partly right as to what I say about the Poems. For though I really do think some of the Poems very pretty, yet I think they belong to a cla.s.s which the world no longer wants. Notwithstanding this, one is sure the world will not be the worse for them: they are a kind of elder Nursery rhymes; pleasing to younger people of good affections. {252b} The letters, some of them, I like very much: but I had some curiosity to know how others would like them.
_To W. B. Donne_.
19 CHARLOTTE ST., FITZROY SQUARE, LONDON.
[18 _Jan_. 1850.]
DEAR DONNE,
. . . After I left Richmond, whence I last wrote to you, I went to Bedford, where I was for five weeks: then returned to spend Christmas at Richmond: and now dawdle here hoping to get some accursed lawyers to raise me some money on what remains of my reversion. This they _can_ do, and _will_ do, in time: but, as usual, find it their interest to delay as much as possible.
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