Volume Iii Part 63 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Mr. Austen H. Layard.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Tuesday, April 10th, 1855._
DEAR LAYARD,
I shall of course observe the strictest silence, at present, in reference to your resolutions. It will be a most acceptable occupation to me to go over them with you, and I have not a doubt of their producing a strong effect out of doors.
There is nothing in the present time at once so galling and so alarming to me as the alienation of the people from their own public affairs. I have no difficulty in understanding it. They have had so little to do with the game through all these years of Parliamentary Reform, that they have sullenly laid down their cards, and taken to looking on. The players who are left at the table do not see beyond it, conceive that gain and loss and all the interest of the play are in their hands, and will never be wiser until they and the table and the lights and the money are all overturned together. And I believe the discontent to be so much the worse for smouldering, instead of blazing openly, that it is extremely like the general mind of France before the breaking out of the first Revolution, and is in danger of being turned by any one of a thousand accidents--a bad harvest--the last strain too much of aristocratic insolence or incapacity--a defeat abroad--a mere chance at home--with such a devil of a conflagration as never has been beheld since.
Meanwhile, all our English tuft-hunting, toad-eating, and other manifestations of accursed gentility--to say nothing of the Lord knows who's defiances of the proven truth before six hundred and fifty men--ARE expressing themselves every day. So, every day, the disgusted millions with this unnatural gloom are confirmed and hardened in the very worst of moods. Finally, round all this is an atmosphere of poverty, hunger, and ignorant desperation, of the mere existence of which perhaps not one man in a thousand of those not actually enveloped in it, through the whole extent of this country, has the least idea.
It seems to me an absolute impossibility to direct the spirit of the people at this pa.s.s until it shows itself. If they begin to bestir themselves in the vigorous national manner; if they would appear in political reunion, array themselves peacefully but in vast numbers against a system that they know to be rotten altogether, make themselves heard like the sea all round this island, I for one should be in such a movement heart and soul, and should think it a duty of the plainest kind to go along with it, and try to guide it by all possible means. But you can no more help a people who do not help themselves than you can help a man who does not help himself. And until the people can be got up from the lethargy, which is an awful symptom of the advanced state of their disease, I know of nothing that can be done beyond keeping their wrongs continually before them.
I shall hope to see you soon after you come back. Your speeches at Aberdeen are most admirable, manful, and earnest. I would have such speeches at every market-cross, and in every town-hall, and among all sorts and conditions of men; up in the very balloons, and down in the very diving-bells.
Ever, cordially yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sat.u.r.day, April 14th, 1855._
MY DEAR FORSTER,
I cannot express to you how very much delighted I am with the ”Steele.”
I think it incomparably the best of the series. The pleasanter humanity of the subject may commend it more to one's liking, but that again requires a delicate handling, which you have given to it in a most charming manner. It is surely not possible to approach a man with a finer sympathy, and the a.s.sertion of the claims of literature throughout is of the n.o.blest and most gallant kind.
I don't agree with you about the serious papers in _The Spectator_, which I think (whether they be Steele's or Addison's) are generally as indifferent as the humour of _The Spectator_ is delightful. And I have always had a notion that Prue understood her husband very well, and held him in consequence, when a fonder woman with less show of caprice must have let him go. But these are points of opinion. The paper is masterly, and all I have got to say is, that if ---- had a grain of the honest sentiment with which it overflows, he never would or could have made so great a mistake.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Thursday, April 26th, 1855._
ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT.
MY DEAR MARK,
I will call for you at two, and go with you to Highgate, by all means.
Leech and I called on Tuesday evening and left our loves. I have not written to you since, because I thought it best to leave you quiet for a day. I have no need to tell you, my dear fellow, that my thoughts have been constantly with you, and that I have not forgotten (and never shall forget) who sat up with me one night when a little place in my house was left empty.
It is hard to lose any child, but there are many blessed sources of consolation in the loss of a baby. There is a beautiful thought in Fielding's ”Journey from this World to the Next,” where the baby he had lost many years before was found by him all radiant and happy, building him a bower in the Elysian Fields where they were to live together when he came.
Ever affectionately yours.
P.S.--Our kindest loves to Mrs. Lemon.