Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) Part 17

E. F.G.

Burn the poor Caricature if offensive to you. The 'Alexander' profile was become somewhat tarnished then.

LXIII.

WOODBRIDGE: _Oct._ 27, [1879.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I am glad to think that my Regard for you and yours, which I know to be sincere, is of some pleasure to you. Till I met you last in London, I thought you had troops of Friends at call; I had not reflected that by far the greater number of them could not be Old Friends; and those you cling to, I feel, with constancy.

I and my company (viz. Crabbe, etc.) could divert you but little until your mind is at rest about Mrs. Leigh. I shall not even now write more than to say that a Letter from Mowbray, which tells of the kind way you received him and his Brother, says also that his Father is well, and expects Valentia and Spouse in November.

This is all I will write. You will let me know by a line, I think, when that which you wait for has come to pa.s.s. A Post Card with a few words on it will suffice.

You cross over your Address (as usual) but I do my best to find you.

Ever yours E. F.G.

LXIV.

WOODBRIDGE: _Octr._ [? _Nov._] 4/79.

MY DEAR LADY:--

I need not tell you that I am very glad of the news your note of Sunday tells me: and I take it as a pledge of old Regard that you told it me so soon: even but an hour after that other Kemble was born. {161}

I know not if the short letter which I addressed to 4 Everton Place, Leamington (as I read it in your former Letter), reached you. Whatever the place be called, I expect you are still there; and there will be for some time longer. As there may be some anxiety for some little time, I shall not enlarge as usual on other matters; if I do not hear from you, I shall conclude that all is going on well, and shall write again.

Meanwhile, I address this Letter to London, you see, to make sure of you this time: and am ever yours sincerely

E. F.G.

By the by, I think the time is come when, if you like me well enough, you may drop my long Surname, except for the external Address of your letter.

It may seem, but is not, affectation to say that it is a name I dislike; {162} for one reason, it has really caused me some confusion and trouble with other more or less Irish bodies, being as common in Ireland as 'Smith,' etc., here--and particularly with 'Edward'--I suppose because of the patriot Lord who bore [it]. I should not, even if I made bold to wish so to do, propose to treat you in the same fas.h.i.+on; inasmuch as I like your Kemble name, which has become as it were cla.s.sical in England.

LXV.

WOODBRIDGE: _Nov._ 13/79.

MY DEAR LADY,

Now that your anxieties are, as I hope, over, and that you are returned, as I suppose, to London, I send you a budget. First: the famous _Belvidere Hat_; which I think you ought to stick into your Records.

{163a} Were I a dozen years younger, I should ill.u.s.trate all the Book in such a way; but, as my French song says, 'Le Temps est trop court pour de si longs projets.'

Next, you behold a Photo of Carlyle's Niece, which he bid her send me two or three years ago in one of her half-yearly replies to my Enquiries.

What a shrewd, tidy, little Scotch Body! Then you have her last letter, telling of her Uncle, and her married Self, and thanking me for a little Wedding gift which I told her was bought from an Ipswich p.a.w.nbroker {163b}--a very good, clever fellow, who reads Carlyle, and comes over here now and then for a talk with me. Mind, when you return me the Photo, that you secure it around with your Letter paper, that the Postman may not stamp into it. Perhaps this trouble is scarce worth giving you.

'Clerke Sanders' has been familiar to me these fifty years almost; since Tennyson used to repeat it, and 'Helen of Kirkconnel,' at some Cambridge gathering. At that time he looked something like the Hyperion shorn of his Beams in Keats' Poem: with a Pipe in his mouth. Afterwards he got a touch, I used to say, of Haydon's Lazarus. Talking of Keats, do not forget to read Lord Houghton's Life and Letters of him: in which you will find what you may not have guessed from his Poetry (though almost unfathomably deep in that also) the strong, masculine, Sense and Humour, etc., of the man more akin to Shakespeare, I am tempted to think, in a perfect circle of Poetic Faculties, than any Poet since.

Well: the Leaves which hung on more bravely than ever I remember are at last whirling away in a Cromwell Hurricane--(not quite that, neither)--and my old Man says he thinks Winter has set in at last. We cannot complain hitherto. Many summer flowers held out in my Garden till a week ago, when we dug up the Beds in order for next year. So now little but the orange Marigold, which I love for its colour (Irish and Spanish) and Courage, in living all Winter through. Within doors, I am again at my everlasting Crabbe! doctoring his Posthumous Tales _a la mode_ of those of 'The Hall,' to finish a Volume of simple 'Selections' from his other works: all which I will leave to be used, or not, whenever old Crabbe rises up again: which will not be in the Lifetime of yours ever

E. F.G.

I dared not decypher all that Mrs. Wister wrote in my behalf--because I knew it must be sincere! Would she care for my Eternal Crabbe?

LXVI.

[_Nov._ 1879.]

MY DEAR LADY,

I must say a word upon a word in your last which really pains me--about yours and Mrs. Wister's sincerity, etc. Why, I do most thoroughly believe in both; all I meant was that, partly from your own old personal regard for me, and hers, perhaps inherited from you, you may both very sincerely over-rate my little dealings with other great men's thoughts.

For you know full well that the best Head may be warped by as good a Heart beating under it; and one loves the Head and Heart all the more for it. Now all this is all so known to you that I am vexed you will not at once apply it to what I may have said. I do think that I have had to say something of the same sort before now; and I do declare I will not say it again, for it is simply odious, all this talking of oneself.

Yet one thing more. I did go to London on this last occasion purposely to see you at that particular time: for I had not expected Mrs. Edwards to be in London till a Fortnight afterward, until two or three days after I had arranged to go and meet you the very day you arrived, inasmuch as you had told me you were to be but a few days in Town.

There--there! Only believe me; my sincerity, Madam; and--_Voila ce qui est fait_. _Parlons_, etc.

Well: Mrs. Edwards has opened an Exhibition of her husband's works in Bond Street--contrary to my advice--and, it appears, rightly contrary: for over 300 pounds of them were sold on the first private View day, {166} and Tom Taylor, the great Art Critic (who neither by Nature nor Education can be such, 'cleverest man in London,' as Tennyson once said he was), has promised a laudatory notice in the omnipotent Times, and then People will flock in like Sheep. And I am very glad to be proved a Fool in the matter, though I hold my own opinion still of the merit of the Picture part of the Show. Enough! as we Tragic Writers say: it is such a morning as I would not have sacrificed indoors or in letter-writing to any one but yourself, and on the subject named.

BELIEVE ME YOURS SINCERELY.

LXVII.

WOODBRIDGE: _Decr._ 10, [1879.]

MY DEAR LADY,