Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883). Edward FitzGerald
something to have been of so much importance.
I keep intending to go out somewhere—if for no other reason than that my rooms here may be cleaned! which they will have it should be done once a year. Perhaps I may have to go to my old Field of Naseby, where Carlyle wants me to erect a Stone over the spot where I dug up some remains of those who were slain there over two hundred years ago, for the purpose of satisfying him in his Cromwell History. This has been a fixed purpose of his these twenty years: I thought it had dropped from his head: but it cropped up again this Spring, and I do not like to neglect such wishes. Ever yours
E. F.G.
VIII.
April 22, [1873.]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
One last word about what you call my ‘Half-invitation’ to Woodbridge. In one sense it is so; but not in the sense you imagine.
I never do invite any of my oldest Friends to come and see me, am almost distressed at their proposing to do so. If they take me in their way to, or from, elsewhere (as Donne in his Norfolk Circuit) it is another matter.
But I have built a pleasant house just outside the Town, where I never live myself, but keep it mainly for some Nieces who come there for two or three months in the Summer: and, when they are not there, for any Friends who like to come, for the Benefit of fresh Air and Verdure, plus the company of their Host. An Artist and his Wife have stayed there for some weeks for the last two years; and Donne and Valentia were to have come, but that they went abroad instead.
And so, while I should even deprecate a Lady like you coming thus far only for my sake, who ought rather to go and ask Admission at your Door, I should be glad if you liked to come to my house for the double purpose aforesaid.
My Nieces have hitherto come to me from July to September or October. Since I wrote to you, they have proposed to come on May 21; though it may be somewhat later, as suits the health of the Invalid—who lives on small means with her elder Sister, who is her Guardian Angel. I am sure that no friend of mine—and least of all you—would dissent from my making them my first consideration. I never ask them in Winter, when I think they are better in a Town: which Town has, since their Father’s Death, been Lowestoft, where I see them from time to time. Their other six sisters (one only married) live elsewhere: all loving one another, notwithstanding.
Well: I have told you all I meant by my ‘Half-Invitation.’ These N.E. winds are less inviting than I to these parts; but I and my House would be very glad to entertain you to our best up to the End of May, if you really liked to see Woodbridge as well as yours always truly
E. F.G.
P.S.—You tell me that, once returned to America, you think you will not return ever again to England. But you will—if only to revisit those at Kenilworth—yes, and the blind Lady you are soon going to see in Ireland [19a]—and two or three more in England beside—yes, and old England itself, ‘with all her faults.’
By the by:—Some while ago [19b] Carlyle sent me a Letter from an American gentleman named Norton (once of the N. American Review, C. says, and a most amiable, intelligent Gentleman)—whose Letter enclosed one from Ruskin, which had been entrusted to another American Gentleman named Burne Jones—who kept it in a Desk ten years, and at last forwarded it as aforesaid—to me! The Note (of Ruskin’s) is about one of the Persian Translations: almost childish, as that Man of Genius is apt to be in his Likes as well as Dislikes. I dare say he has forgotten all about Translator and Original long before this. I wrote to thank Mr. Norton for
(Letter unfinished.)
IX.
[1873.]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
It is scarce fair to assail you on your return to England with another Letter so close on that to which you have only just answered—you who will answer! I wish you would consider this Letter of mine an Answer (as it really is) to that last of yours; and before long I will write again and call on you then for a Reply.
What inspires me now is, that, about the time you were writing to me about Burns and Béranger, I was thinking of them ‘which was the Greater Genius?’—I can’t say; but, with all my Admiration for about a Score of the Frenchman’s almost perfect Songs, I would give all of them up for a Score of Burns’ Couplets, Stanzas, or single Lines scattered among those quite imperfect Lyrics of his. Béranger, no doubt, was The Artist; which still is not the highest Genius—witness Shakespeare, Dante, Æschylus, Calderon, to the contrary. Burns assuredly had more Passion than the Frenchman; which is not Genius either, but a great Part of the Lyric Poet still. What Béranger might have been, if born and bred among Banks, Braes, and Mountains, I cannot tell: Burns had that advantage over him. And then the Highland Mary to love, amid the heather, as compared to Lise the Grisette in a Parisian Suburb! Some of the old French Virelays and Vaux-de-vire come much nearer the Wild Notes of Burns, and go to one’s heart like his; Béranger never gets so far as that, I think. One knows he will come round to his pretty refrain with perfect grace; if he were more Inspired he couldn’t.
‘My Love is like the red, red, Rose
That’s newly sprung in June,
My Love is like the Melody
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.’
and he will love his Love,
‘Till a’ the Seas gang Dry’
Yes—Till a’ the Seas gang dry, my Dear. And then comes some weaker stuff about Rocks melting in the Sun. All Imperfect; but that red, red Rose has burned itself into one’s silly Soul in spite of all. Do you know that one of Burns’ few almost perfect stanzas was perfect till he added two Syllables to each alternate Line to fit it to the lovely Music which almost excuses such a dilution of the Verse?
‘Ye Banks and Braes o’ bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom (so fresh) so fair?
Ye little Birds how can ye sing,
And I so (weary) full of care!
Thou’lt break my heart, thou little Bird,
That sings (singest so) upon the Thorn:
Thou minds me of departed days
That never shall return
(Departed never to) return.’
Now I shall tell you two things which my last Quotation has recalled to me.
Some thirty years ago A. Tennyson went over Burns’ Ground in Dumfries. When he was one day by Doon-side—‘I can’t tell how it was, Fitz, but I fell into a Passion of Tears’—And A. T. not given to the melting mood at all.
No. 2. My friend old Childs of the romantic town of Bungay (if you can believe in it!) told me that one day he started outside the Coach in company with a poor Woman who had just lost Husband or Child. She talked of her Loss and Sorrow with some Resignation; till the Coach happened to pull up by a roadside Inn. A ‘little Bird’ was singing somewhere; the poor Woman then broke into Tears, and said—‘I could bear anything but that.’ I dare say she had never even heard of Burns: but he had heard the little Bird that he knew would go to all Hearts in Sorrow.
Béranger’s Morals are Virtue as compared to what have followed him in France. Yet I am afraid he partly led the way. Burns’ very Passion half excused him; so far from its being Refinement which Burke thought deprived Vice of half its Mischief!
Here is a Sermon for you, you see, which you did not compound for: nor I neither when I began my Letter. But