Chapter 31

Now let me say how much I like De Quincey's new volumes. The "Wreck of a Household" shows great power of narrative, if he would but take the trouble to be right as to details; the least and lowest part of the art, that of interesting you in his people, he has. And those "Last Days of Kant," how affecting they are, and how thoroughly in every line and in every thought, agree with him or not, (and in all that relates to Napoleon I differ from him, as in his overestimate of Wordsworth and of Coleridge), one always feels how thoroughly and completely he is a gentleman as well as a great writer; and so much has _that_ to do with my admiration, that I have come to tracing personal character in books almost as a test of literary merit: Charles Boner's "Chamois-Hunting," for instance, owes a great part of its charm to the resolute truth of the writer, and a great drawback from the attraction of "My Novel" seems to me to be derived from the _blasé_ feeling, the unclean mind from whence it springs, felt most when trying after moralities.

Amongst your bounties I was much amused with the New York magazines, the curious turning up of a new claimant to the Louis-the-Seventeenth pretension amongst the Red Indians, and the rappings and pencil-writings of the new Spiritualists. One should wonder most at the believers in these two branches of faith, if that particular class did not always seem to be provided most abundantly whenever a demand occurs. Only think of Mrs. Browning giving the most unlimited credence to every "rapping" story which anybody can tell her! Did I tell you that the work on which she is engaged is a fictitious autobiography in blank verse, the heroine a woman artist (I suppose singer or actress), and the tone intensely modern? You will see that "Colombe's Birthday" has been brought out at the Haymarket. Mr. Chorley (Robert Browning's most intimate friend) writes me word that Mrs. Martin (Helen Faucit, at whose persuasion it was acted) told him that it had gone off "better than she expected." Have you seen Alexander Smith's book, which is all the rage just now? I saw some extracts from his poems a year and a half ago, and the whole book is like a quantity of extracts put together without any sort of connection, a mass of powerful metaphor with scarce any lattice-work for the honeysuckles to climb upon. Keats was too much like this; but then Keats was the first. Now this book, admitting its merit in a certain way, is but the imitation of a school, and, in my mind, a bad school. One such poem as that on the bust of Dante is worth a whole wilderness of these new writers, the very best of them. Certainly nothing better than those two pages ever crossed the Atlantic.

God bless you, dear friend. Say everything for me to dear Mr. and Mrs. W----, to Dr. Holmes, to Dr. Parsons, to Mr. Whittier, (how powerful his new volume is!) to Mr. Stoddard, to Mrs. Sparks, to all my friends.

Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

I am writing on the 8th of May, but where is the May of the poets? Half the morning yesterday it snowed, at night there was ice as thick as a shilling, and to-day it is absolutely as cold as Christmas. Of course the leaves refuse to unfold, the nightingales can hardly be said to sing, even the hateful cuckoo holds his peace. I am hoping to see dear Mr. Bennoch soon to supply some glow and warmth.

Swallowfield, June 4, 1853.

I write at once, dearest friend, to acknowledge your most kind and welcome letter. I am better than when I wrote last, and get out almost every day for a very slow and quiet drive round our lovely lanes; far more lovely than last year, since the foliage is quite as thick again, and all the flowery trees, aloes, laburnums, horse-chestnuts, acacias, honeysuckles, azalias, rhododendrons, hawthorns, are one mass of blossoms,--literally the leaves are hardly visible, so that the color, whenever we come upon park, shrubbery, or plantation, is such as should be seen to be imagined. In my long life I never knew such a season of flowers; so the wet winter and the cold spring have their compensation. I get out in this way with Sam and K---- and the baby, and it gives me exquisite pleasure, and if you were here the pleasure would be multiplied a thousand fold by your society; but I do not gain strength in the least. Attempting to do a little more and take some young people to the gates of Whiteknights, which, without my presence, would be closed, proved too far and too rapid a movement, and for two days I could not stir for excessive soreness all over the body. I am still lifted down stairs step by step, and it is an operation of such time (it takes half an hour to get me down that one flight of cottage stairs), such pain, such fatigue, and such difficulty, that, unless to get out in the pony-chaise, I do not attempt to leave my room. I am still lifted into bed, and can neither turn nor move in any way when there, am wheeled from the stairs to the pony-carriage, cannot walk three steps, can hardly stand a moment, and in rising from my chair am sometimes ten minutes, often longer. So you see that I am very, very feeble and infirm. Still I feel sound at heart and clear in head, am quite as cheerful as ever, and, except that I get very much sooner exhausted, enjoy society as much as ever, so you must come if only to make me well. I do verily believe your coming would do me more good than anything.

I was much interested by your account of the poor English stage coachman. Ah, these are bad days for stage coachmen on both sides the Atlantic! Do you remember his name? and do you know whether he drove between London and Reading, or between Reading and Basingstoke?--a most useless branch railroad between the two latter places, constructed by the Great Western simply out of spite to the Southwestern, which I am happy to state has never yet paid its daily expenses, to say nothing of the cost of construction, and has taken everything off our road, which before abounded in coaches, carriers, and conveyances of all sorts. The vile railway does us no earthly good, we being above four miles from the nearest station, and you may imagine how much inconvenience the absence of stated communication with a market town causes to our small family, especially now that I can neither spare Sam nor the pony to go twelve miles. You must come to England and come often to see me, just to prove that there is any good whatever in railways,--a fact I am often inclined to doubt.

I shall send this letter to be forwarded to Mr. Bennett, and desire him to write to you himself. He is, as you say, an "excellent youth," although it is very generous in me to say so, for I do believe that you came to see me since he has been. Dear Mr. Bennoch, with all his multifarious business, has been again and again. God bless him! ...To return to Mr Bennett. He has been engaged in a grand battle with the trustees of an old charity school, principally the vicar. His two brothers helped in the fight. They won a notable victory. They were quite right in the matter in dispute and the "excellent youth" came out well in various letters. His opponent, the vicar, was Senior Wrangler at our Cambridge, the very highest University honor in England, and tutor to the present Lord Grey.

By the way, Mr. ---- wrote to me the other day to ask that I would let him be here when Mr. Hawthorne comes to see me. I only answered this request by asking whether he did not intend to come to see _me_ before that time, for certainly he might come to visit an old friend, especially a sick one, for her own sake, and not merely to meet a notability, and I am by no means sure that Mr. Hawthorne might not prefer to come alone or with dear Mr. Bennoch; at all events it ought to be left to _his_ choice, and besides I have not lost the hope of your being the introducer of the great romancer, and then how little should I want anybody to come between us. Begin as they may, all my paragraphs slide into that refrain of Pray, pray come!

I have written to you about other kindnesses since that note full of hopes, but I do not think that I did write to thank you for dear Dr. Holmes's "Lecture on English Poetesses," or rather the analysis of a lecture which sins only by over-gallantry. Ah, there is a difference between the sexes, and the difference is the reverse way to that in which he puts it! Tell him I sent his charming stanzas on Moore to a leading member of the Irish committee for raising a monument to his memory, and that they were received with enthusiasm by the Irish friends of the poet. I have sent them to many persons in England worthy to be so honored, and the very cleverest woman whom I have ever known (Miss Goldsmid) wrote to me only yesterday to thank me for sending her that exquisite poem, adding, "I think the stanza 'If on his cheek, etc.,' contains one of the most beautiful similes to be found in the whole domain of poetry." I also told Mrs. Browning what dear Dr. Holmes said of her. The American poets whom she prefers are Lowell and Emerson. Now I know something of Lowell and of Emerson, but I hold that those lines on Dante's bust are amongst the finest ever written in the language, whether by American or Englishman; don't you? And what a grand Dead March is the poem on Webster! ...Also Mrs. Browning believes in spirit-rapping stories,--all,--and tells me that Robert Owen has been converted by them to a belief in a future state. Everybody everywhere is turning tables. The young Russells, who are surcharged with electricity, set them spinning in ten minutes. In general, you know, it is usual to take off all articles of metal. They, the other night, took a fancy to remove their rings and bracelets, and, having done so, the table, which had paused for a moment, began whirling again as fast as ever the contrary way. This is a fact, and a curious one.

I have lent three volumes of your "De Quincey" to my young friend, James Payn, a poet of very high promise, who has verified the Green story, and taken the books with him to the Lakes. God grant, my dear friend, that you may not lose by "Our Village"; that is what I care for.

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, June 23, 1853.

Ah, my very dear friend, we shall not see you this summer, I am sure. For the first time I clearly perceive the obstacle, and I feel that unless some chance should detain Mr. Ticknor, we must give up the great happiness of seeing you till next year. I wonder whether your poor old friend will be alive to greet you then! Well, that is as God pleases; in the mean time be assured that you have been one of the chief comforts and blessings of these latter years of my life, not only in your own friendship and your thousand kindnesses, but in the kindness and friendship of dear Mr. Bennoch, which, in the first instance, I mainly owe to you. I am in somewhat better trim, although the getting out of doors and into the pony-carriage, from which Mr. May hoped such great things, has hardly answered his expectations. I am not stronger, and I am so nervous that I can only bear to be driven, or more ignominiously still to be led, at a foot's pace through the lanes. I am still unable to stand or walk, unless supported by Sam's strong hands lifting me up on each side, still obliged to be lifted into bed, and unable to turn or move when there, the worst grievance of all. However, I am in as good spirits as ever, and just at this moment most comfortably seated under the acacia-tree at the corner of my house,--the beautiful acacia literally loaded with its snowy chains (the flowering trees this summer, lilacs, laburnums, rhododendrons, azalias, have been one mass of blossoms, and none are so graceful as this waving acacia); on one side a syringa, smelling and looking like an orange-tree; a jar of roses on the table before me,--fresh-gathered roses, the pride of Sam's heart; and little Fanchon at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her,--biscuits from Boston, sent to me by Mrs. Sparks, whose kindness is really indefatigable, and which Fanchon ought to like upon that principle if upon no other, but you know her laziness of old, and she improves in it every day. Well that is a picture of the Swallowfield cottage at this moment, and I wish that you and the Bennochs and the W----s and Mr. Whipple were here to add to its life and comfort. You must come next year and come in May, that you and dear Mr. Bennoch may hear the nightingales together. He has never heard them, and this year they have been faint and feeble (as indeed they were last) compared with their usual song. Now they are over, and although I expect him next week, it will be too late.

Precious fooling that has been at Stafford House! And our ---- who delights in strong, not to say worse, emotions, whose chief pleasure it was to see the lions fed in Van Amburgh's time, who went seven times to see the Ghost in the "Corsican Brothers," and has every sort of natural curiosity (not to say wonder) brought to her at Buckingham Palace, was in a state of exceeding misery because she could not, consistently with her amicable relations with the United States, receive Mrs. ---- there. (Ah! our dear Emperor has better taste. Heaven bless him!) From Lord Shaftesbury one looks for unmitigated cant, but I did expect better things of Lord Carlisle. How many names that both you and I know went there merely because the owner of the house was a fashionable Duchess,--the Wilmers ("though they are my friends"), the P----s and ----! For my part, I have never read beyond the first one hundred pages, and have a certain malicious pleasure in so saying. Let me add that almost all the clever men whom I have seen are of the same faction; they took up the book and laid it down again. Do you ever reprint French books, or ever get them translated? By very far the most delightful work that I have read for many years is Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries du Lundi," or his weekly feuilletons in the "Constitutionnel." I am sure they would sell if there be any taste for French literature. It is so curious, so various, so healthy, so catholic in its biography and criticism; but it must be well done by some one who writes good English prose and knows well the literary history of France. Don't trust women; they, especially the authoresses, are as ignorant as dirt. Just as I had got to this point, Mr. Willmot came to spend the evening, and very singularly consulted me about undertaking a series of English Portraits Littéraires, like Sainte-Beuve's former works. He will do it well, and I commended him to the charming "Causeries," and advised him to make that a weekly article, as no doubt he could. It would only tell the better for the wide diffusion. He does, you know, the best criticism of The Times. I have most charming letters from Dr. Parsons and dear Mr. Whittier. His cordiality is delightful. God bless you.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

(No date.)

Never, my dear friend, did I expect to like so well a man who came in your place, as I do like Mr. Ticknor. He is an admirable person, very like his cousin in mind and manners, unmistakably good. It is delightful to hear him talk of you, and to feel that the sort of elder brotherhood which a senior partner must exercise in a firm is in such hands. He was very kind to little Harry, and Harry likes him _next_ to you. You know he had been stanch in resisting all the advances of dear Mr ----, who had asked him if he would not come to him, to which he had responded by a sturdy "no!" He (Mr. Ticknor) came here on Saturday with the dear Bennochs (N.B. I love him better than ever), and the Kingsleys met him. Mr. Hawthorne was to have come, but could not leave Liverpool so soon, so that is a pleasure to come. He will tell you that all is arranged for printing with Colburn's successors, Hurst and Blackett, two separate works, the plays and dramatic scenes forming one, the stories to be headed by a long tale, of which I have always had the idea in my head, to form almost a novel. God grant me strength to do myself and my publishers justice in that story! This whole affair springs from the fancy which Mr. Bennoch has taken to have the plays printed in a collected form during my lifetime, for I had always felt that they would be so printed after my death, so that their coming out now seems to me a sort of anachronism. The one certain pleasure that I shall derive from this arrangement will be, having my name and yours joined together in the American edition, for we reserve the early sheets. Nothing ever vexed me so much as the other book not being in your hands. That was Mr. ----'s fault, for, stiff as Bentley is, Mr. Bennoch would have managed him..... Of a certainty my first strong interest in American poetry sprang from dear Dr. Holmes's exquisite little piece of scenery painting, which he delivered where his father had been educated. You sent me that, and thus made the friendship between Dr. Holmes and me; and now you are yourself--you, my dearest American friend--delivering an address at the greatest American University. It is a great honor, and one....

I suppose Mr. Ticknor tells you the book-news? The most striking work for years is "Haydon's Life." I hope you have reprinted it, for it is sure, not only of a run, but of a durable success. You know that the family wanted me to edit the book. I shrank from a task that required so much knowledge which could only be possessed by one living in the artist world _now_, to know who was dead and who alive, and Mr. Tom Taylor has done it admirably. I read the book twice over, so profound was my interest in it. In his early days, I used to be a sort of safety-valve to that ardent spirit most like Benvenuto Cellini both in pen and tongue and person. Our dear Mr. Bennoch was the providence of his later years. They tell me that that powerful work has entirely stopped the sale of Moore's Life, which, all tinsel and tawdry rags, might have been written by a court newsman or a court milliner. I wonder whether they will print the other six volumes; for the four out they have given Mrs. Moore three thousand pounds. A bad account Mr. Tupper gives of ----. Fancy his conceit! When Mr. Tupper praised a passage in one of his poems, he said, "If I had known you liked it, I would have omitted that passage in my new edition," and he has done so by passages praised by persons of taste, cut them out bodily and left the sentences before and after to join themselves how they could. What a bad figure your President and Mr. ---- cut at the opening of your Exhibition! I am sorry for ----, for, although he has quite forgotten me since his aunt's book came out, he once stayed three weeks with us, and I liked him. Well, so many of his countrymen are over-good to me, that I may well forgive one solitary instance of forgetfulness! Make my love to all my dear friends at Boston and Cambridge. Tell Mrs. Sparks how dearly I should have liked to have been at her side on _the_ Thursday. Tell Dr. Holmes that his kind approbation of Rienzi is one of my encouragements in this new edition. I had a long talk about him with Mr. Ticknor, and rejoice to find him so young. Thank Mr. Whipple again and again for his kindness.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

(No date.)

My Very Dear Friend: Mr. Hillard (whom I shall be delighted to see if he come to England and will let me know when he can get here)--Mr. Hillard has just put into verse my own feelings about you. It is the one comfort belonging to the hard work of these _two_ books (for besides the Dramatic Works in two thick volumes, there are prose stories in two also, and I have one long tale, almost a novel, to write),--it is the one comfort of this labor that _I_ shall see our names together on one page. I have just finished a long gossiping preface of thirty or forty pages to the Dramatic Works, which is much more an autobiography than the Recollections, and which I have tried to make as amusing as if it were ill-natured. _That_ work is dedicated to our dear Mr. Bennoch, another consolation. I sent the dedication to dear Mr. Ticknor, but as his letter of adieu did not reach me till two or three days after it was written, and I am not quite sure that I recollected the number in Paternoster Row, I shall send it to you here. "To Francis Bennoch, Esq., who blends in his life great public services with the most genial private hospitality; who, munificent patron of poet and of painter, is the first to recognize every talent except his own, content to be beloved where others claim to be admired; to him, equally valued as companion and as friend, these volumes are most respectfully and affectionately inscribed by the author." I write from memory, but if this be not it, it is very like it, (and I beg you to believe that my preface is a little better English than this agglomeration of "its.")