Chapter 32

Mr. Kingsley says that Alfred Tennyson says that Alexander Smith's poems show fancy, but not imagination; and on my repeating this to Mrs. Browning, she said it was exactly her impression. For my part I am struck by the extravagance and the total want of finish and of constructive power, and I am in hopes that ultimately good will come out of evil, for Mr. Kingsley has written, he tells me, a paper called "Alexander Pope and Alexander Smith," and Mr. Willmott, the powerful critic of The Times, takes the same view, he tells me, and will doubtless put it into print some day or other, so that the carrying this bad school to excess will work for good. By the way, Mr. ----, whose Imogen is so beautiful, sent me the other day a terrible wild affair in that style, and I wrote him a frank letter, which my sincere admiration for what he does well gives me some right to do. He has in him the making of a great poet; but, if he once take to these obscurities, he is lost. I hope I have not offended him, for I think it is a real talent, and I feel the strongest interest in him. My young friend, James Payn, went a fortnight or three weeks ago to Lasswade and spent an evening with Mr. De Quincey. He speaks of him just as you do, marvellously fine in point of conversation, looking like an old beggar, but with the manners of a prince, "if," adds James Payn, "we may understand by that all that is intelligent and courteous and charming." (I suppose he means such manners as our Emperor's.) He began by saying that his life was a mere misery to him from nerves, and that he could only render it endurable by a semi-inebriation with opium. (I always thought he had not left opium off.).... On his return, James Payn again visited Harriet Martineau, who talked frankly about _the_ book, exculpating Mr. Atkinson and taking all the blame to herself. She asked if I had read it, and on finding that I had not, said, "It was better so." There are fine points about Harriet Martineau. Mrs. Browning is positively crazy about the spirit-rappings. She believes every story, European or American, and says our Emperor consults the mediums, which I disbelieve.

The above was written yesterday. To-day has brought me a charming letter from Miss De Quincey. She has been very ill, but is now back at Lasswade, and longing most earnestly to persuade her father to return to Grasmere. Will she succeed? She sends me a charming message from a brother Francis, a young physician settled in India. She says that her sister told her her father was in bad spirits when talking to Mr. Payn, which perhaps accounts for his confessing to the continuing the opium-eating.

Mr. ---- brought me some proofs of his new volume of poems. I think that if he will take pains he will be a real poet. But it is so difficult to get young men to believe that correcting and re-correcting is necessary, and he is a most charming person, and so gets spoiled. I spoil him myself, God forgive me! although I advise him to the best of my power. No signs of Mr. Hawthorne yet! Heaven bless you, my dear friend.

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

October, 1853.

My Very Dear Friend: I cannot thank you enough for the two charming books which you have sent me. I enclose a letter for the author of this very remarkable book of Italian travel, and I have written to dear Mr. Hawthorne myself.

Since I wrote to you, dear Mr. Bennoch sent to me to look out what letters I could find of poor Haydon's. I was half killed by the operation, all my sins came upon me; for, lulling my conscience by carelessness about bills and receipts, and by answering almost every letter the day it comes, I am in other respects utterly careless, and my great mass of correspondence goes where fate and K---- decree. We had five great chests and boxes, two huge hampers, fifteen or sixteen baskets, and more drawers than you would believe the house could hold, to look over, and at last disinterred sixty-five. I did not dare read them for fear of the dust, but I have no doubt they will be most valuable, for his letters were matchless for talent and spirit. I hope you have reprinted the Life; if so, of course you will publish the Correspondence. By the way, it is a curious specimen of the little care our highest people have for poetry of the ---- school, that Vice-Chancellor Wood, one of the most accomplished men whom I have ever known, a bosom friend of Macaulay, was with me last week, and had never heard of Alexander Smith.

I continue terribly lame, and with no chance of amendment till the spring, when you will come and do me good. Besides the lameness, I am also miserably feeble, ten years older than when you saw me last. I am working as well as I can, but very slowly. I send you a proof of the Preface to the Dramatic Works (not knowing whether they have sent you the sheets, or when they mean to bring it out). The few who have seen this Introduction like it. It tells the truth about myself and says no ill of other people. God bless you, dear friend. Say everything for me to all friends, not forgetting Mr. Ticknor.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, November 8, 1853.

My Very Dear Friend; Your letters are always delightful to me, even when they are dated Boston; think what they will be when they are dated London. In my last I sent you a very rough proof of my Preface (I think Mr. Hurst means to call it Introduction), which you will find autobiographical to your heart's content; I hope you will like it. To-day I enclose the first rough draft of an account of my first impression of Haydon. Don't print it, please, because I suppose they mean it for a part of the Correspondence when it shall be published. I looked out for those sixty-five long letters of Haydon's,--as long, perhaps, each, as half a dozen of mine to you,--and doubtless I have many more, but I was almost blinded by the dust in hunting up those, my eyes having been very tender since I was shut up in a smoky room for twenty-two weeks last winter. I find now that Messrs. Longman have postponed the publication of the Correspondence in the fear that it would injure the sale of the Memoirs, the book having had a great success here. By the enclosed, which is as true and as like as I could make it, you will see that he was a very brilliant and charming person. I believe that next to having been heart-broken by the committee and the heartlessness of his pupil ----, and enraged by the passion for that miserable little wretch, Tom Thumb, that the real cause of his suicide was to get his family provided for. It succeeded. By one way and another they had £440 a year between the four; but although the poor father never complained, you will see by his book what a selfish wretch that ---- was.....

My tragedies are printed, and the dramatic scenes, forming, with the preface, two volumes of above four hundred pages each. But I don't think they are to come out till the prose work, and that is not a quarter finished. I am always a most slow and laborious writer (that Preface was written three times over throughout, and many parts of it five or six), and of course my ill health does not improve my powers of composition. This wet summer and autumn have been terribly against me. I am lamer even than when Mr. Ticknor saw me, and sometimes cannot even dip the pen in the ink without holding it in my left hand. Thank God my head is spared, and my heart is, I think, as young as ever.

I had a letter to-day from Mr. Chorley; he has been staying all the autumn with Sir William Molesworth, now a Cabinet Minister, but he complains terribly about his own health, notwithstanding he has a play coming out at the Olympic, which Mr. Wigan has taken. Mrs. Kingsley, a most sweet person, has a cough which has forced them to send her to the sea. You shall be sure to see both him and Mr. Willmott if I can compass it; but we live, each of us, seven miles apart, and these country clergymen are so tied to their parish that they are difficult to catch. However, they both come to see me whenever they can, and we must contrive it. You will like both in different ways. Mr. Willmott is one of the most agreeable men in the world, and Mr. Kingsley is charming. I have another dear friend, not an author, whom I prefer to either,--Hugh Pearson. He made for himself a collection of De Quincey, when a lad at Oxford. You would like him, I think, better than anybody; but he too is a country clergyman, living eight miles off. Poor Mr. Norton! His letters were charming. He is connected in my mind with Mrs. Hemans, too, to whom he was so kind. You must say everything for me to dear Mrs. Sparks. I seem most ungrateful to her, but I really have little power of writing letters just now. Did I tell you that Mr. ---- sent me a poem called ----, which I am very sorry that he ever wrote. It has shocked Mr. Bennoch even more than it did me. You must get him to write more poems like ----. A young friend of mine has brought out a little volume in which there is striking evidence of talent; but none of these young writers take pains. How very pretty is that scrap on a country church! Mrs. Browning is at Florence, but is going to Rome. She says that your countryman, Mr. Story, has made a charming statuette, I think of Beethoven, or else of Mendelssohn, which ought to make his reputation. She is crazy about mediums. She says (but I have not heard it elsewhere) that Thackeray and Dickens are to winter at Rome, and Alfred Tennyson at Florence. Mrs. Trollope has quite recovered, and receives as usual. How full of beauty Mr. Hillard's book is! thank him for it again and again. Did I tell you that they are going to engrave a portrait of me by Haydon, now belonging to Mr. Bennoch, for the Dramatic Works? God bless you, my very dear friend. Say everything for me to Mr. Ticknor and Dr. Holmes and Dr. Parsons, and all my friends in Boston. Little Henry grows a very sensible, intelligent boy, and is a great favorite at his school. He is getting on with French.

Once more, ever yours, M.R.M.

1854.

(January, 1854.)

My Beloved Friend: They who correspond with sick people must be content to receive such letters as are sent from hospitals. For many weeks I have been wholly shut up in my own room, getting with exceeding difficulty from the bed to the fireside, quite unable to stir either in the chair or in the bed, but much less miserable up than when in bed. The terrible cold of last summer did not allow me to gain any strength, so that although the fire in my room is kept up night and day, yet a severe attack of influenza came on and would have carried me off, had not Mr. May been so much alarmed at the state of the pulse and the general feebleness as to order me two tablespoonfuls of champagne in water once a day, and a teaspoonful of brandy also in water, at night, which undoubtedly saved my life. It is the only good argument for what is called teetotalism that it keeps more admirable medicines as medicine; for undoubtedly a wine-drinker, however moderate, would not have been brought round by the remedy which did me so much good. Miserably feeble I still am, and shall continue till May or June (if it please God to spare my life till then), when, if it be fine weather, Sam will lift me down stairs and into the pony-chaise, and I may get stronger. Well, in the midst of the terrible cough, which did not allow me to lie down in bed, and a weakness difficult to describe, I finished "Atherton." I did it against orders and against warning, because I had an impression that I should not live to complete it, and I sent it yesterday to London to dear Mr. Bennoch, so I suppose you will soon receive the sheets. Almost every line has been written three times over, and it is certainly the most cheerful and sunshiny story that was ever composed in such a state of helplessness, feebleness, and suffering; for the rheumatic pain in the chest not only rendered the cough terrible (that, thank God, is nearly gone now), but makes the position of writing one of misery. God grant you may like this story! I shall at least say in the Preface that it will give me one pleasure, that of having in the American title-page the names of dear friends united with mine. Mind I don't know whether the story be good or bad. I only answer for its having the youthfulness which you liked in the preface to the plays. Well, dearest friend, just when I was at the worst came your letter about the ducks and the ducks themselves. Never were birds so welcome. My friend, Mr. May, the cleverest and most admirable person whom I know in this neighborhood, refuses all fees of any sort, and comes twelve miles to see me, when torn to pieces by all the great folk round, from pure friendship. Think how glad I was to have such a dainty to offer him just when he had all his family gathered about him at Christmas. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me this great pleasure, infinitely greater than eating it myself would have been. They were delicious. How very, very good you are to me!

Has Mrs. Craig written to you to tell you of her marriage? I will run the risk of repetition and tell you that it is the charming Margaret De Quincey, who has married the son of a Scotch neighbor. He has purchased land in Ireland, and they are about to live in Tipperary,--a district which Irish people tell me is losing its reputation for being the most disturbed in Ireland, but keeping that for superior fertility. They are trying to regain a reputation for literature in Edinburgh. John Ruskin has been giving a series of lectures on art there, and Mr. Kingsley four lectures on the schools of Alexandria.

Nothing out of Parliament has for very long made so strong a sensation as our dear Mr. Bennoch's evidence on the London Corporation. Three leading articles in The Times paid him the highest compliments, and you know what that implies. I have myself had several letters congratulating me on having such a friend. Ah! the public qualities make but a part of that fine and genial character, although I firmly believe that the strength is essential to the tenderness. I always put you and him together, and it is one of the compensations of my old age to have acquired such friends.

Have you seen Matthew Arnold's poems? They have fine bits. The author is a son of Dr. Arnold.

God bless you! Say everything for me to my dear American friends, Drs. Holmes and Parsons, Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier, Mrs. Sparks, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Whipple, Mr. and Mrs. Willard, and Mr. Ticknor. Many, very many happy years to them and to you.

Always most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

P.S. I enclose some slips to be pasted into books for my different American friends. If I have sent too many, you will know which to omit. I must add to the American preface a line expressive of my pleasure in joining my name to yours. I will send one line here for fear of its not going. Mr. May says that those ducks were amongst the few things thoroughly deserving their reputation, holding the same place, as compared with our wild ducks, that the finest venison does to common mutton. I cannot tell you how much I thank you for enabling me to send such a treat to such a friend. You will send a copy of the prose book or the dramas, according to your own pleasure, only I should like the two dear doctors to have the plays.

Swallowfield, January 23, 1854.

I have always to thank you for some kindness, dearest Mr. Fields, generally for many. How clever those magazines are, especially Mr. Lowell's article, and Mr. Bayard Taylor's graceful stanzas! Just now I have to ask you to forward the enclosed to Mr. Whittier. He sent me a charming poem on Burns, full of tenderness and humanity, and the indulgence which the wise and good can so well afford, and which only the wisest and best can show to their erring brethren. I rejoice to hear that he is getting well again. I myself am weaker and more helpless every day, and the rheumatic pain in the chest increases so rapidly, and makes writing so difficult, even the writing such a note as this, that I cannot be thankful enough for having finished "Atherton," for I am sure I could not write it now. There is some chance of my getting better in the summer, if I can be got into the air, and that must be by being let down in a chair through a trap-door, like so much railway luggage, for there is not the slightest power of helping myself left in me,--nothing, indeed, but the good spirits which Shakespeare gave to Horatio, and Hamlet envied him. Dearest Mr. Bennoch has made me a superb present,--two portraits of our Emperor and his fair wife. He all intellect,--never was a brow so full of thought; she all sweetness,--such a mouth was never seen, it seems waiting to smile. The beauty is rather of expression than of feature, which is exactly what it ought to be....

M.R.M.

Swallowfield, May 2, 1854.

My Dear Friend: Long before this time, you will, I hope, have received the sheets of "Atherton." It has met with an enthusiastic reception from the English press, and certainly the friends who have written to me on the subject seem to prefer the tale which fills the first volume to anything that I have done. I hope you will like it,--I am sure you will not detect in it the gloom of a sick-chamber. Mr. May holds out hopes that the summer may do me good. As yet the spring has been most unfavorable to invalids, being one combined series of east-wind, so that instead of getting better I am every day weaker than the last, unable to see more than one person a day, and quite exhausted by half an hour's conversation. I hope to be a little better before your arrival, dearest friend, because I must see you; but any stranger--even Mr. Hawthorne--is quite out of the question.

You may imagine how kind dear Mr. Bennoch has been all through this long trial, next after John Ruskin and his admirable father the kindest of all my friends, and that is saying much.

God bless you. Love to all my friends, poets, prosers, and the dear ----, who are that most excellent thing, readers. I wonder if you ever received a list of people to whom to send one or other of my works? I wrote such with little words in my own hand, but writing is so painful and difficult, and I am always so uncertain of your getting my letters, that I cannot attempt to send another. There was one for Mrs. Sparks. I am sure of liking Dr. Parsons's book,--quite sure. Once again, God bless you! Little Henry grows a nice boy.

Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, July 12, 1854.

Dearest Mr. Fields: Our excellent friend Mr. Bennoch will have told you from how painful a state of anxiety your most welcome letter relieved us. You have done quite right, my beloved friend, in returning to Boston. The voyage, always so trying to you, would, with your health so deranged, have been most dangerous, and next year you will find all your friends, except one, as happy to see and to welcome you. Even if you had arrived now our meeting would have been limited to minutes. Dr. Parsons will tell you that fresh feebleness in a person so long tried and so aged (sixty-seven) must have a speedy termination. May Heaven prolong your valuable life, dear friend, and grant that you may be as happy yourself as you have always tried to render others!

I rejoice to hear what you tell me of "Atherton." Here the reception has been most warm and cordial. Every page of it was written three times over, so that I spared no pains, but I was nearly killed by the terrible haste in which it was finished, and I do believe that many of the sheets were sent to me without ever being read in the office. I have corrected one copy for the third English edition, but I cannot undertake such an effort again, so, if (as I venture to believe) it be destined to be often reprinted by you, you must correct it from _that_ edition. I hope you sent a copy to Mr. Whittier from me. I had hoped you would bring one to Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. De Quincey, but I must try what I can do with Mr. Hurst, and must depend on you for assuring these valued friends that it was not neglect or ingratitude on my part.

Mr. Boner, my dear and valued friend, wishes you and dear Mr. Ticknor to print his "Chamois-Hunting" from a second edition which Chapman and Hall are bringing out. I sent my copy of the work to Mr. Bennoch when we were expecting you, that you might see it. It is a really excellent book, full of interest, with admirable plates, which you could have, and, speaking in your interest, as much as in his, I firmly believe that it would answer to you in money as well as in credit to bring it out in America. Also Mrs. Browning (while in Italy) wrote to me to inquire if you would like to bring out a new poem by her, and a new work by her husband. I told her that I could not doubt it, but that she had better write duplicate letters to London and to Boston. Our poor little boy is here for his holidays. His excellent mother and step-father have nursed me rather as if they had been my children than my servants. Everybody has been most kind. The champagne, which I believe keeps me alive, is dear Mr. Bennoch's present; but you will understand how ill I am when I tell you that my breath is so much affected by the slightest exertion that I cannot bear even to be lifted into bed, but have spent the last eight nights sitting up, with my feet supported on a leg-rest. This from exhaustion, not from disease of the lungs.

Give the enclosed to Dr. Parsons. You know what I have always thought of his genius. In my mind no poems ever crossed the Atlantic which approached his stanzas on Dante and on the death of Webster, and yet you have great poets too. Think how glad and proud I am to hear of the honor he has done me. I wish you had transcribed the verses.

God bless you, my beloved friend! Say everything for me to all my dear friends, to Dr. Parsons, to Dr. Holmes, to Mr. Whittier, to Professor Longfellow, to Mr. Taylor, to Mr. Stoddard, to Mrs. Sparks, and above all to the excellent Mr. Ticknor and the dear W----s.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, July 28, 1854.

My Very Dear Friend: This is a sort of postscript to my last, written instantly on the receipt of yours and sent through Mr. ----. I hope you received it, for he is so impetuous that I always a little doubt his care; at least it was when sent through him that the loss of letters to and fro took place. However, I enjoined him to be careful this time, and he assured me that he was so.