Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble | Page 5

whether before, or after, her seduction by Colonel Berkeley I know not. The Father was played by Young.
Sir Frederick Pollock has been to see me here for two days, {15} and put me up to much that was going on in the civilized World. He was very agreeable indeed: and I believe his Visit did him good. What are you going to do with your Summer? Surely never came Summer with more Verdure: and I somehow think we shall have more rain to keep the Verdure up, than for the last few years we have had.
I am quite sure of the merit of George Eliot, and (I should have thought) of a kind that would suit me. But I have not as yet found an Appetite for her. I have begun taking the Cornhill that I may read Annie Thackeray--but I have not found Appetite for her as yet. Is it that one recoils from making so many new Acquaintances in Novels, and retreats upon one's Old Friends, in Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Sir Walter? Oh, I read the last as you have lately been reading--the Scotch Novels, I mean: I believe I should not care for the Ivanhoes, Kenilworths, etc., any more. But Jeanie Deans, the Antiquary, etc., I shall be theirs as long as I am yours sincerely
E. F.G.

VII.
WOODBRIDGE: August 9, [1872].
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
I think I shall hear from you once again before you go abroad. To Rome! My Brother Peter also is going to winter there: but you would not have much in common with him, I think, so I say nothing of an Acquaintance between you.
I have been having Frederick Tennyson with me down here. {16a} He has come to England (from Jersey where his home now is) partly on Business, and partly to bring over a deaf old Gentleman who has discovered the Original Mystery of Free-masonry, by means of Spiritualism. The Freemasons have for Ages been ignorant, it seems, of the very Secret which all their Emblems and Signs refer to: and the question is, if they care enough for their own Mystery to buy it of this ancient Gentleman. If they do not, he will shame them by Publishing it to all the world. Frederick Tennyson, who has long been a Swedenborgian, a Spiritualist, and is now even himself a Medium, is quite grand and sincere in this as in all else: with the Faith of a Gigantic Child--pathetic and yet humorous to consider and consort with.
I went to Sydenham for two days to visit the Brother I began telling you of: and, at a hasty visit to the Royal Academy, caught a glimpse of Annie Thackeray: {16b} who had first caught a glimpse of me, and ran away from her Party to seize the hands of her Father's old friend. I did not know her at first: was half overset by her cordial welcome when she told me who she was; and made a blundering business of it altogether. So much so, that I could not but write afterwards to apologize to her: and she returned as kind an Answer as she had given a Greeting: telling me that my chance Apparition had been to her as 'A message from Papa.' It was really 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