The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough/Volume 1/Letters from 1853 to 1861

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Letters from 1852 to 1853

The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough
by Arthur Hugh Clough

Letters from 1853 to 1861 (London)

A Consideration of Objections against the Retrenchment Association during the Irish Famine in 1847

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4153222The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough — Letters from 1853 to 1861 (London)Arthur Hugh Clough

LETTERS.

FROM 1853 TO 1861.
LONDON.

To Charles Eliot Norton, Esq., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On board the Asia: July 7, 1853.

Here we are, pretty well on our way across, about 2,200 miles from New York.

Mr. Slidell of Louisiana, and a young man apparently his companion, are perhaps the most unexceptionable human beings that one sees. Some Spaniards from Mexico and Cuba are also pleasant to look at, specially two little boys. A maiden aunt and nephew from Burlington, New Jersey, sit near me. and are not so bad. A horrid woman from New York whines, or rather wheines, or whaines, or even whoines just beyond, whom it is misery even to think of. I feel convinced there is a purgatory for vulgar people.

Combe Hurst, Surrey: July 15.

Now I am here I find the case is altered a good deal. Still I like America best; and, but for the greater security which one has in a fixed salary, would give up all thought of staying here at once. At least I might take the place for a time. It is a temptation, if I am to live the rest of my life chez vous, to secure another year's schooling on this side first; πολλὰ δὲ διδασκόμενος, in short.

To the same.

Downing Street: June 23, 1858.

I have had, mirabile dictu, a letter from Emerson, who reprimanded me strongly for the termination of the 'Amours de Voyage,' in which he may be right, and I may be wrong; and all my defence can only be, that I always meant it to be so, and began it with the full intention of its ending so; but very likely I was wrong all the same.

I cannot help wishing to preserve some Corporate Body or Privy Council for India, to elect half the Ministers' Council, though I have no liking for the constituency of 7,000 or 8,000 to whom Lord Stanley did propose to give this power.

Last night I heard Tennyson read a third Arthur poem: the detection of Guenevere and the last interview with Arthur. These poems all appear to me to be maturer and better than any he has written hitherto.

As for wars and rumours of wars, I trust we need not alarm ourselves at present. I hope the French are at heart pacific; they cannot well afford the money for a war, and though I believe they might inflict, if the chances favoured them, immense damage upon us, in the end they would find themselves the weaker vessels. Their population, it is said by the statistical authorities, is decreasing, and they ought to nurse their vitality carefully. It has not yet recovered the losses of the wars of 1812-15.

To the same.

Mont Dore-les-Bains: July 21.

My plans are changed. This morning about 8.30, going across the place to the café, whom should I see but Tennyson. They are all here. They go to the Pyrenees, and I am to follow them. I want to come home in September, and see no sufficient reason yet for not returning to work in November. I don't at all want to spend a winter abroad away from the children, and were I to be brought to do so, I should want to come home first. Coming home did me good. I now propose to go to some place in the Pyrenees and ride about. Bagnères de Luchon will be the first trial, as the Tennysons will be there.

To the same.

Bagneres de Luchon, Pyrenees: July 30.

I came on here yesterday; a ten hours' drive in the banquette of a diligence, but it was a fine day and not excessively hot. The place is exceedingly crowded, a sort of mountain Brighton. This Franco-Gallo-cockney-Chamouni, is, however, not unbearable, if taken in the right way. It is in a rich valley, an almost perfect level here of corn, maize especially, and vegetables, running in like an estuary among the mountains. At the head of it, between sides of wooded mountains, you see the rocky peaks with snow in their clefts, filling up the gap. But there are no Alpine eternal-snowy peaks visible here.

August 4.

On Friday I went in a sort of public conveyance some six or eight miles up the valley to the Hospice, and thence walked with my fellow-passengers up the Port de Venasque into Spain. You see the whole Maladetta, and it's the principal thing to do here. Yesterday I went up into the Vallée de Lys, full of waterfalls j and to-day I have been a longish ride, starting at 6 A.M. to the Lac d'Oo, really a very beautiful mountain lake, the lowest of four or five; the others are a good way higher up.

August 6.

I have been my ride, five hours over hills, looking out upon the glaciers of the main chain; these hills are called the Super Bagneres, and rise right above here. Then down about eleven o'clock to the chalet of the Vallée de Lys, where I stayed about three hours, breakfasting, going up to some waterfalls, and sheltering from a brief storm, and so home.

August 8.

Providence overruled my mind not to go out riding to-day as I had intended, so I got the letter telling of the new little daughter in good time. I think you must call the little girl Blanche Athena.

The Tennysons are at Bigorre. I am very glad to have the prospect of joining them, for it is rather too solitary work going about Pyreneeing with a horse and a guide, or even to say two horses and a guide. However, the two men I have had here have been good company in their way—two cousins, both having served as soldiers, one six years, the other eight or nine. One was in the Crimea, and all through the campaign in Italy, and means to be a soldier again. He had just finished his time when his brother was drawn in the conscription. His brother had just married, so he said he would serve two years for him, and when the two years were ended and he came home, somehow or other the brother was let off. Eighteen went from Luchon to the Crimea, ten or twelve of them cousins; thirteen came back, and they are, I think, all here as baigneurs, guides, &c. This fine young fellow was a hussar, and went out straight to Algiers, where he set to work and ate so many figs and oranges that he had a fever at once, and was in the hospital for three months. He was wounded just at the end of the Crimean war, a fortnight before the peace, and was in hospital at Constantinople for three months. He made great friends with the English, apparently. So much for Pierre Redonnet, with whom I rode on Tuesday over Super Bagnères to the Vallée de Lys. The day before I had his cousin Jean, who is a family man, and unambitious of military service.

I have seen here a certain Comte de ———, an Italian, a Tuscan, who knew some friends of yours at Rome. He is a Confederation man, and declaims against this premature attempt at a united Italy. I met him at the Lac d'Oo. He has just been here, and all but embraced me in his obscurantist arms, and has bidden me adieu, 'God bless you.' He talks English, which he mixes a little with German, and I mix my English with a little Italian. Who can he be? and why has he so nearly embraced me?

Luchon is a very Parisian place; people flaunt about, and wear strange Parisian mountain-costumes, 'tours-de-tête' of all kinds. The French upper classes seem to me to be strongly possessed with the feeling that the Italian kingdom is very much against French interests; and partly also with the feeling that the Emperor is driven into it by England, who knows it to be bad for France. Sardinia would pacify them, no doubt. But after Ricasoli's declaration, can he, and after Lord John's speech, can he, assent? All things perhaps are possible.

August 9.

To-day comes a note to say that the Tennysons are all coming here this evening, and I have already taken my place for Luz viâ Bigorre! Go I must, and start early to-morrow morning.

To the same.

Luz, St. Sauveur: August 13.

This (Luz) is the place where all the Barèges things are made. The old women are all busy with distaff and spindle. The things are made not at Barèges, but here and at Bigorre. The old women go about in scarlet hoods; the men all wear light-blue caps: the younger women handkerchiefs, brown, with yellow stripes. I have nothing to relate, so I send you some verses made this morning, called 'Currente Calamo.'^[1]

August 17.

I have been laid up for some days, but am well again, and this morning walked up to Barèges, four miles up a high valley east of this. It is a regular pool of Bethesda, only the diseased and impotent people seem to have learnt to play at cards; a desolate place with a staring établissement and a soldiers' hospital, and everybody on crutches, and the only apparent enjoyment playing at cards in shabby cafés. A high road with electric telegraph leads up to it and ends with it.

August 18.

To-day, as soon as I got the letters, I set off for Gavarnie; the horses were waiting at the door for the postman. We got away at 7.20 A.M., and riding up the Gave or river-side, reached Gavarnie village in two hours; here there is a hotel of a quiet kind. Soon after passing through this, you come in fair sight of the Cirque. The ground is mostly level, except a rise at the end, which brings you to the platform of the Cirque itself, and to the cottage which is the end of the riding. A little beyond it there is snow, forming a bridge over the stream, and you have the vast cascade in full sight, but far off. One waits till noon for the sun to get on the cascade and turn it into a white cloud. It is the finest thing, certainly, that I have seen in the Pyrenees.

August 19.

Yesterday was very hot, cloudless, though not without air. To-day there is a 'brouillard sec' all over the hill tops, a north wind blowing, and no sunshine.

August 20.

To day again is the blessed brouillard, keeping all the world cool, but preventing the ascent of hills.

August 23.

I have been to Cauterets by diligence two days ago. Yester- day at 6 A.M. went to Lac de Gaube, which is very good, returned to Cauterets and lounged about the rest of the day, and this morning at 6.30 came back on horseback over the hills and got here at eleven. Cauterets is certainly beautiful, more beautiful than this, only it is a busyish water-place, which this is not; the water-place here, St. Sauveur, being a mile off, and very little frequented. Cauterets is right in the real granite, and the stream is absolutely clear, which no other large stream yet seen by me in these parts is.

August 31.

I have been over to Luchon to see the Tennysons, whom I found very comfortably established in pleasant lodgings out of the town, in maize fields, not far from the river. These places are beginning to lose their beau monde. It was a two days' journey. I rode on Saturday through Barèges, up to the Tourmalet Pass, and down to Grip, up again to Col d'Aspin, and so down to Arreau. Next day left Arreau at 6.30 A.M. and came up a long valley to the top of another col, and so down to Luchon before half-past eleven. It was agreeable enough to be worth doing twice, so I came back on horseback the same way, leaving Luchon on Tuesday. I rode to Arreau in the afternoon, then reascended the Col d'Aspin, when the view this time was complete and much finer; from Maladetta east to the Pic du Midi de Bigorre west; saw, with a slight haze in the air, Maladetta and Port de Venasque perfectly, the glaciers about the Vallde de Lys, the Lac d'Oo, the Pic du Midi, and the Barèges mountains, all quite clear. I reached Luz about six on Wednesday.

I did one new thing yesterday, and went up the Pic des Bergons, whence there is really a fine view of Pic du Midi on the one hand, and Mont Perdu and Brèche de Roland on the other. I send you another Pyrenean fragment:

She fed her cows, the mountain-peaks between.^[2]

September I.

The Tennysons arrived at 6.30 yesterday. Tennyson was here, with Arthur Hallam, thirty-one years ago, and really finds great pleasure in the place; they stayed here and at Cauterets. 'Ænone,' he said, was written on the inspiration of the Pyrenees, which stood for Ida.

September 6.

Yesterday we went up the Pic du Midi, which proved fully equal to all expectations, though there was haze over the plain and over the remoter ends of the chain. It is a very complete view of the chain as we saw it, only from the Maladetta to the Pic du Midi d'Ossau; our Pic du Midi lying detached, or only tacked-to by the thin Col de Tourmalet, some way to the north.

Tennyson and ——— have walked on to Cauterets, and I and the family follow in a calèche at two.

Cauterets: September 7.

To-day is heavy brouillard down to the feet, or at any rate ankles, of the hills, and little to be done. I have been out for a walk with A. T. to a sort of island between two waterfalls, with pines on it, of which he retained a recollection from his visit of thirty-one years ago, and which, moreover, furnished a simile to 'The Princess.' He is very fond of this place, evidently, and it is more in the mountains than any other, and so far superior.

↑ Mari Magno: My Tale.
↑ Mari Magno: My Tale.

[1] Mari Magno: My Tale.

[2] Mari Magno: My Tale.

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