Documents in the Case

Letter No. 1

Thomas Lovell Beddoes to Revell Phillips his solicitor and friend

[January 26 1849]

MY DEAR PHILLIPS,

I am food for what I am good for--worms. I have made a will here which I desire to be respected, and add the donation of £20 to Dr Ecklin my physician.

W. Beddoes must have a case (50 bottles) of Champagne Moet 1847 growth to drink my death in.
Thanks for all kindness. Borrow the £200. You are a good & noble man & your children must look sharp to be like you.

Yours,
if my own,

ever,

T.L.B.

Love to Anna, Henry, the Beddoes of Longvill and Zoe and Emmeline King--also to Kelsall whom I beg to look at my MSS. and print or not as he thinks fit. I ought to have been among other things a good poet. Life was too great a bore on one peg and that a bad one. Buy for Dr Ecklin above mentioned [one of] Reade's best stomach-pumps.

-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)

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Letter No. 2

Revell Phillips to William Minton Beddoes of Cheney Longville

Temple

February 14, 1849.

My Dear Sir,

I had a letter dated Basle from Captain Beddoes [the poet's brother] this morning. It informs me that he had been some hours with Dr. Frey, that the Dr. gave but a melancholy account of poor Tom's last days, that he had been in no danger until apoplexy seized him, but had been ill some days previously, that he passed his time in reading, seeing no one but his medical friends, with the exception of the clergyman who visited him regularly once a week--sometimes oftener--that he had walked but twice since the amputation--once in his room and afterwards in the corridor. He disliked being seen, but looked forward to coming amongst us again in England, there to remain.

Believe me,

My dear Sir,

Yours very truly,

Revell Phillips

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Letter No. 3

Dr. A. Frey at Basel to Minton Beddoes

My Dear Williams,

It is a sad occasion that brings me to enter into correspondence with you. Our good Thomas is no more he died here in my presence the 26 of January in his particular room in our hospital at Basel where he was retained from the month of Juilet till now by his unlucky illness.

I think you have been made acquainted with the circumstances that forced him to stay here. A wound on his left leg producing gangrene of the foot made necessary the amputation of the leg under the knee. At that time I was force to be for four weeks in Paris with a patient for consultation.

At my return I found Thomas quite well appetite very good his leg going rapid to guerison. Since that time a fever lenta began to undermine his forces he lost his appetite. In the stump increasing dolours producing at last a few particles of necrotic bone. Notwithstanding I hope to see him go to England I had promised to accompany him to Frankfort or farther if possible and thought the depart would be possible in the Mars.

The 25 he sent me back some books I had lent him, by his attendant, who took back others, when an hour after that man went to tell me of alarming symptoms of his master. I found delirium beginning, he wrote a letter to Mr. Phillips and spoke of his end. I and his surgeon and physician whom he had selected himself made all possible. An attack of apoplexy made an end he died without dolours. I have written to Mr. Phillips yesterday, as his correspondent in french, not venturing to submit him an English that no more be amended by poor Thomas.

For you I hope you are kind enough to receive it as it is written in a little hurry. His funeral will be tomorrow morning. I have made my possible to make it also as would be wished by his family. I hope to see you and him togataer one day in England we used to speak about the meeting. The Lord has decided otherwise I think for the best.

I should like an answer from you, much more to see you in Switzerland or in England. If not possible to be affected in short time, perhaps the time will come one day.

Yours truly affectioned,

Dr. A. Frey at Basle

-from Thomas Lovell Beddoes: Eccentric & Poet by Royall H. Snow (New York: Covici, Friede, 1928) p. 95., and p. 96.

Unpleasant news

Thomas Lovell Beddoes to a relative

Basel Oct 9 1848

MY DEAR A----,

I should have written to you sometime ago, if I had not unfortunately rather unpleasant news regarding myself to report. Do not, I beg of you, regard the matter on its melancholy side alone, for myself I am quite reconciled to my situation and only dread comforters and condolers.

Late in the summer, in July, I fell with a horse in a precipitious part of the neighbouring hills and broke my left leg all to pieces. In spite of the very best treatment part of the fractured limb was obliged to be sacrificed: (I beg your pardon for this style, but I am writing on my back;) and a month ago the lower part of the leg (below the knee joint) was taken off. Thanks to the power of beneficial Chloroform I felt not the least twitch of pain during the operation, and since then I have been slowly but with sure steps advancing in the way of recovery; and before long hope to dot and go one. As soon as I am quite well I shall return to England, but I fear the winter may intervene.

You ask me to recommend you a German book, but do not say on what kind of subject or in what department of literature: & even if you had, I shd find it hazardous, because tastes & habits, or trains of thought and study render such different things interesting to different individuals. Dreary & dull is dear Mr. Schopenhauer, and Henrik Steffens tells as little truth as possible, I wot in his erlebtend. He has writ some tolerable novels though, sketches of Hyperborean Norwegian life, "Die 4 Norweger" and "Malcolm and Walseth," (or "Walseth and Leith," I forget which,) but if you wish to read goodish Memoirs, very well written, ask for Varnhagen von Ense. Have you not read his book about his wife, the wonderful Berlin Jewess, Rahel, (that is the title of his work,)?

This Rahel Robert was really a woman of great talent, and never printed anything during his [sic] life, without the affectation and mendacious vanity of the ginger bread Bettine Brentano. I think Sternberg is one of the best novelists, (a Tieckianer) and then you can read the rather lengthy but well laboured novels (in 3 vols accordg to the English Canon) of the late Frau von Paalzaw--Thomas Thyrnan, St. Roche, Godwic Castle & others. Besides there is Auerbach with Schwarzrwalder Dorpgeschichten, very good, but some black-forest dialect, tho' not enough to bore you much. . . .

Good bye
T. L. B.

-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)

a skreen full of puzzles

Thomas Lovell Beddoes to Thomas Forbes Kelsall

[Postmark]

Göttingen13 May 1827

'One of my friends sent me a week or two ago the following poem, wh. he had transcribed out of an old album in the library at Hamburg. The date 1604 was on the binding of it--He cannot give a more decided description of the book. The lines are written in a neat old English hand.

My thoughts are winged with hopes, my hopes with Love,

Mount love unto the moon in clearest night

And saie, as she doth in the heaven move

In earth so wanes and waxeth my delight,

And whisper this but softly in her ears

How oft doubt hange the head and trust shed teares.

And you, my thoughts that seem mistrust to varye

If for mistrust my mistris do you blame

Saie, though you alter yet you do notvarye

As shee doth change and yett remaine the same.

Distrust doth enter hartes but not infect

And love is sweetest seasoned with suspect.

If shee, for this, with clouds do mask her eyes

And make the heavens dark with her disdaine,

With windie sights disperse them in the skyes,

Or with thy teares desolve them in to rayne

Thoughts, hopes and love returne to me no more

Till Cinthia shyne as shee hath done before.
W.S.


I have communicated the lines, with a strict regard ever to the interpunctuation, exactly as I received them.' (I too--T.L.B.) Benecke in the Wunschelrathe--(Divining Rod) A dead Göttingen periodical No. 34. April 27. 1818. Göthe gave this translation in his periodical Vol. 2. No. 3 Stuttgard 1820. p. 32
Here grunteth the old pig of Weimar--
* * *
Göthe has done no good here, first he says out of an album of 1604--whereas the book was bound in 1604--was it bound before or after the sheets were written on--I suppose according to English custom, it was a blank book bought by some dilletante for a scrap: M.S. book--Such are seldom very soon filled--and therefore in all probability the lines were written, here at least, in the latter days of Shakspeare. Two lines of it wh I need not point out to you give the thing a possibility--But who is Cynthia? In the sonnets &c is no Cynthia mentioned & altogether there is scarce any evidence of Shakspeares being in love in a sonneteering way--he was probably too well acquainted with the tricks of Authorship, too intimate with the artifice and insincerity of poetry to think of availing himself of it in any serious passion at this time of his life (see Sonnet 130).

His sonnets I take to be early productions dictated by an ardent attachment to W.H. who was younger than himself, and written all before he had become a poetical artist. It may be that these lines were written hastily by him for W.H. or perhaps some Court gentlemen to serve as a complimentary poem or song for his lady--But is there any necessity for raising so great a spirit, is it absolutely necessory that no other W.S. cod have written these lines? The internal evidence is so little satisfactory to my feelings that I cannot think Göethe pardonable for his temerity in printing Shakspeares name at the end of the verses upon such deficient historical grounds. Compare too the Italian frivolity, the careless superficial playfulness, the constrained elegance & roundness of this little bit of verse with the deep & ardent expressions of that wondrous book of sonnets where he has turned his heart inside out & given us all to read all that the tender & true spirit had written on the walls of his chamber,: the former is as the dimple of the coquetting man of the world to the ′ανηριθμον γελασμα--the starry tremulous universal smile of an ocean of passion, which ebbed & flowed about the roots of a love, as firm & sacred as the foundations of the world.

So far from being ready to attribute anything he cd have written to S. I am inclined to deny the authenticity of many smaller pieces & songs such as that to Silvia in 2 Gent. of Verona. At this period of his life--(40 years of age) his spirit was at rest, he was wearied of the "light airs & recollected terms. Of those most brisk and giddy-paced times," that feeling was awakened to full consciousness, wh dictated the true, self condemning expressions of the 110th Sonnet, & he was yearning for the quiet truth of enjoyment, the peace of life. He had long learned that there were mysteries in the feelings and passions of the soul, some of wh he had too rashly revealed; that the most exquisite happiness is silent, it's delights unutterable. He had uncovered to profaner eyes some of the farthest sanctuaries of the heart, he had lent to vulgar tongues the sacred language of truth & divine passion & it was this repentance & sorrow for the violation, which speaks so sorrowfully in that little poem, which deterred him from printing the compositions in wh he had made his own soul a thoroughfare for the world. At this time, wearied and disgusted as he clearly was with the fate wh. had necessitated him to feed cold eyes with the emotions of his eternal nature, cd he have so returned to the cold conceits with wh he had dallied before he had learned the truth & sacredness of human feeling? I cannot think so.

But that an old fellow of letter-press, an author of our days, who wd send the paper wet with his own heart's blood to the printer that fools might wonder & bookmen adore his art, shd think so, is what we can but expect from this vulgar prostituted age. I fear that Printing is a devil whom we have raised to feed & fatten with our best blood & trembling vitals. I (excuse, if you laugh at, this egotism of insignificance) will not again draw the veil from my own feelings to gratify the cold prying curiosity of such, as the million are, & will remain T.L.B--

You will hardly thank me for this letter, I have gone on with it without attending to the laws & purposes of correspondence--but send it that you may gather from the expressions a way of thinking wh grows upon me daily--Do you think I am right both with relation to the lines wh have occasioned them & the sentiment in general or in neither? I hope your instinct will lead you thro' this labyrinth of remark, note Query--it looks like a skreen full of puzzles--

Addressed to
T.F. KELSALL Esq
Fareham
Hants


-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)

Polar Virtue of Perseverance

Thomas Lovell Beddoes to Thomas Forbes Kelsall

Hamburg

Tuesday. 19. July 1825

MY DEAR KELSALL,--und mein lieber herr Thomas,--If you will take the sails of the Harwich packet, walk across the German Ocean, trot up the Elbe, & turn into the Roman Emperor at Hamburg be so good as to enquire for mein Herr T.L.B. No 12 up two pair of stairs, & you will find him sitting on a horse-hair sofa, looking over the Elbe with his meerschaum at his side full of Grave & abundantly prosaic.

Tomorrow, according to the prophecies of the diligence he will set out for Hanovver (we Germans (here a puff.) always spell it with 2 v's--) & by the end of this week mein Herr Thomas will probably be a Dr of the university of Göttingen. What his intentions further may be I cannot say precisely as you & I between ourselves recollect that he is not altogether endued with the polar virtue of perseverance, & that the needle with wh he embroiders his cloth of life has not been rubbed with the magnet of steady determination. I rather think however that he will return to England with a rather quaint and unintelligible tragedy, which will set all critical pens nib upwards, a la fretful porcupine.

When he embarked from Harwich & observed that his only companions were two Oxford men, professors of genteel larking, without the depth, vivacity or heartiness wh is necessary to render such people tolerable, he instantly drew his shell over him, & remained impenetrably proud & silent every wave of the way, dropping now and then a little venom into the mixture of conversation to make it effervesce.

Hamburg, where he now is, poor young man, is a new brick built town a fit place to embellish the ugly genius of the broad flat sided muddy Elbe--The very churches of brick & emetical unto the eye--The people honest and civil, & God fill their purse for it, no custom house no passport required--but then the women are of a coarse quality--there are no pictures no sculpture & if one meets more upright & manly forms in life, than in Italy, yet you seek in vain paintings superior to signs or sculpture beyond a tobacco-stopper.

Herr Procter, the Boet as George the Second says, will tell you what a confusion was caused by your hoaxing letter to a B.A of Pemb. Coll. Oxon--what a scrawl it ilicited from his drowsy quill & how underlined was the reply. Now leb wohl--for the post leaves us soon.

Fahrend oder reitend
sein
Der Genius von T.L.B

[Addressed to]

"T.F. KELSALL Esqre

3 Houndwell Lane

Southampton"

England

-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)

Oxford Idleness

Thomas Lovell Beddoes to Thomas Forbes Kelsall

Pemb: Coll Oxford

Wednesday[Postmark 8 Ju: 1825]

Yet once more O thou Kelsall yet once more I bestow on you a chance of investigating Alfred's university. On Wednesday next is the commemoration, a high and solemn act of academic mummery at wh Chantrey is to receive a degree of LLD--I therefore recommend you to take a place on the roof of the Southton on Monday morng you will get here by dinner time--Tuesday will be consumed in seeing leonine wonders, Wednesday you shall go to the theatre, & (if so inclined) hear the spouting of prize verses &c--& in the eveg a concert--on Thursday then you may rush back to your sheepskins in the Lane--Besides here is another attraction wh I had well nigh forgotten, the new No. of the Oxford Quarterly is to be produced on the occasion, in wh there will be a translation of a very curious high German piece of Schiller's called the "Philosophische Briefe"--executed by your obedient servant--

Oxford is the most indolent place on earth--I have fairly done nothing in the world but read a play or two of Schiller, Aeschylus, & Euripides--you I suppose read German now as fast as English--There is a cheap copy of Schiller's Drama to be had in Tottenham Court Road--about 1£. wh I shall be happy to get on commission as I go to town next week.

I do not intend to finish that 2nd Brother you saw but am thinking of a very Gothic-styled tragedy for wh I have a jewel of a name--DEATH'S JESTBOOK--of course no one will ever read it--Mr. Milman (our poetry professor) has made me quite unfashionable here by denouncing me, as one of a "villainous school." I wish him another son--

Oxford idleness, the heat of the day, & the clock wh is just striking the hour for my lecture on Comparative anatomy break me off--Let me see you on Monday or Tuesday--the former day I recommend as it will give you an opportunity of seeing the last boat race this season.
Yours ever
T.L. BEDDOES

Addressed to

"T.F. KELSALL Esq

3 Houndwell Lane

Southampton"

-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)

Break the ice of this frank

Thomas Lovell Beddoes to Thomas Forbes Kelsall

14 Southampton Row Friday Morng

[Postmark 25 March 1825]

MY DEAR KELSALL,--After a long & shameful period of silence I venture to address you, having got Procter to break the ice of this frank.* I will leave out all explanations, excuses & apologies--painful & unnecessary things--& go straight to the communication of such stuff as my brain entertains this morning. In the first place, lo! I am expert in reading German, even so far as now to be employing an hour a day or so in the metrical translation of the old obscure tedious Nibelungen-lied--about 100 lines is all as yet finished of this work--a grain from the mountain of 9560 of wh it is compact.

As usual I have begun a new tragedy wh at present I think of completing. I understand that Mr. Thomas Campbell has in some newspaper in a paltry refutation of some paltry charge of plagiarism regarding his paltry poem in the paltry Edinburgh touched the egg of my last man--the gentleman is completely addled, & the steam of my teapot will never be powerful enough to supply the place of incubation; nevertheless sometime or other I will treat it, not in the style of Hopkins & Campbell.

You have seen or heard of the Oxford Magazine--I am told that it is the progeny of my college and one or two others--it's best & principal contributor in the Praed line being one ingenious Mr White, a clever youth who is my successor in the literary chair at Pembroke. They have dunned me for a contribution & tho' I anticipate precocious dullness & an early death I believe I shall be foolish enough to write them some special bad rhymes--shd you think of going on with German I can get you a book or two very cheap--e.g. Schiller's Gedichte--bound (if they are not sold) the best edition 7/6. Bohte selling it in it's unwedded sheets for 14s--I have two or three odd volumes of works but complete as poems, wh I will save you too if you speak. Learn it by all means--it's literature touches the heaven of the Greek in many places--& the language is as easy as possible, to my notion more so than French--I have been seriously studying it since New Year's day only--& can read Schiller with little difficulty--Goëthe in his poems &c unvulgarised & cant-stuffed writings easily--Noëhdens dicty the best little one--if you are discontented with your own, is to be had cheaply I know where--

For many reasons at this moment it is impossible to Southamptonise--I must soon go to Ireland. At Present the law is on me--you know what a beast it is, & after my return from the Emerald mother of potatoes I shall have to settle my sisters, settle my affairs, sell & pay & impoverish myself to the bone & then set off for Germany; but be sure I do not leave England without seeing you, nor, if I can but finish, without dropping into the press some frail memorial of my existence--

The state of literature now is painful & humiliating enough--every one will write for £15 a sheet--who for love of art, who for fame, who for the purpose of continuing the noble stream of English minds? We ought too to look back with late repentance & remorse on our intoxicated praise, now cooling, of Lord Byron--such a man to be so spoken of when the world possessed Goëthe, Schiller, Shelley!

Oh self satisfied England--this comes of Always looking at herself in the looking-glass of the sea, I suppose.
Adio
T.L.B
6 Devereux Ct

Addressed to

"London March the twenty fifth 1825

THOMAS KELSALL Esqre

Houndwell Lane Southampton"

*B. W. Procter used the first part of Beddoes' sheet of writing paper to write Kelsall a letter.

-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)

The Biped knock of the post alighted

Thomas Lovell Beddoes to Thomas Forbes Kelsall

26 Mall. Clifton

[Postmark Jan 11:1825]

Dear Kelsall,

Day after day since Xmas I have intended to write or go to London & day after day I have deferred both projects--and now--I will give you the adventures and mishaps of this present sunday. Remorse, and startling conscience, in the form of an old sulky & a shying horse, hurried me to the Regulator coach-office on saturday-- "Does the regulator & its team conform to the Mosaic decalogue, Mr. Book-keeper?" He broke Priscian's head & thro' the aperture assured me that it did not--I was booked for the inside--call at 26 Mall for me--"Yes sir at 1/2 p. 5 AM."--at 5 I rose like a ghost from the tomb & betook me to coffee. No wheels rolled through the streets but the inaudible ones of that uncreated hour--It struck 6--a coach was called--we hurried to the office but the coach was gone--here followed a long Brutus & Cassius discourse between a shilling-buttoned waist-coatteer of a porter and myself--which ended in my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners--& agreeing to accept a place for Monday--

All well thus far. The Biped knock of the post alighted on the door at 12--& two letters were placed upon my german dictionary--Your own-- which I at first intended to reply to vivã voce--had not the second informed [me] of my brother's arrival in England, his short leave of absence, & his intention to visit me here next week. This twisted my strong purpose like a thread,--and disposed me to remain here about 10 days further. On the 21st at latest I go to London. Be there & I will join you, or if not pursue you to Southampton.

The fatal dowry has been cobbled sure, by some purblind ultracrepidarian. McReady's friend Walker very likely--but nevertheless I maintain 'tis a good play--& might have been rendered very effective--by docking it of the whole fifth Act which is an excrescence--re-creating Novall--& making Beaumelle a good deal more ghost-gaping & moonlightish--The cur: tailor has taken out the most purple piece in the whole weft--the end of the 4th act--& shouldered himself into toleration thro' the prejudices of the pit, when he should have built his admiration on their necks.

Say what you will--I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold trampling fellow--no creeper into worm-holes--no reviser even--however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold-- Such ghosts as Marloe--Webster &c are better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, than any contemporary of ours--but they are ghosts--the worm is in their pages--& we want to see something that our great-grandsires did not know. With the greatest reverence for all the antiquities of the drama I still think, that we had better beget than revive--attempt to give the literature of this age an idiosyncrasy & spirit of its own & only raise a ghost to gaze on not to live with--just now the drama is a haunted ruin.

I am glad that you are awakening to a sense of Darley--he must have no little perseverance to have gone thro so much of that play--it will perchance be the first star of a new day. Remember me to Procter & reproach him for his idleness to the fullest extent of vituperative civility--if I could find a reproof as heavy as the new London Mag I'd hurl it on him--I have written a new plot--& forgotten it. Will Keene (?) anatomize Mr. T. Campbell? even after

But, reaching home, terrific omen! there

The straw-laid street preluded his despair--

The servants' look: the table that revealed

His letter sent to Charlotte last still sealed--&c

THEODORIC

Stay in town if you can.
Yours truly
T. L. BEDDOES

Addressed to"T.F. KELSALL Esqre 67 Gt Portland St Oxford St London"

-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)

T. L. Beddoes died on January 26, 1849.

Beddoes and a Multitude of Dinners

To Thomas Forbes Kelsall

26 Mall Clifton Bristol

[Nov: 8. 1824]

What the fifteen hundred devils can have become of that fellow Beddoes? Why here he is on a wet sunday morning at Clifton, a bad pen and nothing to say, being prosperous auspices for the beginning of a letter. Perhaps you thought that I was delaying till I could epistolize in German--but in truth that tongue has flooded my brain no higher than der die das.

One morning at Procter's just after breakfast came a letter from Southton which touched my letterwriting conscience to the quick: it recounted your jaundice, but that I trust is, like Mathew's little pig, all over--and you are reinstated on the sofa in H Lane, where November darkens & clients to come cast their shadows before. Believe me I have begun two letters before, written a page of each and torn them up in despair of finishing. This however I will end.

I have seen Procter, before I left London, once or twice when his honeymoon was reduced to a cheese-paring--though he is now only half of himself he is twice the man he was, and I do not think that you will not be disappointed with his tenderer moiety. He is intending to give Covent Garden Lee's altered play this season & altogether appears very industriously inclined: this is as it should be: he has open sea enough if he will but take the tide.

I have been turning over old plays in the Brit: Museum; and verily think that another volume of specimens might be very well compiled--when I go up again, perhaps I shall do it for my private use. I was very much disappointed with the dulness that hid itself under the alluring title, which you must often have admired; to wit: See me and see me not, or Hans Beerpots invisible comedy. Marston's Sophonisba contains very good things and there are some very smart and quaintly worded speeches & characters in some of Middleton's comedys; the dullest thing possible is the Birth of Merlin, ascribed to W. Shakspeare: if Steam engines shall ever write blank verse it will be such as that:

Excuse me for a little bit of remonstrance. I do not think you were born to be confined to sheep's skins, you should spread a sense of true criticism, if you are disinclined to set an example in another way; crush Campbell, throw Bowles into the fire, Bernard & such small beer into the pig's trough.
Farewell, this is a stunted communication but I am dull & en veritè hurried
Yours ever

T.L. Beddoes

The four first acts of the fatal Dowry have improved my opinion of Massinger; he is a very effective "stage-poet" after all. I have not forgotten that I owe you five shillings and a multitude of dinners--if you do not go to London to receive them, I shall honestly do it at Southton before long.

-from Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes edited by Edmund Gosse (London: Elkin, Matthews & John Lane, 1894)