THE DRAMATIC PROFESSION.I am not aware of having spoken unjustly or disparagingly of the dramatic profession. You say I am ungrateful to it: is it because I owe many of my friends (yourself among the number) to it that you say so? or do you think that I forget that circumstance? But to value it as an art, simply for the personal advantages or pleasures that it was the means of affording me, would be surely quite as absurd as to forget that it did procure such for me. Then, upon reflection, few things have ever puzzled me more than the fact of people likingmebecause I pretended to be a pack of Juliets and Belvideras, and creatures who werenotme. PerhapsI was jealous of my parts; certainly, the good will my assumption of them obtained for me, always seemed to me quite as curious as flattering, or indeed rather more so. I did not think it an unbecoming comment on my father's acting again at the Queen's request, when I said that the excitement to which he had been habituated for so many years had still charms for him; it would be very strange indeed if it had not. It is chiefly from this point of view, and one or two others bearing on the moral health, that I deprecate for those I love the exercise of that profession; the claims of which to be considered as an art I cannot at all determine satisfactorily in my own mind. That we have Shakespeare's plays, written expressly for the interpretation of acting, is a strong argument for the existence of a positive art of acting: nevertheless——. But, if you please, we will settle that point when I have the pleasure of seeing you. I suppose I shall steam for England in October, when I shall endeavor to see you before I go abroad. Give my kindest regards to Lord Dacre, and believe me always
Very affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Lenox, September 4th, 1840.My dearest Harriet,
... First of all, let me congratulate you, and dear Dorothy, upon her improved health. Good as she is, I am sure she must value life; for those who use it best, best know its infinite worth; and for you, my dearest Harriet, this extension of the precious loan of her existence to you, I am persuaded, must be full of the greatest blessings. Give my affectionate love to her when you write to her or see her again; for, indeed, I suppose you are now at Bannisters, where I should like well to be with you, but I much fear that I shall not see you this winter, though I expect to sail for England next month....
You ask me of the distance between the Virginia Springs and Lenox, and I am ashamed to say I cannot answer; however, almost half the length of the United States, I think. This, my northern place of summer sojourn, is in the heart of the hill country of Massachusetts, in a district inhabited chiefly by Sedgwicks, and their belongings....
Our friends the Sedgwicks reached their homes about a fortnight ago, and the hills and valleys hereabouts rejoiced thereat.... Katharine's health and spirits are much revived by the atmosphere of love by which she is surrounded in her home. She bids me give her love to you. I wonder, with your miserable self-distrust, whether you have any idea of the affectionate regard all these people bear you. Katharine, a short time before leaving Europe, saw in a shop a dark gray stuff which resembled a dress you used to wear; she immediately bought it for herself, and carrying it home asked her brother who it reminded him of. He instantly kissed the stuff, exclaiming, "H—— S——!" Young Kate's journal contains a most affectionate record of their short intimacy with you at Wiesbaden; and you have left a deep impression on these hearts, where as little that is bad or base abides as in any frail human hearts I ever knew....
I have regained so much of my former appearance that I trust when I do see you I shall not horrify you, as you seemed some time ago to anticipate, by an apparition altogether unlike your, everessentiallythe same,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, October 7th, 1840.
... Dearest Harriet, whatever may be the evils which may spring from the amazing facilities of intercourse daily developing between distant countries (and with so great good, how should there not be some evil?), think of those whose lots are cast far from their early homes and friends; think of the deathlike separation that going to America has been to thousands who left England, and friends there, but a few years ago; the uncertainty of intercourse by letter, the interminable intervals of suspense, the impossibility of making known or understood by hearts that yearned for such information the new and strange circumstances of the exile's existence; the gradual dying out of friendships, and cooling of warm regard, from the impossibility of sufficient intercourse to keep interest alive; and sympathy, after endeavoring in vain to picture the distant home and surroundings and daily occupations of the absent friend, dwindling and withering away for want of necessary aliment, in spite of all the efforts which imagination could make to satisfy the affectionate desire and longing loving inquiries of the heart. Think of all that those twoexistencesas you call them (existences no more—but mere ideas), Time and Space, have caused of misery and suspense and heart-wearing anxiety, and rejoice that so much has been done to make parting less bitter, and absence endurable, through hope that now amounts almost to certainty.
PLANS OF LIFE.My own plans, which I thought so thoroughly settled a short time ago, have again become extremely indefinite. It is now considered inexpedient that I should travel on the Continent, though there is no objection to my remaining in England until my father's return, which I understand is expected soon after Easter. As, however, my motive in leaving America is to be with my father and sister, I have no idea of going to London to remain there three months, without any expectation of seeing them. This consideration would incline me to put off my visit to England till the spring, but it is not yet determined who, or whether any of us, will go to Georgia for the winter. My being taken thither is entirely uncertain; but should the contrary be decided upon, I might perhaps come to England immediately, as I would rather pass the winter in London, among my friends, if I am to spend it alone, than here, where the severe weather suspends all out-of-doorexercise, interests, and occupations, and where the absolute solitude is a terrible trial to my nerves and spirits.
At present, however, I have not a notion what will be determined about it, but as soon as I have any positive idea upon the subject I will let you know.
We returned from Massachusetts a few days ago, and I find a profusion of flowers and almost summer heat here, though the golden showers that every now and then flicker from the trees, and the rustling sound of fallen leaves, and the autumnal smell of mignonette, and other "fall" flowers, whisper of the coming winter; still all here at present is bright and sweet, with that peculiar combination of softness and brilliancy which belongs to the autumn in this part of America. It is the pleasantest season of the year here, and indescribably beautiful....
Good-bye, dearest Harriet; I had hoped to have joined you and Emily at Bannisters, but that pretty plan is all rubbed out now, and I do not know when I shall see you; but, thanks to those blessed beings—the steam-ships, those Atlantic angels of speed and certainty, it now seems as if I could do so "at any moment." God bless you.
Yours ever,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, October 26th.
I beg you will not stop short, as in your last letter, received the day before yesterday, dearest Harriet, with "but I will not overwhelm you with questions:" it is particularly agreeable to me to have specific questions to answer in the letters I receive from you, and I hope you perceive that I do religiously reply to anything in the shape of a query. It is pleasant to me to know upon what particular points of my doing, being, and suffering you desire to be enlightened; because although I know everything I write to you interests you, I like to be able to satisfy even a few of those "I wonders" that are perpetually rising up in our imaginations with respect to those we love and who are absent from us.
You ask me if I ever write any journal, or anything else now. The time that I passed in the South was so crowded with daily and hourly occupations that, though I kept a regular journal, it was hastily written, and receivedconstant additional notes of things that occurred, and that I wished to remember, inserted in a very irregular fashion in it.... I think I should like to carry this journal down to Georgia with me this winter; to revise, correct, and add whatever my second experience might furnish to the chronicle. It has been suggested to me that such an account of a Southern plantation might be worth publishing; but I think such a publication would be a breach of confidence, an advantage taken on my part of the situation of trust, which I held on the estate. As my condemnation of the whole system is unequivocal, and all my illustrations of its evils must be drawn from our own plantation, I do not think I have a right to exhibit the interior management and economy of that property to the world at large, as a sample of Southern slavery, especially as I did not go thither with any such purpose. This winter I think I shall mention my desire upon the subject before going to the South, and of course any such publication must then depend on the acquiescence of the owners of the estate. I am sure that no book of mine on the subject could be of as much use to the poor people on Butler's Island as my residence among them; and I should, therefore, be very unwilling to do anything that was likely to interfere with that: although I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it was an imperative duty, knowing what I know, and having seen what I have seen, to do all that lies in my power to show the dangers and evils of this frightful institution. And the testimony of a planter's wife, whose experience has all been gathered from estates where the slaves are universally admitted to be well treated, should carry with it some authority. So I am occupying myself, from time to time, as my leisure allows, in making a fair copy of my Georgia Journal.
METHOD OF READING.I occasionally make very copious extracts from what I read, and also write critical analyses of the books that please or displease me, in the language—French or Italian—in which they are written; but these are fragmentary, and do not, I think, entitle me to say that I am writing anything. No one here is interested in anything that I write, and I have too little serious habit of study, too little application, and too much vanity and desire for the encouragement of praise, to achieve much in my condition of absolute intellectual solitude....
Here are two of your questions answered; the third is—whether I let the slave question rest more than I did? Oh yes; for I have come to the conclusion that no words of mine could be powerful enough to dispel the clouds of prejudice which early habits of thought, and the general opinion of society upon this subject have gathered round the minds of the people I live among. I do not know whether they ever think or read about it, and my arguments, though founded in this case on pretty sound reason, are apt to degenerate into passionate appeals, the violence of which is not calculated to do much good in the way of producing convictions in the minds of others....
Even if the property were mine, I could exercise no power over it; nor could our children, after our death, do anything for those wretched slaves, under the present laws of Georgia. All that any one could do, would be to refrain from using the income derived from the estates, and return it to the rightful owners—that is, the earners of it. Had I such a property, I think I would put my slaves at once quietly upon the footing of free laborers, paying them wages, and making them pay me rent and take care of themselves. Of course I should be shot by my next neighbor (against whom no verdict would be found except "Serve her right!") in the first week of my experiment; butif I wasn't, I think, reckoning only the meanest profit to be derived from the measure, I should double the income of the estate in less than three years.... I am more than ever satisfied that God and Mammon would be equally propitiated by emancipation.
You ask me whether I take any interest in the Presidential election. Yes, though I have not room left for my reasons—and I have some, besides that best woman's reason, sympathy with the politics of the man I belong to. The party coming into power are, I believe, at heart less democratic than the other; and while the natural advantages of this wonderful country remain unexhausted (and they are apparently inexhaustible), I am sure the Republican Government is by far the best for the people themselves, besides thinking it the best in the abstract, as you know I do.
God bless you, my dearest Harriet.
I am ever yours most affectionately,
F. A. B.
[The question of my spending the winter in Georgia was finally determined by Mr. J—— B—— 's decided opposition to my doing so. He was part proprietor of the plantation, and positively stipulated that I should not again be taken thither, considering my presence there as a mere source of distress to myself, annoyance to others, and danger to the property.I question the validity of the latter objection, but not at all that of the two first; and am sure that, upon the whole, his opposition to my residence among his slaves was not only justifiable but perfectly reasonable.My Georgia journal was not published until thirty years after it was written, during the civil war in the United States. I was then passing some time in England, and the people among whom I lived were, like most well-educated members of the upper classes of English society, Southern sympathizers. The ignorant and mischievous nonsense I was continually compelled to hear upon the subject of slavery in the seceding States determined me to publish my own observation of it—not, certainly, that I had in those latter years of my life any fallacious expectation of making converts on the subject, but that I felt constrained at that juncture to bear my testimony to the miserable nature and results of the system, of which so many of my countrymen and women were becoming the sentimental apologists.ILLNESS OF CHARLES KEMBLE.It being now settled that I was not to return to the plantation, my thoughts had hardly reverted to the prospect of a winter in England when I received the news of my father's return from the Continent, and dangerous illness in London; so that, I was told, unless I could go to him immediately, there was but little probability of my ever seeing him again. The misfortune I had so often anticipated now seemed to have overtaken me, and instant preparation for my leaving America being made, and an elderly lady, with whom I had become connected by my marriage, having exerted her influence in my behalf, I was not allowed, under such painful circumstances, again to cross the Atlantic alone, but returned with a very heavy heart to my own country, but with the comfort of being accompanied by my whole family.The news that met me on my arrival was that my father was at the point of death, that he would not probably survive twenty-fourhours, and that it was altogether inexpedient that he should see me, as, if he recognized me, which was doubtful, my unexpected appearance, it having been impossible to prepare him for it, might only be the means of causing him a violent and perhaps painful shock of nervous agitation. This terrible verdict, pronounced by three of the most eminent medical men of the day, Bright, Liston, and Wilson, was a dreadful close to all the anxious days and hours of the sea voyage, during which I had hoped and prayed to be again permitted to embrace my father. But in my deep distress, I could not help remembering that, after all, his physicians, able as they were, had not the keys of life and death. And so it proved: my father made an almost miraculous rally, recovered, and survived the sentence pronounced against him for many years.Not many days after our arrival, his improved condition admitted of his being told of my return, and allowed to see me. Cadaverous is the only word that describes the appearance to which acute suffering and subsequent prostration had reduced him; he looked, indeed, like one returned from the dead, and, in his joy at seeing me again, declared that I had restored him to life, and that my arrival, though he had not known of it, had called him back to existence—a sympathetic theory of convalescence, to which I do not think his doctors gave in their adhesion.We now took up our abode in London; first at the Clarendon Hotel, and afterwards in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, where my father, as soon as he could be moved, came to reside with us, and where my sister joined us on her return from Italy. My friend Miss S——, coming from Ireland to stay with me soon after my arrival in England, added to my happiness in finding myself once more with my own family, and in my own country.]
[The question of my spending the winter in Georgia was finally determined by Mr. J—— B—— 's decided opposition to my doing so. He was part proprietor of the plantation, and positively stipulated that I should not again be taken thither, considering my presence there as a mere source of distress to myself, annoyance to others, and danger to the property.
I question the validity of the latter objection, but not at all that of the two first; and am sure that, upon the whole, his opposition to my residence among his slaves was not only justifiable but perfectly reasonable.
My Georgia journal was not published until thirty years after it was written, during the civil war in the United States. I was then passing some time in England, and the people among whom I lived were, like most well-educated members of the upper classes of English society, Southern sympathizers. The ignorant and mischievous nonsense I was continually compelled to hear upon the subject of slavery in the seceding States determined me to publish my own observation of it—not, certainly, that I had in those latter years of my life any fallacious expectation of making converts on the subject, but that I felt constrained at that juncture to bear my testimony to the miserable nature and results of the system, of which so many of my countrymen and women were becoming the sentimental apologists.
ILLNESS OF CHARLES KEMBLE.It being now settled that I was not to return to the plantation, my thoughts had hardly reverted to the prospect of a winter in England when I received the news of my father's return from the Continent, and dangerous illness in London; so that, I was told, unless I could go to him immediately, there was but little probability of my ever seeing him again. The misfortune I had so often anticipated now seemed to have overtaken me, and instant preparation for my leaving America being made, and an elderly lady, with whom I had become connected by my marriage, having exerted her influence in my behalf, I was not allowed, under such painful circumstances, again to cross the Atlantic alone, but returned with a very heavy heart to my own country, but with the comfort of being accompanied by my whole family.
The news that met me on my arrival was that my father was at the point of death, that he would not probably survive twenty-fourhours, and that it was altogether inexpedient that he should see me, as, if he recognized me, which was doubtful, my unexpected appearance, it having been impossible to prepare him for it, might only be the means of causing him a violent and perhaps painful shock of nervous agitation. This terrible verdict, pronounced by three of the most eminent medical men of the day, Bright, Liston, and Wilson, was a dreadful close to all the anxious days and hours of the sea voyage, during which I had hoped and prayed to be again permitted to embrace my father. But in my deep distress, I could not help remembering that, after all, his physicians, able as they were, had not the keys of life and death. And so it proved: my father made an almost miraculous rally, recovered, and survived the sentence pronounced against him for many years.
Not many days after our arrival, his improved condition admitted of his being told of my return, and allowed to see me. Cadaverous is the only word that describes the appearance to which acute suffering and subsequent prostration had reduced him; he looked, indeed, like one returned from the dead, and, in his joy at seeing me again, declared that I had restored him to life, and that my arrival, though he had not known of it, had called him back to existence—a sympathetic theory of convalescence, to which I do not think his doctors gave in their adhesion.
We now took up our abode in London; first at the Clarendon Hotel, and afterwards in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, where my father, as soon as he could be moved, came to reside with us, and where my sister joined us on her return from Italy. My friend Miss S——, coming from Ireland to stay with me soon after my arrival in England, added to my happiness in finding myself once more with my own family, and in my own country.]
Clarges Street, March 21st.
You will, ere this, dearest H——, have received my answer to your first letter. You ask me, in your second, what we think about the chances of a war with America. Our wishes prompt us to the belief that a war between the two countries isimpossible, though the tone of the newspapers, within the last few days, has been horribly pugnacious. A letter was received the day before yesterday, from our Liverpool factor, asking us what is to be done about some cotton which had just come to them fromthe plantation, in the event of war breaking out: a supposition which he had treated as an utter impossibility when he was last in London, but which he confessed in this letter did not seem to him quite so impossible now. I do not, for my own part, see very well how either party is to get out of its present attitude towards the other peaceably and, at the same time, without some compromise of dignity. But I pray God that the hearts of the two nations may be inclined to peace, and then, doubtless, some cunning device will be found to save theirhonor. The virtuous "if" of Touchstone is, I am afraid, not as valid in national as individual quarrels.
Tell Mr. H—— W——, with my love, that it is all a hoax about Niagara Falls havingfallendown; and that they are stillfallingdown, according to their custom; but if you should find this intelligence affect him with too painful a disappointment, you may comfort him by assuring him that they inevitably must and will fall down one of these days, and, what is more, stay fallen, and precisely in the manner they are now said to have begun their career—by the gradual wearing away of the rock between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
PERSIANI AND PAULINE GARCIA.We were at the opera the Saturday after you left us; but it was a mediocre performance, both music and dancing, and gave me but little pleasure. I went last night again with my father, and was enchanted with the opera, which was an old favorite, "Tancredi," in which I heard Persiani, an admirable artist, with a mere golden wire of voice, of which she made most capital use, and Pauline Garcia, who possesses all the genius of her family; and between them it was a perfect performance. The latter is a sister of Malibran's, and will certainly be one of the finest dramatic singers of these times. But the proximity of people to me in the stalls is so intolerable that I think I shall give mine up; for I am in a state of nervouscrawlingthe whole time, with being pushed and pressed and squeezed and leaned on and breathed on by my fellow-creatures. You remember my old theory, that we are all of us surrounded by an atmosphere proper to ourselves, emanating from each of us,—a separate, sensitive envelope, extending some little distance from our visible persons. I am persuaded that this is the case, and that when myindividual atmosphereis invaded by any one, it affects mywhole nervous system. The proximity of anybodiesbut those I love best is unendurable to my body.
My father is much in the same condition as when you went away, suffering a great deal, and complaining frequently; but by his desire we have a dinner-party here on Tuesday, and he has accepted two invitations to dine out himself. My chicks are pretty well....
May God bless you, dear.
I am ever your own
F. A. B.
Clarges Street.
This letter was begun three days ago, and it is now Thursday, March the 25th. Do not, I beseech you, ever make any appeals to my imagination, or my feelings. I have lost all I ever had of the first, and I never had any at all of the second....
You ask me if I have been riding. Only once or twice, for I may not do what I so fain would, give all the visiting to utter neglect, and ride every day. Yesterday I was on horseback for two hours with Henry, who, having sold his pretty mare, for £65, to the author of the new comedy at Covent Garden, was obliged to bestride one of Mr. Allen's screws, as he calls them. The day was dusty and windy, and very disagreeable, but I was all the better for my shaking, as I always am. I am never in health, looks, or spirits without daily hard exercise on horseback.
My first meeting with Mrs. Grote (I am answering your questions, dearest H——, though you have probably forgotten them) took place after all at Sydney Smith's, at a dinner the very next day after you left us. We did not say a great deal to each other, but upon my saying incidentally (I forget about what) "I, who have always preserved my liberty, at least the small crumb of it that a woman can own anywhere," she faced about, in a most emphatical manner, and said, "Then you've struggled for it." "No, I have not been obliged to do so." "Ah, then you must, or you'll lose it, you'll lose it, depend upon it." I smiled, but did not reply, because I saw that she was not taking into consideration the fact of my living in America; and this was the only trulyGrotesque(as Sydney Smith says) passage between us. Since then we have again ineffectually exchanged cards, and yesterday I received an invitation to her house, so that I suppose we shall finally become acquainted with each other.
MRS. GROTE.[Mrs. Grote, wife of George Grote, the banker, member of Parliament, and historian of Greece, was one of the cleverest and most eccentric women in the London society of my time. No worse a judge than De Tocqueville pronounced her the cleverest woman of his acquaintance; and she was certainly a very remarkable member of the circle of remarkable men among whom she was living when I first knew her. At that time she was the female centre of the Radical party in politics—a sort of not-young-or-handsome feminine oracle among a set of very clever half-heathenish men, in whose drawing-room, Sydney Smith used to say, he always expected to find an altar to Zeus. At this time Mr. Grote was in the House of Commons, and as it was before the publication of his admirable history, his speeches, which were as remarkable for their sound sense and enlightened liberality as for their clear and forcible style, were not unfrequently attributed to his wife, whose considerable conversational powers, joined to a rather dictatorial style of exercising them, sometimes threw her refined and modest husband a little into the shade in general society. When first I made Mrs. Grote's acquaintance, the persons one most frequently met at her house in Eccleston Street were Roebuck, Leader, Byron's quondam associate Trelawney, and Sir William Molesworth; both the first and last mentioned gentlemen were then of an infinitely deeper shade of radicalism in their politics than they subsequently became. The other principal element of Mrs. Grote's society, at this time, consisted of musical composers and performers, who found in her a cordial and hospitable friend and hostess, and an amateur of unusual knowledge and discrimination, as well as much taste and feeling for their beautiful art. Her love of music, and courteous reception of all foreign artists, caused her to be generally sought by eminent professors coming to England; and Liszt, Madame Viardot, Dessauer, Thalberg, Mademoiselle Lind, and Mendelssohn were among the celebrated musicians one frequently met at her house. With the two latter she was very intimate, and it was in her drawing-room that my sister gave her first public concert in London. Mendelssohn used often to visit her at a small country-place she had in the neighborhood ofBurnhamBeeches.It was a very small and modest residence, situated on the verge ofthe magnificent tract of woodland scenery known by that name; a dependence, I believe, of the Dropmore estate, which it adjoined. It was an unenclosed space of considerable extent, of wild, heathy moorland; short turfy strips of common; dingles full of foxglove, harebell, and gnarled old stunted hawthorn bushes; and knolls, covered with waving crests of powerful feathery fern. It was intersected with gravelly paths and roads, whose warm color contrasted and harmonized with the woodland hues of everything about them; and roofed in by dark green vaults of the most magnificent beech foliage I have ever seen anywhere. The trees were of great age and enormous size; and from some accidental influence affecting their growth, the huge trunks were many of them contorted so as to resemble absolutely the twisted Saxon pillars of some old cathedral. In many of them the powerful branches (as large themselves as trunks of common trees) spread out from the main tree, at a height of about six feet from the ground, into a sort of capacious leafy chamber, where eight or ten people could have sat embowered. A more perfectly English woodland scene it would be impossible to imagine, and here, as Mrs. Grote told me, Mendelssohn found the inspiration of much of the music of his "Midsummer Night's Dream." (The overture he had composed, and played to us one evening at my father's house, when first he came to England, before he was one-and-twenty.) At one time Mrs. Grote contemplated erecting some monument in the beautiful wood to his memory, and showed me a copy of verses, not devoid of merit, which she thought of inscribing on it to his honor; but she never carried out the suggestion of her affectionate admiration; and to those who knew and loved Mendelssohn (alas! the expressions are synonymous), the glorious wood itself, where he walked and mused and held converse with the spirit of Shakespeare, forms a solemn sylvan temple, forever consecrated to tender memories of his bright genius and lovely character.When first I knew Mrs. Grote, however, her artistic sympathies were keenly excited in a very different direction; for she had undertaken, under some singular impulse of mistaken enthusiasm, to make what she called "an honest woman" of the celebrated dancer, Fanny Ellsler, and to introduce her into London society,—neither ofthem very attainable results, even for as valiant and enterprising a person as Mrs. Grote. When first I heard of this strange undertaking I was, in common with most of her friends, much surprised at it; nor was it until some years after the entire failure of this quixotic experiment, that I became aware that she had been actuated by any motive but the kindliest and most mistaken enthusiasm.Mademoiselle Ellsler was at this time at the height of her great and deserved popularity as a dancer, and whatever I may have thought of the expediency or possibility of making what Mrs. Grote called "an honest woman" of her, I was among the most enthusiastic admirers of her great excellence in her elegant art. She was the only intellectual dancer I have ever seen. Inferior to Taglioni (that embodied genius of rhythmical motion) in lightness, grace, and sentiment; to Carlotta Grisi in the two latter qualities; and with less mere vigor and elasticity than Cerito, she excelled them all in dramatic expression; and parts of her performance in the ballets of the "Tarantella" and the wild legend of "Gisele, the Willye," exhibited tragic power of a very high order, while the same strongly dramatic element was the cause of her pre-eminence in all national and characteristic dances, such as El Jaleo de Xeres, the Cracovienne, et cetera. This predominance of the intellectual element in her dancing may have been the result of original organization, or it may have been owing to the mental training which Ellsler received from Frederic von Genz, Gensius, the German writer and diplomatist, who educated her, and whose mistress she became while still quite a young girl. However that may be, Mrs. Grote always maintained that her genius lay full as much in her head as in her heels. I am not sure that the finest performance of hers that I ever witnessed was not a minuet in which she danced the man's part, in full court-suit of the time of Louis XVI., with most admirable grace and nobility of demeanor.Mrs. Grote labored hard to procure her acceptance in society; her personal kindness to her was of the most generous description: but her great object of making "an honest woman" of her, I believe failed signally in every way.On one occasion I paid Mrs. Grote a visit at Burnham Beeches. Our party consisted only of my sister and myself; the Viennese composer,Dessauer; and Chorley, the musical critic of theAthenæum, who was very intimately acquainted with us all. The eccentricities of our hostess, with which some of us were already tolerably familiar, were a source of unfeigned amazement and awe to Dessauer, who, himself the most curious, quaint, and withal nervously excitable and irritable humorist, was thrown into alternate convulsions of laughter and spasms of terror at the portentous female figure, who, with a stick in her hand, a man's hat on her head, and a coachman's box-coat of drab cloth with manifold capes over her petticoats (English women had not yet then adopted a costume undistinguishable from that of the other sex), stalked about the house and grounds, alternately superintending various matters of the domestic economy, and discussing, with equal knowledge and discrimination, questions of musical criticism and taste.One most ludicrous scene which took place on this occasion I shall never forget. She had left us to our own devices, and we were all in the garden. I was sitting in a swing, and my sister, Dessauer, and Chorley were lying on the lawn at my feet, when presently, striding towards us, appeared the extravagant figure of Mrs. Grote, who, as soon as she was within speaking-trumpet distance, hailed us with a stentorian challenge about some detail of dinner—I think it was whether the majority voted for bacon and peas or bacon and beans. Having duly settled this momentous question, as Mrs. Grote turned and marched away, Dessauer—who had been sitting straight up, listening with his head first on one side and then on the other, like an eagerly intelligent terrier, taking no part in the culinary controversy (indeed, his entire ignorance of English necessarily disqualified him for even comprehending it), but staring intently, with open eyes and mouth, at Mrs. Grote—suddenly began, with his hands and lips, to imitate the rolling of a drum, and then broke out aloud with, "Malbrook s'envat' enguerre," etc.; whereupon the terrible lady faced right about, like a soldier, and, planting her stick in the ground, surveyed Dessauer with an awful countenance. The wretched little man grew red and then purple, and then black in the face with fear and shame; and exclaiming in his agony, "Ah, bonté divine! elle m'a compris!" rolled over and over on the lawn as if he had a fit. Mrs. Grote majestically waved her hand, and with magnanimous disdain of hersmall adversary turned and departed, and we remained horror-stricken at the effect of this involuntary tribute of Dessauer's to her martial air and deportment.When she returned, however, it was to enter into a most interesting and animated discussion upon the subject of Glück's music; and suddenly, some piece from the "Iphigenia" being mentioned, she shouted for her man-servant, to whom on his appearance she gave orders to bring her a chair and footstool, and "the big fiddle" (the violoncello) out of the hall; and taking it forthwith between her knees, proceeded to play, with excellent taste and expression, some of Glück's noble music upon the sonorous instrument, with which St. Cecilia is the only female I ever saw on terms of such familiar intimacy.MRS. GROTE AND FANNY ELLSLER.The second time Mrs. Grote invited me to the Beeches, it was to meet Mdlle. Ellsler. A conversation I had with my admirable and excellent friend Sydney Smith determined me to decline joining the party. He wound up his kind and friendly advice to me upon the subject by saying, "No, no, my child; that's all very well for Grota" (the name he always gave Mrs. Grote, whose good qualities and abilities he esteemed very highly, whatever he may have thought of her eccentricities); "but don't mix yourself up with that sort of thing." And I had reason to rejoice that I followed his good advice. Mrs. Grote told me, in the course of a conversation we once had on the subject of Mdlle. Ellsler, that when the latter went to America, she, Mrs. Grote, had undertaken most generously the entire care and charge of her child, a lovely little girl of about six years old. "All I said to her," said this strange, kind-hearted woman, "was 'Well, Fanny, send the brat to me; I don't ask you whose child it is, and I don't care, so long as it isn't that fool d'Orsay's'" (Mrs. Grote had small esteem forthedandy of his day), "'and I'll take the best care of it I can.'" And she did take the kindest care of it during the whole period of Mdlle. Ellsler's absence from Europe.The next time I visited the Beeches was after an interval of some years, when I went thither with my kind and constant friend Mr. Rogers. My circumstances had altered very painfully, and I was again laboring for my own support.I went down to Burnham with the old poet, and was sorry to findthat, though he had consented to pay Mrs. Grote this visit, he was not in particularly harmonious tune for her society, which was always rather a trial to his fastidious nerves and refined taste. The drive of between three and four miles in a fly (very different from his own luxurious carriage), through intricate lanes and rural winding avenues, did not tend to soften his acerbities, and I perceived at once, on alighting from the carriage, that the aspect of the place did not find favor in his eyes.Mrs. Grote had just put up an addition to her house, a sort of single wing, which added a good-sized drawing-room to the modest mansion I had before visited. Whatever accession of comfort the house received within from this addition to its size, its beauty, externally, was not improved by it, and Mr. Rogers stood before the offending edifice, surveying it with a sardonic sneer that I should think even brick and mortar must have found it hard to bear. He had hardly uttered his three first disparaging bitter sentences, of utter scorn and abhorrence of the architectural abortion, which, indeed it was, when Mrs. Grote herself made her appearance in her usual country costume, box-coat, hat on her head, and stick in her hand. Mr. Rogers turned to her with a verjuice smile, and said, "I was just remarking that in whatever part of the world I had seen this building I should have guessed to whose taste I might attribute its erection." To which, without an instant's hesitation, she replied, "Ah,'tisa beastly thing, to be sure. The confounded workmen played the devil with the place while I was away." Then, without any more words, she led the way to the interior of her habitation, and I could not but wonder whether her blunt straightforwardness did not disconcert and rebuke Mr. Rogers for his treacherous sneer.During this visit, much interesting conversation passed with reference to the letters of Sydney Smith, who was just dead; and the propriety of publishing all his correspondence, which, of course, contained strictures and remarks upon people with whom he had been living in habits of friendly social intimacy. I remember one morning a particularly lively discussion on the subject, between Mrs. Grote and Mr. Rogers. The former had a great many letters from Sydney Smith, and urged the impossibility of publishing them, with all their comments on members of the London world. Rogers, on thecontrary, apparently delighted at the idea of the mischief such revelations would make, urged Mrs. Grote to give them ungarbled to the press. "Oh, but now," said the latter, "here, for instance, Mr. Rogers, such a letter as this, about ——; do see how he cuts up the poor fellow. It really never would do to publish it." Rogers took the letter from her, and read it with a stony grin of diabolical delight on his countenance and occasional chuckling exclamations of "Publish it! publish it! Put an R, dash, or an R and four stars for the name. He'll never know it, though everybody else will." While Mr. Rogers was thus delecting himself, in anticipation, with R——'s execution, Mrs. Grote, by whose side I was sitting on a low stool, quietly unfolded another letter of Sydney Smith's, and silently held it before my eyes, and the very first words in it were a most ludicrous allusion to Rogers's cadaverous appearance. As I raised my eyes from this most absurd description of him, and saw him still absorbed in his evil delight, the whole struck me as so like a scene in a farce that I could not refrain from bursting out laughing.In talking of Sydney Smith Mr. Rogers gave us many amusing details of various visits he paid him at his place in Somersetshire, Combe Flory, where, on one occasion, Jeffrey was also one of the party. It was to do honor to these illustrious guests that Sydney Smith had a pair of horns fastened on his donkey, who was turned into the paddock so adorned, in order, as he said, to give the place a more noble and park-like appearance; and it was on this same donkey that Jeffrey mounted when Sydney Smith exclaimed with such glee—"As short, but not as stout, as Bacchus,As witty as Horatius Flacchus,As great a radical as Gracchus,There he goes riding on myjackuss."THE ASSASSIN.Rogers told us too, with great satisfaction, an anecdote of Sydney Smith's son, known in London society by the amiable nickname of the Assassin.... This gentleman, being rather addicted to horse-racing and the undesirable society of riders, trainers, jockeys, and semi-turf black-legs, meeting a friend of his father's on his arrival at Combe Flory, the visitor said, "So you have got Rogers here, I find." "Oh, yes," replied Sydney Smith's dissimilar son,with a rueful countenance, "but it isn'ttheRogers, you know."TheRogers, according to him, being a famous horse-trainer and rider of that name.I have called him his father's dissimilar son, but feel inclined to withdraw that epithet, when I recollect his endeavor to find an appropriate subject of conversation for the Archbishop of York, by whom, on one occasion, he found himself seated at dinner: "Pray, my lord, how long do youthinkit took Nebuchadnezzar to get into condition again after his turn out at grass?"The third time I went to Burnham Beeches, it was to meet a very clever Piedmontese gentleman, with whom Mr. Grote had become intimate, Mr. Senior, known and valued for his ability as a political economist, his clear and acute intelligence, his general information and agreeable powers of conversation. His universal acquaintance with all political and statistical details, and the whole contemporaneous history of European events, and the readiness and fulness of his information on all matters of interest connected with public affairs used to make Mrs. Grote call him her "man of facts." The other member of our small party was Charles Greville, whose acquaintance Mrs. Grote had made through his intimacy with my sister and myself. This gentleman was one of the most agreeable members of our intimate society. His mother was the sister of the late Duke of Portland, and during the short administration of his uncle, Charles Greville, then quite a young man, had a sinecure office in the island of Jamaica bestowed upon him, and was made Clerk of the Privy Council; which appointment, by giving him an assured position and handsome income for life, effectually put a stop to his real advancement at the very outset, by rendering all effort of ambition on his part unnecessary, and inducing him, instead of distinguishing himself by an honorable public career, to adopt the life and pursuits of a mere man of pleasure, ... and to waste his talents in the petty intrigues of society, and the excitements of the turf. He was an influential member of the London great world of his day; his clear good sense, excellent judgment, knowledge of the world, and science of expediency, combined with his good temper and ready friendliness, made him a sort of universal referee in the society to which he belonged. Men consulted him about their difficulties with men; and women, about their squabbles withwomen; and men and women, about their troubles with the opposite sex. He was called into the confidence of all manner of people, and trusted with the adjustment of all sorts of affairs. He knew the secrets of everybody, which everybody seemed willing that he should know; and he was one of the principal lawgivers of the turf. The publication of Charles Greville's Memoirs, which shocked the whole of London society, surprised, as much as it grieved, his friends, the character they revealed being painfully at variance with their impression of him, and not a little, in some respects, at variance with that of a gentleman.... Our small party at the Beeches was broken up on the occasion of this, my third visit, by our hostess's indisposition. She was seized with a violent attack of neuralgia in the head, to which she was subject, and by which she was compelled to take to her bed, and remain there in darkness and almost intolerable suffering for hours, and sometimes days together. I have known her prostrated by a paroxysm of this sort when she had invited a large party to dinner, and obliged to leave her husband to do the honors to their guests, while she betook herself to solitary confinement in a darkened room.On the present occasion the gentlemen guests took their departure for London, and I should have done the same, but that Mrs. Grote entreated me to remain, for the chance of her being soon rid of her torment. Towards the middle of the day she begged me to come to her room, when, feeling, I presume, some temporary relief, she presently began talking vehemently to me about a French opera of "The Tempest," by Halévy, I believe, which had just been produced in Paris, with Madame Rossi Sontag as Miranda, and Lablache as Caliban. Mrs. Grote was violent in her abuse of the composition, deploring, as I joined her in doing, that Mendelssohn should not have taken "The Tempest" for the subject of an opera, and so prevented less worthy composers from laying hands upon it.JENNY LIND.Towards this time Mrs. Grote became absorbed by a passionate enthusiasm for Mademoiselle Jenny Lind, of whom she was an idolatrous worshipper, and who frequently spent her days of leisure at the Beeches. Mrs. Grote engrossed Mademoiselle Jenny Lind in so curious a manner that, socially, the accomplished singer could hardly be approached but through her. She was kind enough to ask metwice to meet her, when Mendelssohn and herself were together at Burnham—an offer of a rare pleasure, of which I was unable to avail myself. I remember, about this time, a comical conversation I had with her, in which, after surveying and defining her social position and its various advantages, she exclaimed, "But I want some lords, Fanny. Can't you help me to some lords?" I told her, laughingly, that I thought the lady who held watch and ward over Mademoiselle Jenny Lind might have as many lords at her feet as she pleased....MRS. GROTE AND MRS. KEMBLE.Besides her literary and artistic tastes, she took a keen interest in politics, and among other causes for the slight esteem in which she not unnaturally held my intellectual capacity was my ignorance of, and indifference to, anything connected with party politics, especially as discussed in coteries and by coterie queens.Great questions of European policy, and the important movements of foreign governments, or our own, in matters tending to affect the general welfare and progress of humanity, had a profound interest for me; but I talked so little on such subjects, as became the profundity of my ignorance, that Mrs. Grote supposed them altogether above my sympathy, and probably above my comprehension.I remember very well, one evening at her own house, I was working at some embroidery (I never saw her with that feminine implement, a needle, in her fingers, and have a notion she despised those who employed it, and the results they achieved), and I was listening with perfect satisfaction to an able and animated discussion between Mr. Grote, Charles Greville, Mr. Senior, and a very intelligent Piedmontese then staying at the Beeches, on the aspect of European politics, and more especially of Italian affairs, when Mrs. Grote, evidently thinking the subject too much for me, drew her chair up to mine, and began a condescending conversation about matters which she probably judged more on a level with my comprehension; for she seemed both relieved and surprised when I stopped her kind effort to entertain me at once, thanking her, and assuring her that I was enjoying extremely what I was listening to.Some time after this, however, I must say I took a mischievous opportunity of purposely confirming her poor opinion of my brains; for on her return from Paris, where she had been during LouisNapoleon'scoup d'état, she offered to show me Mr. Senior's journal, kept there at the same time, and recording all the remarkable and striking incidents of that exciting period of French affairs. This was a temptation, but it was a greater one to me—being, as Madame de Sévigné says of herself,méchante ma fille—to make fun of Mrs. Grote; and so, comforting myself with thinking that this probably highly interesting and instructive record, kept by Mr. Senior, would be sure to be published, and was then in manuscript (a thing which I abhor), I quietly declined the offer, looking as like Audrey when she asks "What is poetical?" as I could: to which Mrs. Grote, with an indescribable look, accent, and gesture of good-humored contempt, replied, "Ah, well, it might not interest you; I dare say it wouldn't. Itispolitical, to be sure; it is political."This is the second very clever woman, to whom I know my intelligence had been vaunted, to whom I turned out completely "Paradise Lost," as my mother's comical old acquaintance, Lady Dashwood King, used to say to Adelaide of me: "Ah, yes, I know your sister isvastlyclever, exceedingly intelligent, and all that kind of thing, but she is 'Paradise Lost' to me, my dear." I sometimes regretted having hidden my small light under a bushel as entirely as I did, in the little intercourse I had with the first Lady Ashburton, Lady Harriet Montague, with whom some of my friends desired that I should become acquainted, and who asked me to her house in London, and to the Grange, having been assured that there was something in me, and trying to find it out, without ever succeeding.Mrs. Grote had generally a very contemptuous regard for the capacity of her female friends. She was extremely fond of my sister, but certainly had not the remotest appreciation of her great cleverness; and on one occasion betrayed the most whimsical surprise when Adelaide mentioned having received a letter from the great German scholar Waelcker. "Who? what? you? Waelcker, write to you!" exclaimed Grota, in amazement more apparent than courteous, it evidently being beyond the wildest stretch of her imagination that one of the most learned men in Europe, and profoundest scholars of Germany, could be a correspondent of my sister's, and a devoted admirer of her brilliant intelligence.Mrs. Grote's appearance was extremely singular; "striking" is, I think, the most appropriate word for it. She was very tall, square-built, and high-shouldered; her hands and arms, feet and legs (the latter she was by no means averse to displaying) were uncommonly handsome and well made. Her face was rather that of a clever man than a woman, and I used to think there was some resemblance between herself and our piratical friend Trelawney.Her familiar style of language among her intimates was something that could only be believed by those who heard it; it was technical to a degree that was amazing. I remember, at a dinner-party at her own table, her speaking of Audubon's work on ornithology, and saying that some of the incidents of his personal adventures, in the pursuit of his favorite science, had pleased her particularly; instancing, among other anecdotes, an occasion on which, as she said, "he was almost starving in the woods, you know, and found some kind of wild creature, which he immediately disembowelled and devoured." This, at dinner, at her own table, before a large party, was rather forcible. But little usual as her modes of expression were, she never seemed to be in the slightest degree aware of the startling effect they produced; she uttered them with the most straightforward unconsciousness and unconcern. Her taste in dress was, as might have been expected, slightly eccentric, but, for a person with so great a perception of harmony of sound, her passion for discordant colors was singular. The first time I ever saw her she was dressed in a bright brimstone-colored silk gown, made so short as to show her feet and ankles, having on her head a white satin hat, with a forest of white feathers; and I remember her standing, with her feet wide apart and her arms akimbo, in this costume before me, and challenging me upon some political question, by which, and her appearance, I was much astonished and a little frightened. One evening she came to my sister's house dressed entirely in black, but with scarlet shoes on, with which I suppose she was particularly pleased, for she lay on a sofa with her feet higher than her head, American fashion, the better to display or contemplate them. I remember, at a party, being seated by Sydney Smith, when Mrs. Grote entered with a rose-colored turban on her head, at which he suddenly exclaimed, "Now I know the meaning of theword grotesque!" The mischievous wit professed his cordial liking for both her and her husband, saying, "I like them, I like them; I like him, he is so ladylike; and I like her, she's such a perfect gentleman;" in which, however, he had been forestalled by a person who certainlyn'y entendait pas malice, Mrs. Chorley, the meekest and gentlest of human beings, who one evening, at a party at her son's house, said to him, pointing out Mrs. Grote, who was dressed in white, "Henry, my dear, who is the gentleman in the white muslin gown?"]
MRS. GROTE.[Mrs. Grote, wife of George Grote, the banker, member of Parliament, and historian of Greece, was one of the cleverest and most eccentric women in the London society of my time. No worse a judge than De Tocqueville pronounced her the cleverest woman of his acquaintance; and she was certainly a very remarkable member of the circle of remarkable men among whom she was living when I first knew her. At that time she was the female centre of the Radical party in politics—a sort of not-young-or-handsome feminine oracle among a set of very clever half-heathenish men, in whose drawing-room, Sydney Smith used to say, he always expected to find an altar to Zeus. At this time Mr. Grote was in the House of Commons, and as it was before the publication of his admirable history, his speeches, which were as remarkable for their sound sense and enlightened liberality as for their clear and forcible style, were not unfrequently attributed to his wife, whose considerable conversational powers, joined to a rather dictatorial style of exercising them, sometimes threw her refined and modest husband a little into the shade in general society. When first I made Mrs. Grote's acquaintance, the persons one most frequently met at her house in Eccleston Street were Roebuck, Leader, Byron's quondam associate Trelawney, and Sir William Molesworth; both the first and last mentioned gentlemen were then of an infinitely deeper shade of radicalism in their politics than they subsequently became. The other principal element of Mrs. Grote's society, at this time, consisted of musical composers and performers, who found in her a cordial and hospitable friend and hostess, and an amateur of unusual knowledge and discrimination, as well as much taste and feeling for their beautiful art. Her love of music, and courteous reception of all foreign artists, caused her to be generally sought by eminent professors coming to England; and Liszt, Madame Viardot, Dessauer, Thalberg, Mademoiselle Lind, and Mendelssohn were among the celebrated musicians one frequently met at her house. With the two latter she was very intimate, and it was in her drawing-room that my sister gave her first public concert in London. Mendelssohn used often to visit her at a small country-place she had in the neighborhood ofBurnhamBeeches.
It was a very small and modest residence, situated on the verge ofthe magnificent tract of woodland scenery known by that name; a dependence, I believe, of the Dropmore estate, which it adjoined. It was an unenclosed space of considerable extent, of wild, heathy moorland; short turfy strips of common; dingles full of foxglove, harebell, and gnarled old stunted hawthorn bushes; and knolls, covered with waving crests of powerful feathery fern. It was intersected with gravelly paths and roads, whose warm color contrasted and harmonized with the woodland hues of everything about them; and roofed in by dark green vaults of the most magnificent beech foliage I have ever seen anywhere. The trees were of great age and enormous size; and from some accidental influence affecting their growth, the huge trunks were many of them contorted so as to resemble absolutely the twisted Saxon pillars of some old cathedral. In many of them the powerful branches (as large themselves as trunks of common trees) spread out from the main tree, at a height of about six feet from the ground, into a sort of capacious leafy chamber, where eight or ten people could have sat embowered. A more perfectly English woodland scene it would be impossible to imagine, and here, as Mrs. Grote told me, Mendelssohn found the inspiration of much of the music of his "Midsummer Night's Dream." (The overture he had composed, and played to us one evening at my father's house, when first he came to England, before he was one-and-twenty.) At one time Mrs. Grote contemplated erecting some monument in the beautiful wood to his memory, and showed me a copy of verses, not devoid of merit, which she thought of inscribing on it to his honor; but she never carried out the suggestion of her affectionate admiration; and to those who knew and loved Mendelssohn (alas! the expressions are synonymous), the glorious wood itself, where he walked and mused and held converse with the spirit of Shakespeare, forms a solemn sylvan temple, forever consecrated to tender memories of his bright genius and lovely character.
When first I knew Mrs. Grote, however, her artistic sympathies were keenly excited in a very different direction; for she had undertaken, under some singular impulse of mistaken enthusiasm, to make what she called "an honest woman" of the celebrated dancer, Fanny Ellsler, and to introduce her into London society,—neither ofthem very attainable results, even for as valiant and enterprising a person as Mrs. Grote. When first I heard of this strange undertaking I was, in common with most of her friends, much surprised at it; nor was it until some years after the entire failure of this quixotic experiment, that I became aware that she had been actuated by any motive but the kindliest and most mistaken enthusiasm.
Mademoiselle Ellsler was at this time at the height of her great and deserved popularity as a dancer, and whatever I may have thought of the expediency or possibility of making what Mrs. Grote called "an honest woman" of her, I was among the most enthusiastic admirers of her great excellence in her elegant art. She was the only intellectual dancer I have ever seen. Inferior to Taglioni (that embodied genius of rhythmical motion) in lightness, grace, and sentiment; to Carlotta Grisi in the two latter qualities; and with less mere vigor and elasticity than Cerito, she excelled them all in dramatic expression; and parts of her performance in the ballets of the "Tarantella" and the wild legend of "Gisele, the Willye," exhibited tragic power of a very high order, while the same strongly dramatic element was the cause of her pre-eminence in all national and characteristic dances, such as El Jaleo de Xeres, the Cracovienne, et cetera. This predominance of the intellectual element in her dancing may have been the result of original organization, or it may have been owing to the mental training which Ellsler received from Frederic von Genz, Gensius, the German writer and diplomatist, who educated her, and whose mistress she became while still quite a young girl. However that may be, Mrs. Grote always maintained that her genius lay full as much in her head as in her heels. I am not sure that the finest performance of hers that I ever witnessed was not a minuet in which she danced the man's part, in full court-suit of the time of Louis XVI., with most admirable grace and nobility of demeanor.
Mrs. Grote labored hard to procure her acceptance in society; her personal kindness to her was of the most generous description: but her great object of making "an honest woman" of her, I believe failed signally in every way.
On one occasion I paid Mrs. Grote a visit at Burnham Beeches. Our party consisted only of my sister and myself; the Viennese composer,Dessauer; and Chorley, the musical critic of theAthenæum, who was very intimately acquainted with us all. The eccentricities of our hostess, with which some of us were already tolerably familiar, were a source of unfeigned amazement and awe to Dessauer, who, himself the most curious, quaint, and withal nervously excitable and irritable humorist, was thrown into alternate convulsions of laughter and spasms of terror at the portentous female figure, who, with a stick in her hand, a man's hat on her head, and a coachman's box-coat of drab cloth with manifold capes over her petticoats (English women had not yet then adopted a costume undistinguishable from that of the other sex), stalked about the house and grounds, alternately superintending various matters of the domestic economy, and discussing, with equal knowledge and discrimination, questions of musical criticism and taste.
One most ludicrous scene which took place on this occasion I shall never forget. She had left us to our own devices, and we were all in the garden. I was sitting in a swing, and my sister, Dessauer, and Chorley were lying on the lawn at my feet, when presently, striding towards us, appeared the extravagant figure of Mrs. Grote, who, as soon as she was within speaking-trumpet distance, hailed us with a stentorian challenge about some detail of dinner—I think it was whether the majority voted for bacon and peas or bacon and beans. Having duly settled this momentous question, as Mrs. Grote turned and marched away, Dessauer—who had been sitting straight up, listening with his head first on one side and then on the other, like an eagerly intelligent terrier, taking no part in the culinary controversy (indeed, his entire ignorance of English necessarily disqualified him for even comprehending it), but staring intently, with open eyes and mouth, at Mrs. Grote—suddenly began, with his hands and lips, to imitate the rolling of a drum, and then broke out aloud with, "Malbrook s'envat' enguerre," etc.; whereupon the terrible lady faced right about, like a soldier, and, planting her stick in the ground, surveyed Dessauer with an awful countenance. The wretched little man grew red and then purple, and then black in the face with fear and shame; and exclaiming in his agony, "Ah, bonté divine! elle m'a compris!" rolled over and over on the lawn as if he had a fit. Mrs. Grote majestically waved her hand, and with magnanimous disdain of hersmall adversary turned and departed, and we remained horror-stricken at the effect of this involuntary tribute of Dessauer's to her martial air and deportment.
When she returned, however, it was to enter into a most interesting and animated discussion upon the subject of Glück's music; and suddenly, some piece from the "Iphigenia" being mentioned, she shouted for her man-servant, to whom on his appearance she gave orders to bring her a chair and footstool, and "the big fiddle" (the violoncello) out of the hall; and taking it forthwith between her knees, proceeded to play, with excellent taste and expression, some of Glück's noble music upon the sonorous instrument, with which St. Cecilia is the only female I ever saw on terms of such familiar intimacy.
MRS. GROTE AND FANNY ELLSLER.The second time Mrs. Grote invited me to the Beeches, it was to meet Mdlle. Ellsler. A conversation I had with my admirable and excellent friend Sydney Smith determined me to decline joining the party. He wound up his kind and friendly advice to me upon the subject by saying, "No, no, my child; that's all very well for Grota" (the name he always gave Mrs. Grote, whose good qualities and abilities he esteemed very highly, whatever he may have thought of her eccentricities); "but don't mix yourself up with that sort of thing." And I had reason to rejoice that I followed his good advice. Mrs. Grote told me, in the course of a conversation we once had on the subject of Mdlle. Ellsler, that when the latter went to America, she, Mrs. Grote, had undertaken most generously the entire care and charge of her child, a lovely little girl of about six years old. "All I said to her," said this strange, kind-hearted woman, "was 'Well, Fanny, send the brat to me; I don't ask you whose child it is, and I don't care, so long as it isn't that fool d'Orsay's'" (Mrs. Grote had small esteem forthedandy of his day), "'and I'll take the best care of it I can.'" And she did take the kindest care of it during the whole period of Mdlle. Ellsler's absence from Europe.
The next time I visited the Beeches was after an interval of some years, when I went thither with my kind and constant friend Mr. Rogers. My circumstances had altered very painfully, and I was again laboring for my own support.
I went down to Burnham with the old poet, and was sorry to findthat, though he had consented to pay Mrs. Grote this visit, he was not in particularly harmonious tune for her society, which was always rather a trial to his fastidious nerves and refined taste. The drive of between three and four miles in a fly (very different from his own luxurious carriage), through intricate lanes and rural winding avenues, did not tend to soften his acerbities, and I perceived at once, on alighting from the carriage, that the aspect of the place did not find favor in his eyes.
Mrs. Grote had just put up an addition to her house, a sort of single wing, which added a good-sized drawing-room to the modest mansion I had before visited. Whatever accession of comfort the house received within from this addition to its size, its beauty, externally, was not improved by it, and Mr. Rogers stood before the offending edifice, surveying it with a sardonic sneer that I should think even brick and mortar must have found it hard to bear. He had hardly uttered his three first disparaging bitter sentences, of utter scorn and abhorrence of the architectural abortion, which, indeed it was, when Mrs. Grote herself made her appearance in her usual country costume, box-coat, hat on her head, and stick in her hand. Mr. Rogers turned to her with a verjuice smile, and said, "I was just remarking that in whatever part of the world I had seen this building I should have guessed to whose taste I might attribute its erection." To which, without an instant's hesitation, she replied, "Ah,'tisa beastly thing, to be sure. The confounded workmen played the devil with the place while I was away." Then, without any more words, she led the way to the interior of her habitation, and I could not but wonder whether her blunt straightforwardness did not disconcert and rebuke Mr. Rogers for his treacherous sneer.
During this visit, much interesting conversation passed with reference to the letters of Sydney Smith, who was just dead; and the propriety of publishing all his correspondence, which, of course, contained strictures and remarks upon people with whom he had been living in habits of friendly social intimacy. I remember one morning a particularly lively discussion on the subject, between Mrs. Grote and Mr. Rogers. The former had a great many letters from Sydney Smith, and urged the impossibility of publishing them, with all their comments on members of the London world. Rogers, on thecontrary, apparently delighted at the idea of the mischief such revelations would make, urged Mrs. Grote to give them ungarbled to the press. "Oh, but now," said the latter, "here, for instance, Mr. Rogers, such a letter as this, about ——; do see how he cuts up the poor fellow. It really never would do to publish it." Rogers took the letter from her, and read it with a stony grin of diabolical delight on his countenance and occasional chuckling exclamations of "Publish it! publish it! Put an R, dash, or an R and four stars for the name. He'll never know it, though everybody else will." While Mr. Rogers was thus delecting himself, in anticipation, with R——'s execution, Mrs. Grote, by whose side I was sitting on a low stool, quietly unfolded another letter of Sydney Smith's, and silently held it before my eyes, and the very first words in it were a most ludicrous allusion to Rogers's cadaverous appearance. As I raised my eyes from this most absurd description of him, and saw him still absorbed in his evil delight, the whole struck me as so like a scene in a farce that I could not refrain from bursting out laughing.
In talking of Sydney Smith Mr. Rogers gave us many amusing details of various visits he paid him at his place in Somersetshire, Combe Flory, where, on one occasion, Jeffrey was also one of the party. It was to do honor to these illustrious guests that Sydney Smith had a pair of horns fastened on his donkey, who was turned into the paddock so adorned, in order, as he said, to give the place a more noble and park-like appearance; and it was on this same donkey that Jeffrey mounted when Sydney Smith exclaimed with such glee—
"As short, but not as stout, as Bacchus,As witty as Horatius Flacchus,As great a radical as Gracchus,There he goes riding on myjackuss."
"As short, but not as stout, as Bacchus,As witty as Horatius Flacchus,As great a radical as Gracchus,There he goes riding on myjackuss."
THE ASSASSIN.Rogers told us too, with great satisfaction, an anecdote of Sydney Smith's son, known in London society by the amiable nickname of the Assassin.... This gentleman, being rather addicted to horse-racing and the undesirable society of riders, trainers, jockeys, and semi-turf black-legs, meeting a friend of his father's on his arrival at Combe Flory, the visitor said, "So you have got Rogers here, I find." "Oh, yes," replied Sydney Smith's dissimilar son,with a rueful countenance, "but it isn'ttheRogers, you know."TheRogers, according to him, being a famous horse-trainer and rider of that name.
I have called him his father's dissimilar son, but feel inclined to withdraw that epithet, when I recollect his endeavor to find an appropriate subject of conversation for the Archbishop of York, by whom, on one occasion, he found himself seated at dinner: "Pray, my lord, how long do youthinkit took Nebuchadnezzar to get into condition again after his turn out at grass?"
The third time I went to Burnham Beeches, it was to meet a very clever Piedmontese gentleman, with whom Mr. Grote had become intimate, Mr. Senior, known and valued for his ability as a political economist, his clear and acute intelligence, his general information and agreeable powers of conversation. His universal acquaintance with all political and statistical details, and the whole contemporaneous history of European events, and the readiness and fulness of his information on all matters of interest connected with public affairs used to make Mrs. Grote call him her "man of facts." The other member of our small party was Charles Greville, whose acquaintance Mrs. Grote had made through his intimacy with my sister and myself. This gentleman was one of the most agreeable members of our intimate society. His mother was the sister of the late Duke of Portland, and during the short administration of his uncle, Charles Greville, then quite a young man, had a sinecure office in the island of Jamaica bestowed upon him, and was made Clerk of the Privy Council; which appointment, by giving him an assured position and handsome income for life, effectually put a stop to his real advancement at the very outset, by rendering all effort of ambition on his part unnecessary, and inducing him, instead of distinguishing himself by an honorable public career, to adopt the life and pursuits of a mere man of pleasure, ... and to waste his talents in the petty intrigues of society, and the excitements of the turf. He was an influential member of the London great world of his day; his clear good sense, excellent judgment, knowledge of the world, and science of expediency, combined with his good temper and ready friendliness, made him a sort of universal referee in the society to which he belonged. Men consulted him about their difficulties with men; and women, about their squabbles withwomen; and men and women, about their troubles with the opposite sex. He was called into the confidence of all manner of people, and trusted with the adjustment of all sorts of affairs. He knew the secrets of everybody, which everybody seemed willing that he should know; and he was one of the principal lawgivers of the turf. The publication of Charles Greville's Memoirs, which shocked the whole of London society, surprised, as much as it grieved, his friends, the character they revealed being painfully at variance with their impression of him, and not a little, in some respects, at variance with that of a gentleman.... Our small party at the Beeches was broken up on the occasion of this, my third visit, by our hostess's indisposition. She was seized with a violent attack of neuralgia in the head, to which she was subject, and by which she was compelled to take to her bed, and remain there in darkness and almost intolerable suffering for hours, and sometimes days together. I have known her prostrated by a paroxysm of this sort when she had invited a large party to dinner, and obliged to leave her husband to do the honors to their guests, while she betook herself to solitary confinement in a darkened room.
On the present occasion the gentlemen guests took their departure for London, and I should have done the same, but that Mrs. Grote entreated me to remain, for the chance of her being soon rid of her torment. Towards the middle of the day she begged me to come to her room, when, feeling, I presume, some temporary relief, she presently began talking vehemently to me about a French opera of "The Tempest," by Halévy, I believe, which had just been produced in Paris, with Madame Rossi Sontag as Miranda, and Lablache as Caliban. Mrs. Grote was violent in her abuse of the composition, deploring, as I joined her in doing, that Mendelssohn should not have taken "The Tempest" for the subject of an opera, and so prevented less worthy composers from laying hands upon it.
JENNY LIND.Towards this time Mrs. Grote became absorbed by a passionate enthusiasm for Mademoiselle Jenny Lind, of whom she was an idolatrous worshipper, and who frequently spent her days of leisure at the Beeches. Mrs. Grote engrossed Mademoiselle Jenny Lind in so curious a manner that, socially, the accomplished singer could hardly be approached but through her. She was kind enough to ask metwice to meet her, when Mendelssohn and herself were together at Burnham—an offer of a rare pleasure, of which I was unable to avail myself. I remember, about this time, a comical conversation I had with her, in which, after surveying and defining her social position and its various advantages, she exclaimed, "But I want some lords, Fanny. Can't you help me to some lords?" I told her, laughingly, that I thought the lady who held watch and ward over Mademoiselle Jenny Lind might have as many lords at her feet as she pleased....
MRS. GROTE AND MRS. KEMBLE.Besides her literary and artistic tastes, she took a keen interest in politics, and among other causes for the slight esteem in which she not unnaturally held my intellectual capacity was my ignorance of, and indifference to, anything connected with party politics, especially as discussed in coteries and by coterie queens.
Great questions of European policy, and the important movements of foreign governments, or our own, in matters tending to affect the general welfare and progress of humanity, had a profound interest for me; but I talked so little on such subjects, as became the profundity of my ignorance, that Mrs. Grote supposed them altogether above my sympathy, and probably above my comprehension.
I remember very well, one evening at her own house, I was working at some embroidery (I never saw her with that feminine implement, a needle, in her fingers, and have a notion she despised those who employed it, and the results they achieved), and I was listening with perfect satisfaction to an able and animated discussion between Mr. Grote, Charles Greville, Mr. Senior, and a very intelligent Piedmontese then staying at the Beeches, on the aspect of European politics, and more especially of Italian affairs, when Mrs. Grote, evidently thinking the subject too much for me, drew her chair up to mine, and began a condescending conversation about matters which she probably judged more on a level with my comprehension; for she seemed both relieved and surprised when I stopped her kind effort to entertain me at once, thanking her, and assuring her that I was enjoying extremely what I was listening to.
Some time after this, however, I must say I took a mischievous opportunity of purposely confirming her poor opinion of my brains; for on her return from Paris, where she had been during LouisNapoleon'scoup d'état, she offered to show me Mr. Senior's journal, kept there at the same time, and recording all the remarkable and striking incidents of that exciting period of French affairs. This was a temptation, but it was a greater one to me—being, as Madame de Sévigné says of herself,méchante ma fille—to make fun of Mrs. Grote; and so, comforting myself with thinking that this probably highly interesting and instructive record, kept by Mr. Senior, would be sure to be published, and was then in manuscript (a thing which I abhor), I quietly declined the offer, looking as like Audrey when she asks "What is poetical?" as I could: to which Mrs. Grote, with an indescribable look, accent, and gesture of good-humored contempt, replied, "Ah, well, it might not interest you; I dare say it wouldn't. Itispolitical, to be sure; it is political."
This is the second very clever woman, to whom I know my intelligence had been vaunted, to whom I turned out completely "Paradise Lost," as my mother's comical old acquaintance, Lady Dashwood King, used to say to Adelaide of me: "Ah, yes, I know your sister isvastlyclever, exceedingly intelligent, and all that kind of thing, but she is 'Paradise Lost' to me, my dear." I sometimes regretted having hidden my small light under a bushel as entirely as I did, in the little intercourse I had with the first Lady Ashburton, Lady Harriet Montague, with whom some of my friends desired that I should become acquainted, and who asked me to her house in London, and to the Grange, having been assured that there was something in me, and trying to find it out, without ever succeeding.
Mrs. Grote had generally a very contemptuous regard for the capacity of her female friends. She was extremely fond of my sister, but certainly had not the remotest appreciation of her great cleverness; and on one occasion betrayed the most whimsical surprise when Adelaide mentioned having received a letter from the great German scholar Waelcker. "Who? what? you? Waelcker, write to you!" exclaimed Grota, in amazement more apparent than courteous, it evidently being beyond the wildest stretch of her imagination that one of the most learned men in Europe, and profoundest scholars of Germany, could be a correspondent of my sister's, and a devoted admirer of her brilliant intelligence.
Mrs. Grote's appearance was extremely singular; "striking" is, I think, the most appropriate word for it. She was very tall, square-built, and high-shouldered; her hands and arms, feet and legs (the latter she was by no means averse to displaying) were uncommonly handsome and well made. Her face was rather that of a clever man than a woman, and I used to think there was some resemblance between herself and our piratical friend Trelawney.
Her familiar style of language among her intimates was something that could only be believed by those who heard it; it was technical to a degree that was amazing. I remember, at a dinner-party at her own table, her speaking of Audubon's work on ornithology, and saying that some of the incidents of his personal adventures, in the pursuit of his favorite science, had pleased her particularly; instancing, among other anecdotes, an occasion on which, as she said, "he was almost starving in the woods, you know, and found some kind of wild creature, which he immediately disembowelled and devoured." This, at dinner, at her own table, before a large party, was rather forcible. But little usual as her modes of expression were, she never seemed to be in the slightest degree aware of the startling effect they produced; she uttered them with the most straightforward unconsciousness and unconcern. Her taste in dress was, as might have been expected, slightly eccentric, but, for a person with so great a perception of harmony of sound, her passion for discordant colors was singular. The first time I ever saw her she was dressed in a bright brimstone-colored silk gown, made so short as to show her feet and ankles, having on her head a white satin hat, with a forest of white feathers; and I remember her standing, with her feet wide apart and her arms akimbo, in this costume before me, and challenging me upon some political question, by which, and her appearance, I was much astonished and a little frightened. One evening she came to my sister's house dressed entirely in black, but with scarlet shoes on, with which I suppose she was particularly pleased, for she lay on a sofa with her feet higher than her head, American fashion, the better to display or contemplate them. I remember, at a party, being seated by Sydney Smith, when Mrs. Grote entered with a rose-colored turban on her head, at which he suddenly exclaimed, "Now I know the meaning of theword grotesque!" The mischievous wit professed his cordial liking for both her and her husband, saying, "I like them, I like them; I like him, he is so ladylike; and I like her, she's such a perfect gentleman;" in which, however, he had been forestalled by a person who certainlyn'y entendait pas malice, Mrs. Chorley, the meekest and gentlest of human beings, who one evening, at a party at her son's house, said to him, pointing out Mrs. Grote, who was dressed in white, "Henry, my dear, who is the gentleman in the white muslin gown?"]
EDUCATION OF THE POOR.You ask me, dear H——, about Lady Francis's visit. She did not come, as she had proposed doing, on the Friday, for she caught the influenza, and was extremely unwell for a few days; she was here on Monday, coughing incessantly and looking ill. In the course of our conversation, she exclaimed, "Education! bless me, I think of nothing else but the education of the poor. Don't you find people have got to think and talk about nothing else? I protest, I don't." This made me laugh, and you will understand why; but she didn't, and pressed me very much to tell her what there was absurd in the matter to me: but I declined answering her, at least then and there, as I could not enter into a full discussion of the subject, down to the roots of it, just at that moment. But, as you will well comprehend, the circumstances that render this feverish zeal for education comical, in some of its fine-lady advocates, are peculiarly strong in her case, though she is in earnest enough, and thoroughly well-intentioned in whatever she does. Unwittingly, they are serving the poor, as they certainly do not contemplate doing; for by educating them, even as they are likely to do so, they will gradually prepare them, intelligently and therefore irresistibly, to demand such changes in their political and social conditions as they may now impotently desire, and will assuredly hereafter obtain; but not, I think, with the entirely cordial acquiescence of their Tory educators.
We went to the opera the Saturday after you left us, but both the opera and the ballet were indifferent performances.... Do you not know that to misunderstand and be misunderstood is one of the inevitable conditions, and, I think, one of the especial purposes, of our existence? The principal use of the affection of human beings for each other is to supply the want of perfect comprehension, which is impossible. All the faith and love whichwe possess are barely sufficient to bridge over the abyss of individualism which separates one human being from another; and they would not or could not exist, if we really understood each other. God bless you, dear.
Yours ever,
Fanny.
Clarges Street, March 28th, 1841.
Dearest H——,
My Sunday's avocations being over, or rather——
Here a loud, double knock, and Emily's entrance cut short my sentence; and now that she is gone, it is close upon time to dress for dinner. She bids me tell you that I am going to-morrow to sit to the sun for my picture for you. I cannot easily conceive how you should desire a daguerreotype of me; you certainly have never seen one, or you would not do so; as it is, I think you will receive a severe shock from the real representation of the face you love so well and know so little....
Emily and I went with the children to the Zoological Gardens the other day, where a fine, intelligent-looking lioness appeared exceedingly struck with them, crouched, and made a spring at little Fan, which made Anne scream, and Emily, and Amelia Twiss, who was with us, catch hold of the child. The keeper assured us it was only play; but I was well pleased, nevertheless, that there was a grating between that very large cat and the little white mouse of a plaything she contemplated.
I have no news to give you, dear H——. A list of our dinner and evening engagements would be interminable, and not very profitable stuff for correspondence.
I breakfasted with Mr. Rogers the other morning, and met Lord Normanby, to whom I preferred a request that he would procure for Henry an unattached company, by which he would obtain a captain's rank and half-pay, and escape being sent to Canada, or, indeed, out of England at all—which, in my father's present condition of health, is very desirable....
We hear of my sister's great success in Italy, in "Norma," from sources which can leave us no doubt of it....
Good-bye, dearest H——. Here is a list of my immediately impendingoccupations—Monday, Emily spends the evening with me, till I go to a party at Miss Rogers's; Tuesday, we go to the opera; Wednesday, we dine withthe M——s, and go in the evening to Mrs. Grote's; Thursday, dinner at Mrs. Norton's; Friday, dine with Mrs. C——, who has a ball in the evening; Saturday, the opera again: and so, pray don't say I am wasting my time, or neglecting my opportunities.
Yours ever,
Fanny.
Clarges Street, Thursday, April 2nd.
Dearest H——,
I wrote to you yesterday, but have half an hour of leisure, and will begin another letter to you now. If it suffers interruption, I shall at any rate have made a start, and the end will come in time, doubtless, if Heaven pleases....
ADELAIDE KEMBLE.My father is much in the same condition as when last I wrote to you.... You ask if he does not begin to count the days till Adelaide's return [my sister was daily expected from Italy, where she had just finished engagements at the Fenice, the San Carlo, and the Scala]: he speaks of that event occasionally, with fervent hope and expectation; but he is seldom roused by anything from the state of suffering self-absorption in which he lives for the most part....
I forget whether we have heard from Adelaide herself since you left us; but my father had a letter the other day from C——, who sent him a detailed account of her success in "Norma," which by all accounts has indeed been very great.
One of C——'s proofs of it amused me not a little. He said that one night, when she was singing it, although some of the royal family were in their box and appeared about to applaud, the people could not restrain their acclamations, but broke out into vociferous bravos, contrary to etiquette on such occasions, when it is usual for royalty to give the signal to public enthusiasm.
Doubtless this was a very great proof of her power over her fellow-creatures, and of the irresistible human sympathies which are occasionally, even in such an atmosphere as that of a Neapolitan theatre, with Bourbon royalty present, stronger than social conventionalities....
You ask if the new comedy ("London Assurance") is sufficiently successful to warrant the author's purchase of Henry's horse. I heard, but of course cannot vouch forthe truth of the report, that his fixed remuneration was to be three hundred pounds for the piece; and when, as I also hear (but again will not vouch for the truth of my story), besides Henry's, that he has bought another horse, and, besides that other horse, a miraculous "Cab," and, besides that miraculous "Cab," ordered no fewer than seven new coats, I think you will agree with me that the author of "London Assurance," successful as his piece may be, ought to have found a deeper mine than that is likely to prove to serve so many ends. When I expressed my disapprobation of Henry's assisting by any means or in any way such boyish extravagance, he said that the lad had guardians; and therefore I suppose he has property besides what may come of play-writing—for men's persons, however pretty, are seldom put under guardianship of trustees; and Henry argued, in the proper manly fashion, that the youth, having property, had also a right to be as foolish in the abuse of it as he pleased, or as his guardians would let him.
We none of us went to see "PatterversusClatter," after all, having all some previous engagement, so that, though it was literally given for our special amusement, we were none of us there.
I have received no less than four American letters by the last steamer, and this, though a welcome pleasure, is also a considerable addition to the things to be done. God bless you, dearest H——. This letter was begun about three days ago, and now it is the second of April.
Yours ever,
Fanny.