"Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride!Busk ye, busk ye, my winsomemarrow!"
"Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride!Busk ye, busk ye, my winsomemarrow!"
(isn't that an odd term of endearment to one's mistress?)
"Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride!And think nae mair on the braes of Yarrow"?
"Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride!And think nae mair on the braes of Yarrow"?
Then there is that lovely ditty "Gala Water," which I always sing in honor of my young host, who is a sort of Laird of Galashiel. The whole place is full of suchcharming suggestions and associations. The Leader, a lovely, clear, rapid, shallow, sparkling trout-stream, makes a sudden bend across the lawn, opposite the drawing-room and dining-room windows here (last October the pixie got vexed at something and very nearly rushed in to the house); and early before breakfast this morning I walked along the banks of the stream, and then knee deep up its bright waters, and then over the breezy hills, "O'er the hills, amang the heather," whence I watched its gleaming course between red-colored rocks, like walls of porphyry or Roman tufa, and through corn-fields, and by tufted woods, and felt for an hour as if there was no bitterness in life....
I shall remain here till September 11th, when I go to Glasgow, where I expect to act on the 13th. I shall be very sorry to go away, but shall certainly by that time have had enjoyment enough to feel that it would be unwise to tempt the inevitable decree which makes all pleasure and happiness short-lived here, and which, when we strive to retain or detain them, makes us wise through some disappointment or disenchantment, which it is still wiser to anticipate and avoid.
Farewell, dear Hal.
I am ever as ever yours,
Fanny.
[Carolside was situated just beyond the Border in Scotland, in that region of romantic and poetical traditions, full of the charm of early legendary and ballad lore, of the associations of Burns's songs and Scott's Border minstrelsy, pervaded with the old superstitions, half-beliefs, dating from as far back as the days of Thomas the Rhymer, and the later powerful influence of the Wizard of the North, the mighty master-magician of our own day.Melrose, Dryburgh, and Abbotsford, Smailholme, and Beamerside, were all within easy distance of it; "the bonnie broom of Cowdenknowes" bloomed in its neighborhood; the Gala, the Leader, the Tweed, the Yarrow, ran singing through the lovely region, the exquisite melodies that have been inspired by their wild scenery. It was a region of natural beauty, heightened by every association that could add to its charm. The Eildon Hills were our landmarks in all ourwalks and rides and drives: and Ercildown, modernized into Earlston, the picturesque post-village at our gates.]
[Carolside was situated just beyond the Border in Scotland, in that region of romantic and poetical traditions, full of the charm of early legendary and ballad lore, of the associations of Burns's songs and Scott's Border minstrelsy, pervaded with the old superstitions, half-beliefs, dating from as far back as the days of Thomas the Rhymer, and the later powerful influence of the Wizard of the North, the mighty master-magician of our own day.
Melrose, Dryburgh, and Abbotsford, Smailholme, and Beamerside, were all within easy distance of it; "the bonnie broom of Cowdenknowes" bloomed in its neighborhood; the Gala, the Leader, the Tweed, the Yarrow, ran singing through the lovely region, the exquisite melodies that have been inspired by their wild scenery. It was a region of natural beauty, heightened by every association that could add to its charm. The Eildon Hills were our landmarks in all ourwalks and rides and drives: and Ercildown, modernized into Earlston, the picturesque post-village at our gates.]
Carolside, Earlston, September 5th.
My dear Lady Dacre,
... Of the advantageous engagement which you heard I had concluded I cannot speak with any certainty, for it never was settled definitively, and I begin to think will not be concluded. I think it may have been nothing more than a feint on the part of the manager of the Princess's Theatre, who has been urged by Mr. Macready's friends to engage me to act with him, and who, as he will not give me my terms, has, I think, perhaps merely tendered me an arrangement that he knew I would not accept, in order to be able to say that he hadendeavoredto make an arrangement with me. I am very sorry for this, for employment during the winter months in London is what I much desired. However, "there is a soul of good even in things evil," and the later experiences of my life have left me little sensibility to spend upon crosses of this description.
Not to be able to work for my own maintenance would indeed be a serious calamity to me; but if I fail of a theatrical engagement I shall fall back upon my original plan, to me so far preferable, of giving readings. I do not think that now, after a whole year of apparent relinquishment of that pursuit, my father has any thought of resuming it, which leaves me free to make the attempt.
FOUR MILES FROM MELROSE.I am staying with a friend at a place on the Scottish Border; the Leader, famous in song, runs across the lawn; we are four miles from Melrose, and about as many from Abbotsford; the country is lovely, and full of poetical and romantic associations.
I remain here another week, and then go to Glasgow, where I am to act; after that I expect to pass three weeks in Edinburgh, between my two cousins, Cecilia Combe (whom you remember as Cecy Siddons) and a daughter of my dear friend Mrs. Harry Siddons, who married Major Mair, and is living happily and prosperously in beautiful Edinburgh.
I must either act or give readings during this time, as I can in no wise afford to be idle.
It was a great disappointment to me toboilby B——'s very door on my way here [Miss Barbarina Sullivan, LadyDacre's granddaughter, now the Hon. Lady Grey], but my plans had been all disarranged and confused by other people, and I was most unwillingly compelled to pass by Howick. I have written to offer myself to her in the last week of October on my way back to London, and heartily hope she may be able and willing to receive me, as I long to see her in her new home.
Pray give my kind regards to Mrs. Brand. You ought to be of the greatest use, comfort, and pleasure to each other, endowed, as you both are, with the especial graces of age and youth.
With affectionate respects to Lord Dacre, believe me
Ever yours,
Fanny.
[Miss Susan Cavendish had married the Hon. Thomas Brand, Lord Dacre's nephew and heir. When I wrote this letter young Mr. and Mrs. Brand lived a good deal at the Hoo with my kind old friends.]
[Miss Susan Cavendish had married the Hon. Thomas Brand, Lord Dacre's nephew and heir. When I wrote this letter young Mr. and Mrs. Brand lived a good deal at the Hoo with my kind old friends.]
Carolside, Earlston, September 5th.
You ask me what I am doing, dear Hal. I am driving fifteen miles in an open britzska, in a bitter blowing day, to return morning calls of neighbors, whose laudable desire is to "keep the county lively," and who have dragged my little hostess into active participation in a picnic at Abbotsford, which is to take place next Friday, the weather promising to reward the seekers after "liveliness" with their death of cold, if they escape their death of dulness.
I have taken several charming rides; the country is beautiful. I have caught a tolerably good cold—I mean, good of its kind—by wading knee deep in the Leader, and then standing on cold rocks, fishing by the hour; in which process I did catch—cold, but nothing else; for, though the water is still drowning deep in some beautiful brown pools, set in the rocks like huge cairngorms, it is, for the most part, so shallow, and everywhere so clear with the long-continued drought, that the spotted trout and silver eels see me quite as well as I see them, and behave accordingly, avoiding me more successfully, but quite as zealously, as I seek them....
Our party has hitherto consisted of Emily de Viry, an uncle and brother of Mrs. Mitchell's, and a Londonbanker, a friend of hers. This, with the "liveliness" of the neighborhood, with whom we have dined, and who have dined with us, has been our society.
Next week Lady M——, who has been on a visit at Dunse Castle, returns, and various people are coming from sundry places; but, except the Comte de Revel, I do not know any of those who are expected.
The only music I have is my own,forbyea comic song or two, gasped and death-rattled out by poor old Sir Adam Fergusson, whom I met seventeen years ago at Walter Scott's house, and who is still tottering on, with inexhaustible spirits, but a body that seems quite threadbare, tattered, and ready to fall in pieces with long and hard use.
I do not read to the party collectively, but occasionally to Emily de Viry alone, who has asked me once or twice to read her favorite poems of hers, of Wordsworth's, Tennyson's, and Milnes's....
I act in Glasgow on Monday, to-morrow week. On Sunday I shall be in Edinburgh, and shall go and see Cecilia and Mr. Combe. I am sorry you didn't see Mrs. Mitchell, for, though forty years old, she might be fallen in love with any day for her good looks only. She is my notion of what Mary Stuart must have looked like, but she is a marvellous wise and discreet body—mentally and morally, I should think, very unlike the bonnie Queen of Scots.
Did I tell you that one place where we dined was Cowdenknowes? and I felt like singing "The Bonnie Broom" all the time, which would have been an awful accompaniment to the gastronomic enjoyments of the "liveliness of the county." Good-bye, my dear.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
Glasgow, Wednesday, September 15th.
RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.I do not know what my friend's religious opinions are. She was brought up in the midst of strict Presbyterians, but I suspect, from some things I have heard her say, that she is by no means an orthodox sample of that faith. But, you know, I am never curious about people's beliefs, nor anxious that my friends should think as I do upon any subject. The resemblance between Mrs. Mitchell's notions and mine was one that she was led toexpress quite accidentally on a matter on which few women would agree with me....
I have not heard from Adelaide for a long time—a month at least. The Comte de Revel, the Sardinian Ambassador, was at Carolside while I was there, and spoke of the condition of the whole of Italy as full of insecurity, and liable at any moment to sudden outbreaks of violent and momentous change.
I cannot think that Rome will be a desirable residence for foreigners this winter; but E—— is so indolent that, unless people are massacred in the streets, and, moreover, in the identical street in which he lives, I should much doubt his being willing to move, or thinking it at all necessary to do so. I saw the old Countess Grey and Lady G—— just before they left London about three weeks ago. They were intending to winter in Rome, and told me they were much dissuaded by their friends from doing so.
If you leave Ireland, as you say, on the 1st of October, I am afraid I shall not see you in London, for I expect to pass the whole of that month in Edinburgh; but I hope I shall find leisure to come to St. Leonard's, and see you and Dorothy while you are there.
My plans are at present a little unsettled. I think of going back to Carolside with Mrs. Mitchell and Lady M—— until next Monday, when I shall return to Edinburgh, and from thence proceed to act four nights at Dundee; after that I shall be stationary in Edinburgh for, I hope, at least three weeks. I think I shall not act there, but have some thoughts of giving readings.... Good-bye, my dear.
I am ever as ever yours,
Fanny.
Dundee, Thursday, 2d.
My dear Hal,
Your letter directed to me to Greenock never reached me. I did not go there; and having left Glasgow without doing so, shall not visit that place at all now.
I arrived yesterday in Dundee, having left Edinburgh in the morning. I act here two nights, and two in Perth, and return to Edinburgh on Wednesday week to remain with Elizabeth Mair (youngest daughter of Mrs. Harry Siddons) till the last week in October. After that I gosouthward to visit B—— G—— at Hawick, and the Ellesmeres at Worsley.
Your letter about sleeping in Orchard Street, on your way through London, is so very undecided—I mean upon that particular point—that I shall write to Mrs. Mulliner (my housekeeper) to desire her to receive you, if you should apply for a lodging, so that you can do as you like—either go there or to Euston Square.
I am delighted at the prospect of my three weeks' stay in Edinburgh. Nothing could exceed the affectionate kindness with which Lizzie and her husband received me.
COMPANIONSHIP OF CHILDREN.After all that I have seen at home and abroad, Edinburgh still seems to me the most beautiful city I ever saw, and all my associations with it (except those of my last stay there) are peaceful and happy, and carry me back to that year of my life spent with Mrs. Harry Siddons, which has been the happiest of my existence hitherto.... Elizabeth's children are like a troop of angels, one prettier than another; I never saw more lovely little creatures. The companionship of children is charming to me. I delight in them, and am happy to think that I shall live among Lizzie's angels for three weeks. I was living with children at Carolside. Emily de Viry had her little boy and girl with her, the latter a little blossom of only a year old, born, poor thing! after her father's death. Mrs. Mitchell's eldest son was at home from Eton for the holidays, a very fine lad of sixteen, devoted to his mother, who seems to me only to exist through and for him and his brother.... I am to act while I am in Edinburgh, which, of course, is a good thing for me.
E—— has written to Henry Greville to take the house in Eaton Place which they looked at together when he was in London, so I feel sure they will be home in the spring. Adelaide has written a letter to Henry Greville, which he has sent on to me, assuring him of that fact.... She is enchanted at the idea of coming home. Good-bye, my dear. I will write this minute to Mrs. Mulliner to put you in my room, if you go to Orchard Street.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
Perth, Monday, September 27th.
My dear Hal,
I do not understand your note of the 15th, which has only just reached me here on the 27th. You ask me if I "have not written to Lizzie Mair to ascertain her whereabouts." Lizzie is in Edinburgh. I spent the Monday and Tuesday of last week with her, and return there the day after to-morrow, after acting two nights in this lovely place, whither I came on from Dundee yesterday. I shall remain three weeks with Lizzie, and shall see Cecilia and Mr. Combe during some part of that time; for, though they did not return to Edinburgh, as I supposed they would on Dr. Combe's death, they are expected home daily now, and will certainly be there in the first days of October. I wrote from Dundee to Mulliner to make up my bed and do everything in the world for you that you required; and I wrote to you from Dundee, telling you that I had done so. I have now again this minute written to the worthy woman, reiterating my orders to that effect; so sincerely hope you will be properly attended to in my house. Jeffreys, I am sorry to say (sorry for my sake, glad for his), has found an opportunity of placing himself permanently with a gentleman with whom he lived formerly, and has written to tell me of this; so that you will not have his services while you are in Orchard Street. He was an excellent, quiet, orderly servant, and I am sorry I shall not have the advantage of his service during the remainder of my time here.
I am engaged to act with Mr. Murray in Edinburgh for ten nights, from the 16th to the 25th of October. Before that I shall return for three nights to Glasgow, where my last three nights were very profitable, and the manager wishes to have me again. This will probably be next week, the 5th, 6th, and 7th of October. Perhaps I may go for a night or two to Greenock from Glasgow before I return to Edinburgh, but this is uncertain.
From the 12th to the 15th I am going with Mrs. Mitchell, who will take me up in Edinburgh to visit the H—— D——s at Ardoch, and after that shall be stationary for ten days.
Perth, Tuesday, 28th.
In spite of my innate English horror of untidiness, and my maid's innate Irish tendency to it, I should be very sorry if she were to leave me. She has lived with me many years, and I really love as well as esteem her. She has been more than a servant—she has been a friend to me; and I cried some tears at Carolside at the thought of parting with her....
MODES OF DRESSING.I will tell you another point of agreement between Mrs. Mitchell and myself, which I also discovered accidentally. Emily de Viry was laughing at her for a peculiar mode of dress she has adopted, always wearing a cap upon her pretty head, and never uncovering her arms and neck, though both are beautiful, in evening dress. I was appealed to for my opinion about the costume of middle-aged gentlewomen, and could, of course, only state that it had been my own determination for some years past never to uncover either my arms or neck, or wear any but sober colors as soon as I was forty years old. This is one of those trivial points of agreement which sometimes indicate more resemblance between people's natures than a similarity of opinions on important matters, which may co exist with considerable difference in matters of taste and feeling. Mrs. Mitchell, like myself, does not think that stark nakedness would be indecent among decent savage people, but does object to full-dress semi-nudity among indecent civilized ones.
Lady M—— did not come with me to Dundee. I would not let her, though her proposal to do so was certainly dictated partly by her affection for me.... But I would not let her come with mestrolling, though I should only have been too glad of her company. She paints beautifully.... Alas! an empty heart is a spur and goad to drive one to the world's end, unless the soul be full of God, and the mind and time of wholesome occupation.
The Mairs are excellently kind to me, and I look forward to my stay with them with great pleasure. Cecilia and Mr. Combe are expected daily in Edinburgh, so I shall lose little or nothing of them.
I am just disappointed of a charming opportunity of seeing the lovely country round Perth. Lady Ruthven has sent me a very pressing invitation to spend some days at Freeland, seven miles from here; but I am obliged to return to Edinburgh to-morrow, for which I am verysorry, as I should have liked to go to Freeland, the whole neighborhood of which is beautiful. Good-bye. God bless you.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
29, Abercrombie Place, Edinburgh, Saturday, October 2d.
Dear Hal,
I received a note from Mrs. Mulliner yesterday morning, expressing her readiness to receive you, and her full intention to devote herself to you to the very utmost of her ability. I am sorry Jeffreys will not be there to help you in getting cabs, etc.; but he has found a chance of placing himself permanently with a former master, and, of course, is glad of the opportunity to do so.
I have not yet seen any of the Coxes. Cecilia and Mr. Combe only arrived last night from Hull, having come by Antwerp. They have both got the influenza, and are very much knocked up, and I have seen neither of them yet....
The railroad running through the Castle Gardens has cruelly spoiled them, of course, though from the depth of the ravine, at the bottom of which it lies, it is not seen from Prince's Street; but its silver wake floats up above the highest trees of the banks, and the Gardens themselves are ruined by it. I have a sadly affectionate feeling for every inch of that ground.... I do not admire Scott's monument very much. It is an exact copy in stone of the Episcopal Throne in Exeter Cathedral, a beautiful piece of wood carving. The difference between the white color of the statue and the gray shrine by which it is canopied is not agreeable to me. I should have liked it better if the figure had been of the same stone as the monument, and so of the same color.
In Edinburgh it is never so much the detail of its various parts that arrests my attention and enchants me especially, as the picturesque and grand effect of its several parts in juxtaposition with each other—the beautiful result of all its features together, the striking and romantic whole. The Carlton Hill seems to me more covered with buildings than I thought it was; but I believe you have seen it since I have, so that I do not know how to answer your question about it.
In determining to act in Edinburgh I followed theadvice of the Mairs, who were, of course, more likely to be able to judge of the probable relative success of reading or acting here, and who counselled the latter.... Good-bye, dear.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
EFFECTS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.[My cousin Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Mrs. Harry Siddons, married Major Mair, son of that fine old officer, Colonel Mair, Governor of Fort George. During several protracted seasons of foreign service, one of the banishments to which his military duty condemned Arthur Mair was a remote and lonely outpost on the furthest border of our then hardly peopled Canadian territory—a literal wilderness, without human inhabitants. Here, alone, with the small body of men under his command, he led a life of absolute mental and intellectual solitude, the effect of which upon his nervous system was such that, on his return to civilized existence, the society of his fellow-creatures, and all the intercourse of busy city life, affected him with such extreme shyness and embarrassment that in his own native town of Edinburgh, for some time after his return to it, he used to avoid all the more frequented thoroughfares, from mere nervous dread of encountering and being spoken to by persons of his acquaintance—an unfavorable result of "solitary confinement," even in a cell as wide as a wilderness.]
EFFECTS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.[My cousin Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Mrs. Harry Siddons, married Major Mair, son of that fine old officer, Colonel Mair, Governor of Fort George. During several protracted seasons of foreign service, one of the banishments to which his military duty condemned Arthur Mair was a remote and lonely outpost on the furthest border of our then hardly peopled Canadian territory—a literal wilderness, without human inhabitants. Here, alone, with the small body of men under his command, he led a life of absolute mental and intellectual solitude, the effect of which upon his nervous system was such that, on his return to civilized existence, the society of his fellow-creatures, and all the intercourse of busy city life, affected him with such extreme shyness and embarrassment that in his own native town of Edinburgh, for some time after his return to it, he used to avoid all the more frequented thoroughfares, from mere nervous dread of encountering and being spoken to by persons of his acquaintance—an unfavorable result of "solitary confinement," even in a cell as wide as a wilderness.]
Star Hotel, Glasgow, George Square, October 4th.
Dear Harriet,
My acquaintance with the H—— D——s dates only from my last visit to Glasgow, when they joined our party at this hotel, and returned to Carolside with us. The lady is a daughter of a family who are intimate friends of T—— M——, and was presented to me when a girl in London some years ago. She has since married, and I met her again, with her husband, here a little while ago.... They both show a very kind desire to be civil and amiable to me, and I like them both, and her especially. They have spent the last five years of their lives wandering together about Europe and Asia. They have no children, and have travelled without any of the servants that generally attend wealthy English people abroad (courier, lady's-maid, valet); and have come home so inlove with their wild untrammelled life, that the possession of their estate at Ardoch, and their prospect of an income of many thousands a year, seem equally to oppress them as undesirable incumbrances, requiring them to sacrifice all their freedom, and submit to all sorts of civilized conventional constraints from which they have lived in blessed exemption abroad, and to adopt a style of existence utterly repugnant to their nomadicno-habits. G—— D——, on their return to Ardoch, proposed to his wife to take up their abode in two of the rooms of their fine large house, and let the rest to some pleasant and amusing people; for, he said, they never could think of living in that house by themselves....
Your distress about my readings I answered with a slight feeling that it was a pity you should begin to be anxious and troubled about the details of a project that may possibly never be carried out after any fashion. I paid heed, nevertheless, to your observations, of which I admit the force, and am so far from having determined to abide by any theoretical convictions of my own upon the subject that I shall be guided entirely by Mr. Mitchell's opinion about the best manner of giving my readings; for, as I do it for money, I shall do it in the way most likely to be profitable. At the same time, I shall certainly use my best endeavor to have the business so arranged as to desecrate as little as possible the great works of the master, in the exposition and illustration of which I look for infinite pleasure and profit of the highest order, whatever my meaner gain by it may be....
[I am afraid my excellent and zealous manager, Mr. Mitchell, was often far from satisfied with the views I took of the duty imposed upon me by reading Shakespeare. My entire unwillingness to exhaust myself and make my work laborious instead of pleasant to me, by reading more than three, or at the utmost four, times a week, when very often we could have commanded very full rooms for the six; my pertinacious determination to read as many of the plays (and I read twenty-five) as could be so given to an audience in regular rotation, so as to avoid becoming hackneyed, in my feeling or delivery of them, appeared to him vexatious particularities highly inimical to my own best interests, which he thought would have been better served by reading "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and the"Merchant of Venice," three times as often as I did, and "Richard II.," "Measure for Measure," and one or two others, three times as seldom, or not at all. But though Mr. Mitchell could calculate the money value of my readings to me, their inestimable value he knew nothing of.]
[I am afraid my excellent and zealous manager, Mr. Mitchell, was often far from satisfied with the views I took of the duty imposed upon me by reading Shakespeare. My entire unwillingness to exhaust myself and make my work laborious instead of pleasant to me, by reading more than three, or at the utmost four, times a week, when very often we could have commanded very full rooms for the six; my pertinacious determination to read as many of the plays (and I read twenty-five) as could be so given to an audience in regular rotation, so as to avoid becoming hackneyed, in my feeling or delivery of them, appeared to him vexatious particularities highly inimical to my own best interests, which he thought would have been better served by reading "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and the"Merchant of Venice," three times as often as I did, and "Richard II.," "Measure for Measure," and one or two others, three times as seldom, or not at all. But though Mr. Mitchell could calculate the money value of my readings to me, their inestimable value he knew nothing of.]
Pray now, my dearest friend, consider that you too often challenge with affectionate anxiety for me that future which I may never live to see; and yet do not imagine that I consider your apprehensions and suggestions, were they a thousand times more numerous and more ridiculous, if that were possible, as in any way unsatisfactory; but highly the contrary, as testifying to that most comfortable fact that you, my beloved Hal, are the very same you ever have been to me, an excellent, precious, devoted, wise, most absurd, and every way invaluable friend. God bless you.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
AT GREENOCK.Greenock, October 9th.
I am very glad I did the duty of a hostess, dear Hal, though only in your dreams, and received you hospitably in my own house, though I was not conscious of it. As for that fool Mulliner and that brute Jeffreys, I will hang them up together on one rope when I return, for allowing you to be so horribly disturbed....
If we are in Orchard Street together again, you shall put the Psyche [a fine cast of the Neapolitan truncated statue given to Mr. Hamilton, Mrs. Fitzhugh's brother, by the King of Naples] in whatever light you please; but, as I am certain not to return to London till the third week in November, if then, I feel as if, when I get back to Orchard Street, I should have nothing to do but pack up my things preparatory to removing to King Street, where I hope to get Mrs. Humphreys to receive me until I leave England.
I shall certainly not be six weeks in Orchard Street when I return, and the Psyche will desert the drawing-room when I do, and resume her post on the staircase, where she always seemed to me to look down on dear Mrs. Fitzhugh's morning visitors, as they came up the stairs, with a divinely mild severity of expression, as if she felt the bore about to be inflicted by their presence on the inmates of her house, the mortals under her heavenly care.
You ought to find two letters from me at Bannisters, for I have directed two to you there. How I wish I could be with you and dear Emily! Give my love to her, and believe me
Ever yours,
Fanny.
[I was at this time occupying my friend Mrs. Fitzhugh's house in Orchard Street, Portman Square, which I rented for a twelvemonth from her. It was a convenient small house in an excellent situation, and one whole side of the drawing-room was covered with a clever painting, by Mr. Fitzhugh, of the bay and city of Naples—a pleasant object of contemplation in London winter days.]
[I was at this time occupying my friend Mrs. Fitzhugh's house in Orchard Street, Portman Square, which I rented for a twelvemonth from her. It was a convenient small house in an excellent situation, and one whole side of the drawing-room was covered with a clever painting, by Mr. Fitzhugh, of the bay and city of Naples—a pleasant object of contemplation in London winter days.]
Glasgow, October 12th.
My dearest Hal,
I should very much wish that you would give me one of Loyal's children [a fine Irish retriever of my friend's]; but do not again end any letter to me so abruptly, without even signing your name, because it gives me a most uncomfortable notion that I have not got all you have written, that you have, by mistake, put only a part of your letter in your envelope, and so sent it off unfinished to me.
I left Carolside, to my great regret, yesterday. I came in Mrs. Mitchell's carriage to within fourteen miles of Edinburgh, where I joined the railroad. She accompanied me thus far, and then returned home. At Edinburgh I transferred myself immediately to the Glasgow train, and so came on, without being able to ascertain whether Cecilia Combe and Lizzie Mair are at home or not.
Mrs. Mitchell and Lady M——, and a party of their friends, are coming to Glasgow to-morrow. They will stay at the same inn where I am, and go to the theatre every night that I play, so that I do not feel yet as if I had taken leave of them; and Lady M—— intends going on with me to Dundee, where I am going to act when I have finished my engagement here and at Greenock.
Is it not too provoking that the York manager has at length found out that he can afford to give me my terms, and now writes to me to beg that I will go and act in York at the beginning of next month? which, of course, I cannot, as I am to be three weeks in Edinburgh before I return to England.
Neither you nor Dorothy mention your winter plans. Have you none made yet?...
PHRENOLOGY.I do not think, dear Hal, that you have ever heard me express a positive rejection of phrenology, for the simple reason that, never having taken the pains thoroughly to study it, it would ill become me to do so. At the same time, you know, I have at various times lived much in the society of the principal professors of the science in this country, and they have occasionally taken pains to explain a good deal of their system to me. I have also read a good many of their books, and have had a great personal affection and esteem both for Mr. Combe and his excellent brother. But, in spite of all this, and my entire agreement with almost all their physiological doctrines, phrenology, as I have hitherto seen and heard it, has a positive element of inconclusiveness to me, and I doubt if by studying it I should arrive at any other opinion, since all the opportunities I have enjoyed of hearing it discussed and seeing it acted upon have left my mind in this frame regarding it. I believe myself to have no prejudice on this subject, for I have longed all my life to know something positive and certain about this wonderful machine which we carry about with us, or which carries us about with it, and incline to agree with the views which the phrenological physiologists entertain on the subjects of temperament and general organization. But, in spite of all this, phrenology, as I hear it perpetually referred to and mixed up by them with their habitual speech (it forms indeed so completely the staple of their phraseology that one had need be familiar with the terms to follow their usual conversation), produces no conviction on my mind beyond the recognized fact that a nobly and beautifully proportioned head indicates certain qualities in the human individual, andvice versâ.
It appears to me merely a new nomenclature for long-known and admitted phenomena; and beyond those, they seem to me to involve themselves in contradictions, divisions, and subdivisions of the brain, so minute and various, and requiring so much allowance for so many conditions, as considerably to neutralize each other, and render the result of their observations, which to them seems positive and conclusive, to me uncertain and unsatisfactory.
There are many things which my intellectual lazinessprevents my examining, which I feel sure, if I did examine, would produce positive results on my mind; but phrenology does not seem to me one of these. If it had been, I should have adopted it, or felt the same sort of belief in it that I do in mesmerism, about which, understanding nothing, I still cannot resist an impression that it is a real and powerful physical agency.... Now you must draw your own conclusions as to the causes of this state of mind of mine with regard to phrenology. The phrenologists, you know, say I am deficient in "causality"—and undoubtedly it is not my predominant mental quality; but I incline to think that Icouldthink, as well as the average number of professing phrenologists, if I would take the trouble, for I have known some amongst them who certainly were anything but logical in their general use of their brains.
The only time I ever was in the Highlands was when I went with Dall and my father to Loch Lomond twenty years ago. I had never seen a drop of Loch Katrine till now. We went from Glasgow to Stirling by railroad in an hour, on Saturday morning. From Stirling we took a light open carriage, a kind of britzska, and pair of horses, and posted the same afternoon sixteen miles to Callander, where we slept. Sunday morning we took the same carriage with fresh horses to Loch Katrine. The distance is only ten miles of an enchanting drive; and if I had been able to spend the night at the Trosachs, I could have done it perfectly well, for there is an immense big inn there for the reception of tourists; and though the house was shut up for the season, the servants were in it, and we could have procured bed and board there, and I have no doubt a roast fowl and sherry, or oatmeal and whiskey, if we had preferred them. I had, however, to be back in Stirling the same afternoon, and the weather was wild and gloomy, though not cold, nor positively wet till we got into a little one-horse "machine" to drive through the Trosachs, when the mist shrouded the mountains almost from base to summit, and even Ben Aven, close under him as we were, was barely discernible. Ben An was the feature of the scene that struck me most; the form of its crest is so singularly jagged and fine.
We just drove through the pass to the first ripple of the lake, and then turned right-about to Stirling, which we reached before four o'clock in the afternoon, and yesterdaymorning I was back again in Glasgow, the lakes and mountains remaining in my memory absolutely like a dream. The country from Doune to Callander is beautiful, and in summer it must be an enchanting expedition, though such scenery has its own peculiar winter beauty, grander and more impressive perhaps than even its summer loveliness. I wish I was there again.
I cannot tell you anything more of my receipts at Glasgow, except that those of the second night were much better than the first; but as those were small, this is not saying much. I have not yet received the "returns."
I am glad the news you got from Ardgillan is satisfactory. Love to dear Dorothy.
Ever as ever yours,
Fanny.
29, Abercrombie Place, Edinburgh, Wednesday, 13th.
THE ECLIPSE.I did not see the eclipse, my dear. I did not know there was to be one, and did not therefore look for it; and if I had, I doubt my having been any the wiser, inasmuch as our mornings of late have been very misty.
I am off to-day with Mrs. Mitchell to Ardoch, where I stay only to-morrow, and return Friday to act here on Saturday. Having promised to go, I do not like to break my word, otherwise it seems to me rather a fuss, and a long way to go for one day's rest. Originally our plan was to spend two or three days there, that being all I could then give; but Mrs. Mitchell, with whom I had promised to go, could not get away from visitors at her own house sooner.
I spent the evening with Cecilia and Mr. Combe on Monday. They are both tired from the effect of their journey still, and look fagged and ill. They have both got the influenza too, which does not mend matters; and I am struck with the alteration in Mr. Combe's appearance. He looks old, as well as ill, and very sad—naturally enough on his return to this place, where his dear brother died.
Thebecomingnessof Cecilia's gray, or rather white, hair struck me more than any other change in her. She has lost the appearance of hardness (coarseness), which, I think, mingled slightly with her positive beauty formerly, and is to my mind handsomer now than I ever remember her. She is not nearly so stout as she was; hercomplexion has lost its excess of color, has become softer; and the contrast of her fine dark eyes and silvery curls gives her a striking resemblance to Gainsborough's lovely portrait of her mother. She is looking thin and ill, but seems tolerably cheerful.
At the end of my engagement at the theatre, during the whole of which I shall remain with the Mairs, I shall spend a few days with her and Mr. Combe; after which I shall come as far south as Howick, and stay a day or two with B—— G——, and then cross over to Manchester to the Ellesmeres.
I shall hardly be in London before the third week in November. I have had a letter from my sister, announcing their positive return in the spring; but, as she says they will only leave Rome in May, it is improbable that I should see them at all, as I propose going to America by the steamer of the first of June; but Heaven knows what may happen between this and then. Nobody has the same right to "bother" me, as you call it, that you have, for I love nobody so well; besides, as for Emily, she is a deuced deal quicker in her processes than you are, and snaps up one's affairs by the nape of the neck, as a terrier does a rat, and unless one is tolerably alert one's self, she is off with one in her zeal in no time, whither one would not....
I wish you would tell Mrs. Fitzhugh, with my love, that a man who was acting Joseph Surface with me the other night said to me, "Now, my dear Lady Teazle, if you could but be persuaded to commit a triflingfore paw(faux pas)."
Give my love to dear Emily.
Ever as ever yours,
Fanny.
My dearest Hal,
I expect to be with the Combes for some few days at least, and do not feel altogether as happy as usual in the anticipation of their intercourse.
I think I have observed growing, as it were, upon them, with regard to certain subjects, a sort of general attitude of antagonism, which strikes me painfully.
All fanaticisms are bad, and the fanaticism of scepticism as bad or perhaps worse than most others, because it wounds more severely the prejudices of others than itcan be wounded by them, professing, as it does, to have none to wound.
I am going to stay with Cecilia all next week, and am rather afraid that I shall have to hear things that I love and reverence irreverently treated. We shall probably steer clear of much discourse on religious subjects, though of late Mr. Combe has appeared to me more inclined than formerly to challenge discussion on this ground.
I am afraid I can at the utmost only expect to see my sister for a fortnight after they return, though Henry Greville writes me that I cannot possibly give her the mortification and myself the pain of going away just as she comes back, and that I ought, for both our sakes, to stay at least a month in England after her return: but then he wishes to get up a play with us both.
GRANTLEY MANOR.I think Grantley Manor charming. It gave me a great desire to know Lady Georgiana Fullerton personally; but I am told she has a horror of me, for what she calls my "injustice to the Catholics." What that is I do not know; but whatever it is, I am very sorry for this result of it.
Good-bye, dearly beloved.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
29, Abercrombie Place, Edinburgh, Monday, October 25th, 1847.
The last question in your letter, which nevertheless heads it, having been added on over the date, "How is your health?" I can answer satisfactorily—much better.... I am much delighted at you and Dorothy reserving your visit to Battle Abbey till I come to you, and only hope the weather may give you no cause to regret having done so. I have promised Emily to go down to Bannisters in December, and shall then pay you my visit at St. Leonard's.
I do much wish to be once more with you and Dorothy. I have just concluded a very pleasant arrangement with Arthur Malkin and his wife for staying a few days in the neighborhood of the lakes with them, between Keswick and Ambleside, after I leave Howick.
The weather is, I believe, generally favorable for that scenery as late as November. I have never seen the English lakes, and am not likely soon to have so pleasant an opportunity of doing so.
I have received an application from the York manager to act at Leeds, and having agreed to do so, think I shall probably also act a few nights at York, Hull, and Sheffield, while I am thereabouts; all which, together with my visit to the Ellesmeres, will take up so much of my time that I doubt my being more than a month or three weeks in Orchard Street before my term of possession there expires.... I shall be able to answer your questions about the Combes better when I am with them, but besides my own observation I have the testimony of the ——s to the fact of their having become much more aggressive in their feeling and conversation with regard to "Church abuses," "theological bigotry," and even Christianity itself. I am sorry to hear this; but if theyhurtme, I shall heal myself by looking at the Vatican [a fine engraving of St. Peter's, in Mr. Combe's house].
I had a letter from E—— the other day. I am delighted to say that they have quite determined to return in the spring, and it is just possible that I may see them before I leave England.
E——'s account of the Roman reforms is most encouraging, and I must give you an extract from his letter about them.
"A very important decree was published on the 2d of this month, relative to the organization of a municipal council and magistracy for the city of Rome. Besides the ordinary duties of a municipality, such as public works,octroi, etc., it is to have the direction of education. This is a circumstance the consequence of which it is impossible to overrate or to foresee. Hitherto, education has been monopolized by the clergy, and moreover by the Jesuits (whose schools have always been the best by a very great deal, to give the devil his due). The new law does not abolish their establishments, or interfere with them in any way, but the liberal feeling being so strong in the country, the rising generation will be almost entirely educated in the schools founded by the municipality; it is the greatest blow the hierarchy has yet received. The council consists of a hundred members, chosen from different classes of society. It is first named by the Pope, and then renews itself by elections; there are only four members to represent the ecclesiastical bodies."
There, Hal, what do you think of that? I sit and thinkof that most lovely land, emerging gloriously into a noble political existence once more, till I almost feel like a poet.
Love to Dorothy.... I only make Hayessensiblethat she is afooltwice a week on an average, not twice a day.
Yours ever,
Fanny.
Howick Grange, November 14th.
Surely, my dearest Hal, the next time you say you almost despair of mankind, you should add, "in spite of God," instead of "in spite of the Pope."
I arrived here about three hours ago, and have received a most severe and painful blow in a letter from Henry Greville which I found awaiting me, containing the news of Mendelssohn's death. I cannot tell you how shocked I am at this sudden departure of so great and good a creature from amongst his impoverished fellow-beings. And when I think of that bright genius (he was theonlyman of genius I have known who seemed to me to fulfil the rightful moral conditions and obligations of one), by whose loss the whole civilized world is put into mourning; of his poor wife, so ardently attached to him, so tenderly and devotedly loved by him; of his children—his boy, who, I am told, inherits his sweet and amiable disposition; of my own dear sister, and poor E——, so deeply attached to him,—I cannot bear to think, I feel half stupid with pain. And yet your letter is full of other sorrow. O God! how much there is in this sorrowful life! and what suffering we are capable of! and yet—and yet—these can be but the accidents, while the sun still shines, and the beauty and consolation andvirtueof nature and human life still hourly abound.
You ask me if I have written anything in Edinburgh but letters. I have hardly had leisure to write even letters. I do not know when I have worked so hard as during my last engagement there. I have hardly had an occupation or thought that was not perforce connected with my theatrical avocations. I am heartily glad it is over.
"THE VESTIGES OF CREATION."Mr. Combe has given me the "Vestiges of Creation" to read, and I have been reading it.... The book is striking and interesting, but it appears to me far from strictly logical in its great principal deduction, as far as we "human mortals" are concerned. Indeed, Mr. Combe, who thinks it most admirable, was obliged to confessthat the main question of progress, involving dissimilar products from similar causes, wasnon-proven. And I think there are discrepancies, moreover, in minor points: but that may only be because of my profound ignorance.
The book is extremely disagreeable to me, though my ignorance and desire for knowledge combined give it, when treating of facts, a thousand times more interest than the best of novels for me; but its conclusions are utterly revolting to me,—nevertheless, they may be true.
I cannot write any more. B—— has just given me theAthenæum, with a long notice of Mendelssohn; and I am thinking more of him just now than anything else in the world....
God bless you, my dear.
I am ever yours,
Fanny.
Leeds, Friday, November 19th.
Mendelssohn's death did indeed give me a bitter and terrible shock. He was one of the bright sources of truth, at which I had hoped I might drink at some time or other. I always looked forward to some probable season of intercourse with him, the likelihood of which was increased by E—— and Adelaide's love for and intimacy with him. Intercourse with him seemed to me a privilege almost certainly to be mine, in the course of the next few years. This is only my own small selfish share of the great general grief. I feel particularly for E——. He seems to find so very few people that satisfy him, whom he is fond of, or who are at all congenial to him, that the loss of a dear friend, and such a man, will indeed fall heavily upon him.
Those whose sympathies are more general, and whose taste can accept and find pleasure in the intercourse of the majority of their fellow-creatures, are fortunate in this respect, that no one loss can make the world empty for them; and thus the qualities of kindliness and benevolence are repaid, like all other virtues, even in this world (which is nevertheless not heaven), into the bosom of those who practise them.
For a person who has permitted intellectual refinement to become almost a narrow fastidiousness, and whose sympathies are of that exclusive kind that none but special and rarely gifted persons can excite them, the loss ofsuch a friend as Mendelssohn must be incalculable; and I am grieved to the heart for E——.
COVENT GARDEN.I do not know what is to be done with Covent Garden. I suppose it will remain an opera-house; for to fit it for that it has been made well-nigh unavailable for any other purpose, as I think we shall find on the 7th December, when a representation of "Scenes" from various of Shakespeare's plays is to take place there, for the purpose of raising funds for the purchase of the house Shakespeare was born in.
You know what my love and veneration for Shakespeare are; you know, too, how comparatively indifferent to me are those parts of the natures even of those I most love and honor which belong only to their mortality. The dead bodies of my friends appeal, perhaps, even less than they should do to my feelings, since they have been temporarily inhabited and informed by their souls; but acquainted as you are with these notions of mine, you will understand that I do not entirely sympathize with all that is being said and done about the four walls between which the king of poets came into his world. The thing is more distasteful to me, because originally got up by an American charlatan of the first water, with a view to thrust himself into notoriety by shrieking about the world stupendous commonplaces about the house where Shakespeare was born. It has been taken up by a number of people, theatrical and other, who, with the exception of Macready, have many of them the same petty personal objects in view. Those whose profession compels them, by the absolute necessity of its conditions, to garble and hack and desecrate works which else could not be fit for acting purposes (a fact which in itself sets forth what theatrical representation really is and always must be—do read,à proposto this, Serlo's answer to Wilhelm Meister about the impossibility of representing dramatically a great poetical whole), and who now, on this very Shakespearian Memorial night, instead of acting some one of his plays in its integrity, and taking zealously any the most insignificant part in it, have arranged a series of truncated, isolated scenes, that the actors may each be the hero or heroine of their ownbitof Shakespeare.... This is all I know of the immediate destinies of Covent Garden. They have written to me to act the dying scene of Queen Katharine, to which I have agreed, notchoosing to decline any part assigned me in this "Celebration," little as I sympathize with it.
If I should hear anything further, as I very likely may, from Henry Greville, of the probable fate of Covent Garden next season, I will let you know, that you may dispose accordingly of your property in it.
I have finished the "Vestiges of Creation." I became more reconciled to the theory it presents towards the close of the book, for obvious reasons. Of course, when, abandoning his positive chain (as he conceives it) of proved progression, after leading the whole universe from inorganic matter up to the "paragon of animals," the climax of development, man, he goes on to say that it isimpossibleto limit the future progress, or predict the future destinies of this noble human result, he forsakes his own ground of material demonstration, on which he has jumped, as the French say,àpedsjoints, over many an impediment, and relieves himself (and me) by the hypothesis, which, after all, in no way belongs peculiarly to his system, that other and higher destinies, developments, may, and probably do, await humanity than anything it has yet attained here: a theory which, though most agreeable to the love of life and desire of perfection of most human creatures, in no sort hinges logically on to hisabsolute chain of material progressionand development. From the moment, however, that he admitted this view, instead of the one which I think legitimately belongs to his theory, irreconcilable as it seemed to me with what preceded it, the book became less distasteful to me, although I do not think the soundness of his theory (even admitting all his facts, which I am quite too ignorant to dispute) established by his work. Supposing his premises to be all correct, I think he does not make out his own case satisfactorily; and many of the conclusions in particular instances appear to me to be tacked or basted (to speak womanly) together loosely and clumsily, and yet with an effect of more mutual relation, coherence, and cohesion than really belongs to them.
Mr. Combe is delighted with the book—because it quotes him and his brother, and professes a belief in phrenology; but Mr. Combe himself allowed that the main proposition of the work is not logically deduced from its arguments, and moreover admitted that thoughwell versed inallthe branches of natural science, the author was perfectly master ofnone. He attributes the authorship to his friend Robert Chambers, or perhaps to the joint labor of him and his brother William. If his surmise in this respect is true there would be obvious reasons why they should not acknowledge so heterodox a book, especially in Edinburgh.
In asking me formytheory of human existence, dear Hal, you must haveforgotten mein your craving desire for some—any—solution of the great mystery with which you are so deeply and perpetually perplexed.
How should I, who know nothing, who amexceptionallyignorant, who seldom read, and seldomer think (in any proper sense of the word), have even the shadow of a theory upon this overpowering theme?
To tell you the vague suggestions of my imagination at various times would doubtless be but to re-echo some of your own least satisfactory surmises.
DUTY.I thank God I have not the mental strengthand infirmityto seek to grapple with this impossible subject. The faint outlines of ideas that have at any time visited my brain about this tremendous mystery of human life have all been sad and dreary, and most bitterly and oppressively unsatisfactory; and therefore I rejoice that no mental fascination rivets my thoughts to the brink of this dark and unfathomable abyss, but that it is on the contrary the tendency of my nature to rest in hope, or rather in faith in God's mercy and power, and moreover to think that the perception we have (or as you would say, imagine we have) ofduty, of right to be done and wrong to be avoided, gives significance enough to our existence to make it worth both love and honor, though it should consist of but one conscious day in which that noble perception might be sincerely followed, and though absolute annihilation were its termination. The whole value and meaning of life, to me, lies in the single sense of conscience—duty; and that is here, present, now, enough for the best of us—God knows how much too much for me.
Good-bye, my dear. I have a most horrible cough and sore throat, and I have been acting with it, feeling every moment that I was doing my poorparts of speecha serious injury by the strain I was compelled to put upon them. You may judge of the state of my voice when I tell youthat I received from some anonymous kind friend this morning a bottle of cough-mixture, and all manner of lozenges, jujubes, etc. Give my love to Dorothy.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
Orchard Street.
Dearest H——,
... I am going with Henry Greville to see Rachel on Wednesday in "Marie Stuart." I wish I could afford to see her every night, but it is a dear recreation. Henry Greville is not "teaching me to act," though I dare say he thinks I may derive profit as well as pleasure from seeing Rachel....
All my friends are extremely impatient of my small gains; I am not, though I certainly should be glad if they were larger....
I have moved my Psyche, my beautiful and serene goddess. As the ancient Romans had especial tutelary gods for their private houses, the patron saints of the heathen calendar, she is my adopted divinity. You know I have had her with me in some of my blackest and bitterest seasons, and have often marvelled at the mere combination of lines which have produced so exquisite an image of noble graceful thoughtfulness. She is not without a certain sweet sternness, too; there is immense power, as well as repose, in that lovely countenance,—how—why—can mere curved and straight lines convey so profoundly moral an impression? She is an admirable companion, and reminds me of Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty," which I every now and then feel inclined to apostrophize her with.
I have sent out the big centre china jar to the table on the stair-case, and have put my goddess in the drawing-room in its place....
I have received a kind invitation from Lady Dacre to the Hoo, and I shall spend next week there, which will be both good and agreeable for me. I expect to find Lady G—— there; she is a person for whom I have a great liking and esteem, and whom I shall be glad to meet. Perhaps, too, dear William Harness; but I do not know of anybody else.
I forget whether I told you that the Sedgwicks had sent me a friend of theirs, an American country clergyman, to lionize about London, which I have been doingfor the last three days. I took him to the British Museum, and showed him the Elgin Marbles, and the library, and the curious manuscripts and books which strangers generally care to see; but the profit and pleasure, I should think, of travelling is but little unless the mind is in some slight measure prepared for more knowledge by the possession of some small original stock; and a great many Americans come abroad but poorly furnished not only with learning but with the means of learning.
Charles Greville got me an admission for my Yankee friend to the House of Lords. We were admitted while the business was going on, and saw the curious old form of passing the Acts of Parliament by Commission, than the ceremonies of which it is difficult to imagine anything more quaint, not to say ludicrous, and apparently meaningless.
We heard Lord Brougham and the Duke of Wellington speak, and had an excellent view of both of them.
The House appeared to me too minutely ornamented; it is rich, elaborate, but all in small detail, too subdivided and intricate and overwrought to be as imposing and good in effect as if it were more simple.
I took my American friend to the Zoological Gardens, and to the Botanical Gardens, in the Regent's Park, which are very charming, and for which I have a private ticket of admission.
This morning I have been with him to Stafford House, to show him the pictures, which are fine, and the house itself, which I think the handsomest in London. To-morrow I take him to the opera, and I have given him a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner, and feel as if I had discharged the duty put upon me, especially as it involved what I have no taste for,i.e.sight-seeing.
The Elgin Marbles I was glad enough to see again—one has never seen them too often,—and was sitting down to reflect upon them at my leisure, when my American friend, to whom, doubtless, they seemed but a parcel of discolored, dirty, decapitated bodies, proposed that we should pass on, which we accordingly did.
YOUNG AMERICANS.I am struck with the spirit of conformity by which this gentleman seems troubled, and which Adelaide tells me the young American people they saw in Rome constantly expressed,—the dread of appearing that which they are, foreigners; the annoyance at hearing that their accentand dress denote them to be Americans. They certainly are not comfortable people in this respect, and I always wish, for their own sakes as well as mine, that they had more or less self-love.
I was impelled to say to my young clergyman, whose fear of trespassing against English usages seemed to leave him hardly any other idea, "Sir, are you not a foreigner, an American? May I ask why it is to be considered incumbent upon you, either by yourself or others, to dress and speak like an Englishman?" ...
Good-bye, dear.
I am ever yours,
Fanny.
18, Orchard Street, November 18th.
I do not know that I ever slept so near the sea as to hear it discoursing as loudly as you describe, though I have been where its long swelling edge was heard rolling up and tearing itself to ribbons on the shingly beach like distant thunder. As for night-sounds of any sort, you know mysoundsleep is the only one I am familiar with.
In the hotel at Niagara, the voice of the cataract not only roared night and day through every chamber of the house, but the whole building vibrated incessantly with the shock of the mighty fall. I have still health and nerve and spirits to cope with the grand exhibitions of the powers of Nature: the majesty and beauty of the external world always acts as a tonic on me, and under its influence I feel as if a strong arm was put round me, and was lifting me over stony places; and I nothing doubt that the great anthem of the ocean would excite rather than overpower me, however nearly it sounded in my ears.
Your description of the terrace, or parade walk, covered with my fellow-creatures, appals my imagination much more. My sympathies have never been half human enough, and in the proximity of one of nature's most impressive objects I shrink still more from contact with the outward forms of unknown humanity. However, this is merely an answer to your description; I shall find, by creeping down the shingles, some place below, or, by climbing the cliff, some place above, these dear men and women, where I can be a little alone with the sea.
I observed nothing peculiar about the direction of anyletter that I have recently received from you; but then, to be sure, I am not given to the general process, which, general as it is, always astonishes me, of examining the direction, the date, the postmark, the signature, of the letter I receive (as many of these, too, as possible, before opening the epistle); I hasten to read your words as soon as I have them, and seldom speculate as to when or where they were written, so that I really do not know whether I have received your Hull letter or not. I do not go thither until Monday next, and return to town the following Sunday....
Oh, my dear, what a world is this! or rather, what an unlucky experience mine has been—in some respects—yes, insomerespects! for while I write this, images of the good, and true, and excellent people I have known and loved rise like a cloud of witnesses to shut out the ugly vision of the moral deformity of some of those with whom my fate has been interwoven....
I have agreed with Mrs. Humphreys to take the apartments that T—— M—— had in King Street, from the beginning of January till the beginning of May. She says she cannot let me have them longer than that, but I shall endeavor for at least a month's extension, for it will be so very wretched to turn out and have to hunt for new lodgings, for a term of six weeks.
SUCCESS AT LEEDS.My success at Leeds was very good, considering the small size of the theatre.... I am not exempt from a feeling about "illustrious localities," but the world seems to me to be so absolutely Shakespeare's domain and dwelling-place, that I do not vividly associate him with the idea of those four walls, between which he first saw the light of an English day. If the house he dwelt in in the maturity of his age, and to which he retired to spend the evening of his life, still existed, I should feel considerable emotion in being where his hours and days were spent when his mind had reached its zenith.
A baby is the least intelligent form of a rational human being, and as it mercifully pleased God to remove His wonderfully endowed child before the approach of age had diminished his transcendent gifts, I do not care to contemplate him in that condition in which I cannot recognize him—that is, with an undeveloped and dormant intelligence.
We know nothing of his childhood, nothing of thegradual growth and unfolding of his genius; his acknowledged works date from the season of its ripe perfection.
You know I do not regret the dimness that covers the common details of his life: his humanity was allied to that of its kind by infirmities and sins, but I am glad that these links between him andmehave disappeared, and that those alone remain by which he will be bound, as long as this world lasts, to the love and reverence of his fellow-beings. Shakespeare's childhood, boyhood, the season of his moral and intellectual growth, would be of the deepest interest could one know it: but Shakespeare's mere birthplace and babyhood is not much to me; though I quite agree that it should be respectfully preserved, and allowed to be visited by all who find satisfaction in such pilgrimage.
He could not have been different from other babies you know; nor, indeed, need be,—for ababy—anybaby—is a more wonderful thing even than Shakespeare.
I have told you how curiously affected I was while standing by his grave, in the church at Stratford-upon-Avon: how I was suddenly overcome with sleep (my invariable refuge under great emotion or excitement), and how I prayed to be allowed to sleep for a little while on the altar-steps of the chancel, beside his bones: the power of association was certainly strong in me then; but his bonesarethere, and above them streamed a warm and brilliant sunbeam, fit emblem of his vivifying spirit;—but I have no great enthusiasm for his house....
Does not the power of conceiving in any degree theideaof God establish some relation between Him and the creature capable of any approach by thought to Him? Do we not, in some sense, possess mentally that which we most earnestly think of? is it not the possession over which earthly circumstances have the least power? The more incessantly and earnestly we think of a thing the more we become possessedbyandofit, and in some degree assimilated to it; and can those thoughts which reach towards God alone fail to lay hold, in any sort or degree, of their object?...
Surely, whether we are, or are not, the result of an immense chain of material progression, we have attained to that idea which preserves alive to all eternity the souls upon which it has once dawned. We have caught hold of the feet of the omnipotent Creator; and to the spiritthat once has received the conception, however feeble or remote, of His greatness and goodness, there can be no cessation of the bond thus formed between itself and its great Cause. I cannot write about this; I could not utter in words what I think and feel about it: but it seems to me that if organization, mere development, has reached a pitch at which it becomes capable ofdivinethoughts, it thenceforth can never be anythinglessthan a creature capable of such conceptions; and if so, then how muchmore?
Farewell. Love to Dorothy.
Yours ever,
F. A. K.
Orchard Street, Monday, 18th.
I arrived yesterday in town, my dearest Hal, and found your letter waiting for me. The aspect of these, my hired Penates, is comfortable and homelike to me, after living at inns for a fortnight; and the spasmodic and funereal greetings of the nervous Mulliner, and the lugubrious Jeffreys,gladdenmy spirits with a sense of returning tosomethingthat expects me.
About Lady Emily —— and heretherealconfinement: did I not tell you that Mrs. C—— wrote me word from America that Fanny Longfellow had been brought to bed most prosperously under the beneficent influence of ether? at which my dear S—— C—— expresses some anxiety touching the authority of the Book of Genesis, which she thinks may be impaired if women continue, by means of ether, to escape from the special curse pronounced against them for their share in the original sin.
For my part I am not afraid that the worst part of the curse will not abide upon us, in spite of ether; the woman's desire will still be to her husband, who, consequently, will still rule over her. For these (curses or not, as people may consider them), I fear no palliating ether will be found; and till men are more righteous than they are, all creatures subject to them will be liable to suffer misery of one sort or another....
LADY MORLEY.I wonder if I have ever spoken to you of Lady Morley—a kind-hearted, clever woman (who, by the bye, always calls men "the softer sex"), a great friend of Sydney Smith's, whom I have known a good deal in society, and who came to see me just before I left town. In speakingof poor Lady Dacre, and the difficulty she found in accepting her late bereavement, Lady Morley said, "I think people should be very grateful whose misfortunes fall upon them in old age rather than in youth: they're all the nearer having done with them." There was some whimsical paradox in this, but some truth too. An habitual saying of hers (not serious, of course, but which she applies to everything she hears) is: "There's nothing new, nothing true, and nothing signifies." The last time I dined at Lady Grey's a discussion arose between Lady Morley, myself, and some of the other guests, as to how much or how little truth it wasrightto speak in our usual intercourse with people. I maintained that one was bound to speak the whole truth; so did my friend, Lady G——; Lady F—— said, "Toute verité n'est pas bonne à dire;" and Lady Morley told the following story: "I sat by Rogers at dinner the other day (the poet of memory was losing his, and getting to repeat the same story twice over without being aware that he did so), and he told me a very good story, which, however, before long, he began to repeat all over again; something, however, suggesting to him the idea that he was doing so, he stopped suddenly, and said, 'I've told you this before, haven't I?' And he had, not a quarter of an hour before. Now, ladies, what would you have said? and what do you think I said? 'Oh yes,' said I, 'to be sure: you were beginning to tell it to me when the fish came round, andI'm dying to hear the end of it.'" This was on all hands allowed to have been a most ingenious reply; and I said I thought she deserved to be highly complimented for such graceful dexterity in falsehood: to which she answered, "Oh, well, my dear, it's all very fine; but if ever you get the truth, depend upon it you won't like it"—a retort which turned the laugh completely against me, and sent her ladyship off with flying colors; and certainly there was no want of tolerably severe sincerity in that speech of hers.