MRS. CHARLES NORTON.[The little daughter referred to in the above letter became Mrs. Charles Norton, one of the loveliest and most charming of young American women, snatched by an untimely death from the midst of an adoring family and friends.]
MRS. CHARLES NORTON.[The little daughter referred to in the above letter became Mrs. Charles Norton, one of the loveliest and most charming of young American women, snatched by an untimely death from the midst of an adoring family and friends.]
Philadelphia, Friday, December 14th, 1839.
Dearest Harriet,
... It is perhaps well for you that this letter has suffered an interruption here, as had this not been the case you might have been edified with a yet further "complaint." ...
We have shut up our house in the country, and are at present staying in Philadelphia, at my brother-in-law's; but we are expecting every day to start for the plantation in Georgia, where I hope we are to find what is yet lacking to us in health and strength.
I look forward with some dismay now to this expedition, in the middle of winter, with two young children, traveling by not very safe railroads and perhaps less safe steamboats, through that half-savage country, and along that coast only some months ago the scene of fearful shipwreck.... I have already written you word of our last residence there, of the small island in the Altamaha and below its level—the waters being only kept out by dykes, which protect the rice-marshes, of which the plantation is composed, from being submerged. The sole inhabitants, you know, are the negroes, who cultivate the place, and the overseer who manages them.... As early as March the heat becomes intense, and by the beginning of April it is no longer safe for white people to remain there, owing to the miasma which exhales from the rice-fields....
We shall find, no doubt, our former animal friends, from the fleas up to the alligators: the first, swarming in the filthy negroes' huts; the last, expatiating in the muddy waters of the Altamaha. I trust they will none of them have forgotten us. Did I tell you before of those charming creatures, the moccasin snakes, which, I have just been informed, abound in every part of the southern plantations? Rattlesnakes I know by sight: but the moccasin creature, though I may have seen him, I do not feel acquainted, or at any rate familiar, with. Our nearest civilized town, you know, is Savannah, and that is sixty miles off. I cannot say that the expedition is in any way charming to me, but the alternative is remaining alone here; and, as it is possible to live on the plantation with the children, I am going. Margery, of course, comes with me....
Did I tell you, my dear Irishwoman, that we had nopotatoeson the plantation, and that Indian meal holds the place of wheaten flour, bread baked of the latter being utterly unknown?... Do not be surprised if I dwell upon these small items of privation, even now that I am about to go among those people the amelioration of whose condition I have considered as one of my special duties. With regard to this, however, I have, alas! no longer the faintest shadow of hope....
Yours most truly,
F. A. B.
Philadelphia, January 15th, 1840.
Dearest Harriet,
My last to you was dated the fourteenth of December, and it is now the tenth of January, a whole month; and you and Dorothy are, I presume, sundered, instead of together, and surrounded with ice and snow, and all wintry influences, instead of those gentle southern ones in which you had imagined you would pass the dismal season.
I can fancy Ardgillan comfortably poetical (if that is not a contradiction in terms) at this time of year, with its warm, bright, cheerful drawing-room looking out on the gloomy sea. But perhaps you are none of you there?—perhaps you are in Dublin?—on Mr. Taylor's new estate?—or where—where, dear Harriet—where are you? How sad it seems to wander thus in thought after those we love, and conjecture of their whereabouts almost as vaguely as of the dwelling of the dead!...
I am annoyed by the interruption which all this ice and snow causes in my daily rides. My horse is rough-shod, and I persist in going out on him two or three times a week, but not withoutsome peril, and severe inconvenience from the cold, which not only cuts my face to pieces, but chaps my skin from head to foot, through my riding-dress and all my warm under-clothing. I do not much regret our prolonged sojourn in the North, on my children's account, who, being both hearty and active creatures, thrive better in this bracing climate than in the relaxing temperature of the South....
FORESTER.Dear Harriet, I have nothing to tell you; my life externally isnothing; and who can tell the inward history of their bosom—that internal life, which is often so strangely unlike the other? Suppose I inform you that I have just come home from a ride of an hour and a half; that I went out of the city by Broad Street, and returned by Islington Lane and the Ridge Road—how much the wiser will you be? that the roads were frozen as hard as iron, and here and there so sheeted with ice that I had great difficulty in preventing my horse from slipping and falling down with me, and, being quite alone, without even a servant, I wondered whatIshould do ifhedid. I have a capital horse, whom I have christened Forester, after the hero of my play, and who grins with delight, like a dog, when I talk to him and pat him. He is a bright bay, with black legs and mane, tall and large, and built like a hunter, with high courage and good temper. I have had him four years, and do not like to think what would become of me if anything were to happen to him. It would be necessary that I should commit suicide, for his fellow is not to be found in "these United States." Dearest Harriet, we hope to come over to England next September; and if your sister will invite me, I will come and see you some time before I re-cross the Atlantic. I am very anxious about my father, and still more anxious about my sister, and feel heart-weary for the sight of some of my own people, places, and things; and so. Fate prospering, to speak heathen, I shall gohomeonce more in the autumn of this present 1840: till when, dearest Harriet, God bless you! and after then, and always,
I am ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.
[My dear horse, having been sold to a livery-stable keeper, I repurchased him by the publication of a small volume of poems, which thus proved themselves tomeexcellent verses. The gallant animal broke his hip-joint by slipping in a striding gallop over some wet planks, and I had to have him shot. His face—I mean the anguish in it after the accident—is among the tragical visions in my memory.]
[My dear horse, having been sold to a livery-stable keeper, I repurchased him by the publication of a small volume of poems, which thus proved themselves tomeexcellent verses. The gallant animal broke his hip-joint by slipping in a striding gallop over some wet planks, and I had to have him shot. His face—I mean the anguish in it after the accident—is among the tragical visions in my memory.]
Philadelphia, February 9th, 1840.
Dear Mrs. Jameson,
... You ask me if I have read your book on Canada. With infinite interest and pleasure, and great sympathy and admiration, and much gratitude for the vindication of women's capabilities, both physical and mental, which all your books (but this perhaps more than all the others) furnish.
It has been, like all your previous works, extremely popular here; and if you have received no remuneration for it, you are not justly dealt by, as I am sure its sale has been very considerable, and very profitable. [Mrs. Jameson was, undoubtedly, one of the greatest sufferers by the want of an author's copyright in America: her works were all republished there; and her laborious literary career, her careful research and painstaking industry, together with her restricted means and the many claims upon them, made it a peculiar hardship, in her case, to be deprived of the just reward of the toil by which she gave pleasure and instruction to so many readers in America, as well as in her own country.] Your latest publication, "Social Life in Germany," I have not seen, but have read numerous extracts from it, in the American literary periodicals.
You ask me if you can "do anything" about my play? I thought I must have told you of my offering it to Macready, who civilly declined having anything to do with it. Circumstances induced me to destroy my own copy of it: the one Macready had is in Harriet's custody, another copy I have given to Elizabeth Sedgwick, and I now neither know nor care anything more about it. Once upon a time I wrote it, and that is quite enough to have had to do with it. Prescott, the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, is urgent with me to let him have it published in Boston; perhaps hereafter, if I should want a penny, and be able to turn an honest one by so doing, I may.
It is odd that I have not the remotest recollection of reading any of that play to you. You have mentioned it several times to me, and I have never been able to recall to my mind, either when I read it to you, or what portion of it I inflicted upon you. You were lucky, and I wonder that I let you off with aportionof it; for, for nearly a year after I finished it, I was in such ecstasies with my own performance, that I martyrized every soul that had a grain of regard for me, with its perusal....
J—— B—— and his brother have just started for Georgia, leaving his wife and myself in forlorn widowhood, which, (the providence of railroads and steamboats allowing) is not to last more than three months. I have been staying nearly threemonths in their house in town, expecting every day to depart for the plantation; but we have procrastinated to such good effect that the Chesapeake Bay is now unnavigable, being choked up with ice, and the other route involving seventy miles of night travelingon the worst road in the United States(think what that means!), it has been judged expedient that the children and myself should remain behind. I am about, therefore, to return with them to the Farm, where I shall pass the remainder of the winter,—how, think you? Why, reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," which I have never read yet, and which I now intend to study with classical atlas, Bayle's dictionary, the Encyclopædia, and all sorts of "aids to beginners." How quiet I shall be! I think perhaps I may die some day, without so much as being aware of it; and if so, beg to record myself in good season, before that imperceptible event,
Yours very truly,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, February 16th, 1840.
I have just been looking over a letter of yours, dearest Harriet, as old as the 19th of last September, describing your passage over the Splügen. About four days ago I was looking over some engravings of the passes of the Alps, in a work called "Switzerland Illustrated," by Bartlett, and lingered over those attempts of human art with the longing I have for those lands, which I always had, which has never died away entirely, but seems now reviving again in some of its earliest strength: I can compare it to nothing but the desire of thirst for water, and I must master it as I may, for of those mountain-streams I fear I never shall drink, or look upon their beauty, but in the study of my imagination.
SCENERY IN AMERICA.In the hill-country of Berkshire, Massachusetts, where I generally spend some part of the summer among my friends the Sedgwicks, there is a line of scenery, forming part of the Green Mountain range, which runs up into the State of Vermont, and there becomes a noble brotherhood of mountains, though in the vicinity of Stockbridge and Lenox, where I summer, but few of them deserve a more exalted title than hill. They are clothed with a various forest of oak, beech, chestnut, maple, and fir; and down their sides run wild streams, and in the valleys between them lie exquisite lakes. Upon the whole, it is the most picturesque scenery I have ever seen; particularly in the neighborhood of a small town called Salisbury, thirty miles from Lenox. Thisis situated in a plain surrounded by mountains, and upon the same level in its near neighborhood lie four beautiful small lakes; close above this valley rises Mount Washington, or, as some Swiss charcoal-burners, who have emigrated thither, have christened it, Mount Rhigi.
In a recess of this mountain lies a deep ravine and waterfall; and a precipice, where an arch of rock overhangs a basin, where, many hundred feet below, the water boils in a mad cauldron, and then plunges away, by leaps of forty, twenty, and twelve feet, with the intermediate runs necessary for such jumps, through a deep chasm in the rocks, to a narrow valley, the whole character of which, I suppose, may represent Swiss scenery invery small.
A week ago J—— B—— and —— left Philadelphia for the South; and yesterday I received a letter giving a most deplorable account of their progress, if progress it could be called, which consisted in goingnine miles in four hours, and then returning to Washington, whence they had started, the road being found utterly impassable. Streams swollen with the winter snows and spring rains, with their bridges all broken up by the ice or swept away by the water, intersect these delightful ways; and one of these, which could not admit of fording, turned them back, to try their fate in a steamboat, through the ice with which the Chesapeake is blocked up. This dismal account has in some measure reconciled me to having been left behind with the children; they have neither of them been as well as usual this winter, and the season is now so far advanced, our intended departure being delayed from day to day for three months, that, besides encountering a severe and perilous journey, we should have arrived in Georgia to find the weather almost oppressively hot, and, if we did wisely, to return again, at the end of a fortnight, to the North.
I have come back to Butler Place with the bairns, and have resumed the monotonous tenor of my life, which this temporary residence in town had interrupted, not altogether agreeably; and here I shall pass the rest of the winter, teaching S—— to read, and sliding through my days in a state of external quietude, which is not always as nearly allied to content as it might seem to (oughtto) be....
When the children's bed-time comes, and their little feet and voices are still, the spirit of the house seems to have fallen asleep. I send my servants to bed, for nobody here keeps late hours (ten o'clock being considered late), and, in spite of assiduous practicing, reading, and answering of letters, my evenings are sad in their absolute solitude, and I am glad when ten o'clock comes,the hour for my retiring, which I could often find in my heart to anticipate....
I have taken vehemently to worsted-work this winter, and,instead of a novel or two, am going to read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," which I have never read, and by means of Bayle, classical atlas, and the Encyclopædia, I mean to make a regular school-room business of it.
Good-bye, dear. Events are so lacking in my present existence, that I am longing for the spring as I never did before—for the sight of leaves and flowers, and the song of birds, and the daily development of the great natural pageant of the year. I am grateful to God for nothing more than the abundant beauty with which He has adorned His creation. The pleasure I derive from its contemplation has survived many others, and should I live long, will, I think, outlive all that I am now capable of....
Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, February 17th, 1840.
My Dear Lady Dacre,
DANGEROUS JOURNEY.... I believe too implicitly in your interest in me and mine, ever to havenothingto say to you; but my sayings will be rather egotistical, for the monotony of my life affords me few interests but those which centre in my family, the head of which left me ten days ago, with his brother, for their southern estate. I have since had a letter, which, as it affords an accurate picture of winter traveling in this country, would, I flatter myself, make your sympathetic hair stand on end. Listen. On Sunday morning, before day, they set out, two post-coaches, with four horses, each carrying eight passengers. They got to Alexandria, which is close to Washington, whence they started without difficulty, stopped a short time to gird up their loins and take breath, and at seven o'clock set off. It rained hard; the road was deep with mud, and very bad; several times the passengers were obliged to get out of the coach and walk through the rain and mud, the horses being unable to drag the load through such depths of mire. They floundered on, wading through mud and fording streams, until eleven o'clock, when they stopped to breakfast, having come buteight milesinfour hours. They consulted whether to go on or turn back: the majority ruled to go on; so after breakfast they again took the road, but had proceeded but one mile when it became utterly impassable—the thaw and rain had so swelled a stream that barred the way that it was too deepto ford; and when it was quite apparent that they must either turn back or be drowned, they reluctantly adopted the former course, and got back to Washington late in the evening, having passed nearly all day in goingnine miles. I think you will agree with me, my dear Lady Dacre, that my children and myself were well out of that party of pleasure; though the very day before the party set off it was still uncertain whether we should not accompany them.
The contrary having been determined, I am now very quietly spending the winter with my chickens at the Farm.... An imaginative nature makes, it is true, happiness as well as unhappiness for itself, but finds inevitable ready made disappointment in the mere realities of life.... I make no excuse for talking "nursery" to you, my dear Lady Dacre. These are my dearest occupations; indeed, I might say, my only ones.
Have you looked into Marryatt's books on this country? They are full of funny stories, some of them true stories enough, and some, little imitation Yankee stories of the captain's own.
Do explain to me what Sydney Smith means by disclaiming Peter Plymley's letters as he does? Surely hedidwrite them.
This very youthful nation of the United States is "carrying on," to use their own favorite phrase, in a most unprecedented manner. Their mercantile and financial experiments have been the dearest of their kind certainly; and the confusion, embarrassment, and difficulty, in consequence of these experiments, are universal. Money is scarce, credit is scarcer, but, nevertheless, they will not lay the lesson to heart. The natural resources of the country are so prodigious, its wealth so enormous, so inexhaustible, that it will be presently up and on its feet again running faster than ever to the next stumbling-post.Moralbankruptcy is what they have to fear, much more than failure of material riches. It is a strange country, and a strange people; and though I have dear and good friends among them, I still feel a stranger here, and fear I shall continue to do so until I die, which God grant I may do at home!i.e., in England.
Give my kindest remembrance to Lord Dacre. We hope to be in England in September, and I shall come and see you as soon as ever I can.
Believe me ever, my dear Lady Dacre,Yours affectionately,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, March 1st, 1840.
Thank you, my dearest Harriet, for your extract from my sister's letter to you.... The strongest of us are insufficient to ourselves in this life, and if we will not stretch out our hands for help to our fellows, who, for the most part, are indeed broken reeds and quite as often pierce as support us, we needs must at last stretch them out to God; and doubtless these occasions, bitter as they may seem, should be accounted blest, which make the poor proud human soul discover its own weakness and God's all-sufficiency....
My winter—or rather, what remains of it—is like to pass in uninterrupted quiet and solitude; and you will probably have the satisfaction of receiving manyshortletters from me, for I know not where I shall find the material for long ones. To be sure, S——'s sayings and F——'s looks might furnish me with something to say, but I have a dread of beginning to talk about my children, for fear I should never leave off, for that is apt to be a "story without an end."
TESTIMONIAL TO CHARLES KEMBLE.I hear they are going to bestow upon my father, on his return to England, a silver vase, valued at several hundred pounds. I am base-minded, dear Harriet, grovelling, and sordid; and were I he, would rather have a shilling's worth of honor, and the rest of the vase in hard cash: but he has lived his life upon this sort of thing, and I think with great pleasure of the great pleasure it will give him. I am very well, and always most affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, March 12th, 1840.
Dearest Harriet,
It is only a few days since I received your letter with the news of Mr. F——'s attack, from which it is but natural to apprehend that he may not recover.... The combination of the loss of one's father, and of the home of one's whole life, is indeed a severe trial; though in this case, the one depending on the other, and Mr. F——'s age being so advanced, Emily with her steadfast mind has probably contemplated the possibility of this event, and prepared herself for it, as much as preparation may be made against affliction, which, however long looked for, when it comes always seems to bring with it some unforeseen element of harsh surprise. We never can imaginewhat will happen to us, precisely as itdoeshappen to us; and overlook in anticipation, not only minute mitigations, but small stings of aggravation, quite incalculable till they are experienced.... I could cry to think that I shall never again see the flowerbeds and walks and shrubberies of Bannisters. I think there is something predominantly material in my nature, for the sights and sounds of outward things have always been my chiefest source of pleasure; and as I grow older this in nowise alters; so little so, that gathering the first violets of the spring the other morning, it seemed to me that they were things tolovealmost more than creatures of my own human kind. I do not believe I am a normal human being; and at my death, onlyhalf a soulwill pass into a spiritual existence, the other half will go and mingle with the winds that blow, and the trees that grow, and the waters that flow, in this world of material elements....
Do I remember Widmore, you ask me. Yes, truly.... I remember the gay colors of the flowerbeds, and the fine picturesque trees in the garden, and the shady quietness of the ground-floor rooms....
You ask me how I have replaced Margery. Why, in many respects, if indeed not in all, very indifferently; but I could not help myself. Her leaving me was a matter of positive necessity, and some things tend to reconcile me to her loss. I believe she would have made S—— a Catholic. The child's imagination had certainly received a very strong impression from her; and soon after her departure, as I was hearing S—— her prayers, she begged me to let her repeat that prayer to "the blessed Virgin," which her nurse had taught her. I consider this a direct breach of faith on the part of Margery, who had once before undertaken similar instructions in spite of distinct directions to interfere in no way with the child's religious training.
The proselytizing spirit of her religion was, I suppose, stronger than her conscience, or rather, was the predominant element in it, as it is in all very devout Catholics; and the opportunity of impressing my little girl with what she considered vital truth, not to be neglected; and upon this ground alone I am satisfied that it is better she should have left me, for though it would not mortally grieve me if hereafter my child were conscientiously to embrace Romanism, I have no desire that she should be educatedin what I consider erroneous views upon the most momentous of all subjects.
ROMAN CATHOLIC NURSES.I have been more than once assured, on good authority, that it is by no means an infrequent practice of the Roman Catholic Irish women employed as nurses in American families, to carry their employers' babies to their own churches and have them baptized, of course without consent or even knowledge of their parents. The secret baptism is duly registered, and the child thus smuggled into the pope's fold, never, if possible, entirely lost sight of by the priest who administered the regenerating sacrament to it. The saving of souls is an irresistible motive, especially when the saving of one's own is much facilitated by the process.
The woman I have in Margery's place is an Irish Protestant, a very good and conscientious girl, but most wofully ignorant, and one who murders our luckless mother-tongue after a fashion that almost maddens me. However, as with some cultivation, education, reading, reflection, and that desire to do what is best that a mother alone can feel for her own child, I cannot but be conscious of my own inability in all points to discharge this great duty, the inability of my nursery-maid does not astonish or dismay me. The remedy for the nurse's deficiencies must be inme, and the remedy for mine in God, to whose guidance I commit myself and my darlings.... Margery was very anxious to remain with me as my maid; but we have reduced our establishment, and I have no longer any maid of my own, therefore I could not keep her....
With regard to attempting to make "reason the guide of your child's actions," that, of course, must be a very gradual process, and may, in my opinion, be tried too early. Obedience is the first virtue of which a young child is capable, the first duty it can perform; and the authority of a parent is, I think, the first impression it should receive,—a strictly reasonable and just claim, inasmuch as, furnishing my child with all its means of existence, as well as all its amusements and enjoyments, regard for my requests is the proper and only return it can make in the absence of sufficient judgment, to decide upon their propriety, and the motives by which they are dictated.
Good-bye, dearest Harriet.
I am ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, March 16th, 1840.
My dearest Harriet,
It was with infinite pain that I received your last letter [a very unfavorable report, almost a sentence of death, had been pronounced by the physicians upon my friend's dearest friend, Miss Dorothy Wilson], and yet I know not, except your sorrow, what there is so deplorable in the fact that Dorothy, who is one of the living best prepared for death, should have received a summons, which on first reading of it shocked me so terribly.
We calculate most blindly, for the most part, in what form the call to "change our life" may be least unwelcome; but to one whose eyes have long been steadily fixed upon that event, I do not believe the manner of their death signifies much.
Pain, our poor human bodies shrink from; and yet it has been endured, almost as if unfelt, not only in the triumphant death of the mob-hunted martyr, but in the still, lonely, and, by all but God, unseen agony of the poor and humble Christian, in those numerous cases where persecution indeed was not, but the sorrowful trial of the neglect and careless indifference of their fellow-beings, the total absence of all sympathy—a heavy desolation whether in life or death.
DR. FOLLEN.I have just lost a friend, Dr. Follen, a man to whose character no words of mine could do justice. He has been publicly mourned from more than one Christian pulpit; and Dr. Channing, in a discourse after his death, has spoken of him as one whom "many thought the most perfect man they ever knew." Among those many I was one. I have never seen any one whom I revered, loved, and admired more than I did Dr. Follen. He perished, with above a hundred others, in a burning steam-boat, on the Long Island Sound; at night, and in mid-winter, the freezing waters affording no chance of escape to the boldest swimmer or the most tenacious clinger to existence. He perished in the very flower of vigorous manhood, cut off in the midst of excellent usefulness, separated,for the first time, from a most dearly loved wife and child, who were prevented from accompanying him by sickness. In a scene of indescribable terror, confusion, and dismay, that noble and good man closed his life; and all who have spoken of him have said, "Could one have seen his countenance, doubtless it was to the last the mirror of hisserene and steadfast spirit;" and for myself, after the first shock of hearing of that awful calamity, I could only think it mattered not how or where that man met his death. He was always near to God, and who can doubt that, in that scene of apparent horror and despair, God was very near to him?
Even so, my dearest Harriet, do I now think of the impending fate of Dorothy; but oh, the difference between the sudden catastrophe in the one case, and the foreknowledge granted in the other! Time, whose awful uses our blind security so habitually forgets, is granted to her, with its inestimable value marked on it by the finger of death, undimmed by the busy hands of earthly pursuits and interests; she has, and will have, her dearest friends and lovers about her to the very end; and I know of no prayer that I should frame for her, but exemption from acute pain. For you, my dearest Harriet, if pain and woe and suffering are appointed you, it is to some good purpose, and you may make it answer its best ends.
These seem almost cold-hearted words, and yet God knows from how warm a heart, full of love and aching with sympathy, I write them! But sorrow is His angel, His minister, His messenger who does His will, waiting upon our souls with blessed influences. My only consolation, in thinking upon your affliction, is to remember that all events are ordered by our Father, and to reflect, as I often do——
I had written thus far, dearest Harriet, when a miserable letter from Georgia came to interrupt me. How earnestly, in the midst of the tears through which I read it, I had to recall those very thoughts, in my own behalf, which I was just urging upon you, you can imagine....
We may not choose our own discipline; but happy are they who are called to suffer themselves, rather than to see those they love do so!...
My head aches, and my eyes ache, and my heart aches, and I cannot muster courage to write any more. God bless you, my dearest Harriet. Remember me most affectionately to dear Dorothy, and
Believe me ever yours,
F. A. B.
[Dr. Charles Follen, known in his own country as Carl Follenius,became an exile from it for the sake of his political convictions, which in his youth he had advocated with a passionate fervor that made him, even in his college days, obnoxious to its governing authorities. He wrote some fine spirited Volkslieder that the students approved of more than the masters; and was so conspicuous in the vanguard of liberal opinion, that the Vaterland became an unwholesome residence for him, and he emigrated to America, where all his aspirations towards enlightened freedom found "elbow-room."He became an ordained Unitarian preacher; and it was a striking tribute to his spirit of humane tolerance as well as to his eloquent advocacy of his own high spiritual faith, that he was once earnestly and respectfully solicited to give a series of discourses upon Christianity, to a society of intelligent men who professed themselves dis-believers in it (atheists, materialists, for aught I know), inasmuch as from him they felt sure of a powerful, clear, and earnest exposition of his own opinions, unalloyed by uttered or implied condemnation of them for differing from him. I do not know whether Dr. Follen complied with this petition, but I remember his saying how much he had been touched by it, and how glad he should be to address such a body of mis- or dis-believers. He was a man of remarkable physical vigor, and excelled in all feats of strength and activity, having, when first he came to Boston, opened a gymnasium for the training of the young Harvard scholars in such exercises. He had the sensibility and gentleness of a woman, the imagination of a poet, and the courage of a hero; a genial kindly sense of humor, and buoyant elastic spirit of joyousness, that made him, with his fine intellectual and moral qualities, an incomparable friend and teacher to the young, for whose rejoicing vitality he had the sympathy of fellowship as well as the indulgence of mature age, and whose enthusiasm he naturally excited to the highest degree.His countenance was the reflection of his noble nature. My intercourse with him influenced my life while it lasted, and long after his death the thought of what would have been approved or condemned by him affected my actions.Many years after his death, I was speaking of him to Wæleker, the Nestor of German professors, the most learned of German philologists, historians, archæologists, and antiquarians, and hebroke out into enthusiastic praise of Follen, who had been his pupil at Jena, and to whose mental and moral worth he bore, with deep emotion, a glowing testimony.]
[Dr. Charles Follen, known in his own country as Carl Follenius,became an exile from it for the sake of his political convictions, which in his youth he had advocated with a passionate fervor that made him, even in his college days, obnoxious to its governing authorities. He wrote some fine spirited Volkslieder that the students approved of more than the masters; and was so conspicuous in the vanguard of liberal opinion, that the Vaterland became an unwholesome residence for him, and he emigrated to America, where all his aspirations towards enlightened freedom found "elbow-room."
He became an ordained Unitarian preacher; and it was a striking tribute to his spirit of humane tolerance as well as to his eloquent advocacy of his own high spiritual faith, that he was once earnestly and respectfully solicited to give a series of discourses upon Christianity, to a society of intelligent men who professed themselves dis-believers in it (atheists, materialists, for aught I know), inasmuch as from him they felt sure of a powerful, clear, and earnest exposition of his own opinions, unalloyed by uttered or implied condemnation of them for differing from him. I do not know whether Dr. Follen complied with this petition, but I remember his saying how much he had been touched by it, and how glad he should be to address such a body of mis- or dis-believers. He was a man of remarkable physical vigor, and excelled in all feats of strength and activity, having, when first he came to Boston, opened a gymnasium for the training of the young Harvard scholars in such exercises. He had the sensibility and gentleness of a woman, the imagination of a poet, and the courage of a hero; a genial kindly sense of humor, and buoyant elastic spirit of joyousness, that made him, with his fine intellectual and moral qualities, an incomparable friend and teacher to the young, for whose rejoicing vitality he had the sympathy of fellowship as well as the indulgence of mature age, and whose enthusiasm he naturally excited to the highest degree.
His countenance was the reflection of his noble nature. My intercourse with him influenced my life while it lasted, and long after his death the thought of what would have been approved or condemned by him affected my actions.
Many years after his death, I was speaking of him to Wæleker, the Nestor of German professors, the most learned of German philologists, historians, archæologists, and antiquarians, and hebroke out into enthusiastic praise of Follen, who had been his pupil at Jena, and to whose mental and moral worth he bore, with deep emotion, a glowing testimony.]
Butler Place, March 23rd, 1840.
I have just learned, dearest Harriet, that the Censorship [office of licenser of plays] has been transferred from my father to my brother John, which I am very glad to hear, as I imagine, though I do not know it, that the death of Mr. Beaumont must have put an end to the existence of theBritish and Foreign Review, for which he employed my brother as editor.
If the salary of licenser is an addition to the income attached to his editorship of theReview, my brother will be placed in comfortable circumstances; and I hope this may prove to be the case—though ladies are not apt to be so in love with abstract political principles as to risk certain thousands every year merely to promote their quarterly illustration in aReview, and I shall not be at all surprised to learn that Mrs. Beaumont declines doing so any longer.
[Mrs. Wentworth Beaumont, mother of my brother John's friend, must have been a woman of very decided political opinions, and very liberal views of the value of her convictions—in hard cash. Left the widowed mistress of a princely estate in Yorkshire, on the occasion when the most passionate contest recorded in modern electioneering made it doubtful whether the Government candidate or the one whose politics were more in accordance with her own would be returned to Parliament, she, then a very old lady, drove in her travelling-carriage with four horses to Downing Street, and demanding to see the Prime Minister, with whom she was well acquainted, accosted him thus: "Well, my lord, are you quite determined to make your man stand forourseat?" "Yes, Mrs. Beaumont, I think quite determined." "Very well," replied the lady; "I am on my way down to Yorkshire, with eighty thousand pounds in the carriage for my man. Try and do better than that."WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE.I am afraid theprosandconsfor Woman's Suffrage would alike have thought that very expensive female partisan politician hardly to be trusted with the franchise. Lord Dacre, who told me that anecdote, told me also that on one occasion forty thousand pounds,to his knowledge, had been spent by Government on a contested election—I think he said at Norwich.] ...
[Mrs. Wentworth Beaumont, mother of my brother John's friend, must have been a woman of very decided political opinions, and very liberal views of the value of her convictions—in hard cash. Left the widowed mistress of a princely estate in Yorkshire, on the occasion when the most passionate contest recorded in modern electioneering made it doubtful whether the Government candidate or the one whose politics were more in accordance with her own would be returned to Parliament, she, then a very old lady, drove in her travelling-carriage with four horses to Downing Street, and demanding to see the Prime Minister, with whom she was well acquainted, accosted him thus: "Well, my lord, are you quite determined to make your man stand forourseat?" "Yes, Mrs. Beaumont, I think quite determined." "Very well," replied the lady; "I am on my way down to Yorkshire, with eighty thousand pounds in the carriage for my man. Try and do better than that."
WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE.I am afraid theprosandconsfor Woman's Suffrage would alike have thought that very expensive female partisan politician hardly to be trusted with the franchise. Lord Dacre, who told me that anecdote, told me also that on one occasion forty thousand pounds,to his knowledge, had been spent by Government on a contested election—I think he said at Norwich.] ...
The longer I live, the less I think of the importance of any or all outward circumstances, and the more important I think the original powers and dispositions of people submitted to their influence. God has permitted no situation to be exempt from trial and temptation, and few, if any, to be entirely exempt from good influences and opportunities for using them. The tumult of the inward creature may exist in the midst of the calmest outward daily life, and the peace which passeth understanding subsist in the turmoil of the most adverse circumstances.... Our desires tending towards particular objects, we naturally seek the position most favorable for obtaining them; and, stand where we will, we are still, if we so choose, on the heavenward road. If we know how barely responsible for what they are many human beings necessarily must be, how much better does God know it! With many persons, whose position we regret and think unfortunate for their character, we might have to go far back, and retrace in the awful influence of inheritance the source of the evils we deplore in them. We need have much faith in the future to look hopefully at the present, and perfect faith in the mercy of our Father in heaven, who alone knows how much or how little of His blessed light has reached every soul of us through precept and example....
You ask me of Margery's successor: she is an honest, conscientious, and most ignorant Irish Protestant. You cannot conceive of what materials our households are composed here. The Americans, whose superior intelligence and education make them by far the most desirable servants we could have, detest the condition of domestic service so utterly, that it is next to impossible to procure them, and absolutely impossible to retain them above a year. The lowest order of Irish are the only persons that can be obtained. They offer themselves, and are accepted of hard necessity, indiscriminately, for any situation in a house, from that of lady's-maid to that of cook; and, indeed, they are equally unfit for all, having probably never seen so much as the inside of a decent house till they came to this country. To illustrate—my housemaid is the sister of my present nursery-maid, and on the occasion of the latter taking her holiday in town, the other had thetemporary charge of the children, and, when first she undertook it, had to be duly enlightened as to the toilet purposes of a wash-hand basin, a sponge, and a toothbrush, not one of which had she apparently been familiar with before; and this would have been the case with a large proportion of the Irish girls who present themselves here to be engaged as our servants.
Our household has been reduced for some time past, and I have no maid of my own; and when the nurse is in town I am obliged to forego the usual decency of changing my dress for dinner, from the utter incapacity of my housemaid to fasten it upon my back. Of course, except tolerably faithful washing, dressing, and bodily care, I can expect nothing for my children from my present nurse. She is a very good and pious girl, and though her language is nothing short of heathen Greek, her sentiments are very much those of a good Christian. This same service is a source of considerable daily tribulations, and I wish I only improved all my opportunities of practising patience and forbearance....
F. A. B.
Butler Place, March 25th, 1840.
My dear T——,
I have been reading with infinite interest the case of theAmistad; but understand, from Mrs. Charles Sedgwick, that there is to be an appeal upon the matter. As, however, the result will, I presume, be the same, the more publicity the affair obtains, the more it and all kindred subjects are discussed, spoken of, thought on, and written about, the better for us unfortunate slaveholders.
MR. JAY.I am very much obliged to you for sending me that article on Mr. Jay's book. You know how earnestly I look to every sign of the approaching termination of this national disgrace and individual misfortune; and when men of ability and character conscientiously raise their voices against it, who can be so faint-hearted as not to have faith in its ultimate downfall?
Your very name pledges you in some sort to this cause, and, among your other important duties, let me (who am now involuntarily implicated in this terrible abuse) beg you to remember that this one is an inheritance; and for the sake of those, justly honored, who have bequeathed it to you, discharge it with the ability nature has so bountifullyendowed you with, and you cannot fail to accomplish great good.
In reading your article, I was much reminded of Legget, whose place, it seems to me, there is none but you to fill.
I have just been interrupted by a letter from Elizabeth, confirming the news of your sister's return from Europe. I congratulate you heartily upon the termination of your anxieties about her. Remember me most kindly to her, and to your mother, if my message can be made acceptable to her in her present affliction, and believe me
Ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.
[TheAmistadwas a low raking schooner, conveying between fifty and sixty negroes, fresh from Africa, from Havannah to Guamapah, Port Principe, to the plantation of one of the passengers. The captain and three of the crew were murdered by the negroes. Two planters were spared to navigate the vessel back to Africa. Forced to steer east all day, these white men steered west and north all night; and after two months, coming near New London, the schooner was captured by the United States schoonerWashington, and carried into port, where a trial was held by the Circuit Court at Hertford, transferred to the District Court, and sent by appeal to the United States Supreme Court. The District Court decreed that one man, not of the recent importation, should, by the treaty of 1795 with Spain, be restored to his master; the rest, delivered to the President of the United States, to be by him transported to their homes in Africa.Before the case could come before the United States Supreme Court, the President (Mr. Van Buren), upon the requisition of the Spanish minister, had the negroes conveyed, by the United States schoonerGrampus, back to Havannah and to slavery, under the treaty of 1795.The case created an immense excitement among the friends and foes of slavery. The point made by the counsel for the negroes being that they were not slaves, but free Africans, freshly brought to Cuba, contrary to the latest enacted laws of Spain. The schoonerAmistadstarted on her voyage to Africa in June, 1839, reached New London in August, and was sent back in January, 1840.]
[TheAmistadwas a low raking schooner, conveying between fifty and sixty negroes, fresh from Africa, from Havannah to Guamapah, Port Principe, to the plantation of one of the passengers. The captain and three of the crew were murdered by the negroes. Two planters were spared to navigate the vessel back to Africa. Forced to steer east all day, these white men steered west and north all night; and after two months, coming near New London, the schooner was captured by the United States schoonerWashington, and carried into port, where a trial was held by the Circuit Court at Hertford, transferred to the District Court, and sent by appeal to the United States Supreme Court. The District Court decreed that one man, not of the recent importation, should, by the treaty of 1795 with Spain, be restored to his master; the rest, delivered to the President of the United States, to be by him transported to their homes in Africa.
Before the case could come before the United States Supreme Court, the President (Mr. Van Buren), upon the requisition of the Spanish minister, had the negroes conveyed, by the United States schoonerGrampus, back to Havannah and to slavery, under the treaty of 1795.
The case created an immense excitement among the friends and foes of slavery. The point made by the counsel for the negroes being that they were not slaves, but free Africans, freshly brought to Cuba, contrary to the latest enacted laws of Spain. The schoonerAmistadstarted on her voyage to Africa in June, 1839, reached New London in August, and was sent back in January, 1840.]
Butler Place, April 5th, 1840.
Dearest Harriet,
I have received both your letters concerning Dorothy's health. The one which you sent by theBritish Queencame before one you previously wrote me from Liverpool, and destroyed all the pleasure I should have received from the cheerful spirit in which the latter was written.
I was reading the other evening a sermon of Dr. Channing's, suggested by the miserable destruction of a steamboat with the loss of upwards of a hundred lives; among them, one precious to all who knew him perished, a man who, I think, had few equals, and to whose uncommon character all who ever knew him bear witness.
The fate of so excellent a human being, cut off in the flower of his age, in the midst of a career of uncommon worth and usefulness, inspired Dr. Channing, who was his dear friend, with one of the finest discourses in which Christian faith ever "justified the ways of God to Man."
In reading that eloquent sermon, so full of hope, of trust, of resignation, and rational acknowledgment of the great purposes of sorrow, my thoughts turned to you, dearest Harriet, and dwelt upon your present trial, and on the impending loss of your dear friend. I have not the sermon by me, or I could scarce resist transcribing passages from it; but if you can procure it, do. It was written on the occasion of the burning of the steamboatLexington, and in memory of Dr. Charles Follen.
SORROW, AN APPOINTED EXPERIENCE.One of the views that impressed me most, of those urged by Channing, was that sorrow—however considered by us, individually, as a shocking accident,—in God's providence, was a large part of the appointed experience of existence: no blot, no jar, no sudden violent visitation of wrath; but part of the light, and harmony, and order, of our spiritual education; an essential and invaluable portion of our experience, of infinite importance in our moral training. To all it is decreed to suffer; through our bodies, through our minds, through our affections, through the noblest as well as the lowest of our attributes of being. This then, he argues, which enters so largely into the existence of every living soul, should never be regarded with an eye of terror, as an appalling liability or a fearful unaccountable disturbance in the course of our lives.
I suppose it is the rarefied air our spirits breathe ongreat heights of achievement; as vital to our moral nature as the pure mountain element, which stimulates our lungs, is to our physical being. In sorrow, faithfully borne, the glory and the blessing of holiness become hourly more apparent to us; and it must be good for us to suffer, since our dear Father lays suffering upon us. If we believe one word of what we daily repeat, and profess to believe, of His mercy and goodness, we must needs believe that the pain and grief which enter so largely into His government of and provision for us are all part of His goodness and mercy.... I pray that you, and I, and all, may learn more and more to accept His will, even as His Son, our perfect pattern, accepted it....
J—— B—— has already returned home from the South, weary of the heat, and the oppressivesmell of the orange flowerson Butler's Island....
The tranquillity of my outward circumstances has its counterweight m the excitability of my nature. I think upon the whole, the task and load of life is very equal, its labors and its burdens very equal: they only have real sorrow who make it for themselves, in their own hearts, by their own faults; and they only have real joy who make and keep it there by their own effort....
Katharine Sedgwick writes in great disappointment at your not being in Italy this winter, and so does her niece, my dear little Kate. Those are loving hearts, and most good Christians; they have been like sisters to me in this strange land; I am gratefully attached to them, and long for their return. God bless you, dear. Give my affectionate remembrance to Dorothy, and
Believe me ever yours,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, April 30th, 1840.
My dearest Harriet,
Of course I have begun to die already: which I believe people do as soon as they reach maturity; at any rate, the process begins, I am sure, much earlier, and is much more gradual and uninterrupted, than we suppose or are aware of. Most persons, I think, begin to die at about thirty; some take a longer, and some a shorter time in becoming quite entirely dead, but after that age I do not believe anybody is quite entirely alive.... Still, though somewhat dead (as I have most reason to know), to theeyes of most people I am even now an uncommonly lively woman; and while my soul is at peace, and my spirits cheerful, I am not myself painfully conscious that I am dying.... The treasure of health was mine in perfection, almost for five and twenty years, and I do not see that I should have any right to complain that I no longer possess it as fully as I once did....
You and I have changed places curiously enough, since first we began to hold arguments together; and it seems as strange that you should disparage reason to me, as the chief instrument of education, as that I should be upholding it against your disparagement. The longer I live, the more convinced myreasonis of the goodness and wisdom of God; and from what myreasoncan perceive of these attributes of our Father myfaithderives the surest foundation on which to build perfect trust and confidence, where myreasoncan no longer discern the meaning of my existence, the exact purpose of its several events, and significance of its circumstances. Entire faith in God seems to me entirely reasonable; but, indeed, I have yet had no experience of any dispensations of Divine Providence which at all tried or shook my reason, or disturbed my trust in their unfailing righteousness.
Our reason, above all our other faculties, shows us how little we can know; and it is the very function of reason to perceive how finite, vague, and feeble all our conceptions of the Almighty must be; how utterly futile all our attempts to fathom His purposes, whose ways are assuredly not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts.
THE SPRING RESURRECTION.The spring has come; the mysterious resurrection which with its annually recurring miracle adorns the earth, and makes the heavens above it bright; and even on this uninteresting place, the flush of rosy bloom down in the apple-orchard, the tender green halo above, the golden green atmosphere beneath the trees of the avenue, the smell of the blossoms, the songs of the birds, awaken impressions of delight; and while the senses rejoice, the soul worships. Tulips, and hyacinths, and lilacs, and monthly roses shake about in the soft wind, and scatter their colored petals like jewels among the young vivid verdure. Delicate shadows of delicate leaves lie drawn in quivering tracery on the smooth emerald grass. My garden is a source of pleasure and perpetual occupation to me. Here, where ornamental cultivation is so littleattended to, my small improvements of our small pleasure-ground are repaid, not only by my own enjoyment, but by the admiring commendation of all who knew the place before we came to it; and as within the last two years I have planted upwards of two hundred trees, I begin to feel as if I had really done something in my generation. Good-bye, dear.
I remain ever yours,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, June 7th, 1840.
Thank you, my dear Mrs. Jameson, for your letter of April 4th. It was interesting and amusing enough to have been written by one whose thoughts and feelings were far otherwise free and cheerful than yours could have been when you indited it. I lament the protraction of your father's illness very much, for your mother's sake, and all your sakes. A serious illness at his period of life is not a circumstance to cause surprise; but its long continuance is to be deprecated, no less for the sufferer than those whose health and strength, expended in anxious watching, can leave them but little fortitude to meet the result should it prove fatal. I hope to hear in your next that your mother is relieved from her present painful position, and that your own spirits are more cheerful.
I have not seen even as much as an extract from Leigh Hunt's play [I think called a "Legend of Florence," and founded upon the incident that gave its name to the Via della Morte in the fair city]; but I am very glad he has written one, and hope he will write others: certain elements of his genius are essentially those of an effective dramatist, and surely, if the public can swallow a play of ——'s, it might be brought to taste one of Leigh Hunt's. I dislike everything that —— ever wrote, and think he ought to have been a Frenchman. Can one say worse of a man who is not?...
You ask me if writing plays is not pleasanter and more profitable than reading Gibbon. Certainly, if one only has the mind to do the one instead of the other, which at present I have not.
I have sometimes fancied it was my duty to work out such talent of that kind as was in me; but I have hitherto not felt at all sure that I had any such gift which, you know, would be necessary before I could determine whatwas my duty with regard to it. I never write anything but upon impulse—all my compositions are impromptus; and the species of atmosphere I live in is not favorable to that order of inspiration. The outward sameness of my life; its uniformity of color, level surface, and monotonous tone; its unvaried tenor, alike devoid of pleasurable and painful excitement; its wholesome abundance of daily recurring trivial occupations, and absence of any great or varied interests; its entire isolation from all literary and intellectual society, which might strike the fire from the sleepy stone—all these influences prevail against my writing.
I once thought the material lay within me, but it will probably moulder away forwantof use; and as long as I am neither the worse woman, wife, nor mother for its neglect, I take it it matters very little, and there is no harm done. My serious interest in life is the care of my children, and my principal recreation is my garden; and though I formerly sometimes imagined I had faculties whose exercise might demand a wider sphere, the consciousness that I discharge very imperfectly the obligations of that which I occupy, ought to satisfy me that its homely duties and modest tasks are more than sufficient for my abilities; and though I am not satisfied with myself, I should be with my existence, since, such as it is, it furnishes me with more work than I do as it should be done.
FANNY ELLSLER.From the interest you express in Fanny Ellsler, you will be glad to hear that her success here has been triumphant. I believe the great mass of people always recognize and acknowledge excellence when they see it, though their stupid or ignorant toleration of what is mediocre, or even bad, would seem to indicate the contrary.... The general mind of man is capable of perceiving the most excellent in all things, and prompt to seize it, too, when it meets with it. Even in morals it does so theoretically, however the difficulty of adhering to high standards may make the actions of most people conform but little to their best conceptions of right. The idea of perfection is recognized by the spirit of creatures capable of and destined for perfection in all things, whether great or small; and so (since this isà proposof opera dancing) Fanny Ellsler's performances have been appreciated here to a degree that would astonish thosewho forget that education, though it develops, does not create our finer perceptions, and, moreover, that the finest are commoner than is commonly believed. The possession is almost universal: the cultivation inanydegree worth anything comparatively rare, and in ahighdegree very rare indeed everywhere; and here—well! it does not exist.
I hope we shall see you in England in the autumn; I am using every endeavor not to be sent over alone.... I cannot bear to go to England again a "widow bewitched."
I am ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, June 8th, 1840.
Dearest Harriet,
It is not to you that I apologize for talking over-much about my children, but to myself.... For what said the witty Frenchman of a man's love for wife and child? "Ah! bien c'est de l'égoïsme à trois." ... I hope you will see my children, both them and me, in a very few months; for I think we are coming to England in September, and I shall surely not leave it without borrowing some of your company from you, let you be where you may....
I must go and dress for dinner, hence the brevity of this letter, which pray accept for "the soul of wit."
Did you ever see a humming-bird? Have they them in Italy? We have a honeysuckle hedge here, where the little jewels of creatures stuff themselves incessantly, early and late, sabbaths and week-days, flickering over the sweet bushes of fragrance, like the diamonds of modern fashion set on elastic wires, to make them quiver and increase their sparkle and brilliancy. I should like to have written some more to you.
I am ever your affectionate
F. A. B.
Butler Place, June 28th, 1840.
My dear T——,
Your discoveries in the private character of Sir Samuel Romilly are none to me. I have known those who knew him intimately. My brother was school and college mate of his sons, one of whom I know very well; and their father's character, in all its most endearing aspects, was familiar to me. I think I was once told (not by them,however, of course) that the melancholy induced by the loss of his wife had been the chief cause of his destroying himself, for he was devotedly and passionately attached to her.
We go every night to see Fanny Ellsler; only think what an extraordinary effort of dissipation for me, who hardly ever stir abroad of an evening, and who had almost as much forgotten the inside of a theatre as Falstaff had the inside of a church! My admiration for her grows rather than diminishes, though she is a better actress even than dancer, which I think speaks in favor of her intellect. Did you ever see Taglioni? Who invented and who suggested the expression the "poetry of motion"? It should have beenmadefor her. Her dancing is like nothing but poetic inspiration, and seems as if she was composing while she executed it. I wonder if it is the ballet-master who devises all the steps of these great dancers,—of course, not the national dances, but the inconceivably lovely things that Taglioni does, or whether she orders her own steps, and (given a certain dramatic situation and a certain strain of music) floats or flies, or glides, or gyrates at her own will and pleasure. Did you ever see her in the "Sylphide"? What an exquisite pathetic dream of supernatural sentiment that was! Other dances are as graceful as possible; that woman was grace itself.
I was saying once to my friend, Frederick Rackeman, that Chopin's music made me think of Taglioni's dancing, to which he replied, to my great surprise, that Chopin had said that he had more than once received his inspiration from Taglioni's dancing; a curious instance of influence so strong as to be recognized by one who was perfectly unaware of it. If I remember rightly, Gibson, the sculptor, said that he owed many suggestions to the vigorous and graceful dancing of Cerito; but those, of course, were a suggestion of form to a creator of form, and not an inspiration of exquisite sound gathered from exquisite motion, as in the instance of Taglioni and Chopin.
SUGGESTIONS OF MUSIC.Certain music suggests the waving of trees, as in the Notturno in Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and Schubert's exquisitebeckoningsong of the linden tree.
Certainly dancers deserve to be well paid when one thinks of the mechanical labor, the daily hours ofbattementsandchangements de pieds, and turning, and twisting, and torturing of the limbs before this apparently spontaneous result of mere movement can be obtained.
Ellsler has great dramatic power. Her Tarentelle and Wylie are really finely tragical in parts; but then she had a first-rateheadas well as foot training.
She is a wonderful artist; but there is something unutterably sad to me in the contemplation of such a career. The blending in most unnatural union of the elements of degradation and moral misery with such exquisite perceptions of beauty, grace, and refinement, produces the impression of a sort of monstrosity, a deformity of the whole higher nature, which fills one with poignant compassion and regret. Poor, fair, admired, despised, flattered, forlorn souls!...
Pray come and see us when you can, and
Believe me very truly yours,
F. A. B.
Butler Place, June 26th, 1840.
Dearest Harriet,
Mr. Combe and Cecilia spent the day with us on their way to New York, and I did rejoice to think her pilgrimage was over. She has gone through what her former habits of life must have made a severe experience in travelling in this country. Her affection for her husband, and her devotion to his views, are unbounded, and have helped her to submit to her trial with a cheerfulness and good humor worthy of all praise; for the luxurious comfort of her life in her mother's house was certainly a bad preparation for roughing it, as she has been doing for some months past, for the sake of the phrenologist and his phrenology.... I never knew any one more improved by the blessed discipline of happiness than she appears to be. I am afraid my incapacity to accept the whole of their system would always prevent our being as good friends as we might otherwise with opportunity become. Perhaps, however, as the opportunity is not likely to offer often, it does not much matter....
Saunders, the miniature-painter, of London celebrity, has come out here to look at the pretty faces on this side of the water.... He told me that he had once executed to order a miniature of me, partly from seeing me on the stage, and partly from memory. I knew nothing whateverof this, and think it is one among the many nuisances of being a "public character," or what the American Minister's wife said her position had made her, "Une femme publique," that one's likeness may thus be stolen, and sold or bought by anybody who chooses to traffic in such gear.
I remember my mother telling me of a painful circumstance which had occurred to her from the same cause. A young officer of some distinction, who died in India, left among his effects a miniature of her; and she was disagreeably surprised by receiving from his mother a heartbroken appeal to her, saying that the fact of her son's being in possession of this portrait led her to hope that perhaps my mother might possess one of him, and entreating her, if such were the case, to permit her (his mother) to have a copy of it, as she had no likeness of her son. My mother was obliged to reply that she had no such portrait, and had never known or even heard the name of the gentleman who was in possession of hers....
How many things make one feel as if one's whole life was only a confused dream! Wouldn't it be odd to wake at the end, and find one had not lived at all? Many perhaps will wake at the end, and find it so indeed in one sense,—which brings us back to the more serious aspect of things....
I had some time ago a joint-stock letter from my brother John and his wife, informing me of the birth of their son. I do not think they mentioned who was to be its godmother; but I quite agree with Mrs. Kemble (my Uncle John's widow), as to the inexpediency of undertaking such a sponsorship for any one's child. If it means anything, it means something so serious that I should shrink from such a responsibility; and if it means (as it generally does) nothing, I think it would be better omitted altogether. When I was at home I dissuaded my sister from standing godmother to their little girl; but I do not think any of them understood my motive for doing so....
IRISH GIRLS IN AMERICA.You ask me whether the specimens of Irish order, neatness, and intelligence which came over here to fill our domestic ranks are beyond training. Truly, training is, for the most part, so far beyondthem, that it is no easy matter to simplify even the first rudiments of the science of civilization sufficiently to render them intelligible tothese fair countrywomen of yours. Patience is a fine thing, and might accomplish something, perhaps; but there are insuperable bars to any hope of their progress in the high wages which they can all command at once, whether they ever saw the inside of a decent house before they came to this country or not; the abundance of situations; and the absence of everything like superior competition. The extraordinary comparative prosperity to which these poor ignorant girls are suddenly introduced on their arrival here, the high pay, the profusely plentiful living, theequalitytreatment, which must seem almostqualitytreatment to them, presently make them impertinent and unsteady; and as they can all command a new situation the instant that, for any cause, they leave the one they are in (unfit for the commonest situation in a decent household as they are), it is hardly worth their while, out of a mere abstract love of perfection, to labor at any very great improvement of their powers. A residence of some years in this country generally develops their intelligence into a sort of sharp-sighted calculating shrewdness, which they do not bring with them, but no way improves their own quick native wit and natural national humor. Of course there are exceptions; but the majority of them, after a short stay in America, contrive to combine their own least desirable race qualities with the independent tone of pert familiarity, the careless extravagance, and the passion for dress of American girls of the lower class....
F. A. B.
Butler Place, July 8th 1840.
Perhaps, dearest Harriet, it might be better for me not to come to England, inasmuch as my roots are beginning to spread in my present soil, and to transplant them, even for a short time, might check the process materially.... But while my father still lives, I shall hope to revisit England once in every few years: when he is gone, I will give up all the rest that I own on the other side of the water, and remain here until it might be thought desirable for us to visit, not England only, but Europe; and should that never appear desirable, why, then, remain here till I die.
My father's health received a beneficial stimulus from the excitement of his temporary return to the stage; butbefore that, his condition was by all accounts very unsatisfactory; and I am afraid that when the effect of the impulse his physical powers received from the pleasurable exertion of acting subsides, he may again relapse into feebleness, dejection, and general disorder of the system, from which he appeared to be suffering before he made this last professional effort. Imustsee him once more, and he has written to me to say that as soon as he knows when we are coming to England, he will meet us there. He will, I am pretty sure, bring my sister with him, and this is an additional reason why I am very anxious to be in England this autumn.... I have no doubt that they will both come to England in September, to meet me, and I presume we should remain together until I am obliged to return to America.
THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW.I have not expressed to you, my dearest Harriet, my delight at your relief from immediate anxiety about Dorothy. Sorrow seems to me so peculiarly severe in its administration—or discipline, should I call it?—to your spirit, that I thank God that its heavy pressure is lifted from your heart for the present. Dorothy is one of those with whom I always feel sure that all is well, let their circumstances or situation be what they will; but I rejoice that she is spared physical suffering, and preserved to you, to whom she is so infinitely precious....
F. A. B.
Lenox,August 15th, 1840.
Dearest Harriet,
... You bid me tell you when I shall leave America to pay my promised visit to my father. I have been thrown into a state of complete uncertainty by receiving a letter from my brother John, which informs me of my sister's engagement at Naples and Palermo, and possible further engagements at Malta andConstantinople! Think of her going to sing to the Turks!... I am at present alone here, and of course cannot myself determine the question of my going alone all over the Continent to join my father and Adelaide.... It is possible that I may have to renounce my visit to Europe altogether for the present, and, but for my father, I could do so without a moment's hesitation, but I dread postponing seeing him again, and, while I do so, shall live in a perpetual apprehension that I shallhearof his death as I didof that of my poor mother. I consider the visit I contemplated making him our probable last season of reunion, and cannot banish the thought that if it is indefinitely postponed I may perhaps never see him again....
An intense interest is felt by all good Democrats in the coming election, which determines whether Mr. Van Buren is to retain the Presidency or not; and no zealous member of his party would leave the country while that was undetermined. John writes me, too, that he expects my father and sister both in London after Easter next year, and I have no doubt it will be thought best that I should wait till then to join them in England. However, all my plans must remain for the present in utter uncertainty, and I shall surely not meet you and Emily at Bannisters, which I could well have liked to do....
What lots of umbrellas you must wear out at Grasmere! [Miss S—— and Miss W—— were passing the summer at the English lakes.] I am writing pretty late at night, but if the Sedgwicks, whom you know, and those who, through them, know you, were round me, I should haveshowersof love to send you from them: your rainy lake country suggested that image, but that would be awarmshower, which you don't get in Westmoreland. I am growing very fat, but at the present there is no fatty degeneracy of the heart, so that I still remain
Affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Lenox, Massachusetts, August 28th, 1840.
My dear Lady Dacre,
I have always considered your writing to me a very unmerited kindness towards one who had so little claim on your time and attention; and I need not tell you how much this feeling is increased by your present state of mind, and the effort I am sure it must be to you to remember one so far off, in the midst of your great sorrow [for the death of her daughter, Mrs. Sullivan].... I shall come alone to England; and this is the more dismal, that I have it in prospect to go down to Naples to join my father and sister, and stay with them till her engagements there and at Palermo are ended. This journey (once my vision by day and dream by night) will lose much of its delight by being a solitary pilgrimage to the long-desired Italy. I think of pressing one of my brothers into my service asescort; or if they are not able to go with me, shall write to my father to come to England, as he lately sent me word he would do, at any time that I would meet him there—of course, to return immediately with him to my sister. They will both, I believe, be in England after Easter next year; and then I shall hope to be allowed to see you, my dear Lady Dacre, and express to you how much I have sympathized with you in all you have suffered.