Chapter XXI (4)

_Friday, July 22d._--Long and edifying talk with dear Dall upon my
prospects in marrying. "While you remain single," says she, "and
choose to work, your fortune is an independent and ample one; as
soon as you marry, there's no such thing. Your position in
society," says she, "is both a pleasanter and more distinguished
one than your birth or real station entitles you to; but that also
is the result of your professional exertions, and might, and
probably would, alter for the worse if you left the stage; for,
after all, it is mere frivolous fashionable popularity." I ought to
have got up and made her a courtesy for that. So that it seems I
have fortune and fame (such as it is)--positive real advantages,
which I cannot give with myself, and which I cease to own when I
give myself away, which certainly makes my marrying any one or any
one marrying me rather a solemn consideration; for I lose
everything, and my marryee gains nothing in a worldly point of
view--says she--and it's incontrovertible and not pleasant. So I
took up Dante, and read about devils boiled in pitch, which
refreshed my imagination and cheered my spirits very much.

[How far my ingenious mind was from foreseeing the days when men of high rank and social station would marry singers, dancers, and actresses, and be condescending enough to let their wives continue to earn their bread by public exhibition, and even to appropriate the proceeds of their theatrical labors! I have not yet made up my mind whether, in these cases, the _gentleman_ ought not to take his wife's name in private, as a compensation for her not taking his in public. Poor Miss Paton's noble husband was the only Englishman, that I know of, who committed that act of self-effacement. To go much further back in dramatic and social history, the old, accomplished, mad Earl of Peterborough married the famous singer Anastasia Robinson, and refused to acknowledge the fact till her death. To be sure, this was a more cowardly, but a less dirty meanness. He withheld his name from her, but did not take her money.]

It is settled now that we go to Exeter by coach, and now that we
have given up our pretty sea trip to Ilfracombe, the weather has
become lovely--perverse creature!--but I am glad we are going away
in every way.

_Saturday, Bristol, July 23d._ ... We started at eight, and taking
the whole coach to ourselves as we do, I think traveling by a
public conveyance the best mode of getting over the road. They run
so rapidly; there is so little time lost, and so much trouble with
one's luggage saved. The morning was gray and soft and promised a
fine day, but broke its promise at the end of our second stage, and
began to pelt with rain, which it continued to do the live-long
blessed day. We could see, however, that the country we were
passing through was charming. One or two of the cottages by the
roadside, half-smothered in vine and honeysuckle, reminded me of
Lady Juliana,[B] who, when she said she could live in a desert with
her lover, thought that it was a "sort of place full of roses." ...
These laborers' cottages were certainly the poor dwellings of very
poor people, but there was nothing unsightly, repulsive, or squalid
about them--on the contrary, a look of order, of tidy neatness
about the little houses, that added the peculiarly English element
of comfort and cleanliness to the picturesqueness of their fragrant
festoons of flowery drapery, hung over them by the sweet season.
The little plots of flower-garden one mass of rich color; the tiny
strip of kitchen-garden, well stocked and trimly kept, beside it;
the thriving fruitful orchard stretching round the whole; and
beyond, the rich cultivated land rolling its waving corn-fields,
already tawny and sunburnt, in mellow contrast with the smooth
green pasturages, with their deep-shadowed trees and bordering
lines of ivied hawthorn hedgerows, marking boundary-lines of
division without marring the general prospect--a lovely landscape
that sang aloud of plenty, industry, and thrift. I wonder if any
country is more blessed of God than this precious little England? I
think it is like one of its own fair, nobly blooming, vigorous
women; her temper--that's the climate--not perfection, to be sure
(but, after all, the old praise of it is true; it admits of more
constant and regular out-of-door exercise than any other); the
religion it professes, pure; the morality it practises, pure,
probably by comparison with that of other powerful and wealthy
nations. Oh, I trust that neither reform nor its extreme,
revolution, will have power to injure this healthily, heartily
constituted land....

[B] In Miss Ferrie's novel, "Marriage."

EXETER, July 24th, 1831.
DEAREST H----,

We arrived here last night, or rather evening, at half-past six
o'clock, and I found your letter, which, having waited for me,
shall not wait for my answer....

Thank you for John's translation of the German song, the original
of which I know and like very much. The thoughts it suggested to
you must constantly arise in all of us. I believe that in these
matters I feel all that you do, but not with the same intensity. To
adore is most natural to the mind contemplating beauty, might, and
majesty beyond its own powers; to implore is most natural to the
heart oppressed with suffering, or agitated with hopes that it
cannot accomplish, or fears from which it cannot escape. The
difference between natural and revealed religion is that the one
worships the loveliness and power it perceives, and the other the
goodness, mercy, and truth in which it believes. The one prays for
exemption from pain and enjoyment of happiness for body and mind in
this present existence; the other for deliverance from spiritual
evils, or the possession of spiritual graces, by which the soul is
fitted for that better life toward which it tends....

I do not think "Juliet" has written to you hitherto, and I am
rather affronted at your calling me so. I have little or no
sympathy with, though much compassion for, that Veronese young
person.... There is but one sentiment of hers that I can quote with
entire self-application, and that is--

"I have no joy of this contract to-night;
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden."

In spite of which the foolish child immediately secures her lover's
word, appoints the time for meeting, and makes every arrangement
for following up the declaration she thought too sudden by its as
sudden execution. Poor Juliet! I am very sorry for her, but do not
like to be called after her, and do not think I am like her. I have
been working very hard every day since you left Bristol (my belief
is that Juliet was very idle). I am sorry to say I find my playing
very hard work; but easy work, if there is such a thing, would not
be best for me just now.

Yours ever,
F. A. K.

_Sunday, Exeter._--To church with Dall and my father, a blessing
that I can never enjoy in London, where he is all but stared out of
countenance if he shows his countenance in a church, and it
requires more devotion to the deed than I fear he possesses to
encounter the annoyance attendant upon it. We heard an excellent
sermon, earnest, sober, simple, which I was especially grateful for
on my father's account. Women don't mind bad preaching; they have a
general taste for sermons, and, like children with sweeties, will
swallow bad ones if they cannot get good. "We have a natural turn
for religion," as A.F. said of me; but men, I think, get a not
unnatural turn against it when they hear it ill advocated....

The day has been lovely, and from my perch among the clouds here I
am looking down upon a lovely view. Following the irregular line of
buildings of the street, the eye suddenly becomes embowered in a
thick rich valley of foliage, beyond which a hill rises, whose
sides are covered with ripening corn-fields, meadows of vivid
green, and fields where the rich red color of the earth contrasts
beautifully with the fresh hedgerows and tall, dark elm trees,
whose shadows have stretched themselves for evening rest down in
the low rosy sunset. It is all still and bright, and the Sabbath
bells come up to me over it all with intermitting sweetness, like
snatches of an interrupted angels' chorus, floating hither and
thither about the earth.

_Monday._--We contrived to get some saddle-horses, and rode out
into the beautiful country round Exeter, but the preface to our
poem was rather dry prose. We rode for about an hour between
powdery hedges all smothered in dust, up the steepest of hills, and
under the hottest of suns; but we had our reward when we halted at
the top, and looked down upon a magnificent panorama of land and
water, hill and dale, broad smiling meadows, and dark shadowy
woodland--a vast expanse of various beauty, over which the eye
wandered and paused in slow contentment. As we came leisurely down
the opposite side of the hill, we met a gypsy woman, and I reined
up my horse and listened to my fortune: "I have a friend abroad who
is very fond of me." I hope so. "I have a relation far abroad who
is very fond of me too." I know so. "I shall live long." More is
the pity. "I shall marry and have three children." Quite enough. "I
shall take easily to love, but it will not break my heart." I am
glad to hear that. "I shall cross the sea before I see London
again." Ah! I am afraid not. "The end of my summer will be happier
than its beginning"--and that may very easily be. For that I gave
my prophetess a shilling. Oh, Zingarella! my blessing on your black
eyes and red-brown cheeks! May you have spoken true!...

Meantime, my companions, my father and Mr. Kean, were discussing
the fortunes of Poland. If I were a man, with a hundred thousand
pounds at my disposal, I would raise a regiment and join the Poles.
The Russians have been beaten again, which is good hearing. Is it
possible this cause should fall to the earth? On our way home, had
a nice smooth, long canter by the river-side. We turned off our
road to visit a pretty property of Mr. F----'s, the house half-way
up a hill, prettily seated among pleasant woods. We galloped up
some fields above it to the brow of the rise, and had three
mouthfuls of delicious fresh breeze, and a magnificent view of
Exeter and the surrounding country.... After dinner, off to the
theater; it was my benefit, "The Gamester." The house was very
full, and I played and looked well; but what a Stukely! I was
afraid my eyes would scarcely answer my purpose, but that I should
have been obliged to "employer l'effort de mon bras" to keep him at
a proper distance. What ruffianly wooing! and not one of the actors
knew their parts. Stukely said to me in his love-speech, "Time has
not gathered the roses from your cheeks, though often washed them."
I had heard of Time as the thinner of people's hair, but never as
the washer of their faces.

_Sunday, July 31st._--Went to church, to St. Sidwell's.... We had
another good sermon; that preacher must be a good man, and I should
like to know him....

Our dinner-party this evening was like nothing but a chapter out of
one of Miss Austen's novels. What wonderful books those are! She
must have written down the very conversations she heard _verbatim_,
to have made them so like, which is Irish.... How many things one
ought to die of and doesn't! That dinner did come to an end. In the
drawing-room afterward, in spite of the dreadful heat, two fair
female friends actually divided one chair between them; I expected
to see them run into one every minute, and kept speculating then
which they would be, till the idea fascinated me like a thing in a
nightmare. As we were taking our departure, and had got half way
down the stairs, a general rush was made at us, and an attempt,
upon some pretext, to get us back into that dreadful drawing-room.
I thought of Malebranche hooking the miserable souls that tried to
escape back again into the boiling pitch. But we got away and safe
home, and leave Exeter to-morrow.

EXETER, July 31, 1831.
DEAREST H----,

I am content to be whatever does not militate against your
affection for me.... I had a long letter from dear A----, a day
ago, from Weybridge. She is quite well, and says my mother is as
happy as the day is long, now she is once more in her beloved
haunts. I love Weybridge too very much.... It seems to me that
memory is the special organ of pain, for even when it recalls our
pleasures, it recalls only the past, and half their sweetness
becomes bitter in the process. I have a tenacious and acute memory,
and, as the phrenologists affirm, no hope, and feel disposed to
lament that, not having both, I have either. The one seems the
necessary counterpoise of the other; the one is the source of most
of the pain, as the other is of most of the pleasure, which we
derive from the things that are not; and I feel daily more and more
my deficiency in the more cheerful attribute....

You have been to the Opera, and seen what even one's imagination
does not shrug its shoulders at; I mean Madame Pasta. I admire her
perfectly, and she seems to me perfect. How I wish I had been with
you! And yet I cannot fancy you in the Opera House; it is a sort of
atmosphere that I find it difficult to think of your breathing....
I wish you had not asked me to write verses for you upon that
picture of Haydon's "Bonaparte at St. Helena." Of course, I know it
familiarly through the engraving, and, in spite of its sunshine,
what a shudder and chill it sends to one's heart! It is very
striking, but I have neither the strength nor concentrativeness
requisite for writing upon it. The simplicity of its effect is what
makes it so fine; and any poetry written upon it would probably
fail to be as simple, and therefore as powerful, as itself. I
cannot even promise you to attempt it, but if ever I fall in with a
suitable frame of mind for so bold an experiment, I will remember
you and the rocks of St. Helena. "My lady" (an Italian portrait on
which I had written some verses) "Mia Donna," or "Madonna," more
properly to speak, was a most beautiful Italian portrait that I
saw, not in Augustin's gallery, but in a small collection of
pictures belonging to Mr. Day, and exhibited at the Egyptian Hall.
Sir Thomas Lawrence told me when I described it to him, that he
thought it was a painting of Giordano's. It was a lovely face, not
youthful in its character of beauty; there is a calm seriousness
about the brow and forehead, a clear, intellectual severity about
the eye, and a sweet, still placidity round the mouth, that united,
to my fancy, all the elements of beauty, physical, mental, and
moral. What an incomparable friend that woman must have been! Why
is it that we rejoice that a soul fit for heaven is constrained to
tarry here, but that, in truth, the fittest for this is also the
fittest for that life? For it seems to me more natural not to wish
to detain the bright spirit from its brighter home, and not to
sorrow at the decree which calls it hence to perfect its excellence
in higher spheres of duty....

I think a blight of uncertainty must have pervaded the atmosphere
when I was born, and penetrated, not certainly my nature, but my
whole earthly destiny, with its influence; from my plans and
projects for to-morrow on to those of next year, all is mist and
indistinct indecision. I suppose it is the trial that suits my
temper least, and therefore fits it best. It surely is that which
"willfulness, conceit, and egotism" find hardest to endure.
Yesterday I determined so far to escape from, or cheat, my destiny
as to have a peep into futurity by the help of a gypsy. Riding with
my father, and the whole hour, time, day, and scene, were in
admirable harmony: the dark, sunburnt face, with its bright,
laughing eyes and coal-black curls and flashing teeth; the old
gateway against which she was leaning; the blue summer sky and
sunny road skirted with golden corn-fields--the whole picture in
which she was set was charming.

"I know it is a sin to be a mocker;"

and I am sure I need not tell you that I am sincerely grateful for
all the kindness and civility that is bestowed upon us wherever we
go.... What with riding, rehearsing, and acting, my days are
completely filled. We start for Plymouth to-morrow at eight, and
act "Romeo and Juliet" in the evening, which is rather laborious
work. We play there every night next week. When next I write I will
tell you of our further plans, which are at this moment still
uncertain....

Affectionately yours,
F. A. K.

[These were the days before railroads had run everything and everybody up to London. There were still to be found then, in various parts of England, life that was peculiar and provincial, and manners that had in them a character of their own and a stamp of originality that had often quite as much to attract as to repel. Men and women are, of course, still the same that sat to that enchanting painter, Jane Austen, but the whole form and color and outward framing and various countenance of their lives have merged its distinctiveness in a commonplace conformity to universal custom; and in regard to the more superficial subjects of her fine and gentle satire, if she were to return among us she would find half her occupation gone.]

_Monday, August 1st._--I got some books while waiting for the
coach, and we started at half-past eight. The heat was intolerable
and the dust suffocating, but the country through which we passed
was lovely. For a long time we drove along the brow of a steep
hill. The valley was all glorious with the harvest: corn-fields
with the red-gold billows yet untouched by the sickle; others full
of sunburnt reapers sweeping down the ripe ears; others, again,
silent and deserted, with the tawny sheaves standing, bound and
dry, upon the bristling stubble, on the ground over which they
rippled and nodded yesterday, a great rolling sea of burnished
grain. All over the sunny landscape peace and prosperity smiled,
and gray-steepled churches and red-roofed villages, embowered in
thick protecting shade, seemed to beckon the eye to rest as it
wandered over the charming prospect. The white-walled mansions of
the lords of the land glittered from the verdant shelter of their
surrounding plantations, and the thirsty cattle, beautiful in color
and in grouping, stood in pools in the deeper parts of the brooks,
where some giant tree threw its shadow over the water and the
smooth sheltered sward round its feet. In spite of this charming
prospect I was very sad, and the purple heather bordering the road,
with its thick tufts, kept suggesting Weybridge and the hours I had
lately spent there so happily.... To shake myself I took up "Adam
Blair;" and, good gracious! what a shaking it did give me! What a
horrible book! And how could D---- have recommended me to read it?
It is a very fine and powerful piece of work, no doubt; but I
turned from it with infinite relief to "Quentin Durward." Walter
Scott is quite exciting enough for wholesome pleasure; there is no
poison in anything that he has ever written: for how many hours of
harmless happiness the world may bless him!

At Totnes we got out of the coach to shake ourselves, for we were
absolute dust-heaps, and then resumed our powdery way, and reached
Plymouth at about four o'clock. As we walked up toward our
lodgings, we were met by Mr. Brunton, with the pleasing
intelligence that those we had bespoken had been let, by some
mistake, to another family. Dusty, dreary, and disconsolate, I sat
down on the stairs which were to have been ours, while Dall
upbraided the hostess of the house, and my father did what was more
to the purpose--posted off to find other apartments for us; no easy
matter, for the town is crammed to overflowing. In the mean time a
little blue-eyed fairy, of about two years old, came and made
friends with me, and I presently had her fast asleep in my lap.
After carrying my prize into an empty room, and sitting by it for
nearly half an hour while it slept the sleep of the blessed, I was
called away from this very new interest, for my father had
succeeded in finding house-room for us, and I had yet all my
preparations to make for the evening.

The theater is a beautiful building for its purpose, of a perfectly
discreet size, neither too large nor too small, of a very elegant
shape, and capitally constructed for the voice. The house was very
_full_; the play, "Romeo and Juliet." I played abominably ill, and
did not like my audience, who must have been very good-natured if
they liked me.

_Tuesday, August 2d._--Rose at seven, and went off down to the sea,
and that was delightful. In the evening the play was "Venice
Preserved." I acted very well, notwithstanding that I had to prompt
my Jaffier through every scene, not only as to words, but position
on the stage, and "business," as it is called. How unprincipled and
ungentlemanlike this is! The house was very fine, and a pleasanter
audience than the first night. Found a letter from Mrs. Jameson
after the play, with an account of Pasta's "Anna Bolena." How I
wish I could see it!

_Wednesday, August 3d._--Rose at seven, and went down to the sea to
bathe. The tide was out, and I had to wait till the nymphs had
filled my bath-tub.... At the theater in the evening, the play was
"The Stranger." The house not so good as last night, and the
audience were disagreeably noisy....

_Thursday, August 4th._--They will not let me take my sea-bath
every morning; they say it makes me too weak. Do they mean in the
head, I wonder?... "Let the sanguine then take warning, and the
disheartened take courage, for to every hope and every fear, to
every joy and every sorrow, there comes a last day," which is but a
didactic form of dear Mademoiselle Descuillier's conjuring of our
impatiences: "Cela viendra, ma chère, cela viendra, car tout vient
dans ce monde; cela passera, ma chère, cela passera, car tout passe
dans ce monde." ... I finished my drawing, and copied some of "The
Star of Seville." I wonder if it will ever be acted? I think I
should like to see a play of mine acted. In the evening at the
theater, the play was "Isabella." The house was very full, and I
played well. The wretched manager will not afford us a green baize
for our tragedies, and we faint and fall and die upon bare boards,
and my unhappy elbows are bruised black and blue with their
carpetless stage, barbarians that they be!

_Friday, August 5th._--Down to the sea at seven o'clock; the tide
was far out, the lead-colored strand, without its bright
foam-fringes, looked bleak and dreary; it was not expected to be
batheable till eleven, and as I had not breakfasted, I could not
wait till then. Lingered on the shore, as Tom Tug says, thinking of
nothing at all, but inhaling the fresh air and delicious sea-smell.
I stood and watched a party of pleasure put off from the shore,
consisting of a basket of fuel, two baskets of provisions, a
cross-looking, thin, withered, bony woman, wrapped in a large
shawl, and with boots thick enough to have kept her dry if she had
walked through the sea from Plymouth to Mount Edgecombe. Her
_tête-à-tête_ companion was a short, thick, squat, stumpy, dumpy,
dumpling of a man, in a round jacket, and very tight striped
trousers. "Sure such a pair were never seen." The sour she, stepped
into their small boat first, but as soon as her fat playfellow
seated himself by her, the poor little cockle-shell dipped so with
the increased weight that the tail of the cross-shawl hung deep in
the water. I called after them, and they rectified the accident
without sending me back a "Thank you." I love the manners of my
country-folk, they are so unsophisticated with civility.

At the theater the play was "The Gamester," for my benefit, and the
house was very fine. My father played magnificently; I "not even
excellent well, but only so-so." The actors none of them knew their
parts, abominable persons; and as for Stukely--well! Mdlle.
Dumesnil, in her great, furious scene in Hermione, ended her
imprecations against Orestes by spitting in her handkerchief and
throwing it in his face. The handkerchief spoils the frenzy. I
wonder if it ever occurred to Mrs. Siddons so to wind up her abuse
of Austria in "King John." By the by, it was when asked to give his
opinion of the comparative merits of Clairon and Dumesnil, that
Garrick said, "Mdlle. Clairon was the greatest actress of the age,
but that for Mdlle. Dumesnil he was not aware that he had seen her,
but only Phedre, Rodogund, and Hermione, when she did them." After
the play the audience clamored for my father. He thought that
"l'envie leur en passerait;" and not being in a very good humor, he
declined appearing. The uproar went on, the overture to the farce
was inaudible, and the curtain drew up amid the deafening shouts of
"Kemble! Kemble!"--they would not suffer the poor _farçeurs_ to go
on, even in dumb show. I was at the side scene, and thought it
really a pity not to put an end to all the fuss; so I went to my
father, who was standing at the stage door in the street, and
requested him to stop the disturbance by coming forward at once. He
turned round, and without saying anything but "Tu me le
conseilles," walked straight upon the stage, and addressed the
audience as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen, I had left the theater
when word was brought to me that you had done me the honor to call
for me; as I conclude you have done so merely in conformity to a
custom which is becoming the fashion of calling for certain
performers after the play, I can only say, ladies and gentlemen,
that I enter my protest against such a custom. It is a foreign
fashion, and we are Englishmen; therefore I protest against it. I
will take my leave of you by parodying Mercutio's words: Ladies and
gentlemen, _bon soir_; there's a French salutation for you." So
saying he walked off the stage, leaving the audience rather
surprised; and so was I. I think he is laboring under an incipient
bilious attack.

We had a long discussion to-day as to the possibility of women
being good dramatic writers. I think it so impossible that I
actually believe their physical organization is against it; and,
after all, it is great nonsense saying that intellect is of no sex.
The brain is, of course, of the same sex as the rest of the
creature; besides, the original feminine nature, the whole of our
training and education, our inevitable ignorance of common life and
general human nature, and the various experience of existence, from
which we are debarred with the most sedulous care, is insuperably
against it. Perhaps some of the manly, wicked Queens Semiramis,
Cleopatra, could have written plays; but they lived their tragedies
instead of writing them.

_Saturday, August 6th._--After breakfast our excellent architect
came to fetch us for our expedition to the breakwater. My father
complained of being dreadfully bilious, a bad preparation for the
purpose. I wanted to stay at home with him, or at all events to put
off the party for an hour or two; but he would not hear of either
plan. So as soon as I was ready we set off. We walked first to the
M----s', and then proceeded in a body to the shore, where a
Government boat was waiting for us; and what a cargo we were, to be
sure! My father, certainly no feather; our worthy friend, who must
weigh eighteen stone, if a pound; Mr. and Mrs. W----, thinnish
bodies; but her friend, Dall, and myself decidedly thickish ones;
then the pilot, a gaunt, square Scotchman; and four stout sailors.
The gallant little craft courtesied and courtesied as she received
us, one by one, and at length, when we were all fairly and pretty
closely packed, she put off, and breasted the water bravely, rising
and dancing on the back of the waves like a dolphin. I should have
enjoyed it but for my father's ghastly face of utter misery. The
day was dull, the sky and sea lead-colored, the brown coast by
degrees lost its distinctness, and became covered with a dark haze
that seemed to blend everything into a still, stony, threatening
iron-gray mass. The wind rose, the sea became inky black and
swelled into heavy ridges, which made our little vessel dip deep
and spring high, as she toiled forward; and then down came the
rain--such tremendous rain! Cloaks, shawls, and umbrellas were
speedily produced; but we were two miles from shore, between the
rising sea and the falling clouds, sick, wet, squeezed. Oh the
delights of that party of pleasure! My father looked cadaverous,
Dall was portentously silent, I shut my eyes and tried to sleep,
being in that state when to see, or hear, or speak, or be spoken
to, is equally fatal. At length we reached the foot of the
breakwater, and I sprang out of the boat, too happy to touch the
stable rock. The rain literally fell in sheets from the sky, and
the wind blew half a hurricane; but I was on firm ground, and
taking off my bonnet, which only served the purpose of a
water-spout down my back, I ran, while Mr. M----, holding my arm,
strode along the mighty water-based road, while the angry sea,
turning up black caldrons full of boiling foam, dashed them upon
the barrier man has raised against its fury in magnificent, solemn
wrath. This breakwater is a noble work; the daring of the
conception, its vast size and strength, and the utility of its
purpose, are alike admirable. We do these things and die; we ride
upon the air and water, we guide the lightning and we bridle the
sea, we borrow the swiftness of the wind and the fine subtlety of
the fire; we lord it in this universe of ours for a day, and then
our bodies are devoured by these material slaves we have
controlled, and helplessly mingle their dust with the elements that
have obeyed our will, who reabsorb the garment of our soul when
that has fled--whither?

The rain continuing to fall in torrents, and my father being
wretchedly unwell, we gave up our purpose of visiting Mount
Edgecombe, and returned to Plymouth. The sea was horribly rough,
even inside the breakwater; but I shut my eyes that I might not see
how we heaved, and sang that I might not think how sick I was: and
so we reached shore, and I ran up and down the steep beach while
the rest were disembarking, and the wind soon dried my light muslin
clothes. The other poor things continued drenched till we reached
home. After a good rest, we went to our dinner at Mr. W----'s; my
father was all right again, and our party, that had separated in
such dismal plight, met again very pleasantly in the evening. Mr.
W---- got quite tipsy with talking, an accident not uncommon with
eager, excitable men, and all but overwhelmed me with an argument
about dramatic writing, in which he was wrong from beginning to
end.... We leave Plymouth to-morrow.

_Sunday, August 7th._--Started for Exeter at seven, and slept
nearly the whole way by little bits; between each nap getting
glimpses of the pleasant land that blended for a moment with my
hazy, dream-like thoughts, and then faded away before my closing
eyes. One patch of moorland that I woke to see was lovely--all
purple heather and golden gorse; nature's royal mantle thrown, it
is true, over a barren soil, whose gray, cold, rifted ridges of
rock contrasted beautifully with its splendid clothing. We got to
Exeter at two o'clock, and I was thankful to rest the rest of the
day.

_Monday, August 8th._--I read old Biagio's preface to Dante, which,
from its amazing classicality, is almost as difficult as the
crabbed old Florentine's own writing. Worked at a rather elaborate
sketch tolerably successfully, and was charmingly interrupted by
having our landlady's pretty little child brought in to me. She is
a beautiful baby, but will be troublesome enough by and by.... At
the theater the house was very good; I played tolerably well upon
the whole, but felt so fagged and faint toward the end of the play
that I could hardly stand.

_Tuesday, August 9th._--I sometimes wish I was a stone, a tree,
some senseless, soulless, irresponsible thing; that ebbing sea
rolling before me, its restlessness is obedience to the law of its
nature, not striving against it, neither is it "the miserable life
in it" urging it to ceaseless turmoil and agitation. We dined
early, and then started for Dorchester, which we reached at
half-past ten, after a most fatiguing journey. It was a still, gray
day, an atmosphere and light I like; there is a clearness about it
that is pleasanter sometimes than the dazzle of sunshine. Some of
the country we drove through was charming, particularly the vale of
Honiton.... I have an immense bedroom here; a whole army of ghosts
might lodge in it. I hope, if there are any, they will be civil,
well-behaved, and, above all, invisible.

_Wednesday, August 10th._ ... At ten o'clock we started for
Weymouth, where we arrived in the course of an hour, and found it
basking on the edge of a lovely summer sea, with a dozen varying
zones of color streaking its rippling surface; from the deep, dark
purple heaving against the horizon to the delicate pearl-edged,
glassy golden-green that spreads its transparent sheets over the
sparkling sand of the beach. The bold chalky cliffs of the shore
send back the burning sunlight with blinding brightness, and
stretch away as far as eye can follow in hazy outlines, that
glimmer faintly through the shimmering mist. It is all very
beautiful.... I got ready my things for the theater, ... and when I
got there I was amused and amazed at its absurdly small
proportions; it is a perfect doll's playhouse, and until I saw that
my father really could stand upon the stage, I thought that I
should fill it entirely by myself. How well I remember all the
droll stories my mother used to tell about old King George III. and
Queen Charlotte, who had a passion for Weymouth, and used to come
to the funny little theater here constantly; and how the princesses
used to dress her out in their own finery for some of her parts. [I
long possessed a very perfect coral necklace of magnificent single
beads given to my mother on one of these occasions by the Princess
Amelia.] The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and our masquerade scene
was in the height of the modern fashion, for there was literally
not room to stir; and what between my nurse and my father I
suffered very nearly total eclipse, besides much danger of being
knocked down each time either of them moved. In the balcony,
besides me, there was a cloud, which occasionally interfered with
my hair, and I think must have made my face appear to the audience
like a chin and mouth speaking out of the sky. To be sure, this
inconvenient scenic decoration made rather more appropriate the
lines which Shakespeare wrote (only unfortunately Romeo never
speaks them), "Two of the stars," etc. I acted very well, but was
so dreadfully tired at the end of the play that they were obliged
to carry me up to my dressing-room, where I all but fainted away;
in spite of which, as I got out of the carriage at the door of our
lodging, hearing the dear voice of the sea calling me, I tried to
persuade Dall to come down to it with me; but she, thinking I had
had enough of emotion and exertion, made me go in and eat my supper
and go to bed, which was detestable on her part, and so I told her,
which she didn't mind in the least.

_Thursday, August 11th._--A kind and courteous and most courtly old
Mr. M---- called upon us, to entreat that we would dine with him
during our stay in Weymouth; but it is really impossible, with all
our hard work, to do society duty too, so I begged permission to
decline. After he was gone we walked down to the pier, and took
boat and rowed to Portland. The sky was cloudless, and the sea
without a wave, and through its dark-blue transparent roofing we
saw clearly the bottom, one forest of soft, undulating weeds,
which, catching the sunlight through the crystal-clear water,
looked like golden woods of some enchanted world within its depths;
and it looks just as weird and lovely when folks go drowning down
there, only they don't see it. I sang Mrs. Hemans's "What hid'st
thou in thy treasure-caves and cells?" and sang and sang till,
after rowing for an hour over the hardly heaving, smooth surface,
we reached the foot of the barren stone called Portland. We landed,
and Dall remained on the beach while my father and I toiled up the
steep ascent. The sun's rays fell perpendicularly on our heads, the
short, close grass which clothed the burning, stony soil was as
slippery as glass with the heat, and I have seldom had a harder
piece of exercise than climbing that rock, from the summit of which
one wide expanse of dazzling water and glaring white cliffs, that
scorched one's eyeballs, was all we had for our reward. To be sure,
exertion is a pleasure in itself, and when one's strength serves
one's courage, the greater the exertion the greater the pleasure.
We saw below us a railroad cut in the rock to convey the huge
masses of stone from the famous quarries down to the shore. The
descent looked almost vertical, and we watched two immense loads go
slowly down by means of a huge cylinder and chains, which looked as
if the world might hang upon them in safety. I lay down on the
summit of the rock while my father went off exploring further, and
the perfect stillness of the solitude was like a spell. There was
not a sound of life but the low, drowsy humming of the bees in the
stone-rooted tufts of fragrant thyme. On our return we had to run
down the steep, slippery slopes, striking our feet hard to the
earth to avoid falling; firm walking footing there was none. When
we joined Dall we found, to our utter dismay, that it was five
o'clock; we bundled ourselves _pêle-mêle_ into the boat and bade
the boatman row, row, for dear life; but while we were indulging in
the picturesque he had been indulging in fourpenny, which made him
very talkative, and his tongue went faster than his arms. I longed
for John to make our boat fly over the smooth, burnished sea; the
oars came out of the water like long bars of diamond dropping gold.
We touched shore just at six, swallowed three mouthfuls of dinner,
and off to the theater. The play was "Venice Preserved." I dressed
as quick as lightning, and was ready in time. The house was not
very good, and I am sure I should have wondered if it had been,
when the moon is just rising over the fresh tide that is filling
the basin, and a delicious salt breeze blows along the beach, and
the stars are lighting their lamps in heaven; and surely nobody but
those who cannot help it would be breathing the gas and smoke and
vile atmosphere of the playhouse. I played well, and when we came
home ran down and stood a few minutes by the sea; but the moon had
set, and the dark palpitating water only reflected the long line of
lights from the houses all along the curving shore.

_Friday, August 12th, Portsmouth._-- ... The hotel where we are
staying is quite a fine house, and the Assembly balls used to be
held here, and so there is a fine large "dancing-hall deserted" of
which I avail myself as a music-room, having entire and solitary
possession of it and a piano.... At the theater the house was good,
and I played well....

_Monday, August 15th, Southampton._--After breakfast practised till
eleven, and then went to rehearsal; after which Emily Fitzhugh came
for me, and we drove out to Bannisters. Poor Mrs. Fitzhugh was
quite overcome at seeing my father, whom she has not seen since
Mrs. Siddons's death; we left her with him to talk over Campbell's
application to her for my aunt's letters. He has behaved badly
about the whole business, and I hope Mrs. Fitzhugh will not let him
have them.... When we came in I went and looked at Lawrence's
picture of my aunt in the dining-room (now in the National Gallery;
it was painted for Mrs. Fitzhugh). It is a fine rich piece of
coloring, but there is a want of ease and grace in the figure, and
of life in the countenance, and altogether I thought it looked like
a handsome dark cow in a coral necklace. O ox-eyed Juno! forgive
the thought.... At the theater the house was good; the play was
"Romeo and Juliet," and I played well. While I was changing my
dress for the tomb scene--putting on my grave-clothes, in fact--I
had desired my door to be shut, for I hate that lugubrious
funeral-dirge. How I do hate, and have always hated, that stage
funeral business, which I never see without a cold shudder at its
awful unfitness. I can't conceive how that death's pageant was ever
tolerated in a theater. [I think Mrs. Bellamy, in her "Memoirs,"
mentions that it was first introduced as a piece of new sensation
when she and Garrick were dividing the town with the efforts of
their rival managership.] At present the pretext for it is to give
the necessary time for setting the churchyard scene and for Juliet
to change her dress, which she has no business to do according to
the text, for it expressly says that she shall be buried in all her
finest attire, according to her country's custom. In spite of which
I was always arrayed in long white muslin draperies and veils, with
my head bound up, corpse fashion, and lying, as my aunt had
stretched me, on the black bier in the vault, with all my white
folds drawn like carved stone robes along my figure and round my
feet, with my hands folded and my eyes shut. I have had some bad
nervous minutes, sometimes fancying, "Suppose I should really die
while I am lying here, making believe to be dead!" and imagining
the surprise and dismay of my Romeo when I didn't get up; and at
others fighting hard against heavy drowsiness of over-fatigue, lest
I should be fast asleep, if not dead, when it came to my turn to
speak--though I might have depended upon the furious bursting open
of the doors of the vault for my timely waking. Talking over this
with Mrs. Fitzhugh one day she told me a comical incident of the
stage life of her friend, the fascinating Miss Farren. The devotion
of the Earl of Derby to her, which preceded for a long time the
death of Lady Derby, from whom he was separated, and his marriage
to Miss Farren, made him a frequent visitor behind the scenes on
the nights of her performance. One evening, in the famous scene in
Joseph Surface's library in "The School for Scandal," when Lady
Teazle is imprisoned behind the screen, Miss Farren, fatigued with
standing, and chilled with the dreadful draughts of the stage, had
sent for an armchair and her furs, and when this critical moment
arrived, and the screen was overturned, she was revealed, in her
sable muff and tippet, entirely absorbed in an eager conversation
with Lord Derby, who was leaning over the back of her chair.

_Tuesday, 16th, Southampton._--After breakfast walked down to the
city wall, which has remnants of great antiquity they say, as old
as the Danes, one bit being still heroically called "Canute's
Castle."

_Wednesday, August 17th._--Went to the theater, and rehearsed "The
Stranger." On my return found Emily waiting for me, and drove with
her to Bannisters.... In the evening, at the theater, the house was
very good, but I played only so-so, and not at all excellent
well....

_Thursday, August 18th._--While I was practising I came across that
pretty piece of ballad pathos, "The Banks of Allan Water," and sang
myself into sobbing. Luckily I was interrupted by Dall and my
father, who came in with a little girl, poor unfortunate! whose
father had brought her to show how well she deserved an engagement
at Covent Garden. She sat down to the piano at his desire, and
panted through the great cavatina in the "Gazza Ladra." Poor little
thing! I never heard or saw anything that so thoroughly impressed
me with the brutal ignorance of our people; for there is scarcely
an Englishman of that man's condition, situated as he is, who would
not have done the same thing. A child of barely ten years old made
to sing her lungs away for four hours every day, when it is not
possible yet to know what the character and qualities of her voice
will be, or even if she will have any voice at all. Wasting her
health and strength in attempting "The Soldier Tired" and "Di
piacer," it really was pitiful. We gave her plenty of kind words
and compliments, and sundry pieces of advice to him, which he will
not take, and in a few months no doubt we shall hear of little Miss
H---- singing away as a prodigy, and in a few years the voice,
health, and strength will all be gone, and probably the poor little
life itself have been worn out of its fragile case. Stupid
barbarian! After rehearsal drove to Bannisters.... In the evening,
at the theater, the play was "The Provoked Husband." The house was
very full; I played fairly well. I was rather tired, and Lady
Townley's bones ached, for I had been taking a rowing lesson from
Emily, and supplied my want of skill, tyro fashion, with a deal of
unnecessary effort.

_Friday, August 19th._-- ... It sometimes occurs to me that our
spirits, when dwelling with the utmost intensity of longing upon
those who are distant from us, must create in them some perception,
some consciousness of our spiritual presence, so that not by the
absent whom I love thinking of me, but by my thinking of them, they
must receive some intimation of the vividness with which my soul
sees and feels them. It seems to me as if my earnest desire and
thought must not bring those they dwell on to me, but render me in
some way perceptible, if not absolutely visible, to them.

"Though thou see me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye."

I fancy I must create my own image to their senses by the clinging
passion with which my thoughts dwell on them. And yet it would be
rather fearful if one were thus subject, not only to the disordered
action of one's own imagination, but to the ungoverned imaginations
of others; and so, upon the whole, I don't believe people would be
allowed to pester other people with their presence only by dint of
thinking hard enough and long enough about them. It would be
intolerable, and yet I have sometimes fancied I was thinking myself
visible to some one.... In the evening, at the theater, the house
was very good; the play was "The Gamester," and I played very ill.
I felt fagged to death; my work tires me, and I am growing old.

_Saturday, 20th._--At Bannisters all the morning. Emily gave me two
charming Italian songlets, and then they drove us down to
Southampton. At the theater this evening the house was all but
empty, owing to some stupid blunder in the advertisement. The play
was "The School for Scandal," and I played well.... To-morrow I
shall be at home once more in smoky London.

SOUTHAMPTON, August 19, 1831.
MY DEAREST H----,

I do not like to defer answering you any longer, though I am not
very fit to write, for I am half blind with crying, and have a
torturing side-ache, the results of bodily fatigue and nervous
anxiety; but if I do not write to you to-night I know not when I
shall be able to do so, for I shall have to rehearse every morning
and to act every night, and I expect the intermediate hours will be
spent on the road to and from Bannisters, the Fitzhughs' place near
here. I have been traveling ever since half-past eight to-day, and,
have hardly been three hours out of the coach which brought us from
Weymouth, where we have been acting for the last week. Your letter
followed me from Plymouth, and right glad I was to get it.... I do
not know what I can write you of if not myself, and I dare say,
after all, my thoughts are more amusing to you, or rather, perhaps,
more useful, in your processes of observing and studying human
nature in general, through my individual case, than if I wrote you
word what plays we had been acting, etc., etc.... To meet pain, no
matter how severe, the mind girds up its loins, and finds a sort of
strength of resistance in its endurance, which is a species of
activity. To endure helplessly prolonged suspense is another matter
quite, and a far heavier demand upon all patient power than is in
one....