Chapter XXI (5)

So you have seen the railroad; I am so glad you have seen that
magnificent invention. I wish I had been on it with you. I wish you
had seen Stephenson; you would have delighted in him, I am sure.
The hope of meeting him again is one of the greatest pleasures
Liverpool holds out to me.... With regard to what are called "fine
people," and liking their society better than that of "not fine
people," I suppose a good many tolerable reasons might be adduced
by persons who have that preference. They do not often say very
wise or very witty things, I dare say; but neither do they tread on
one's feet or poke their elbows into one's side (figuratively
speaking) in their conversation, or commit the numerous solecisms
of manner of less well-bred people. For myself, my social position
does not entitle me to mix with the superior class of human beings
generally designated as "fine people." My father's indolence
renders their society an irksome exertion to him, and my mother's
pride always induces her to hang back rather than to make advances
to anybody. We are none of us, therefore, inclined to be very keen
tuft-hunters. But for these very reasons, if "fine people" seek me,
it is a decided compliment, by which my vanity is flattered. A
person with less of that quality might be quite indifferent to
their notice, but I think their society, as far as I have had any
opportunity of observing it, has certain positive merits, which
attract me irrespectively of the gratification of my vanity. Genius
and pre-eminent power of intellect, of course, belong to no class,
and one would naturally prefer the society of any individual who
possessed these to that of the King of England (who, by the by, is
not, I believe, particularly brilliant). I would rather pass a day
with Stephenson than with Lord Alvanley, though the one is a
coal-digger by birth, who occasionally murders the king's English,
and the other is the keenest wit and one of the finest gentlemen
about town. But Stephenson's attributes of genius, industry, mental
power, and perseverance are his individually, while Lord Alvanley's
gifts and graces (his wit, indeed, excepted) are, in good measure,
those of his whole social set. Moreover, in the common superficial
intercourse of society, the minds and morals of those you meet are
really not what you come in contact with half the time, while from
their manners there is, of course, no escape; and therefore those
persons may well be preferred as temporary associates whose manners
are most refined, easy, and unconstrained, as I think those of
so-called "fine people" are. Originality and power of intellect
belong to no class, but with information, cultivation, and the
mental advantages derived from education, "fine people" are perhaps
rather better endowed, as a class, than others. Their lavish means
for obtaining instruction, and their facilities for traveling, if
they are but moderately endowed by nature and moderately inclined
to profit by them, certainly enable them to see, hear, and know
more of the surface of things than others. This is, no doubt, a
merely superficial superiority; but I suppose that there are not
many people, and certainly no class of people, high, low, or of any
degree, who go much below surfaces.... If you knew how, long after
I have passed it, the color of a tuft of heather, or the smell of a
branch of honeysuckle by the roadside, haunts my imagination, and
how many suggestions of beauty and sensations of pleasure flow from
this small spring of memory, even after the lapse of weeks and
months, you would understand what I am going to say, which perhaps
may appear rather absurd without such a knowledge of my
impressions. I think I like fine places better than "fine people;"
but then one accepts, as it were, the latter for the former, and
the effect of the one, to a certain degree, affects one's
impressions of the other. A great ball at Devonshire House, for
instance, with its splendor, its brilliancy, its beauty, and
magnificence of all sorts, remains in one's mind with the
enchantment of a live chapter of the "Arabian Nights;" and I think
one's imagination is still more impressed with the fine residences
of "fine people" in the country, where historical and poetical
associations combine with all the refinements of luxurious
civilization and all the most exquisitely cultivated beauties of
nature to produce an effect which, to a certain degree, frames
their possessors to great advantage, and invests them with a charm
which is really not theirs; and if they are only tolerably in
harmony with the places where they live, they appear charming too.
I believe the pleasure and delight I take in the music, the lights,
the wreaths, and mirrors of a splendid ball-room, and the love I
have for the smooth lawns, bright waters, and lordly oaks of a fine
domain, would disgracefully influence my impressions of the people
I met amongst them. Still, I humbly trust I do not like any of my
friends, fine or coarse, only for their belongings, though my
intercourse with the first gratifies my love of luxury and excites
what my Edinburgh friends call my ideality. I don't think, however.
I ever could like anybody, of any kind whatever, that I could not
heartily respect, let their intellectual gifts, elegance, or
refinement of manners be what they might. Good-by, dearest H----.

Ever your affectionate
F. A. K.

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, October 3, 1831.
MY DEAREST H----,

I received your last letter on Thursday morning, and as I read it
exclaimed, "We shall be able to go to her!" and passed it to Dall,
who seemed to think there was no reason why we should not, when my
father said he was afraid it could not be managed, as the theater,
upon second arrangements, would require me before this month was
over. It seems to me that, instead of one disappointment, I have
had twenty about coming to you, dear H----, and the last has fairly
broken the poor camel's back. My father promised to see what could
be done for me, and to get me spared as long as possible; but the
final arrangement is, that on the 24th I shall have to act Queen
Katharine, for which, certainly, a week of daily rehearsals will be
barely sufficient preparation. This, you see, will leave me hardly
time enough to stay at Ardgillan to warrant the fatigue and expense
of the journey. I am afraid it would be neither reasonable nor
right to spend nearly a week in traveling and the money it must
cost, to pass a fortnight with you.... Give my love to your sister,
and tell her how willingly I would have accepted her hospitality
had circumstances permitted it; but "circumstances," of which we
are so apt to complain, may, perhaps, at some future time, allow me
to be once more her guest. The course of events is, after all, far
more impartial than, in moments of disappointment, we are apt to
admit, and quite as often procures us unexpected and unthought-of
pleasures as defeats those we had proposed for ourselves. Pazienza!
Dear Dall, who, I see, has produced her invariable impression upon
your mind, bids me thank you for the kind things you say of her, at
the same time that she says, "though they are undeserved, she is
thankful for the affection that dictates them." She is excellent.
You bid me tell you of my father, and how his health and spirits
continue to struggle against his exertions and anxieties: tolerably
well, thank God! I sometimes think they have the properties of that
palm tree which is said to grow under the pressure of immense
weights. He looks very well, and, except the annoyances of his
position in the theater, has rather less cause for depression than
for some time past. Though we have not yet obtained our "decree,"
we understand that the Lord Chancellor says openly that we shall
get it, so that uncertainty of the issue no longer aggravates the
wearisome delays of this unlucky appeal.... I need not tell you
what my feeling about acting Queen Katharine is; you, who know how
conscious I am of my own deficiencies for such an undertaking, will
easily conceive my distress at having such a task assigned me.
Dall, who entirely agrees with me about it, wishes me to
remonstrate upon the subject, but that I will not do. I am in that
theater to earn my living by serving its interests, and if I was
desired to act Harlequin, for those two purposes, should feel bound
to do so. But I cannot help thinking the management short-sighted.
I think their real interest, as far as I am concerned, which they
overlook for some immediate tangible advantage, is not to destroy
my popularity by putting me into parts which I must play ill, and
not to take from my future career characters which require physical
as well as mental maturity, and which would be my natural resources
when I no longer become Juliet and her youthful sisters of the
drama. But of course they know their own affairs, and I am not the
manager of the theater. Those who have its direction, I suppose,
make the best use they can of their instruments.

[My performance of Queen Katharine was not condemned as an absolute failure only because the public in general didn't care about it, and the friends and well-wishers of the theater were determined not to consider it one. But as I myself remember it, it deserved to be called nothing else; it was a school-girl's performance, tame, feeble, and ineffective, entirely wanting in the weight and dignity indispensable for the part, and must sorely have tried the patience and forbearance of such of my spectators as were fortunate and unfortunate enough to remember my aunt; one of whom, her enthusiastic admirer, and my excellent friend, Mr. Harness, said that seeing me in that dress was like looking at Mrs. Siddons through the diminishing end of an opera-glass: I should think my acting of the part must have borne much the same proportion to hers. I was dressed for the trial scene in imitation of the famous picture by Harlow, and of course must have recalled, in the most provoking and absurd manner, the great actress whom I resembled so little and so much. In truth, I could hardly sustain the weight of velvet and ermine in which I was robed, and to which my small girlish figure was as little adapted as my dramatic powers were to the matronly dignity of the character. I cannot but think that if I might have dressed the part as Queen Katharine really dressed herself, and been allowed to look as like as I could to the little dark, hard-favored woman Holbein painted, it would have been better than to challenge such a physical as well as dramatic comparison by the imitation of my aunt's costume in the part. Englishmen of her day will never believe that Katharine of Arragon could have looked otherwise than Mrs. Siddons did in Shakespeare's play of "Henry VIII.;" but nothing could in truth be more unlike the historical woman than the tall, large, bare-armed, white-necked, Juno-eyed, ermine-robed ideal of queenship of the English stage. That quintessence of religious, conscientious bigotry and royal Spanish pride is given, both in the portraits of contemporary painters and in Shakespeare's delineation of her; the splendid magnificence of my aunt's person and dress, as delineated in Harlow's picture, has no affinity whatever to the real woman's figure, or costume, or character.]

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, October 12, 1831.
DEAREST H----,

I received my book and your letter very safely about a week ago,
and would have written to say so sooner, but have been much
occupied with one thing and another that has prevented me. So you
are beaten, _vieilles perukes_ that you are! not by one or two, but
by forty-one; and your bones are all the likelier to ache, and I am
not at all sorry. Think of Brougham going down on his marrow-bones
(there can be none in them, though), and adjuring the Lords, con
quella voce! e quel viso! to pass the Bill, like good boys, and
remember the schoolmaster, who surely, when he is at home, cannot
be said to be abroad. A good _coup de théâtre_ is not an easy
thing, and requires a good deal of tact and skill. I cannot help
thinking there must have been something grotesque in this
performance of Brougham's, as when Liston turned tragedian and
recited Collins's "Ode to the Passions" in a green coat and top
boots. The excitement, however, was tremendous; the House thronged
to suffocation; as many people crammed into impossible space as the
angels in the famous Needle-point controversy. Lady Glengall
declares that she sat for four hours on an iron bar. I think this
universal political effervescence has got into my head. And what
will you do now? You cannot create forty-one Peers; the whole Book
of Genesis affords no precedent. I suppose Parliament will be
prorogued, ministers will go out, a "cloth of gold" and "cloth of
frieze" Government, with Brougham and Wellington brought together
into it, will be cobbled, and a new Bill, which will set the teeth
of the Lords so badly on edge, will be concocted, which the people
will accept rather than nothing, if they are taken in the right
way. That, I suppose, is what you Whigs will do; for an adverse
majority of forty-one must be turned somehow or other, as it can
hardly be gone straight at by folks who mean to keep on the box, or
hold the reins, or carry the coach to the end of the journey....

I do not know at all how I should like to live in a palace; I am
furiously fond of magnificence and splendor, and not unreasonably,
seeing that I was born in a palace, with a sapphire ceiling hung
with golden lamps, and velvet floors all embroidered with
sweet-smelling, lovely-colored flowers, and walls of veined marble
and precious, sparkling stones. I almost doubt if any mere royal
palace would be good enough for me, or answer my turn. I should
like all the people in the world to be as beautiful as angels, and
go about crowned with glory and clothed with light (dear me, how
very different they are!); but failing all that I should like in
the way of enormously beautiful things, I pick up and treasure like
a baby all the little broken bits of splendor and sumptuousness,
and thank Heaven that their number and gradations are infinite,
from the rainbow that the sun spans the heavens with, to the fine,
small jewel drawn from the bowels of the earth to glitter on a
lady's neck....

My dearest H----, I wish I were with you with all my heart, but, as
if to diminish my regret by putting the thing still further beyond
the region of possibility, I act next Monday the 17th, instead of
the 24th. (They say "a miss is as good as a mile;" why does it
always seem so much worse, then?) I begin with Belvidera, and have
already begun my cares and woes and tribulations about lilac satins
and silver tissues, etc., etc. Young is engaged with us, and plays
Pierre, and my father Giaffir, which will be very dreadful for me;
I do not know how I shall be able to bear all his wretchedness as
well as my own. To be a good politician one ought to have, as it
were, only one eye for truth; I do not at all mean to be
single-eyed in the good sense of the word, but to be incapable of
seeing more than one side of every question: one sees a part so
much more strongly when one does not see the whole of a matter, and
though a statesman may need a hundred eyes, I maintain that a party
politician is the better for having only one. Restricted vision is
good for work, too; people who see far and wide can seldom be very
hopeful, I should think, and hope is the very essence of working
courage. The matter in hand should always, if possible, be the
great matter to those who have to carry it through, and though
broad brains may be the best for conceiving, narrow ones are,
perhaps, the best for working with.

Thank you for your quotation from Sir Humphry Davy; it did me good,
and even made me better for five minutes; and your Irish letter,
which interested me extremely. "Walking the world." What a sad and
touching expression; and how well it describes a broken and
desponding spirit! And yet what else are we all doing, in soul if
not in body? Is not that solitary, wandering feeling the very
essence of our existence here?

You ask if the interests of the theater and mine are not identical?
No, I think not. The management seems to me like our Governments
for some time past, to be actuated by mere considerations of
temporary expediency; that which serves a momentary purpose is all
they consider. But it stands to reason that if they make me play
parts in which I must fail, my London popularity must decrease, and
with it my provincial profits; and that, of course, is a serious
thing. In short, dear H----, where success means bread and butter,
failure means dry bread, or none; and I hate the last, I believe,
less than the first, though, as I never tried starvation, perhaps
dry bread is nicer....

The excitement about the Bill is rising instead of subsiding. The
shops are all shut, and the people meeting in every direction; the
windows of Apsley House have been smashed, and Wellington's statue
(the Achilles in the Park) pelted and threatened to be pulled down.
They say that Nottingham and Belvoir Castles are burnt down. All
this is bad, and bodes, I fear, worse. Good-by, dear.

Your affectionate
F. A. K.

_Thursday, August 22d._--I read some of "Cibber's Lives." I should
like to read a well-written French life of Alin Chartier, Louis
XI.'s ugly secretary, whose mouth Queen Margaret kissed while he
was sleeping, "parce qu'elle avait dit de si belles choses." In the
life, or rather the death, of Sackville, he notes his sitting up
till eleven at night as a manifest waste of human existence. It is
near two in the morning as I am now writing, but people's notions
change as to time as well as other things. We don't dine at twelve
any more. Macdonald, the sculptor, dined with us; I like him for
dear Scotland's sake, and the blessed time I passed there. After
the gentlemen came up into the drawing-room, Nourrit, the great
French tenor, sang delightfully for us; Adelaide sang and played,
and Nourrit made her try a charming duet from the "Dame Blanche,"
which I accompanied, and was frightened to death for self and
sister. Macdonald wants to make a statue of me in "The Grecian
Daughter," at the moment of veiling the face: he is right. An
interval of some time elapsed, in which I did not keep my journal
regularly. I had a long visit from my friend Miss S----. The
lawsuit about the theater continued, the affairs of the concern
becoming more and more involved in difficulties every day; and my
father, worried almost to death with anxiety, vexation, and hard
work, had a serious illness.

_Saturday, November 25th._--My father was not quite so well this
morning. I took Dr. Wilson home in the carriage; he talked a great
deal about this horrible burking business (a series of atrocious
murders committed by two wretches of the names of Burk and Bishop,
for the purpose of obtaining, for the corpses of their victims, the
price paid by the Edinburgh surgeons for subjects for dissection;
the mode of death inflicted by these men came to be designated by
the name of the more hardened murderer as burking).

I called at Fozzard's for the boys, and set them down at Angelo's
(a famous school for fencing, boxing, and single-stick, where my
brothers took lessons in those polite exercises). In the evening,
at the theater, dear Charles Young played "The Stranger" for the
last time; the house was very full, and I played very ill. After
the play Young was enthusiastically called for. I have finished
"Tennant's Tour in Greece," which I rather liked. I have been
reading "Bonaparte's Letters to Joséphine;" the vague and doubting
spirit which once or twice throws its wavering shadow across his
thoughts, startles one in contrast with the habitual tone of the
mind, which assuredly _ne doubtait de rien_, especially of what his
own power of will could accomplish. The affection he expresses for
his wife is sometimes almost poetical from its intensity, in spite
of the grossness of his language. He seems to have believed in
nothing but volition, and that volition is in itself, perhaps, a
mere form of faith. It's a dangerous worship, for the devil in that
shape does obey so long and so well before he claims his due; so
much is achieved precisely by that belief in what can be achieved;
the last round of the ladder, somehow or other, however, always
seems to break down at last, and then I doubt if the people who
fall from it can all declare, as Holcroft did when he fell from his
horse, and, as his surgeon assured him, broke his ribs, that he was
positive he had not, because in falling he had exerted the energy
of will, and could not therefore have broken his bones.

_Sunday, 29th._--The great good fortune of a good sermon at church.
After church Mrs. Jameson, John Mason, and Mr. Loudham called; the
latter said he had good news about that fatal theater of ours, for
that Mr. Harris seemed to be inclined to come into some
accommodation, and so perhaps this cancer of a Chancery suit may
stop eating our lives away. Oh dear! I am afraid this is too good
news to be true. I went to my father's room and sat by him for a
long time, and talked about the horse I had bought for him; and
there he lies in his bed, and God knows when he will even be able
to walk again.

_Monday, 30th._--I went to rehearsal. It seems that the managers
and proprietors (of course not my poor father) had summoned a
meeting of all the actors to try and induce them to accept for the
present a reduced rate of salary till the theater can be in some
measure relieved of its most pressing difficulties. I knew nothing
of this, and, finding them all very solemnly assembled in the
greenroom, asked them cheerfully why they were all there, which
must have struck them strangely enough. I dare say they do not know
how little I know, or wish to know, about this disastrous concern.
On my return home, I heard that Dr. Watson had seen my father, and
requested that Dr. Wilson might be sent for. They fear inflammation
of the lungs; he has gone to the very limit of his tether, for had
he continued fagging a night or two longer the effects might have
been fatal. Poor, poor father!...

Lady Francis and Mrs. Sullivan called in the afternoon; I was
feeling miserable, and exhausted with my rehearsal. In the evening
I helped my mother to move all the furniture, which I think is
nothing in the world but a restless indication of her anxiety about
my father; it is the fourth time since she same back from the
country.

_Tuesday, December 1st._-- ... It seems that in the arrangement,
whatever it may be, which has taken place between the actors and
the management, Mr. Harley and Mr. Egerton are the only ones who
have declined the proposed accommodation. Young has behaved like an
angel, offering to play for nothing till Christmas; how kind and
liberal he is! Mr. Abbott, Mr. Duraset, Mr. Ward, and all the
others, have been as considerate and generous as possible. But the
thing is doomed, and will go to the ground, in spite of every
effort that can be made to stave the ruin off.

I was greeted this morning, when I came down to breakfast, with a
question that surprised and amused we very much. "Pray, Fanny,"
said John, "did you ever thank Mr. Bacon (one of the editors of the
_Times_) for his book (the "Life of Francis I." which Mr. Bacon had
been kind enough to send me); for here is a very abusive critique
in to-day's _Times_ of the play last night." "Well," thought I,
"that's a comical _sequitur_, and a fine estimate of criticism;"
but the conclusion was droller still. I had not forgotten to thank
the friendly author for his book, nor had he written the article in
question; but it seems a young gentleman, much in love with Miss
Phillips (a promising and very handsome young actress at Drury
Lane), had found pulling me to pieces the easiest way of showing
his admiration for her. That is not a very exalted style of
criticism either, but it is just as well that one should
occasionally know what the praise and blame one receives may be
worth. It seems that when it was determined that Miss Sheriff
should come out, Mr. Welsh, whose pupil she was, made a great
feast, and invited two-and-twenty gentlemen connected with the
press to a private hearing of her.... In the evening, we all went
to hear her, being every way much interested in her success. John
and Henry went into the front of the house; my mother, Dr. Moore
(the Rev. Dr. Moore, a great friend of my father and mother's), and
myself, went up to our own box. The house was crammed, the pit one
black, crowded mass. Poor child! I turned as cold as ice as the
symphony of "Fair Aurora" (the opera was "Artaxerxes") began, and
she came forward with Mr. Wilson. The bravos, the clapping, the
noise, the great sound of popular excitement overpowering in all
its manifestations; and the contrast between the sense of power
conveyed by the acclamations of a great concourse of people, and
the weakness of the individual object of that demonstration, gave
me the strangest sensation when I remembered my own experience,
which I had not seen. When I saw the thousands of eyes of that
crowded pitful of men, and heard their stormy acclamations, and
then looked at the fragile, helpless, pretty young creature
standing before them trembling with terror, and all woman's fear
and shame in such an unnatural position, I more than ever marveled
how I, or any woman, could ever have ventured on so terrible a
trial, or survived the venture. It seemed to me as if the mere gaze
of all that multitude must melt the slight figure away like a
wreath of vapor in the sun, or shrivel it up like a scrap of silver
paper before a blazing fire. It made poor Dr. Moore and myself both
cry, but there was a deal more sympathy in my tears than in his;
for I had known the dizzy terror of that moment, had felt the
ground slide from under my feet and the whole air become a sea of
fiery rings before my swimming eyes. Besides my fellow-feeling for
her actual agony, I had one for what her after trials may be, and I
hoped for her that she might be able to see the truth of all things
in the midst of all things false; and then, if she takes pleasure
in her gilded toys, she will not have too bitter a heartache when
they are broken. She sang well, and soon recovered from her fright,
which, even from the first, did not affect her voice. She is rather
pretty, but does not walk or move gracefully; she was well dressed,
all but her hair, which was dressed in the present frizzy French
fashion, and looked ridiculous for Mandane. Her singing was good,
of a good style; I do not mean only that she sang "Fly, soft ideas,
fly," and "Monster away!" and "The Soldier Tired," brilliantly,
because they do not test the best singing, but the _soave
sostenuto_ of her "If e'er the cruel tyrant love," and "Let not
rage thy bosom firing," were specimens of the best and most
difficult school of singing. They were flowing, smooth, soft, and
sweet, without trick or device of mere florid ornamentation, and
were as intrinsically good in her execution as they are admirable
in that peculiar style of composition. Her shake is not genuine,
and some of her rapid descending scales want finish and accuracy;
her use of her arms and her gestures were very pretty and graceful,
and we were all greatly pleased with her. Braham was magnificently
great, in spite of his inches. What a noble artist he is! and with
what wonderful vigor he acts through his singing! being no actor at
all the moment he stops singing. Wilson sang out of tune; the music
is not in his voice, and he was frightened. Miss Cawse was rather a
dumpy Artaxerxes, which is an impertinent remark for me to make;
she has a beautiful contralto voice. The opera went off
brilliantly, and after it the audience called for "God Save the
King," which was performed. Paganini was in the box opposite to us;
what a cadaverous-looking creature he is! Came home and saw my
father, and gave him the report of Miss Sheriff's success....

_Friday, December 2d._-- ... I went to see Cecilia Siddons; I
thought her looking aged and thin, and Mrs. Wilkinson (Mrs.
Siddons's companion for many years previous to her death) looking
sad and ill too. They have both lost the one idea of their whole
lives.

_Saturday, 3d._-- ... It seems the doctors recommend my father's
going to Brighton. I was urging him to do so this morning.... After
tea I looked on the map for Rhodez, the scene of that horrible
Fualdes tragedy (a murder the commission of which involved some
singular and terribly dramatic incidents). I read Daru's "History
of Venice" till bedtime.

_Sunday, December 4th._-- ... My father, for the first time this
fortnight, was able to dine with us. After dinner I read the whole
trial of Bishop and Williams, and their confession. My mother is
reading aloud to us Lord Edward Fitzgerald's Life.

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, December 4, 1831.
DEAR H----,

It is at the sensible hour of a quarter-past twelve at night that I
begin this immense sheet of paper, and with the sensible purpose of
filling it before I go to bed.... What an unsatisfactory invention
letter-writing is, to be sure; and yet there is none better for the
purpose. When you asked me so affectionately in your letter whether
I was going to bed, I concluded naturally that you were writing to
me instead of doing so yourself; but I received the letter at
half-past nine in the morning, when I was getting ready to ride.
This sort of epistolary cross-questions and crooked answers is
sometimes droll, but oftener sad: we weep with those who did weep,
when they have dried their eyes; and rejoice with those who did
rejoice, but the corners of whose mouths are already drawn down for
crying, while we fancy we are smiling sympathetically with them....
You ask me how the world goes with me, and I can only say round, as
I suppose it does with everybody. All goes on precisely as usual
with me; my life is exceedingly uniform, and it is seldom that
anything occurs to disturb its monotonous routine. My dear father,
thank Heaven, is better, but still very weak, and I fear it will be
yet some time before he recovers his strength. He came down to
dinner to-day for the first time in this fortnight; indeed, it is
only since the day before yesterday that he has left his bed; but I
trust that this attack will serve him for a long time, and that
with rest and quiet he will regain his strength.

I am really glad my aunt Kemble is better, though I remember having
some not unpleasant ideas as to how, if she were not, you would go
to Leamington to nurse her, and so come on and stay with us in
London; but I cannot wish it at the price of her prolonged
indisposition, poor woman!... I am sorry to say my father is
pronounced worse to-day; he has a bad side-ache, and they are
applying mustard poultices to overcome it. There is some
apprehension of a return of fever. This is a real and terrible
anxiety, dear H----. The theater, too, is going on very ill, and he
is unable to give it any assistance; and for the same reason I can
do nothing for it, for all my plays require him, except Isabella
and Fazio, and these are worn threadbare. It is all very gloomy;
but, however, time doth not stand still, and will some day come to
the end of the journey with us.... You say Undine reminds you of
me.... The feeling of an existence more closely allied to the
elements of the material universe than even we acknowledge our
dust-formed bodies to be, possesses me sometimes almost like a
little bit of magnus; bright colors, fleeting lights and shadows,
flowers, and above all water, the pure, sparkling, harmonious,
powerful element, excite in me a feeling of intimate fellowship, of
love, almost greater than any human companionship does. Perhaps,
after all, I am only an animated morsel of my palace, this
wonderful, beautiful world. Do you not believe in numberless,
invisible existences, filling up the vast intermediate distance
between God and ourselves, in the lonely and lovely haunts of
nature and her more awful and gloomy recesses? It seems as if one
must be surrounded by them; I do not mean to the point of merely
suggesting the vague "suppose?" _that_, I should think, must visit
every mind; but rather like a consciousness, a conviction,
amounting almost to certainty, only short of seeing and hearing.
How well I remember in that cedar hall at Oatlands, the sort of
invisible presence I used to feel pervading the place. It was a
large circle of huge cedar trees in a remote part of the grounds;
the paths that led to it were wild and tangled; the fairest flower,
the foxglove, grew in tall clumps among the foliage of the thickets
and shrubberies that divided the lawn into undulating glades of
turf all round it; a sheet of water in which there was a rapid
current--I am not sure that it was not the river--ran close by, and
the whole place used to affect my imagination in the weirdest way,
as the habitation of invisible presences of some strange
supernatural order. As the evening came on, I used frequently to go
there by myself, leaving our gentlemen at table, and my mother and
Lady Francis in the drawing-room. How I flew along by the syringa
bushes, brushing their white fragrant blossoms down in showers as I
ran, till I came to that dark cedar hall, with its circle of giant
trees, whose wide-sweeping branches spread, at it were, a halo of
darkness all round it! Through the space at the top, like the open
dome of some great circular temple, such as the Pantheon of Rome,
the violet-colored sky and its starry worlds looked down. Sometimes
the pure radiant moon and one fair attendant star would seem to
pause above me in the dark framework of the great tree-tops. That
place seemed peopled with spirits to me; and while I was there I
had the intensest delight in the sort of all but conscious
certainty that it was so. Curiously enough, I never remember
feeling the slightest nervousness while I was there, but rather an
immense excitement in the idea of such invisible companionship; but
as soon as I had emerged from the magic circle of the huge black
cedar trees, all my fair visions vanished, and, as though under a
spell, I felt perfectly possessed with terror, and rushed home
again like the wind, fancying I heard following footsteps all the
way I went. The moon seemed to swing to and fro in the sky, and
every twisted tree and fantastic shadow that lay in my path made me
start aside like a shying horse. I could have fancied they made
grimaces and gestures at me, like the rocks and roots in Retsch's
etchings of the Brocken; and I used to reach the house with cheeks
flaming with nervous excitement, and my heart thumping a great deal
more with fear than with my wild run home; and then I walked with
the utmost external composure of demure propriety into the
drawing-room, as who should say, "Thy servant went no whither," to
any inquiry that might be made as to my absence....

It seems to me that you would be a poet but for your analyzing,
dissecting, inquiring, and doubting mental tendency. Your truth is
not a matter of intuition, but of demonstration; and when you get
beyond demonstrability, then nothing remains to you but doubt....
God bless you, dear!

I am yours ever affectionately,
F. A. K.

_Monday, December 5th._-- ... My father is worse again to-day.
Ohimé! His state is most precarious, and this relapse very
alarming. It is dreadful to see him drag himself about, and hear
his feeble voice. Oh, my dear, dear Father! Heaven preserve you to
us!

_Tuesday, 6th._--My father is much worse. How terrible this is!...
Dall met me on the stairs this morning, and gave me a miserable
account of him; he had just been bled, and that had somewhat
relieved him. I went and sat with him while my mother drove out in
the carriage. I stayed a long while with him, and he seemed a
little better.... My father's two doctors have returned again, and
paid him two visits daily. I read Daru all the evening.

_Wednesday, 7th._-- ... So I am to play Belvidera on Monday, and
Bianca on Wednesday. That will be hard work; Bianca is terrible.

_Thursday, 8th._-- ... My dear father is beginning to gain strength
once more, thank Heaven! I received a letter from Lady Francis
about the play (a translation of the French piece of "Henri Trois,"
by Lord Francis, the production of which at Covent Garden is being
postponed in consequence of my father's illness). Poor people! I am
sorry for their disappointment.... I devised and tried on a new
dress for Bianca; it will be very splendid, but I am afraid I shall
look like a metal woman, a golden image. [The dress in question was
entirely made of gold tissue; and one evening a man in the pit
exclaimed to a friend of mine sitting by him, "Oh! doesn't she look
like a splendid gold pheasant?" the possibility of which comparison
had not occurred to me, not being a sportsman.]

_Friday, 9th._-- ... I went with my mother to the theater to hear
"Fra Diavolo," with which, and Miss Sheriff's singing in it, we
were delighted.

_Saturday, 10th._-- ... We had a talk about the fashion of southern
countries of serenading, which I am very glad is not an English
fashion. Music, as long as I am awake, is a pure and perfect
delight to me, but to be wakened out of my sleep by music is to
wake in a spasm of nervous terror, shaking from head to foot, and
sick at my stomach, with indescribable fear and dismay; certainly
no less agreeable effect could possibly be contemplated by the
gallantry of a serenading admirer, so I am glad our admirers do not
serenade us English girls. This picturesque practice prevails all
through the United States, where the dry brilliancy of the climate
and skies is favorable to the paying and receiving this melodious
homage, and where musical bands, sometimes numbering fifty, are
marshaled by personal or political admirers, under the balconies of
reigning beauties or would-be-reigning public men. My total
ignorance of this prevailing practice in the United States led to a
very prosaic demonstration of gratitude on my part toward my first
serenaders; for I opened my window and rewarded them with a dollar,
which one of the recipients informed me he should always keep, to
my no small confusion, not knowing the nature of my gratuitous
indulgence, and that, like my Lady Greensleeves in the old English
ballad, "My music still to play and sing" would be, while I
remained in America, a disinterested demonstration of the devotion
of my friends.... My poor mother is in the deepest distress about
my father. Inflammation of the lungs is dreaded, and he is spitting
blood. I felt as if I were turning to stone as I heard it. I came
up to my own room and cried most bitterly for a long time. In the
afternoon I was allowed to go in and see my father; but I was so
overcome that, as I stooped to kiss his hand, I was almost
suffocated with suppressed sobs. I did control myself, however,
sufficiently to be able to sit by him for a while with tolerable
composure. Cecilia and Mrs. Wilkinson called, and were very kind
and affectionate to me. They brought news that Harry Siddons had
arrived in India and been sent off to Delhi. My brother Henry, poor
child, came and lay on the sofa in my room, and we cried together
almost through the whole afternoon, in spite of our efforts to
comfort each other. My heart dies away when I think of my dear
father.... I got a very kind and affectionate letter from Lady
Francis; she wants us very much to go again to Oatlands. After all,
perhaps it would not be so sad there as I think, though it must
appear changed enough in some respects, if not in all. Everything
is winter now, within and without me; and when I was last there it
was summer, in my heart and over all the earth. My cedar palace is
there still, and to that I should bring more change than I should
find. Poor Undine! how often I think of that true story. When I
went to the theater my heart really sickened at my work; my eyes
smarted, and my voice was broken, with my whole day's crying. The
house seemed good; I played ill, and felt very ill. Lord M---- was
in the stage-box, which annoyed me. I hate to have my society
acquaintance close to me while I am acting. The play was "Venice
Preserved." After I came home I saw my father, who is a little
better; but now Henry is quite unwell, and I am in a high fever--I
suppose with all this wretchedness and exertion.

_Thursday, 13th._--My father has passed a quieter night, thank God.
I went to Fozzard's riding-school with John, and tried a hot little
hunter that they want to persuade Lady Chesterfield to ride--a very
pretty creature, but quite too eager for the school. While I was
riding Lady Grey came in, very much frightened, upon her horse,
which was rather fresh. She took Gazelle, which I was riding, and I
rode her horse tame for her. It is very odd that, riding as well as
she does, she should be so miserably nervous on horseback.... I
drove to Mrs. Mayo's, who impressed and affected me very much.
Those magnificent eyes of hers are becoming dim; she is growing
blind, with eyes like dark suns. I could not help expressing the
deep concern I felt for such a calamity. She replied that doubtless
it was a trial, but that she saw many others afflicted with
dispensations so much heavier than her own, that she was content.
To grow blind contentedly is to be very brave and good, and I
admired and loved her even more than I did before. When I came
home, I went and sat with my father. He has decided that we shall
not go to Oatlands, and I am hardly sorry for it.

_Friday, 14th._--Went over my part for to-night.... Victoire came
with me to the theater instead of Dall, whose whole time is taken
up attending on my father. The house was bad, and I thought I acted
very ill, though Victoire and John, who was in the front, said I
did not. Henry Greville was in the boxes, and to my surprise went
from them to the pit, though I ought not to have been surprised,
for, for such a fine gentleman, he is a very sensible man. Colonel
and Lady C. Cavendish were in the orchestra, and how I did wish
them further. I do so wonder, in the middle of my stage despair,
what business my drawing-room acquaintances have sitting staring at
it. My dress was beautiful. As for the audience, I do not know what
ailed them, but they seemed to have agreed together only to applaud
at the end of the scenes, so that I got no resting interruptions,
and was half dead with fatigue at the end of the play. I read
Daru's "Venice" between the scenes, and saw my father for a few
minutes after I came home.

_Thursday, 15th._--Had a delightful long letter from H----, who is
a poet without the jingle.... Another physician is to be called in
for my father. Oh, my dear father! Mr. Bartley was with him about
this horrible theater business.... My mother went in the evening
with John to hear Miss Sheriff in Polly. It is her first night in
"The Beggar's Opera," and my father wished to know how it went. I
stayed at home with poor Henry, and after tea sat with my father
till bedtime.

_Friday, 16th._--Went to the theater at eleven, and rehearsed
Isabella in the saloon, the stage being occupied with a rehearsal
of the pantomime. When my rehearsal was over, the carriage not
being come, I went down to see what they were doing. There was poor
Farleigh, nose and all (a worthy, amiable man, and excellent comic
character, with a huge excrescence of a nose), _qui se déménait_
like one frantic; huge Mr. Stansbury, with a fiddle in his hand,
dancing, singing, prompting, and swearing; the whole _corps de
ballet_ attitudinizing in muddy shoes and poke-bonnets, and the
columbine, in dirty stockings and a mob-cap, ogling the harlequin
in a striped shirt and dusty trousers. What a wrong side to the
show the audience will see!

My father is better, thank God! After dinner sat with poor Henry
till time to go to the theater. Played Isabella. House bad. I
played well; I always do to an empty house (this was my invariable
experience both in my acting and reading performances, and I came
to the conclusion that as my spirits were not affected by a small
audience, they, on the contrary, were exhilarated by the effect
upon my lungs and voice of a comparatively cool and free
atmosphere). I read Daru between my scenes; I find it immensely
interesting.... I read Niccolini's "Giovanni di Procida," but did
not like it very much; I thought it dull and heavy, and not up to
the mark of such a very fine subject.

_Saturday, 17th._-- ... My father, thank God, appears much
better.... I have christened the pretty mare I have bought "Donna
Sol," in honor of my part in "Hernani." In the evening I read Daru,
and wrote a few lines of "The Star of Seville;" but I hate it, and
the whole thing is as dead as ditch-water.

_Sunday, 18th._--To church.... After I came home I went and sat
with my father. Poor fellow! he is really better; I thank God
inexpressibly!

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, December 18.
DEAR H----,

I have had time to write neither long nor short letters for the
last week; Mr. Young's engagement being at an end, I have been
called back to my work, and have had to rehearse, and to act, and
to be much too busy to write to you until to-day, when I have
caught up all my arrears.

My father, thank God, is once more recovering, but we have twice
been alarmed at such sudden relapses that we hardly dare venture to
hope he is really convalescent. Inflammation on the lungs has, it
seems, been going on for a considerable time, and though they think
now that it has entirely subsided, yet, as the least exertion or
exposure may bring it on again, we are watching him like the apples
of our eyes. He has not yet left his bed, to which he has now been
confined more than a month....

The exertion I have been obliged to make when leaving him to go and
act, was so full of misery and dread lest I should find him worse,
perhaps dead, on my return, that no words can describe what I have
suffered at that dreadful theater. Thank God, however, he is now
certainly better, out of present danger, and I trust and pray will
soon be beyond any danger of a relapse. Anything like Dall's
incessant and unwearied care and tenderness you cannot imagine.
Night and day she has watched and waited on him, and I think she
must have sunk under all the fatigue she has undergone but for the
untiring goodness and kindness of heart that has supported her
under it all. She is invaluable to us all, and every day adds to
her claims upon our love and gratitude....

In the passage you quote from Godwin, he seems to think a friend of
more use in reproving what is evil in us than I believe is really
the case. Do you think our faults and follies can ever be more
effectually sifted, analyzed, and condemned by another than by our
own conscience? I do not think if one could put one's heart into
one's friends' hand that they could detect one defect or evil
quality that had not been marked and acknowledged in the depths of
one's own consciousness. Do you suppose people shrink more from the
censure of others than from self-condemnation? I find it difficult
to think so.... You appear to me always to wish to submit your
faith to a process which invariably breaks your apparatus and
leaves you very much dissatisfied, with your faith still a simple
element in you, in spite of your endeavors to analyze or decompose
it. Are not, after all, our convictions our only steadfastly
grounded faith? I do not mean conviction wrought out in the loom of
logical argument, where one's understanding must have shuttled
backward and forward through every thread a thousand times before
the woof is completed, but the spiritual convictions, the
intuitions of our souls, that lie upon their surface like direct
reflections from heaven, distinct and beautiful enough for reverent
contemplation, but a curious search into whose nature would, at any
rate temporarily, blur and dissipate and destroy....

The sense of power which man cannot control is one thing that makes
the sea such a delightful object of contemplation; the huge white
main, and deep, tremendous voice of the vast creature over which
man's daring and his knowledge give him but such imperfect mastery,
suggest images of strength which are full of sublime fascination as
one stands on the shore, looking at the vasty deep, and remembers
how precarious and uncertain is man's dominion over it, and how God
alone rules and governs it. It is impossible not to rejoice in the
great sense of its huge power and freedom, even though their
manifestations toward men are so often terrible and destructive....
Oh yes, indeed, I, like Wallenstein, have faith in the "strong
hours," and hold their influence the more efficacious that we
seldom think of resisting it; or, if we do, are seldom successful
in the attempt....