Chapter XXI (9)

I was leaving my mother, my brothers and sister, my friends and my country, for two years, and could only hear from them at monthly intervals. I was going to work very hard, in a distasteful vocation, among strangers, from whom I had no right to expect the invariable kindness and indulgence my own people had favored me with. My spirits were depressed by my father's troubled fortunes, and I had just received the first sharp, smarting strokes in the battle of life; those gashes from which poor "unbruised youth," in its infinite self-compassion, fancies its very life-blood must all pour away; little imagining under what gangrened, festering wounds brave life will still hold on its way, and urge to the hopeless end its warfare with unconquerable sorrow. There is nothing more pathetic than the terrified impatience of youth under its first experience of grief, and its vehement appeal of "Behold, and see if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow!" to the patient adepts in suffering such as it has not yet begun to conceive of. Orlando's adjuration to the exiled duke in "As You Like It," and the wise Prince's reply, seem to me one of the most exquisite illustrations of the comparative griefs of youth and age.

OFF SANDY HOOK, Monday, September 5.
MY DEAREST H----,

We are within three hours' sail of New York, having greeted the
first corner of Long Island (the first land we saw) yesterday
morning; but we are becalmed, and the sun shines so bright, and the
air is so warm and breathless, that we seem to have every chance of
lying here for the next--Heaven knows how long! In point of time,
you see, our voyage has been very prosperous, and I am surprised
that we have made such good progress, for the weather has been
squally, with constant head-winds. I do not think we have had, in
all, six days of fair wind, so that we have no reason whatever to
complain of our advance, having come thus far in thirty-two days.
You bade me write to you by ships passing us, but though we have
encountered several bound eastward, we only hailed them without
lying to; notwithstanding which, about a fortnight ago, on hearing
that a vessel was about to pass us, I wrote you a scrawl, which
none but you could have made out (so the fishes won't profit much
by it), and a kind fellow-passenger undertook to throw it from our
ship to the other as it passed us. She came alongside very rapidly,
and though he flung with great force and good aim, the distance was
too great, and my poor little missive fell into the black sea
within twenty feet of its destination. I could not help crying to
think that those words from my heart, that would have gladdened
yours, should go down into that cold, inky water.... I pray to God
that we may return to England, but I am possessed with a dread that
I never shall....

I have been called away from this letter by one of those little
incidents which Heaven in its mercy sends to break the monotony of
a sea-voyage. Ever since daybreak this morning an English brig has
been standing at a considerable distance behind us. About an hour
ago we went on deck to watch the approach of a boat which they were
sending off in our direction. The distance was about five miles,
and the men had a hard pull in the broiling heat. When they came on
board, you should have seen how we all clustered about them. The
ship was a merchantman from Bristol, bound to New York; she had
been out eleven weeks, her provisions were beginning to run short,
and the crew was on allowance. Our captain, who is a gentleman,
furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham,
eggs, etc., etc. The men remained about half an hour on board, and
as they were remanning their boat we saw a whole cargo of eatables
carried to it from our steerage passengers. You know that these are
always poor people, who are often barely supplied themselves with
necessaries for their voyage. The poor are almost invariably kind
and compassionate to one another, and Gaffer Gray is half right
when he says--

"The poor man alone,
When he hears the poor moan,
Of his morsel one morsel will give."

They (the men from the brig) gave us news from Halifax, where they
had put in. The cholera had been in Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and New York; the latter town was almost deserted, and
the people flying in numbers from the others. This was rather bad
news to us, who were going thither to find audiences (if possible
not few, whether fit or not), but it was awful to such as were
going back to their homes and families. I looked at the anxious
faces gathered round our informer, and thought how the poor hearts
were flying, in terrible anticipation of the worst, to the nests
where they had left their dear ones, and eagerly counting every
precious head in the homes over which so black a cloud of doom had
gathered in their absence.... My father, though a bad sailor, and
suffering occasionally a good deal, has, upon the whole, borne the
voyage well. Poor dear Dall has been the greatest wretch on board;
she has been perfectly miserable the whole time. It has made me
very unhappy, for she has come away from those she loves very
dearly on my account, and I cannot but feel sad to see that most
excellent creature now, in what should be the quiet time of her
life, leaving home and all its accustomed ways, habits, and
comforts, and dear A----, who is her darling, to come wandering to
the ends of the earth after me.... These distant and prolonged
separations seem like foretastes of death.... We have seen an
American sun, and an American moon, and American stars, and we
think they "get up these things better than we do." We have had
several fresh squalls, and one heavy gale; we have shipped sundry
seas; we have had rat-hunting and harpooning of porpoises; we have
caught several hake and dogfish.

NEW YORK, AMERICA, Wednesday, September 5, 1832.

Here we really are, and perhaps you, who are not here, will believe
it more readily than I who am, and to whom it seems an impossible
kind of dream from which I must surely presently wake. We made New
York harbor Monday night at sunset, and cast anchor at twelve
o'clock off Staten Island, where we lay till yesterday morning at
half-past nine, when a steamboat came alongside to take the
passengers to shore. A thick fog covered the shores, and the rain
poured in torrents; but had the weather been more favorable, I
should have seen nothing of our approach to the city, for I was
crying bitterly. The town, as we drove through it from the landing,
struck me as foreign in its appearance--continental, I mean; trees
are mixed very prettily with the houses, which are painted of
various colors, and have green blinds on the outside, giving an
idea of coolness and shade.

The sunshine is glorious, and the air soft and temperate; our hotel
is pleasantly situated, and our rooms are gay and large. The town,
as I see it from our windows, reminds me a little of Paris.
Yesterday evening the trees and lighted shop-windows and brilliant
moonlight were like a suggestion of the Boulevards; it is very gay,
and rather like a fair.

The cholera has been very bad, but it is subsiding, and the people
are returning to town. We shall begin our work in about ten days. I
have not told you half I could say, but foolscap will contain no
more. God bless you, dear!

Affectionately yours,
F. A. K.

The foreboding with which I left my own country was justified by the event. My dear aunt died, and I married, in America; and neither of us ever had a home again in England.

NEW YORK, September 16, 1832.
MY DEAREST H----,

What shall I say to you? First of all, pray don't forget me, don't
be altered when I see you again, don't die before I come back,
don't die if I never come back.... You cannot imagine how strange
the comparisons people here are perpetually making between this
wonderful sapling of theirs and our old oak seem to me.... My
father, thank God, is wonderfully improved in health, looks, and
spirits; the fine, clear, warm (hot it should be called) atmosphere
agrees with him, and the release from the cares and anxieties of
that troublesome estate of his in St. Giles' will, I am sure, be of
the greatest service to him. He begins his work to-morrow night
with Hamlet, and on Tuesday I act Bianca. It is thought expedient
that we should act singly the two first nights, and then make a
"constellation." Dall is in despair because I am to be discovered
instead of coming on (a thing actors deprecate, because they do not
receive their salvo of entrance applause), and also because I am
not seen at first in what she thinks a becoming dress. For my part,
I am rather glad of this decision, for besides Bianca's being one
of my best parts, the play, as the faculty have mangled it, is such
a complete monologue that I am less at the mercy of my coadjutors
than in any other piece I play in....

Dall is very well, very hot, and very mosquito-bitten. The heat
seems to me almost intolerable, though it is here considered mild
autumn weather: the mornings and evenings are, it is true,
generally freshened with a cool delicious air, which is at this
moment blowing all my pens and paper away, and compensating us for
our midday's broiling. I do nothing but drink iced lemonade, and
eat peaches and sliced melon, in spite of the cholera.

Baths are a much cheaper and commoner luxury (necessary) in the
hotels here than with us; a great satisfaction to me, who hope in
heaven, if I ever get there, to have plenty of water to wash in,
and, of course, it will all be soft rainwater there. What a
blessing! On board ship we were not stinted in that respect, but
had as much water as we desired for external as well as internal
purposes.

There are no water-pipes or cisterns in this city such as we have,
but men go about as they do in Paris, with huge water-butts,
supplying each house daily; for although a broad river (so called)
runs on each side of this water-walled city, the one--the East
River--is merely an arm of the sea; and the Hudson receives the
salt tide-water, and is rendered brackish and unfit for washing or
cooking purposes far beyond the city. There are fine springs, and a
full fresh-water stream, at a distance of some miles; but the
municipality is not very rich, and is economical and careful of the
public money, and many improvements which might have been expected
to have been effected here long ago are halting in their advance,
leaving New York ill paved, ill lighted, and indifferently supplied
with a good many necessaries and luxuries of modern civilization.

[This was fifty-six years ago. Times are altered since this letter was written. New York is neither ill paved nor ill lighted; the municipality is rich, but neither economical, careful, nor honest, in dealing with the public moneys. The rapid spread of superficial civilization and accumulation of easily-got wealth, together with incessant communication with Europe, have made of the great cities of the New World, centres of an imperfect but extreme luxury, vying with, and in some respects going beyond, all that London or Paris presents for the indulgence of tastes pampered by the oldest civilization of Europe.

One day, after the Croton water had been brought into New York, I was sitting with the venerable Chancellor Kent at the window of his house in Union Square, and, pointing to the fountain that sprang up in the midst of the inclosure, he said, "When I was a boy, much more than half a century ago, I used to go to the Croton water, and paddle, and fish, and bathe, and swim, and loiter my time away in the summer days. I cannot go out there any more for any of these pleasant purposes, but the Croton water has come here to me." What a ballad Schiller or Goethe would have made of that! That morning visit to Chancellor Kent has left that pretty picture in my mind, and the recollection of his last words as he shook hands with me: "Ay, madam, the secret of life is always to have excitement enough, and never too much." But he did not give me the secret of that secret.]

There are, on an average, half a dozen fires in various parts of
the town every night--I mean houses on fire. The sons of all the
gentlemen here are volunteer engineers and firemen, and great is
the delight they take in tearing up and down the streets,
accompanied by red lights, speaking trumpets, and a rushing,
roaring escort of running amateur extinguishers, who make night
hideous with their bawling and bellowing. This evening as I was
observing that we had had no fire to-day, Dall said the weather was
so hot, she thought they must have left off fires for the season.

Speaking of carriages and the devices on the panels of them here,
which appear to be rather fancy pieces than heraldic bearings, my
father said, "I wonder what they do for arms." "Use legs," said
Dall immediately, not at all bethinking herself how ancient a
device on the shield of the Island of Man the three legs were, or
knowing how much more ancient on the coins of Crotona, I think, or
some other of the Magna Grecian colonies.

The hours which prevail here are those of our shop-keeping
population; they rise and go to business very early, dine at three,
which indeed is considered late, take tea at five, and supper at
nine, which seems to us very primitive.... The women here are,
generally speaking, very pretty little creatures, with a great deal
of freshness and brilliancy; they dress in the extreme of the
French fashion, and, I suppose from some unfavorable influence of
the climate, they lose their beauty prematurely--they become
full-blown very early, and their bloom is extremely evanescent;
they fade almost suddenly.... There seems to be a great deal of
consumption here. The climate is as capricious as ours, with this
additional disadvantage, that the extremes of heat and cold are
much more intense, and the transitions much more violent, the
temperature varying occasionally as much as thirty degrees in the
twenty-four hours. I have just left off writing for five minutes to
watch the lightning, which is dancing in a fiery ring all round the
horizon--summer lightning, no thunder, although the flashes are
strong and vivid....

We have had such a tremendous storm--really gorgeous, grand, and
awful; lightning that stretched from side to side of the sky,
making a blaze like daylight for several seconds at a time. The
mere reflection of it on the ground was more than the eye could
endure; great forked ribbons of fire darting into the very bosom of
the city and its crowded dwellings, or zigzagging through the air
to an accompaniment of short, sharp, crackling thunder, succeeded
by endless, deep, full-toned rolls that made the whole air shake
and vibrate with the heavy concussion; pelting and pouring rain, a
perfect tornado of wind. Heaven and earth are all, while I write,
one livid, violet-colored flame, and the thunder resounds through
the wild frenzy of the elements like the voice of "the Ruler of the
spirits." My eyes ache with the incessant glare, and I must close
my letter, for it is past eleven o'clock, and I have to rehearse
to-morrow morning.... I have seen Mr. Wallack since our arrival,
whom I never saw in England, either on or off the stage. I went the
other night to see him in one of his favorite pieces, "The
Rent-Day," which made me cry dreadfully, but chiefly, I believe,
because, when they are ruined, he asks his wife if she will go with
him to America. You see I am taking to play-going in my old age.
The theater is very pretty, of the best possible dimensions for me,
and tolerably good for the voice. We leave this place for
Philadelphia on the 10th of October, and remain there a fortnight,
and then go on to Boston....

Last Thursday we crossed the Hudson in one of the steamers
constantly plying between the opposite shores and New York, and
took a delightful walk along the New Jersey shore to a place called
Hoboken, famous once as a dueling-ground, now the favorite resort
of a pacific society of _bon vivants_, who meet once a week to eat
turtle, or, as it is expressed on their cards of invitation, for
"spoon exercise." The distance from our landing-point to the place
where these meetings are held is about five miles, a charming walk
through a strip of forest-ground, which crowns the banks of the
river, gradually rising to a considerable height above it. We were
delighted with the vivid, various, and strange foliage of the
trees, the magnificent river, broad and blue as a lake, with its
high and richly wooded shore, and the sparkling, glittering town
opposite. We looked down to the Narrows, the defile through which
the waters of this noble estuary reach the Atlantic, and between
whose rocky walls two or three ships stood out against the
brilliant sky. The ebbing tide plashed on the rocks far below us,
and the warm grass through which we walked was alive with
grasshoppers, whose scarlet wings, suddenly unfolded when they
flew, made me take them for some strange species of butterfly. It
was all indescribably bright and joyous-looking, and the air of a
transparent clearness that was one of the most striking
characteristics of the whole scene, and one of the most
delightful.... [In discussing the relative merits of England and
America, Dr. Channing once said to me, "The earth is yours, but the
heavens are ours;" and I quite agree with him. I have never seen a
sky comparable, for splendor of color or translucent purity, to
that of the Northern States.]

I have been reading your favorite book, "Salmonia." ... I am rather
surprised at your liking it so very much, because, though the
descriptions are beautiful, and the natural history interesting,
and the philosophical and moral reflections scattered through it
delightful, yet there is so much that is purely technical about
fishing and its processes, and addressed only to the hook-and-line
fraternity, that I should not have thought it calculated to charm
you so greatly. However, you may have some associations connected
with it; liking is a very complex and many-motived thing....

We went through the fish and fruit markets the other day;
unfortunately it was rather late in the morning, and of course the
glory of the market was over, but yet there remained enough to
enchant us, with their abundant plenteousness of good things. The
fruit-market was beautiful; fruit-baskets half as high as I am,
placed in rows of a dozen, filled with peaches, and painted of a
bright vermilion color, which throws a ruddy becoming tint over the
downy fruit. It looked like something in the "Arabian Nights;"
heaps, literally heaps of melons, apples, pears, and wild grapes,
in the greatest profusion. I was enchanted with the beautiful
forms, bright colors, and fragrant smell, but I saw no flowers, and
I have seen hardly any since I have been here, which is rather a
grief to me....

Americans are the most extravagant people in the world, and flowers
are among them objects of the most lavish expenditure. The prices
paid for nosegays, wreaths, baskets, and devices of every sort of
hot-house plants, are incredible to any reasonable mind. At parties
and balls ladies are laden with costly nosegays which will not even
survive the evening's fatigue of carrying them. Dinner and luncheon
parties are adorned, not only with masses of exquisite bloom as
table ornaments, but by every lady's plate a magnificent nosegay of
hot-house flowers is placed; and I knew a lady who, wishing to
adorn her ballroom with rather more than usual floral magnificence,
had it hung round with garlands of white camellias and myosotis.

At the theater enormously expensive nosegays and huge baskets of
forced flowers are handed to the favorite performers from the front
of the house, till the ceremony becomes embarrassing, and almost
ridiculous for the object of the demonstration. The churches at
certain festivals are hung with draperies of costly hot-house
flowers; the communion-tables heaped with them. Weddings, of
course, are natural occasions for that species of ornament, but in
America funerals are as flowery as marriage-feasts; and I have seen
there in mid-winter, with the thermometer at fifteen degrees below
zero, large crosses, and hearts, and wreaths, made entirely of
rosebuds and lilies of the valley, as part of the solemnities of a
burial service; and a young girl who died in the flowerless season
was not only shrouded in blossoms, but as her coffin was carried to
the bosom of the wintry earth, a white pall of the finest material
was thrown over it, with a great cross of double forced violets,
almost the length of the coffin, laid on it. I have had as many as
a dozen huge baskets of camellias, violets, orange-flower, and
tuberose, at one time, in my room; perishable tokens of anonymous
public and private favor, the cost of which used to fill me with
dismay: and on one occasion a table of magnificent hot-house
flowers was sent to me, of such dimensions that both sides of the
street door had to be opened to admit it. When I have deplored the
inordinate amount of money lavished upon that which could only
impart pleasure for so brief a time, I have been answered, but not
converted from my feeling of disapprobation and regret, that the
gardeners profited by this wild extravagance. In New York I have
known a guinea paid for a gentleman's button-hole rosebud, and
three guineas for half a dozen sprays of lily of the valley.

Good-by, my dearest H----. I pray for you morning and night. Is not
that thinking of you, and loving you as best I can?

Your affectionate
F. A. K.

DEAREST H----,

... We are all pretty well, but all but devoured by multitudinous
and multivarious beasts of prey--birds, I suppose they are:
mosquitoes, ants, and flies, by day; and flies, fleas, and worse,
by night. The plagues of Egypt were a joke to it. We spend our
lives in murdering hecatombs of creeping and jumping things, and
vehemently slapping our own faces with intent to kill the flying
ones that incessantly buzz about one. It is rather a deplorable
existence, and reminds me of one of the most unpleasant circles in
Dante's "Hell," which I don't think could have been much worse. My
father began his work on Monday last with Hamlet. Dall and I went
into a private box to see him; he acted admirably, and looked
wonderfully young and handsome. The house was crammed, and the
audience, we were assured, was enthusiastic beyond all precedent.

On Tuesday I came out in Bianca; I was rather glad they had
appointed that part for my first, because it is one of my best; but
had not the genius of theatrical management made such a mere
monologue of the play as it has, I verily believe I should have
been "swamped" by my helpmate. My Fazio was an unhappy man who
played Romeo once with me in London, and failed utterly: moreover,
he had studied this part in a hurry, it seems, and did not know
three words of it, and was, besides, too frightened to profit by my
prompting. The only thing that seemed to occur to him was to go
down on his knees, which he did every five minutes. Once when I was
on mine, he dropped down suddenly exactly opposite to me, and there
we were, looking for all the world like one of those pious conjugal
_vis-à-vis_ that adorn antique tombs in our cathedrals. It really
was exceedingly absurd. But I looked and acted well, and the play
was very successful.... I was not nervous for my first night, till
my unhappy partner made me so. My dislike to the stage would really
render me indifferent to my own success, but that I am working for
my livelihood; my bread depends upon success, and that is a
realistic, if not an artistic, view of the case, of which I
acknowledge the importance....

Absolute and uncompromising vulgarity is really not very
objectionable; it is rather refreshing, indeed, for it is simple,
and, in that respect, rare. Vulgarity allied to pretension and the
affectation of fine manners is the only real vulgarity, and is an
intolerable thing. The plain rusticity, or even coarseness, of what
are called the lower classes, is infinitely preferable to the
assumption of _gentility_ of those a little above them in the
social scale. The artisan, or day-laborer, or common workman, is
apt to be a gentleman, compared with a certain well-to-do small
shopkeeper....

On Thursday, when I went to rehearse "Romeo and Juliet," I found
that the unfortunate Mr. Keppel was, by general desire, taken out
of Romeo, which my father was therefore called upon, for the first
time, to act with me. I was vexed at this every way. I was sorry
for the poor player, whose part, of course, was money to him; and
sorry for my father, who has the greatest objection to playing
Romeo, for which his age, of course, disqualifies him, however much
his excellent acting may tend to make one forget it; and I was
sorry for the public, who lost his admirable Mercutio, which I do
not think they were compensated for by his taking the other
part....

The steward of our ship, a black--a very intelligent, obliging,
respectable servant--came here the other morning to ask my father
for an order, at the same time adding that it must be for the
gallery, as people of color were not allowed to go into any other
part of the theater. Qu'en dis-tu? The prejudice against these
unfortunate people is, of course, incomprehensible to us. On board
ship, after giving that same man some trouble, Dall poured him out
a glass of wine, when we were having our dinner, whereupon the
captain looked at her with utter amazement, and I thought some
little contempt, and said, "Ah! one can tell by that that you are
not an American;" which sort of thing makes one feel rather glad
that one is not.

[This was in 1832, when slavery literally governed the United States. In 1874, when the Civil War had washed out slavery with the blood of free men, the prejudice engendered by it governed them still to the following degree. Going to the theater in Philadelphia one night, I desired my servant, a perfectly respectable and decorous colored man, to go into the house and see the performance. This, however, he did not succeed in doing, being informed at all the entrance doors that persons of color were not admitted to any part of the theater. At this same time, more than half the State legislature of South Carolina were blacks. Moreover, at this same time, colored children were not received into the public schools of Philadelphia, though colored citizens were eligible, and in some cases acted as members of the board of management of these very schools. I talked of this outrageous inconsistent prejudice with some of my friends; among others, the editor of a popular paper. They were all loud in their condemnation of the state of things, but strongly of opinion that to move at all in the matter would be highly inopportune and injudicious. Time, they said, would settle all these questions; and, without doubt, it will. Charles Sumner, who thought Time could afford to have his elbow jogged about them, had just gone to his grave, leaving, unfortunately, incomplete his bill of rights in behalf of the colored citizens of the United States.

My servant was a citizen of the United States, having a vote, when he was turned from the theater door as a person of color; and negroes had been elected as Members of Congress at that very time. Strangely enough, Philadelphia, once the seat of enthusiastic and self-devoted Quaker abolitionism, the home of that noble and admirable woman, Lucretia Mott, who stood heroically in its vanguard, is now one of the strongholds of the most illiberal prejudice against the blacks.]

On Friday we acted "The School for Scandal." Our houses have been
very fine indeed, in spite of the intolerable heat of the
weather.... My ill-starred Fazio of Thursday night is making a
terrible stir in the papers, appealing to the public, and writing
long letters about his having merely studied the part to
accommodate me. "Hard case--unjust partiality--superior influence,"
etc., etc.--in short, an attempt at a little cabal, the effect of
which is that he has obtained leave to appear again to-morrow night
in Jaffier to my Belvidera. The poor man is under a strong mental
delusion, he cannot act in the least; however, we shall see what he
will do with "Venice Preserved." ...

Yesterday evening we dined with some English people who are staying
in this hotel, and met Dr. Wainwright, rector of the most
"fashionable" church in New York; a very agreeable, good, and
clever man, who expressed great delight at having an opportunity of
meeting us in private, as his congregation are so strait-laced that
he can neither call upon us nor invite us to his house, much less
set his foot in the theater. The probable consequence of any of
these enormities, it seems, would be deserted pews next Sunday, and
perhaps eventually the forced resignation of his cure of souls.
This is rather narrow minded, I think, for this free and
enlightened country. Think of my mother's dear old friend, Dr.
Hughes, and Milman, and Harness, and Dyce, and all our excellent
reverend friends and intimate acquaintance....

To-morrow we act "Venice Preserved," on Tuesday "Much Ado about
Nothing," Wednesday is a holiday, on Thursday, for my benefit, "The
Stranger," and on Friday "The Hunchback." On the 10th of next month
we act in Philadelphia, where we shall remain for a fortnight, and
then return here for a fortnight, after which we go on to Boston.
God bless you, dear! It is past twelve at night, and I have a
ten-o'clock rehearsal to-morrow morning.

Ever your affectionate
F. A. K.

PART OF LETTER TO MRS. JAMESON.

NEW YORK, September 30, 1832.

I am not sure that, upon the whole, our acting is not rather too
quiet--tame, I suppose they would call it--for our present public.
Ranting and raving in tragedy, and shrieks of unmeaning laughter in
comedy, are not, you know, precisely our style, and I am afraid our
audiences here may think us flat. I was informed by a friend of
mine who heard the remark, that one gentleman observed to another,
after seeing my father in "Venice Preserved," "Lord bless you! it's
nothing to Cooper's acting--nothing! Why, I've seen the
perspiration roll down his face like water when he played Pierre!
You didn't see Mr. Kemble put himself to half such pains!" Which
reminds me of the Frenchwoman's commendation to her neighbor of a
performance of Dupré, the great Paris tenor of his day: "Ah! ce
pauvre cher M. Dupré! ce brave homme! quel mal il se donne pour
chanter cela! Regardez donc, madame, il est tout en sueur!" But
this order of criticism, of course, may be met with anywhere; and
the stamp-and-stare-and-start-and-scream-school has had its
admirers all the world over since the days of Hamlet the Dane.

I have not seen much of either places or people yet.... This city
is picturesque and foreign-looking; trees are much intermixed with
the houses, among them a great many fine willows, and these,
together with the various colors of the houses, and the
irregularity of the streets and buildings, form constantly "little
bits" that would gladden the eye of a painter. The sky here is
beautiful; I find in it what you have seen in Italy, and I only in
Angerstein's Gallery, the orange sunsets of Claude Lorraine.

We leave New York for Philadelphia after next week, and shall
remain there three weeks.

I have read and noted much of your pretty book. There are one or
two points which shall "serve for sweet discourses" in our time to
come. I find great satisfaction in our discussions, for though I
may not often confess to being convinced by your arguments in our
differences (does any one ever do so?), I derive so much
information from them, that they are as profitable as pleasant to
me. Are you going to be busy with your pen soon again? Write me how
the world is going on yonder, and believe me ever truly yours,

F. A. K.

NEW YORK, September 30, 1832.

DEAREST H----,

... Perhaps, as you say, it is morbid to dwell as I do upon the
unreality of acting, because its tangible reality makes its
appearance duly every morning with the "returns" of the preceding
night; but I am not sure that it is morbid to consider wants
exaggerated and necessities unreal which render insufficient
earnings that would be ample for any one's real need. A livelihood,
of course, we could make in England.... You speak of all the
various strange things I am to see, and the amount of knowledge I
shall involuntarily acquire, by this residence in America; but you
know I am what Dr. Johnson would have considered disgracefully
"incurious," and the lazy intellectual indifference which induced
me to live in London by the very spring of the fountain of
knowledge without so much as stooping my lips to it, prevails with
me here.

[Our house in Great Russell Street, which was the last at the corner of Montague Place, adjoined the British Museum, and has since been taken into, or removed for (I don't know which), the new buildings of that institution. Our friend Panizzi, the learned librarian, lived in the house that stood where ours, formerly my uncle's, did. While we were still living there, however, I was allowed a privileged entrance at all times to the library, and am ashamed to think how seldom I availed myself of so great a favor.]

Then, too, my profession occupies nearly the whole of my time; I
have rehearsals every day, and act four times a week; my
journalizing takes up a good deal of my leisure. Walking in the
heat we still have here fatigues me and hurts my feet very much,
especially when I have to stand at the theater all the evening.
Although I have been here a month, I have seen but little either of
places or people; the latter, you know, I nowhere affect, and my
distaste for the society of strangers must, of course, interfere
with my deriving information from them. Still, as you say, I must
inevitably see and learn much that is new to me, and I take
pleasure in the hope that when I return to you I shall be less
distressingly ignorant than you must often have found me....

I am very sorry my brother Henry and his men are going to be sent
upon so odious an errand as tithe-collecting must be in Ireland. I
trust in God he may meet with no mischief while fulfilling his
duty; I should be both to think of that comely-looking young thing
bruised or broken, maimed or murdered. I hardly think your savage
Irishers would have the heart to hurt him, he looks so like, what
indeed he is, a mere boy; but then, to be sure, his errand is not
one to recommend him to their mercy.

I have read Bryant's poetry, and like it very much. The general
spirit of it is admirable; it is all wholesome poetry, and some of
it is very beautiful.

I am going to get Graham's "History of the United States," and
Smith's "History of Virginia," to beguile my journey to
Philadelphia with. I can't fancy a savage woman marrying a
civilized man.... I suppose love might bring harmony out of the
discords of natures so dissimilar, but I think if I had been a wild
she-American, I should not have been tamed by one of the invading
race, my hunters. Pocahontas thought differently....

Are you acquainted with any of Daniel Webster's speeches? They are
very fine, eloquent, and powerful; and one that he delivered upon
the commemoration of the landing of the English exiles at Plymouth,
in many parts, magnificent. I was profoundly affected by it when my
father read it to us on board ship....

Bad as your mice, of which you complain so bitterly, may be, they
are civilized Christian creatures compared with the heathen swarms
with which we wage war incessantly here. Every evening, as soon as
the sun sets, clouds of mosquitoes begin their war-dance round us;
their sting is most venomous, and as my patience is not even
skin-deep, I tear myself like a maniac, and then, instead of oil,
pour aromatic vinegar into my wounds, and a very pretty species of
torture is produced by that means, I assure you. Besides these
winged devils, we have swarms of flies, which also bite and sting,
with a venomous rancor of which I should have thought their
frivolity incapable. Besides these, every cupboard and drawer in
our rooms is full of moths. Besides these, we have an army of
cantankerous fleas quartered upon us. Besides these, we have one
particular closet where we keep--our bugs, and where for the most
part, I am truly thankful to say, they keep themselves. Besides
these, we have two or three ants' nests in our bedroom, and
everything we look upon seems but a moving mass of these red,
long-legged, but always exemplary insects. These fellow-creatures
make one's life not worth much having, and I do nothing all day
long but sing the famous entomological chorus in "Faust;" and if
this goes on much longer, I feel as if I should take to buzzing. Do
you know that it is hard upon three o'clock in the morning? I must
leave off and go to bed, for I rehearse Constance to-morrow at
eleven, and act her to-morrow night. On Friday I act Bizarre in
"The Inconstant," and think I shall find it great fun.... God bless
you, dearest H----.

Ever your affectionate
F. A. K.

MANSION HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA, October 10, 1832.
DEAREST H----,

Do not let the date of this make any alteration in your way of
addressing your letters, which must still be "Park Theater, New
York;" for before this reaches you we shall probably have returned
thither; but I date particularly that you may follow us with your
mind's legs, and know where to find us. My dearest H----, in spite
of an often heavy heart, and my distaste for my present
surroundings, I have reason to be most grateful, and I trust I am
so, for the benefits which we have already derived from a visit to
this far world beyond the sea. The first and greatest of these is
the wonderful improvement in my dear father's health. He looks full
ten years younger than when last you saw him, and besides enjoying
better spirits from the absence of the many cares and anxieties and
vexations that weighed upon him daily in England, he says that he
is conscious since he came away of a great increase of absolute
muscular strength and vigor; and when he said this, I felt that my
share of the unpleasant duty of coming hither was already amply
repaid.... We have finished our first engagement at New York, which
was for twelve nights, and have every reason to be satisfied with
our financial, as well as professional, success. Living here is not
as cheap as we had been led to expect, but our earnings are very
considerable, and as we labor for these, it is matter of rejoicing
that we labor so satisfactorily.

Dall is very well, except the nuisance of a bad cold. I am very
well, without exception. The only unpleasant effect I feel from
this climate is a constant tendency to slight relaxation of the
throat, but this is nothing more than a trifling inconvenience,
very endurable, and which probably a little more seasoning will
remove.... I tell you of our health first, for at our distance from
each other that is the matter of greatest moment and anxiety....

I must tell you of our future arrangements; and, to begin like an
Irishwoman, we arrived here on Monday. My father acts to-night for
the first time, Hamlet; and I make my first appearance to-morrow in
"Fazio." We shall act here for three weeks, and then return to New
York for a month; after which we shall proceed to Boston, whence
look to receive volumes from me about Webster, and Channing, and
our friends and fellow-passengers, the H----s, who reside there.

I like this place better than New York; it has an air of greater
age. It has altogether a rather dull, sober, mellow hue, which is
more agreeable than the glaring newness of New York. There are one
or two fine public buildings, and the quantity of clean,
cool-looking white marble which they use both for their public
edifices and for the doorsteps of the private houses has a simple
and sumptuous appearance, which is pleasant. It is electioneering
time, and all last night the streets resounded with cheers and
shouts, and shone with bonfires. The present President, Jackson,
appears to be far from popular here, and though his own partisans
are determined, of course, to re-elect him if possible, a violent
struggle is likely to take place; and here already his opponent,
Henry Clay, who is the leader of the aristocratic party in the
United States, is said to have obtained the superiority over him.

I have got Graham's and Smith's "Histories," and though my time for
reading is anything but abundant, yet every night and morning I do
contrive, while brushing the outside of my head, to cram something
into the inside of it.

I cannot bear to give up any advantage which I once possessed, and
therefore struggle to keep up, in some degree, my music and
Italian. These, together with rehearsing every morning, and acting
four times a week, besides my journal, which I very seldom neglect,
make up a good deal of daily occupation. Then, one must sacrifice a
certain amount of time to the conventional waste of society,
receiving and returning visits, etc.... I like what I have read of
Graham very much; the matter is very interesting, and the spirit in
which it is treated; and I am deeply in love with Captain John
Smith, and wonder greatly at Pocahontas marrying anybody else. I
suppose, however, the savage was not without excuse; for Mary
Stuart, who knew something of these matters, says, with a rather
satirical glance at her cousin of England, "En ces sortes de
choses, la plus sage de nous toutes n'est qu'un peu moins sotte que
les autres."

I have been to my first rehearsal here to-day; the theater is
small, but pretty enough. The public has high pretensions to
considerable critical judgment and literary and dramatic taste, and
scouts the idea of being led by the opinion of New York.... It is
rather tiresome that fools are cut upon the same pattern all the
world over. What is the profit of traveling? Oh dear! I think my
Fazio has got St. Vitus's dance!...

Yesterday I tried some horses, which were rather terrible
quadrupeds. They were not ill-bred cattle to look at, and I should
think of a race that, with care and attention, might be brought to
considerable perfection; but they are never properly broken for the
saddle. The Americans who have spoken to me about riding say that
they do not like a horse to have what we consider proper paces, but
prefer a shambling sort of half-trot, half-canter, which they
judiciously call a rack, and which is the ugliest pace to behold,
and the most difficult to endure, possible. They never use a curb,
but ride their horses upon the snaffle entirely, dragging it as
tight as they can, and having the appearance of holding on for dear
life by it; so that the horse, in addition to the awkward gait I
have described, throws his head up, and pokes his nose out, and
with open jaws "devours the road" before him....

I acted here last night for the first time. Dall and my father say
that I received my reception very ungraciously. I am sure I am very
sorry, I did not mean to do so, but I really had not the heart or
the face to smile and look as pleased and pleasant as I can at a
parcel of strangers.... I was not well, or in spirits, and laboring
under a severe cold, which I acquired on board the steamboat that
brought down the Delaware.... Neither the Raritan nor the Delaware
struck me in any way except by their great width. These vast
streams naturally suggest the mighty resources which a country so
watered presents to the commercial enterprise of its inhabitants.
The breadth of these great rivers dwarfs their shores and makes
their banks appear flat and uninteresting, though the large
lake-like basins into which they occasionally expand are grand from
the mere extent and volume of the sweeping mass of waters.

The colors of the autumnal foliage are rich and beautiful beyond
imagination--crimson and gold, like a regal mantle, instead of the
sad russet cloak of our fading woods. I think, beautiful as this
is, that its gorgeousness takes away from the sweet solemnity that
makes the fall of the year pre-eminently the season of thoughtful
contemplation. Our autumn at home is mellow and harmonious, though
sometimes melancholy; but the brilliancy of this decay strikes one
sometimes with a sudden sadness, as if the whole world were dying
of consumption, with these glittering gleams and hectic flushes, a
mere deception of disease and death.... Good-by, my dearest H----

PHILADELPHIA, October 14, 1832.
DEAREST H----,

"Boston is a Yankee town, and so is Philadelphy;" considering
which, I assure you I find the latter quite a civilized place. The
above quotation is from "Yankee-doodle," the National Anthem of the
Americans, which I will sing to you some day when I am within
hearing.

We have just returned from church. Dall and I being too late this
morning for the service, which begins at half-past ten, sallied
forth in search of salvation this afternoon, and after wandering
about a little, entered a fine-looking church, which we found was a
Presbyterian place of worship.... The preaching to-day was
extemporaneous, and extremely feeble and commonplace, occasionally
reminding me of your eloquent friend at Skerries.... I shall try,
on my return to New York, to settle to some work in earnest, as I
hope there that we shall repeat the plays we have already acted,
and so need no rehearsals.... To-morrow I act Juliet to my father's
Romeo; he does it still most beautifully.... In spite of his acting
it with his own child (which puts a manifest absurdity on the very
face of it), the perfection of his art makes it more youthful,
graceful, ardent, and lover-like--a better Romeo, in short, than
the youngest pretender to it nowadays. It is certainly simple truth
when he says, "I am the youngest of that name, for lack of a
better," when the nurse asks for young Romeo.

Wednesday we act "The School for Scandal," and Friday "Venice
Preserved." So there's your play-bill....

At this moment a great political excitement pervades the country;
it is the time of the Presidential Election, and the most vehement
efforts are being made by the Democratic party to maintain the
present President, General Jackson, in his post. The majority, I
believe, is in his favor, though we are told that the "better
classes" (whatever that may mean where no distinctions of class
exist) embrace the cause of his opponent, Henry Clay.

It seems curious, if it is true, as we have been assured, that in
this one State of Pennsylvania, eight thousand persons out of fifty
who have the right of voting were all who in this last election
exercised it; so that the much-vaunted privilege of universal
suffrage does not seem to be highly prized where it is possessed.

From all the opinions that I hear expressed upon the subject, it
does not seem as though the system of election prevalent here works
much better, or is much freer from abuses, than the well-vilified
one which England has just been reforming. Bribery and corruption
are familiar here as elsewhere, to those who have, and those who
wish to have, power; and I have not yet heard a single American
speak of our Radical reformers without uplifted hands at what they
consider their folly in not "letting well alone," or, as they say,
in substituting one set of abuses for another, as they declare we
shall do if we adopt their vote by ballot system.

I have now written you a philosophical, moral, and political
letter, and beg you will score up my attempt to write rationally
against the loads of gibberish I have from time to time discoursed
to you. Good bless you, dearest H----! Three thousand miles away, I
am still

Always your affectionate
F. A. K.

PHILADELPHIA, October 22, 1832.
DEAR H----,

My first news is deplorable, and I beg you will lament over it
accordingly. I eat little, drink less, rehearse six mornings and
act five nights a week; in spite of all which, and riding a
heavy-going, jolting, shambling, hard-pulling horse, I have grown
so fat that I really cannot perceive that there is any shape in
particular about me. Grotesque things sometimes are melancholy too,
and it is so with me, for I am both....

My father and Dall are very well; at this moment he is busy saying,
and she hearing him say, the part of Fazio, which he is to act with
me to-morrow night. I dread it dreadfully; acting anything painful
with him always tries my nerves extremely.

Bianca is a part of terrible excitement in itself, without the
addition of having to act it to his Fazio. I cannot get rid of his
being he, and it agonizes me really to see his sham agony; however,
"'tis my vocation, Hal." It is very well that our audiences should
look at us as mere puppets, for could they sometimes see the real
feelings of those for whose false miseries their sympathies are
excited, I believe sufficiently in their humanity to think they
would kindly give us leave to leave off and go home. Ours is a very
strange trade, and I am sorry to say that every day increases my
distaste for it.... I do not think that during my father's life I
shall ever leave the stage; it is very selfish to feel regret at
this, I know, but it sometimes seems to me rather dreary to look
along my future years, and think that they will be devoted to labor
that I dislike and despise.... For many years--ever since I entered
upon my first girlhood, indeed--a quiet, lonely life upon a small
independence has been the aim of my desires and my notion of
happiness. Italy and the south of France formerly constantly
solicited my imagination, as offering pleasant places wherein to
build a solitary nest.... And now a cottage near Edinburgh, with an
income of two hundred a year, seems to me the most desirable of
earthly possessions; but, though this is certainly not a very wild
vision of wealth or magnificence, I fear it is quite as little
within my reach as southern palaces, or villas on the
Mediterranean.