Chapter X: Part 10

I hear they are going to bestow upon my father, on his return to England, a silver vase, valued at several hundred pounds. I am base-minded, dear Harriet, grovelling, and sordid; and were I he, would rather have a shilling's worth of honor, and the rest of the vase in hard cash: but he has lived his life upon this sort of thing, and I think with great pleasure of the great pleasure it will give him. I am very well, and always most affectionately yours,

F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, March 12th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,

It is only a few days since I received your letter with the news of Mr. F----'s attack, from which it is but natural to apprehend that he may not recover.... The combination of the loss of one's father, and of the home of one's whole life, is indeed a severe trial; though in this case, the one depending on the other, and Mr. F----'s age being so advanced, Emily with her steadfast mind has probably contemplated the possibility of this event, and prepared herself for it, as much as preparation may be made against affliction, which, however long looked for, when it comes always seems to bring with it some unforeseen element of harsh surprise. We never can imagine what will happen to us, precisely as it _does_ happen to us; and overlook in anticipation, not only minute mitigations, but small stings of aggravation, quite incalculable till they are experienced.... I could cry to think that I shall never again see the flowerbeds and walks and shrubberies of Bannisters. I think there is something predominantly material in my nature, for the sights and sounds of outward things have always been my chiefest source of pleasure; and as I grow older this in nowise alters; so little so, that gathering the first violets of the spring the other morning, it seemed to me that they were things to _love_ almost more than creatures of my own human kind. I do not believe I am a normal human being; and at my death, only _half a soul_ will pass into a spiritual existence, the other half will go and mingle with the winds that blow, and the trees that grow, and the waters that flow, in this world of material elements....

Do I remember Widmore, you ask me. Yes, truly.... I remember the gay colors of the flowerbeds, and the fine picturesque trees in the garden, and the shady quietness of the ground-floor rooms....

You ask me how I have replaced Margery. Why, in many respects, if indeed not in all, very indifferently; but I could not help myself. Her leaving me was a matter of positive necessity, and some things tend to reconcile me to her loss. I believe she would have made S---- a Catholic. The child's imagination had certainly received a very strong impression from her; and soon after her departure, as I was hearing S---- her prayers, she begged me to let her repeat that prayer to "the blessed Virgin," which her nurse had taught her. I consider this a direct breach of faith on the part of Margery, who had once before undertaken similar instructions in spite of distinct directions to interfere in no way with the child's religious training.

The proselytizing spirit of her religion was, I suppose, stronger than her conscience, or rather, was the predominant element in it, as it is in all very devout Catholics; and the opportunity of impressing my little girl with what she considered vital truth, not to be neglected; and upon this ground alone I am satisfied that it is better she should have left me, for though it would not mortally grieve me if hereafter my child were conscientiously to embrace Romanism, I have no desire that she should be educated in what I consider erroneous views upon the most momentous of all subjects.

I have been more than once assured, on good authority, that it is by no means an infrequent practice of the Roman Catholic Irish women employed as nurses in American families, to carry their employers' babies to their own churches and have them baptized, of course without consent or even knowledge of their parents. The secret baptism is duly registered, and the child thus smuggled into the pope's fold, never, if possible, entirely lost sight of by the priest who administered the regenerating sacrament to it. The saving of souls is an irresistible motive, especially when the saving of one's own is much facilitated by the process.

The woman I have in Margery's place is an Irish Protestant, a very good and conscientious girl, but most wofully ignorant, and one who murders our luckless mother-tongue after a fashion that almost maddens me. However, as with some cultivation, education, reading, reflection, and that desire to do what is best that a mother alone can feel for her own child, I cannot but be conscious of my own inability in all points to discharge this great duty, the inability of my nursery-maid does not astonish or dismay me. The remedy for the nurse's deficiencies must be in _me_, and the remedy for mine in God, to whose guidance I commit myself and my darlings.... Margery was very anxious to remain with me as my maid; but we have reduced our establishment, and I have no longer any maid of my own, therefore I could not keep her....

With regard to attempting to make "reason the guide of your child's actions," that, of course, must be a very gradual process, and may, in my opinion, be tried too early. Obedience is the first virtue of which a young child is capable, the first duty it can perform; and the authority of a parent is, I think, the first impression it should receive,--a strictly reasonable and just claim, inasmuch as, furnishing my child with all its means of existence, as well as all its amusements and enjoyments, regard for my requests is the proper and only return it can make in the absence of sufficient judgment, to decide upon their propriety, and the motives by which they are dictated.

Good-bye, dearest Harriet.

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

BUTLER PLACE, March 16th, 1840.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

It was with infinite pain that I received your last letter [a very unfavorable report, almost a sentence of death, had been pronounced by the physicians upon my friend's dearest friend, Miss Dorothy Wilson], and yet I know not, except your sorrow, what there is so deplorable in the fact that Dorothy, who is one of the living best prepared for death, should have received a summons, which on first reading of it shocked me so terribly.

We calculate most blindly, for the most part, in what form the call to "change our life" may be least unwelcome; but to one whose eyes have long been steadily fixed upon that event, I do not believe the manner of their death signifies much.

Pain, our poor human bodies shrink from; and yet it has been endured, almost as if unfelt, not only in the triumphant death of the mob-hunted martyr, but in the still, lonely, and, by all but God, unseen agony of the poor and humble Christian, in those numerous cases where persecution indeed was not, but the sorrowful trial of the neglect and careless indifference of their fellow-beings, the total absence of all sympathy--a heavy desolation whether in life or death.

I have just lost a friend, Dr. Follen, a man to whose character no words of mine could do justice. He has been publicly mourned from more than one Christian pulpit; and Dr. Channing, in a discourse after his death, has spoken of him as one whom "many thought the most perfect man they ever knew." Among those many I was one. I have never seen any one whom I revered, loved, and admired more than I did Dr. Follen. He perished, with above a hundred others, in a burning steam-boat, on the Long Island Sound; at night, and in mid-winter, the freezing waters affording no chance of escape to the boldest swimmer or the most tenacious clinger to existence. He perished in the very flower of vigorous manhood, cut off in the midst of excellent usefulness, separated, _for the first time_, from a most dearly loved wife and child, who were prevented from accompanying him by sickness. In a scene of indescribable terror, confusion, and dismay, that noble and good man closed his life; and all who have spoken of him have said, "Could one have seen his countenance, doubtless it was to the last the mirror of his serene and steadfast spirit;" and for myself, after the first shock of hearing of that awful calamity, I could only think it mattered not how or where that man met his death. He was always near to God, and who can doubt that, in that scene of apparent horror and despair, God was very near to him?

Even so, my dearest Harriet, do I now think of the impending fate of Dorothy; but oh, the difference between the sudden catastrophe in the one case, and the foreknowledge granted in the other! Time, whose awful uses our blind security so habitually forgets, is granted to her, with its inestimable value marked on it by the finger of death, undimmed by the busy hands of earthly pursuits and interests; she has, and will have, her dearest friends and lovers about her to the very end; and I know of no prayer that I should frame for her, but exemption from acute pain. For you, my dearest Harriet, if pain and woe and suffering are appointed you, it is to some good purpose, and you may make it answer its best ends.

These seem almost cold-hearted words, and yet God knows from how warm a heart, full of love and aching with sympathy, I write them! But sorrow is His angel, His minister, His messenger who does His will, waiting upon our souls with blessed influences. My only consolation, in thinking upon your affliction, is to remember that all events are ordered by our Father, and to reflect, as I often do----

I had written thus far, dearest Harriet, when a miserable letter from Georgia came to interrupt me. How earnestly, in the midst of the tears through which I read it, I had to recall those very thoughts, in my own behalf, which I was just urging upon you, you can imagine....

We may not choose our own discipline; but happy are they who are called to suffer themselves, rather than to see those they love do so!...

My head aches, and my eyes ache, and my heart aches, and I cannot muster courage to write any more. God bless you, my dearest Harriet. Remember me most affectionately to dear Dorothy, and

Believe me ever yours,
F. A. B.

[Dr. Charles Follen, known in his own country as Carl Follenius,
became an exile from it for the sake of his political convictions,
which in his youth he had advocated with a passionate fervor that
made him, even in his college days, obnoxious to its governing
authorities. He wrote some fine spirited Volkslieder that the
students approved of more than the masters; and was so conspicuous
in the vanguard of liberal opinion, that the Vaterland became an
unwholesome residence for him, and he emigrated to America, where
all his aspirations towards enlightened freedom found "elbow-room."

He became an ordained Unitarian preacher; and it was a striking
tribute to his spirit of humane tolerance as well as to his eloquent
advocacy of his own high spiritual faith, that he was once earnestly
and respectfully solicited to give a series of discourses upon
Christianity, to a society of intelligent men who professed
themselves dis-believers in it (atheists, materialists, for aught I
know), inasmuch as from him they felt sure of a powerful, clear, and
earnest exposition of his own opinions, unalloyed by uttered or
implied condemnation of them for differing from him. I do not know
whether Dr. Follen complied with this petition, but I remember his
saying how much he had been touched by it, and how glad he should be
to address such a body of mis- or dis-believers. He was a man of
remarkable physical vigor, and excelled in all feats of strength and
activity, having, when first he came to Boston, opened a gymnasium
for the training of the young Harvard scholars in such exercises. He
had the sensibility and gentleness of a woman, the imagination of a
poet, and the courage of a hero; a genial kindly sense of humor, and
buoyant elastic spirit of joyousness, that made him, with his fine
intellectual and moral qualities, an incomparable friend and teacher
to the young, for whose rejoicing vitality he had the sympathy of
fellowship as well as the indulgence of mature age, and whose
enthusiasm he naturally excited to the highest degree.

His countenance was the reflection of his noble nature. My
intercourse with him influenced my life while it lasted, and long
after his death the thought of what would have been approved or
condemned by him affected my actions.

Many years after his death, I was speaking of him to Waeleker, the
Nestor of German professors, the most learned of German
philologists, historians, archaeologists, and antiquarians, and he
broke out into enthusiastic praise of Follen, who had been his
pupil at Jena, and to whose mental and moral worth he bore, with
deep emotion, a glowing testimony.]

BUTLER PLACE, March 23rd, 1840.

I have just learned, dearest Harriet, that the Censorship [office of licenser of plays] has been transferred from my father to my brother John, which I am very glad to hear, as I imagine, though I do not know it, that the death of Mr. Beaumont must have put an end to the existence of the _British and Foreign Review_, for which he employed my brother as editor.

If the salary of licenser is an addition to the income attached to his editorship of the _Review_, my brother will be placed in comfortable circumstances; and I hope this may prove to be the case--though ladies are not apt to be so in love with abstract political principles as to risk certain thousands every year merely to promote their quarterly illustration in a _Review_, and I shall not be at all surprised to learn that Mrs. Beaumont declines doing so any longer.

[Mrs. Wentworth Beaumont, mother of my brother John's friend, must
have been a woman of very decided political opinions, and very
liberal views of the value of her convictions--in hard cash. Left
the widowed mistress of a princely estate in Yorkshire, on the
occasion when the most passionate contest recorded in modern
electioneering made it doubtful whether the Government candidate or
the one whose politics were more in accordance with her own would be
returned to Parliament, she, then a very old lady, drove in her
travelling-carriage with four horses to Downing Street, and
demanding to see the Prime Minister, with whom she was well
acquainted, accosted him thus: "Well, my lord, are you quite
determined to make your man stand for _our_ seat?" "Yes, Mrs.
Beaumont, I think quite determined." "Very well," replied the lady;
"I am on my way down to Yorkshire, with eighty thousand pounds in
the carriage for my man. Try and do better than that."

I am afraid the _pros_ and _cons_ for Woman's Suffrage would alike
have thought that very expensive female partisan politician hardly
to be trusted with the franchise. Lord Dacre, who told me that
anecdote, told me also that on one occasion forty thousand pounds,
to his knowledge, had been spent by Government on a contested
election--I think he said at Norwich.] ...

The longer I live, the less I think of the importance of any or all outward circumstances, and the more important I think the original powers and dispositions of people submitted to their influence. God has permitted no situation to be exempt from trial and temptation, and few, if any, to be entirely exempt from good influences and opportunities for using them. The tumult of the inward creature may exist in the midst of the calmest outward daily life, and the peace which passeth understanding subsist in the turmoil of the most adverse circumstances.... Our desires tending towards particular objects, we naturally seek the position most favorable for obtaining them; and, stand where we will, we are still, if we so choose, on the heavenward road. If we know how barely responsible for what they are many human beings necessarily must be, how much better does God know it! With many persons, whose position we regret and think unfortunate for their character, we might have to go far back, and retrace in the awful influence of inheritance the source of the evils we deplore in them. We need have much faith in the future to look hopefully at the present, and perfect faith in the mercy of our Father in heaven, who alone knows how much or how little of His blessed light has reached every soul of us through precept and example....

You ask me of Margery's successor: she is an honest, conscientious, and most ignorant Irish Protestant. You cannot conceive of what materials our households are composed here. The Americans, whose superior intelligence and education make them by far the most desirable servants we could have, detest the condition of domestic service so utterly, that it is next to impossible to procure them, and absolutely impossible to retain them above a year. The lowest order of Irish are the only persons that can be obtained. They offer themselves, and are accepted of hard necessity, indiscriminately, for any situation in a house, from that of lady's-maid to that of cook; and, indeed, they are equally unfit for all, having probably never seen so much as the inside of a decent house till they came to this country. To illustrate--my housemaid is the sister of my present nursery-maid, and on the occasion of the latter taking her holiday in town, the other had the temporary charge of the children, and, when first she undertook it, had to be duly enlightened as to the toilet purposes of a wash-hand basin, a sponge, and a toothbrush, not one of which had she apparently been familiar with before; and this would have been the case with a large proportion of the Irish girls who present themselves here to be engaged as our servants.

Our household has been reduced for some time past, and I have no maid of my own; and when the nurse is in town I am obliged to forego the usual decency of changing my dress for dinner, from the utter incapacity of my housemaid to fasten it upon my back. Of course, except tolerably faithful washing, dressing, and bodily care, I can expect nothing for my children from my present nurse. She is a very good and pious girl, and though her language is nothing short of heathen Greek, her sentiments are very much those of a good Christian. This same service is a source of considerable daily tribulations, and I wish I only improved all my opportunities of practising patience and forbearance....

F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, March 25th, 1840.
MY DEAR T----,

I have been reading with infinite interest the case of the _Amistad_; but understand, from Mrs. Charles Sedgwick, that there is to be an appeal upon the matter. As, however, the result will, I presume, be the same, the more publicity the affair obtains, the more it and all kindred subjects are discussed, spoken of, thought on, and written about, the better for us unfortunate slaveholders.

I am very much obliged to you for sending me that article on Mr. Jay's book. You know how earnestly I look to every sign of the approaching termination of this national disgrace and individual misfortune; and when men of ability and character conscientiously raise their voices against it, who can be so faint-hearted as not to have faith in its ultimate downfall?

Your very name pledges you in some sort to this cause, and, among your other important duties, let me (who am now involuntarily implicated in this terrible abuse) beg you to remember that this one is an inheritance; and for the sake of those, justly honored, who have bequeathed it to you, discharge it with the ability nature has so bountifully endowed you with, and you cannot fail to accomplish great good.

In reading your article, I was much reminded of Legget, whose place, it seems to me, there is none but you to fill.

I have just been interrupted by a letter from Elizabeth, confirming the news of your sister's return from Europe. I congratulate you heartily upon the termination of your anxieties about her. Remember me most kindly to her, and to your mother, if my message can be made acceptable to her in her present affliction, and believe me

Ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.

[The _Amistad_ was a low raking schooner, conveying between fifty
and sixty negroes, fresh from Africa, from Havannah to Guamapah,
Port Principe, to the plantation of one of the passengers. The
captain and three of the crew were murdered by the negroes. Two
planters were spared to navigate the vessel back to Africa. Forced
to steer east all day, these white men steered west and north all
night; and after two months, coming near New London, the schooner
was captured by the United States schooner _Washington_, and carried
into port, where a trial was held by the Circuit Court at Hertford,
transferred to the District Court, and sent by appeal to the United
States Supreme Court. The District Court decreed that one man, not
of the recent importation, should, by the treaty of 1795 with Spain,
be restored to his master; the rest, delivered to the President of
the United States, to be by him transported to their homes in
Africa.

Before the case could come before the United States Supreme Court,
the President (Mr. Van Buren), upon the requisition of the Spanish
minister, had the negroes conveyed, by the United States schooner
_Grampus_, back to Havannah and to slavery, under the treaty of
1795.

The case created an immense excitement among the friends and foes of
slavery. The point made by the counsel for the negroes being that
they were not slaves, but free Africans, freshly brought to Cuba,
contrary to the latest enacted laws of Spain. The schooner _Amistad_
started on her voyage to Africa in June, 1839, reached New London in
August, and was sent back in January, 1840.]

BUTLER PLACE, April 5th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,

I have received both your letters concerning Dorothy's health. The one which you sent by the _British Queen_ came before one you previously wrote me from Liverpool, and destroyed all the pleasure I should have received from the cheerful spirit in which the latter was written.

I was reading the other evening a sermon of Dr. Channing's, suggested by the miserable destruction of a steamboat with the loss of upwards of a hundred lives; among them, one precious to all who knew him perished, a man who, I think, had few equals, and to whose uncommon character all who ever knew him bear witness.

The fate of so excellent a human being, cut off in the flower of his age, in the midst of a career of uncommon worth and usefulness, inspired Dr. Channing, who was his dear friend, with one of the finest discourses in which Christian faith ever "justified the ways of God to Man."

In reading that eloquent sermon, so full of hope, of trust, of resignation, and rational acknowledgment of the great purposes of sorrow, my thoughts turned to you, dearest Harriet, and dwelt upon your present trial, and on the impending loss of your dear friend. I have not the sermon by me, or I could scarce resist transcribing passages from it; but if you can procure it, do. It was written on the occasion of the burning of the steamboat _Lexington_, and in memory of Dr. Charles Follen.

One of the views that impressed me most, of those urged by Channing, was that sorrow--however considered by us, individually, as a shocking accident,--in God's providence, was a large part of the appointed experience of existence: no blot, no jar, no sudden violent visitation of wrath; but part of the light, and harmony, and order, of our spiritual education; an essential and invaluable portion of our experience, of infinite importance in our moral training. To all it is decreed to suffer; through our bodies, through our minds, through our affections, through the noblest as well as the lowest of our attributes of being. This then, he argues, which enters so largely into the existence of every living soul, should never be regarded with an eye of terror, as an appalling liability or a fearful unaccountable disturbance in the course of our lives.

I suppose it is the rarefied air our spirits breathe on great heights of achievement; as vital to our moral nature as the pure mountain element, which stimulates our lungs, is to our physical being. In sorrow, faithfully borne, the glory and the blessing of holiness become hourly more apparent to us; and it must be good for us to suffer, since our dear Father lays suffering upon us. If we believe one word of what we daily repeat, and profess to believe, of His mercy and goodness, we must needs believe that the pain and grief which enter so largely into His government of and provision for us are all part of His goodness and mercy.... I pray that you, and I, and all, may learn more and more to accept His will, even as His Son, our perfect pattern, accepted it....

J---- B---- has already returned home from the South, weary of the heat, and the oppressive _smell of the orange flowers_ on Butler's Island....

The tranquillity of my outward circumstances has its counterweight m the excitability of my nature. I think upon the whole, the task and load of life is very equal, its labors and its burdens very equal: they only have real sorrow who make it for themselves, in their own hearts, by their own faults; and they only have real joy who make and keep it there by their own effort....

Katharine Sedgwick writes in great disappointment at your not being in Italy this winter, and so does her niece, my dear little Kate. Those are loving hearts, and most good Christians; they have been like sisters to me in this strange land; I am gratefully attached to them, and long for their return. God bless you, dear. Give my affectionate remembrance to Dorothy, and

Believe me ever yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, April 30th, 1840.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Of course I have begun to die already: which I believe people do as soon as they reach maturity; at any rate, the process begins, I am sure, much earlier, and is much more gradual and uninterrupted, than we suppose or are aware of. Most persons, I think, begin to die at about thirty; some take a longer, and some a shorter time in becoming quite entirely dead, but after that age I do not believe anybody is quite entirely alive.... Still, though somewhat dead (as I have most reason to know), to the eyes of most people I am even now an uncommonly lively woman; and while my soul is at peace, and my spirits cheerful, I am not myself painfully conscious that I am dying.... The treasure of health was mine in perfection, almost for five and twenty years, and I do not see that I should have any right to complain that I no longer possess it as fully as I once did....

You and I have changed places curiously enough, since first we began to hold arguments together; and it seems as strange that you should disparage reason to me, as the chief instrument of education, as that I should be upholding it against your disparagement. The longer I live, the more convinced my _reason_ is of the goodness and wisdom of God; and from what my _reason_ can perceive of these attributes of our Father my _faith_ derives the surest foundation on which to build perfect trust and confidence, where my _reason_ can no longer discern the meaning of my existence, the exact purpose of its several events, and significance of its circumstances. Entire faith in God seems to me entirely reasonable; but, indeed, I have yet had no experience of any dispensations of Divine Providence which at all tried or shook my reason, or disturbed my trust in their unfailing righteousness.

Our reason, above all our other faculties, shows us how little we can know; and it is the very function of reason to perceive how finite, vague, and feeble all our conceptions of the Almighty must be; how utterly futile all our attempts to fathom His purposes, whose ways are assuredly not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts.

The spring has come; the mysterious resurrection which with its annually recurring miracle adorns the earth, and makes the heavens above it bright; and even on this uninteresting place, the flush of rosy bloom down in the apple-orchard, the tender green halo above, the golden green atmosphere beneath the trees of the avenue, the smell of the blossoms, the songs of the birds, awaken impressions of delight; and while the senses rejoice, the soul worships. Tulips, and hyacinths, and lilacs, and monthly roses shake about in the soft wind, and scatter their colored petals like jewels among the young vivid verdure. Delicate shadows of delicate leaves lie drawn in quivering tracery on the smooth emerald grass. My garden is a source of pleasure and perpetual occupation to me. Here, where ornamental cultivation is so little attended to, my small improvements of our small pleasure-ground are repaid, not only by my own enjoyment, but by the admiring commendation of all who knew the place before we came to it; and as within the last two years I have planted upwards of two hundred trees, I begin to feel as if I had really done something in my generation. Good-bye, dear.

I remain ever yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, June 7th, 1840.

Thank you, my dear Mrs. Jameson, for your letter of April 4th. It was interesting and amusing enough to have been written by one whose thoughts and feelings were far otherwise free and cheerful than yours could have been when you indited it. I lament the protraction of your father's illness very much, for your mother's sake, and all your sakes. A serious illness at his period of life is not a circumstance to cause surprise; but its long continuance is to be deprecated, no less for the sufferer than those whose health and strength, expended in anxious watching, can leave them but little fortitude to meet the result should it prove fatal. I hope to hear in your next that your mother is relieved from her present painful position, and that your own spirits are more cheerful.

I have not seen even as much as an extract from Leigh Hunt's play [I think called a "Legend of Florence," and founded upon the incident that gave its name to the Via della Morte in the fair city]; but I am very glad he has written one, and hope he will write others: certain elements of his genius are essentially those of an effective dramatist, and surely, if the public can swallow a play of ----'s, it might be brought to taste one of Leigh Hunt's. I dislike everything that ---- ever wrote, and think he ought to have been a Frenchman. Can one say worse of a man who is not?...

You ask me if writing plays is not pleasanter and more profitable than reading Gibbon. Certainly, if one only has the mind to do the one instead of the other, which at present I have not.

I have sometimes fancied it was my duty to work out such talent of that kind as was in me; but I have hitherto not felt at all sure that I had any such gift which, you know, would be necessary before I could determine what was my duty with regard to it. I never write anything but upon impulse--all my compositions are impromptus; and the species of atmosphere I live in is not favorable to that order of inspiration. The outward sameness of my life; its uniformity of color, level surface, and monotonous tone; its unvaried tenor, alike devoid of pleasurable and painful excitement; its wholesome abundance of daily recurring trivial occupations, and absence of any great or varied interests; its entire isolation from all literary and intellectual society, which might strike the fire from the sleepy stone--all these influences prevail against my writing.

I once thought the material lay within me, but it will probably moulder away for want of use; and as long as I am neither the worse woman, wife, nor mother for its neglect, I take it it matters very little, and there is no harm done. My serious interest in life is the care of my children, and my principal recreation is my garden; and though I formerly sometimes imagined I had faculties whose exercise might demand a wider sphere, the consciousness that I discharge very imperfectly the obligations of that which I occupy, ought to satisfy me that its homely duties and modest tasks are more than sufficient for my abilities; and though I am not satisfied with myself, I should be with my existence, since, such as it is, it furnishes me with more work than I do as it should be done.

From the interest you express in Fanny Ellsler, you will be glad to hear that her success here has been triumphant. I believe the great mass of people always recognize and acknowledge excellence when they see it, though their stupid or ignorant toleration of what is mediocre, or even bad, would seem to indicate the contrary.... The general mind of man is capable of perceiving the most excellent in all things, and prompt to seize it, too, when it meets with it. Even in morals it does so theoretically, however the difficulty of adhering to high standards may make the actions of most people conform but little to their best conceptions of right. The idea of perfection is recognized by the spirit of creatures capable of and destined for perfection in all things, whether great or small; and so (since this is _a propos_ of opera dancing) Fanny Ellsler's performances have been appreciated here to a degree that would astonish those who forget that education, though it develops, does not create our finer perceptions, and, moreover, that the finest are commoner than is commonly believed. The possession is almost universal: the cultivation in _any_ degree worth anything comparatively rare, and in a _high_ degree very rare indeed everywhere; and here--well! it does not exist.

I hope we shall see you in England in the autumn; I am using every endeavor not to be sent over alone.... I cannot bear to go to England again a "widow bewitched."

I am ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, June 8th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,

It is not to you that I apologize for talking over-much about my children, but to myself.... For what said the witty Frenchman of a man's love for wife and child? "_Ah! bien c'est de l'egoisme a trois._" ... I hope you will see my children, both them and me, in a very few months; for I think we are coming to England in September, and I shall surely not leave it without borrowing some of your company from you, let you be where you may....

I must go and dress for dinner, hence the brevity of this letter, which pray accept for "the soul of wit."

Did you ever see a humming-bird? Have they them in Italy? We have a honeysuckle hedge here, where the little jewels of creatures stuff themselves incessantly, early and late, sabbaths and week-days, flickering over the sweet bushes of fragrance, like the diamonds of modern fashion set on elastic wires, to make them quiver and increase their sparkle and brilliancy. I should like to have written some more to you.

I am ever your affectionate
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, June 28th, 1840.
MY DEAR T----,

Your discoveries in the private character of Sir Samuel Romilly are none to me. I have known those who knew him intimately. My brother was school and college mate of his sons, one of whom I know very well; and their father's character, in all its most endearing aspects, was familiar to me. I think I was once told (not by them, however, of course) that the melancholy induced by the loss of his wife had been the chief cause of his destroying himself, for he was devotedly and passionately attached to her.

We go every night to see Fanny Ellsler; only think what an extraordinary effort of dissipation for me, who hardly ever stir abroad of an evening, and who had almost as much forgotten the inside of a theatre as Falstaff had the inside of a church! My admiration for her grows rather than diminishes, though she is a better actress even than dancer, which I think speaks in favor of her intellect. Did you ever see Taglioni? Who invented and who suggested the expression the "poetry of motion"? It should have been _made_ for her. Her dancing is like nothing but poetic inspiration, and seems as if she was composing while she executed it. I wonder if it is the ballet-master who devises all the steps of these great dancers,--of course, not the national dances, but the inconceivably lovely things that Taglioni does, or whether she orders her own steps, and (given a certain dramatic situation and a certain strain of music) floats or flies, or glides, or gyrates at her own will and pleasure. Did you ever see her in the "Sylphide"? What an exquisite pathetic dream of supernatural sentiment that was! Other dances are as graceful as possible; that woman was grace itself.

I was saying once to my friend, Frederick Rackeman, that Chopin's music made me think of Taglioni's dancing, to which he replied, to my great surprise, that Chopin had said that he had more than once received his inspiration from Taglioni's dancing; a curious instance of influence so strong as to be recognized by one who was perfectly unaware of it. If I remember rightly, Gibson, the sculptor, said that he owed many suggestions to the vigorous and graceful dancing of Cerito; but those, of course, were a suggestion of form to a creator of form, and not an inspiration of exquisite sound gathered from exquisite motion, as in the instance of Taglioni and Chopin.

Certain music suggests the waving of trees, as in the Notturno in Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and Schubert's exquisite _beckoning_ song of the linden tree.

Certainly dancers deserve to be well paid when one thinks of the mechanical labor, the daily hours of _battements_ and _changements de pieds_, and turning, and twisting, and torturing of the limbs before this apparently spontaneous result of mere movement can be obtained.

Ellsler has great dramatic power. Her Tarentelle and Wylie are really finely tragical in parts; but then she had a first-rate _head_ as well as foot training.

She is a wonderful artist; but there is something unutterably sad to me in the contemplation of such a career. The blending in most unnatural union of the elements of degradation and moral misery with such exquisite perceptions of beauty, grace, and refinement, produces the impression of a sort of monstrosity, a deformity of the whole higher nature, which fills one with poignant compassion and regret. Poor, fair, admired, despised, flattered, forlorn souls!...

Pray come and see us when you can, and

Believe me very truly yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, June 26th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,

Mr. Combe and Cecilia spent the day with us on their way to New York, and I did rejoice to think her pilgrimage was over. She has gone through what her former habits of life must have made a severe experience in travelling in this country. Her affection for her husband, and her devotion to his views, are unbounded, and have helped her to submit to her trial with a cheerfulness and good humor worthy of all praise; for the luxurious comfort of her life in her mother's house was certainly a bad preparation for roughing it, as she has been doing for some months past, for the sake of the phrenologist and his phrenology.... I never knew any one more improved by the blessed discipline of happiness than she appears to be. I am afraid my incapacity to accept the whole of their system would always prevent our being as good friends as we might otherwise with opportunity become. Perhaps, however, as the opportunity is not likely to offer often, it does not much matter....

Saunders, the miniature-painter, of London celebrity, has come out here to look at the pretty faces on this side of the water.... He told me that he had once executed to order a miniature of me, partly from seeing me on the stage, and partly from memory. I knew nothing whatever of this, and think it is one among the many nuisances of being a "public character," or what the American Minister's wife said her position had made her, "_Une femme publique_," that one's likeness may thus be stolen, and sold or bought by anybody who chooses to traffic in such gear.

I remember my mother telling me of a painful circumstance which had occurred to her from the same cause. A young officer of some distinction, who died in India, left among his effects a miniature of her; and she was disagreeably surprised by receiving from his mother a heartbroken appeal to her, saying that the fact of her son's being in possession of this portrait led her to hope that perhaps my mother might possess one of him, and entreating her, if such were the case, to permit her (his mother) to have a copy of it, as she had no likeness of her son. My mother was obliged to reply that she had no such portrait, and had never known or even heard the name of the gentleman who was in possession of hers....

How many things make one feel as if one's whole life was only a confused dream! Wouldn't it be odd to wake at the end, and find one had not lived at all? Many perhaps will wake at the end, and find it so indeed in one sense,--which brings us back to the more serious aspect of things....

I had some time ago a joint-stock letter from my brother John and his wife, informing me of the birth of their son. I do not think they mentioned who was to be its godmother; but I quite agree with Mrs. Kemble (my Uncle John's widow), as to the inexpediency of undertaking such a sponsorship for any one's child. If it means anything, it means something so serious that I should shrink from such a responsibility; and if it means (as it generally does) nothing, I think it would be better omitted altogether. When I was at home I dissuaded my sister from standing godmother to their little girl; but I do not think any of them understood my motive for doing so....

You ask me whether the specimens of Irish order, neatness, and intelligence which came over here to fill our domestic ranks are beyond training. Truly, training is, for the most part, so far beyond _them_, that it is no easy matter to simplify even the first rudiments of the science of civilization sufficiently to render them intelligible to these fair countrywomen of yours. Patience is a fine thing, and might accomplish something, perhaps; but there are insuperable bars to any hope of their progress in the high wages which they can all command at once, whether they ever saw the inside of a decent house before they came to this country or not; the abundance of situations; and the absence of everything like superior competition. The extraordinary comparative prosperity to which these poor ignorant girls are suddenly introduced on their arrival here, the high pay, the profusely plentiful living, the _equality_ treatment, which must seem almost _quality_ treatment to them, presently make them impertinent and unsteady; and as they can all command a new situation the instant that, for any cause, they leave the one they are in (unfit for the commonest situation in a decent household as they are), it is hardly worth their while, out of a mere abstract love of perfection, to labor at any very great improvement of their powers. A residence of some years in this country generally develops their intelligence into a sort of sharp-sighted calculating shrewdness, which they do not bring with them, but no way improves their own quick native wit and natural national humor. Of course there are exceptions; but the majority of them, after a short stay in America, contrive to combine their own least desirable race qualities with the independent tone of pert familiarity, the careless extravagance, and the passion for dress of American girls of the lower class....

F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, July 8th 1840.

Perhaps, dearest Harriet, it might be better for me not to come to England, inasmuch as my roots are beginning to spread in my present soil, and to transplant them, even for a short time, might check the process materially.... But while my father still lives, I shall hope to revisit England once in every few years: when he is gone, I will give up all the rest that I own on the other side of the water, and remain here until it might be thought desirable for us to visit, not England only, but Europe; and should that never appear desirable, why, then, remain here till I die.

My father's health received a beneficial stimulus from the excitement of his temporary return to the stage; but before that, his condition was by all accounts very unsatisfactory; and I am afraid that when the effect of the impulse his physical powers received from the pleasurable exertion of acting subsides, he may again relapse into feebleness, dejection, and general disorder of the system, from which he appeared to be suffering before he made this last professional effort. I _must_ see him once more, and he has written to me to say that as soon as he knows when we are coming to England, he will meet us there. He will, I am pretty sure, bring my sister with him, and this is an additional reason why I am very anxious to be in England this autumn.... I have no doubt that they will both come to England in September, to meet me, and I presume we should remain together until I am obliged to return to America.

I have not expressed to you, my dearest Harriet, my delight at your relief from immediate anxiety about Dorothy. Sorrow seems to me so peculiarly severe in its administration--or discipline, should I call it?--to your spirit, that I thank God that its heavy pressure is lifted from your heart for the present. Dorothy is one of those with whom I always feel sure that all is well, let their circumstances or situation be what they will; but I rejoice that she is spared physical suffering, and preserved to you, to whom she is so infinitely precious....

F. A. B.

LENOX, August 15th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,

... You bid me tell you when I shall leave America to pay my promised visit to my father. I have been thrown into a state of complete uncertainty by receiving a letter from my brother John, which informs me of my sister's engagement at Naples and Palermo, and possible further engagements at Malta and _Constantinople_! Think of her going to sing to the Turks!... I am at present alone here, and of course cannot myself determine the question of my going alone all over the Continent to join my father and Adelaide.... It is possible that I may have to renounce my visit to Europe altogether for the present, and, but for my father, I could do so without a moment's hesitation, but I dread postponing seeing him again, and, while I do so, shall live in a perpetual apprehension that I shall _hear_ of his death as I did of that of my poor mother. I consider the visit I contemplated making him our probable last season of reunion, and cannot banish the thought that if it is indefinitely postponed I may perhaps never see him again....

An intense interest is felt by all good Democrats in the coming election, which determines whether Mr. Van Buren is to retain the Presidency or not; and no zealous member of his party would leave the country while that was undetermined. John writes me, too, that he expects my father and sister both in London after Easter next year, and I have no doubt it will be thought best that I should wait till then to join them in England. However, all my plans must remain for the present in utter uncertainty, and I shall surely not meet you and Emily at Bannisters, which I could well have liked to do....

What lots of umbrellas you must wear out at Grasmere! [Miss S---- and Miss W---- were passing the summer at the English lakes.] I am writing pretty late at night, but if the Sedgwicks, whom you know, and those who, through them, know you, were round me, I should have _showers_ of love to send you from them: your rainy lake country suggested that image, but that would be a _warm_ shower, which you don't get in Westmoreland. I am growing very fat, but at the present there is no fatty degeneracy of the heart, so that I still remain

Affectionately yours,
F. A. B.

LENOX, MASSACHUSETTS, August 28th, 1840.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,

I have always considered your writing to me a very unmerited kindness towards one who had so little claim on your time and attention; and I need not tell you how much this feeling is increased by your present state of mind, and the effort I am sure it must be to you to remember one so far off, in the midst of your great sorrow [for the death of her daughter, Mrs. Sullivan].... I shall come alone to England; and this is the more dismal, that I have it in prospect to go down to Naples to join my father and sister, and stay with them till her engagements there and at Palermo are ended. This journey (once my vision by day and dream by night) will lose much of its delight by being a solitary pilgrimage to the long-desired Italy. I think of pressing one of my brothers into my service as escort; or if they are not able to go with me, shall write to my father to come to England, as he lately sent me word he would do, at any time that I would meet him there--of course, to return immediately with him to my sister. They will both, I believe, be in England after Easter next year; and then I shall hope to be allowed to see you, my dear Lady Dacre, and express to you how much I have sympathized with you in all you have suffered.