Chapter XIII: Part 13

I wrote thus much this morning, dear Harriet; this evening I have another quiet season in which to resume my pen.... I have been obliged to give up my dinner engagement for to-day, and I sat down by the failing light of half-past seven o'clock to eat a cold dinner alone, with a book in my hand: which combination of circumstances reminded me so forcibly of my American home, that I could hardly make out whether I was here or there.

So far yesterday, Thursday evening; it is now Friday morning. Adelaide has gone out with Mary Anne Thackeray to buy cheap gowns at a bankrupt shop in Regent Street; the piano is silent, and I can hear myself think, and have some consciousness of what I am writing about....

Dearest Harriet, it is now Sunday morning; there is a most stupendous row at the pianoforte, and, luckily, there is no more space in this paper for my addled brains to testify to the effect of this musical tempest. God bless you.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

CLARGES STREET, Wednesday, June 23rd, 1841.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

You asked me some time ago some questions about Rachel, which I never answered, in the first place because I had not seen her then, and since I have seen her I have had other things I wanted to say. Everybody here is now raving about her. I have only seen her once on the stage, and heard her declaim at Stafford House, the morning of the concert for the Poles. Her appearance is very striking: she is of a very good height; too thin for beauty, but not for dignity or grace; her want of chest and breadth indeed almost suggest a tendency to pulmonary disease, coupled with her pallor and her youth (she is only just twenty). Her voice is the most remarkable of her natural qualifications for her vocation, being the deepest and most sonorous voice I ever heard from a woman's lips: it wants brilliancy, variety, and tenderness; but it is like a fine, deep-toned bell, and expresses admirably the passions in the delineation of which she excels--scorn, hatred, revenge, vitriolic irony, concentrated rage, seething jealousy, and a fierce love which seems in its excess allied to all the evil which sometimes springs from that bittersweet root. [I shall never forget the first time I ever heard Mademoiselle Rachel speak. I was acting my old part of Julia, in "The Hunchback," at Lady Ellesmere's, where the play was got up for an audience of her friends, and for her especial gratification. The room was darkened, with the exception of our stage, and I had no means of discriminating anybody among my audience, which was, as became an assembly of such distinguished persons, decorously quiet and undemonstrative. But in one of the scenes, where the foolish heroine, in the midst of her vulgar triumph at the Earl of Rochdale's proposal, is suddenly overcome by the remorseful recollection of her love for Clifford, and almost lets the earl's letter fall from her trembling hands, I heard a voice out of the darkness, and it appeared to me almost close to my feet, exclaiming, in a tone the vibrating depth of which I shall never forget, "_Ah, bien, bien, tres bien!_"] Mademoiselle Rachel's face is very expressive and dramatically fine, though not absolutely beautiful. It is a long oval, with a head of classical and very graceful contour; the forehead rather narrow and not very high; the eyes small, dark, deep-set, and terribly powerful; the brow straight, noble, and fine in form, though not very flexible.

I was immensely struck and carried away with her performance of "Hermione," though I am not sure that some of the parts did not seem to me finer than the whole, as a whole conception. That in which she is unrivalled by any actor or actress I ever saw is the expression of a certain combined and concentrated hatred and scorn. Her reply to Andromaque's appeal to her, in that play, was one of the most perfect things I have ever seen on the stage: the cold, cruel, acrid enjoyment of her rival's humiliation,--the quiet, bitter, unmerciful exercise of the power of torture, was certainly, in its keen incisiveness, quite incomparable. It is singular that so young a woman should so especially excel in delineations and expressions of this order of emotion, while in the utterance of tenderness, whether in love or sorrow, she appears comparatively less successful; I am not, however, perhaps competent to pronounce upon this point, for Hermione and Emilie, in Corneille's "Cinna," are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M---- saw her the other day in "Marie Stuart," and cried her eyes almost out, so she must have some pathetic power. ---- was so enchanted with her, both on and off the stage, that he took me to call upon her, on her arrival in London, and I was very much pleased with the quiet grace and dignity, the excellent _bon ton_ of her manners and deportment. The other morning too, at Stafford House, I was extremely overcome at my sister's first public exhibition in England, and was endeavoring, while I screened myself behind a pillar, to hide my emotion and talk with some composure to Rachel; she saw, however, how it was with me, and with great kindness allowed me to go into a room that had been appropriated to her use between her declamations, and was very amiable and courteous to me.

She is completely the rage in London now; all the fine ladies and gentlemen crazy after her, the Queen throwing her roses on the stage out of her own bouquet, and viscountesses and marchionesses driving her about, _a l'envie l'une de l'autre_, to show her all the lions of the town. She is miserably supported on the stage, poor thing, the _corps dramatique_ engaged to act with her being not only bad, but some of them (the principal hero, principally) irresistibly ludicrous.

By-the-by, I was assured, by a man who went to see the "Marie Stuart," that this worthy, who enacted the part of Leicester, carried his public familiarity with Queen Elizabeth to such lengths as to nudge her with his elbow on some particular occasion. Don't you think that was nice?

Mrs. Grote and I have had sundry small encounters, and I think I perceive that, had I leisure to cultivate her acquaintance more thoroughly, I should like her very much. The other evening, at her own house, she nearly killed me with laughing, by assuring me that she had always had a perfect passion for dancing, and that she had entirely missed her vocation, which ought to have been that of an opera-dancer; (now, Harriet, she looks like nothing but Trelawney in petticoats.) I suppose this is the secret of her great delight in Ellsler.

I find, in an old letter of yours that I was reading over this morning, this short question: "Does imagination make a fair balance, in heightening our pains and our pleasures?" That would depend, I suppose, upon whether we had as many pleasures as pains (real ones, I mean) to be colored by it; but as the mere possession of an imaginative temperament is in itself a more fertile source of unreal pains than pleasures, the answer may be short too; an imaginative mind has almost always a tendency to be a melancholy one. Shakespeare is the glorious exception to this, but then he is an exception to everything. I must bid you good-bye now....

God bless you, dear.

Ever your affectionate,
FANNY.

[After seeing Mademoiselle Rachel, as I subsequently did, in all her
great parts, and as often as I had an opportunity of doing so, the
impression she has left upon my mind is that of the greatest
dramatic genius, except Kean, who was not greater, and the most
incomparable dramatic artist I ever saw. The qualities I have
mentioned as predominating in her performances still appear to me to
have been their most striking ones; but her expressions of
tenderness, though rare, were perfect--one instance of which was the
profound pathos of the short exclamation, "_Oh, mon cher, Curiace!_"
that precedes her fainting fit of agony in "Camille," and the whole
of the last scene of "Marie Stuart," in which she excelled Madame
Ristori as much in pathetic tenderness as she surpassed her in
power, in the famous scene of defiance to Elizabeth. As for any
comparison between her and that beautiful woman and charming
actress, or her successor on the French stage of the present day,
Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, I do not admit any such for a moment.]

Bannisters, July 28th, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,

You certainly have not thought that I was never going to write to you again, but I dare say you have wondered when I should ever write to you again. This seems a very fitting place whence to address you, who are so affectionately associated with the recollection of the last happy days I spent here.

How vain is the impatience of despondency! How wise, as well as how pleasant, it is to hope! Not that all can who would; but I verily believe that the hopeful are the wisest as well as the happiest of this mortal congregation; for, in spite of the credulous distrust of the desponding, the accomplishment of our wishes awaits us in the future quite as often as their defeat, and the cheerful faithful spirit of those who can hope has the promise of this life as well as of that which is to come.

At the end of four years, here I am again with my dear friend Emily, even in this lovely home of hers, from which a doom, ever at hand, has threatened to expel her every day of these four years.... In spite of separation, distance, time, and the event which stands night and day at her door, threatening to drive her forth from this beloved home, here we are again together, enjoying each other's fellowship in these familiar beautiful scenes: walking, driving, riding, and living together, as we have twice been permitted to do before, as we are now allowed to do again, to the confusion of all the depressing doubts which have prevented this fair prospect from ever rising before my eyes with the light of hope upon it--so little chance did there seem of its ever being realized.

Emily and I rode to Netley Abbey yesterday, and looked at the pillar on which your name and ours were engraved with so many tears before my last return to America. If I had had a knife, I would have rewritten the record, at least deepened it; but, indeed, it seems of little use to do so while the soft, damp breath of the air suffices to efface it from the stone, and while every stone of the beautiful ruin is a memento to each one of us of the other two, and the place will be to all time haunted by our images, and by thoughts as vivid as bodily presences to the eyes of whichever of us may be there without the others....

Our plans are assuming very definite shape, and you will probably be glad to hear that there is every prospect of our spending another year in England, inasmuch as we are at this moment in treaty for a house which we think of taking with my father for that time. My sister has concluded an extremely agreeable and advantageous engagement with Covent Garden, for a certain number of nights, at a very handsome salary. This is every way delightful to me; it keeps her in England, among her friends, and in the exercise of her profession; it places her where she will meet with respect and kindness, both from the public and the members of the profession with whom she will associate. Covent Garden is in some measure our vantage-ground, and I am glad that she should thence make her first appeal to an English audience.

Our new house (if we get it) is in Harley Street, close to Cavendish Square, and has a room for you, of course, dearest Harriet; and you will come and see my sister's first appearance, and stay with me next winter, as you did last. Our more immediate plans stand thus: we leave this sweet and dear place, to our great regret, to-morrow; to-morrow night and part of Thursday we spend at Addleston with my brother; then we remain in town till Monday, when we go to the Hoo (Lord Dacre's); then we return to town, and afterwards proceed to Mrs. Arkwright's at Sutton, and then to the Francis Egertons', at Worsley; and after that we set off for Germany, where we think of remaining till the end of September. Adelaide's engagement at Covent Garden begins in November, when you must come and assist in bringing her out properly. God bless you, dear. Give my love to Dorothy, and believe me

Ever affectionately yours,
FANNY.

THE HOO, Wednesday, July 28th, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,

I wrote you a long letter yesterday, which was no sooner finished than I tore it up.... We came down to this place yesterday. I obtained Lady Dacre's leave to bring my sister, and of course I have my children with me, so we are here in great force. Independently of my long regard for and gratitude to Lord and Lady Dacre, which made me glad to visit them, I like this old place, and find it pleasant, though it has no pretensions to be a fine one. Some part of the offices is Saxon, of an early date, old enough to be interesting. The house itself, however, is comparatively modern: it is a square building, and formerly enclosed a large courtyard, but in later days the open space has been filled up with a fine oak staircase (roofed in with a skylight), the carving of which is old and curious and picturesque. The park is not large, but has some noble trees, which you would delight in; the flower-garden, stolen from a charming old wood (some of the large trees of which are coaxed into its boundaries), is a lovely little strip of velvet lawn, dotted all over with flower-beds, like large nosegays dropped on the turf; and the rough, whitey-brown, weather-beaten stone of the house is covered nearly to the top windows with honeysuckle and jasmine. It is not at all like what is called a fine place; it is not even as pretty and cheerful as Bannisters: but it has an air of ancient stability and dignity, without pretension or ostentation, that is very agreeable....

We left my father tolerably well in health, but a good deal shaken in spirits.... I am expected downstairs, to read to them in the drawing-room something from Shakespeare; and our afternoon is promised to a cricket-match, for the edification of one of our party, who never saw one. I must therefore conclude.... Good-bye, dearest Harriet. As for me, to be once more in pure air, among flowers and under trees, is all-sufficient happiness. I do cordially hate all towns.

Give my dear love to Mrs. Harry Siddons, if she is near you, and tell her I shall surely not leave Europe without seeing her again, let her be where she will. Remember me affectionately to Dorothy, and believe me.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

THE HOO, Thursday, July 29th, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,

I wrote to you yesterday, but an unanswered letter of yours lies on the top of my budget of "letters to answer," and I take it up to reply to it. The life I am leading does not afford much to say; yet that is not quite true, for to loving hearts or thinking minds the common events of every day, in the commonest of lives, have a meaning.... After breakfast yesterday we took up Lady Dacre's translations from Petrarch--a very admirable performance, in which she has contrived to bend our northern utterance into a most harmonious and yet conscientious interpretation of those perfect Italian compositions. My sister read the Italian, which, with her pure pronunciation and clear ringing voice, sounded enchanting; after which I echoed it with the English translation; all which went on very prosperously, till I came to that touching invocation written on Good Friday, when the poet, no longer offering incense to his mortal idol, but penitential supplications to his God, implores pardon for the waste of life and power his passion had betrayed him into, and seeks for help to follow higher aims and holier purposes; a pathetic and solemn composition, which vibrated so deeply upon kindred chords in my heart that my voice became choked, and I could not read any more. After this, Adelaide read us some Wordsworth, for which she has a special admiration; after which, having recovered my voice, I took up "Romeo and Juliet," for which we all have a special admiration; and so the morning passed. After lunch, we went, B----, Lord Dacre, and I on horseback, Lady Dacre, Adelaide, and G---- S---- in the open carriage, to a pretty village seven miles off, where a cricket-match was being played, into the mysteries of which some of us particularly wished to be initiated.

The village of Hitchin is full of Quakers, and I rather think the game was being played by them, for such a silent meeting I never saw, out of a Friends' place of worship. But the ride was beautiful, and the day exquisite; and I learned for the first time that clematis is called, in this part of England, "traveller's joy," which name returned upon my lips, like a strain of music, at every moment, so full of poetry and sweet and touching association does it seem to me. Do you know it by that name in Ireland? I never heard it before in England, though I have been familiar with another pretty nickname for it, which you probably know--virgin's-bower. This is all very well for its flowering season; I wish somebody would find a pretty name for it when it is all covered with blown glass or soap-bubbles, and looks at a little distance like smoke.

Returning home, after entering the park, Lord Dacre had left us to go and look at a turnip-field, and B---- and I started for a gallop; when my horse, a powerful old hunter, not very well curbed, and extremely hard-mouthed, receiving some lively suggestion from the rhythmical sound of his own hoofs on the turf, put his head down between his legs and tore off with me at the top of his speed. I knew there was a tallish hedge in the direction in which we were going, and, as it is full seven years since I sat a leap, I also knew that there was a fair chance of my being chucked off, if he took it, which I thought I knew he would; so I lay back in my saddle and sawed at his mouth and pulled _de corps et a'ane_, but in vain. I lost my breath, I lost my hat, and shouted at the top of my voice to B---- to stop, which I thought if she did, my steed, whose spirit had been roused by emulation, would probably do too. She did not hear me, but fortunately stopped her horse before we reached the hedge, when my quadruped halted of his own sweet will, with a bound on all fours, or off all fours, that sent me half up to the sky; but I came back into my saddle without leap, without tumble, and with only my ignoble fright for my pains.

We dine at half-past seven, after which we generally have music and purse-making and discussions, poetical and political, and wine and water and biscuits, and go to bed betimes, like wise folk....

This morning a bloodhound was brought me from the dog-kennel, the largest dog of his kind, and the handsomest of any kind, that I ever saw; his face and ears were exquisite, his form and color magnificent, his voice appalling, and the expression of his countenance the tenderest, sweetest, and saddest you can conceive; I cannot imagine a more beautiful brute. After admiring him we went to the stables, to see a new horse Lord Dacre has just bought, and I left him being put through his paces, to come and indite this letter to you....

We leave this place on Monday for London, at the thought of which I feel half choked with smoke already. The Friday after, however, we go into the country again, to the Arkwrights' and the Francis Egertons', and then to Germany; so that our lungs and nostrils will be tolerably free passages for vital air for some little time.

God bless you, dearest Harriet. I have filled my letter with such matter as I had--too much with myself, perhaps, for any one but you; but unless I write you an epic poem about King Charlemagne, I know not well what else to write about here.

Ever affectionately yours,
FANNY.

THE HOO, Sunday, August 1st, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,

I wrote you the day before yesterday, and gave you a sort of journal of that day's proceedings. I have nothing of any different interest to tell you, inasmuch as our daily proceedings here are much of a muchness.

We return to town to-morrow afternoon, to my great regret; and I must, immediately upon our doing so, remove the family to our new abode. I am rather anxious to see how my father is; we left him in very low spirits, ... and I am anxious to see whether he has recovered them at all. I think our visit to Sutton, where we go on Friday, will be of use to him; for though he cordially dislikes the country and everything belonging to its unexciting existence, he has always had a very great attachment for Mrs. Arkwright, and perhaps, for so short a time as a week, he may be able to resist the ennui of _l'innocence des champs_....

I am well, and have been enjoying myself extremely. I love the country for itself; and the species of life which combines, as these people lead it, the pleasures of the highest civilization with the wholesome enjoyments which nature abounds in seems to me the perfection of existence, and is always beneficial as well as delightful to me. I rode yesterday a fine new horse Lord Dacre has just bought, and who is to be christened Forester, in honor of my beloved American steed, whom he somewhat resembles....

Considering our weather down here in Hertfordshire, I am afraid you must have most dismal skies at Ambleside, where you are generally so misty and damp; I am sure I recollect no English summer like this. As for poor Adelaide, she is all but frozen to death, and creeps about, lamenting for the sun, in a most piteous fashion imaginable.

I have had a letter from Cecilia Combe within the last two days, anticipating meeting us on the Rhine, either at Godesberg, where she now is, or at Bonn, where she expects to pass some time soon. She complains of dulness, but accuses the weather, which she says is horrible. By-the-by, of Cecy and Mr. Combe I have now got the report containing the account of Laura Bridgman (the deaf, dumb, and blind girl of whom he speaks), and when you come to me you shall see it; it is marvellous--a perfect miracle of Christian love.

Catherine Sedgwick's book (some notes of her visit to Europe) has just come out, and I am reading it again, having read the manuscript journal when first she returned home; a record, of course, of far more interest than the pruned and pared version of it which she gives to the public. I am also reading an excellent article in the last _Edinburgh_, on the society of Port Royal, which I find immensely interesting. I must now run out for a walk. It is Sunday, and the horses are not used, and I must acquire some exercise, through the agency of my own legs, before dinner. I have walked two miles this morning, to be sure; but that was to and from church, and should not count. God bless you, dearest Harriet.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

LIEGE, Thursday, August 26th, 1841.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

We have just returned from a lionizing drive about Liege, a city of which my liveliest impressions, before I saw it, were derived from Scott's novel of "Quentin Durward," and in which the part now remaining of what existed in his time is all that much interests me.

I do not know whether in your peregrinations you ever visited this place; if you did, I hope you duly admired the palace of the prince bishop (formerly), now the Palais de Justice, which is one of the most picturesque remnants of ancient architecture I have seen in this land of them.

Except this, and one fine old church, I have found nothing in the town to please or interest me much. I have seen one or two old dog-holes of houses, blackened and falling in with age, which seem as if they might be some of the cinders of Charles the Bold's burnings hereabouts. We left Brussels this morning, after spending a day and a half there. I was much pleased with the gay and cheerful appearance of that small imitation Paris, even to the degree of fancying that I should like to live there, in spite of the supercilious sentence of vulgarity, stupidity, and pretension which some of our friends, diplomatic residents there, passed upon the inhabitants.... We went to call upon the ----s, and, with something of a shock on my part, found one of the ornaments of his sitting-room a large crucifix with the Saviour in his death-agony--a horrible image, which I would banish, if I could, from every artist's imagination; for the physical suffering is a revolting spectacle which art should not portray, and the spiritual triumph is a thing which the kindred soul of man may indeed conceive, but which art cannot delineate, for it is God, and not to be translated into matter, save indeed where it once was made manifest in that Face and Person every imaginary representation of which is to me more or less intolerable.

The face of Christ is never painted or sculptured without being painfully offensive to me; yet I have seen looks--who has not?--that were His, momentarily, on mortal faces; but they were looks that could not have been copied, even there....

These steamship and railroad times will do away with that staple idea, both in real and literary romances, of "never meeting again," "parting forever," etc., etc.; and people will now meet over and over again, no matter by what circumstances parted, or to what distance thrown from each other; whence I draw the moral that our conduct in all the quarters of the globe had better be as decent as possible, for there is no such thing nowadays as losing sight of people or places--I mean, for any convenient length of time, for purposes of forgetfulness. I forget whether, when you left us in London, my father had come to the determination of not accompanying but following us, which he intends doing as soon as he feels well enough to travel.

Rubens's paintings have given us extreme delight.... I was much interested by the lace-works at Brussels and Mechlin, and very painfully so. It is beginning to be time, I think, in Christian countries, for manufactures of mere luxury to be done away with, when proficiency in the merest mechanical drudgery involved in them demands a lifetime, and the sight and health of women, who begin this twilight work at five and six years old, are often sacrificed long before their natural term to this costly and unhealthy industry.

I hope to see all such manufactures done away with, for they are bad things, and a whole moral and intelligent being, turned into ten fingers' ends for such purposes, is a sad spectacle. I (a lace-worshipper, if ever woman was) say this advisedly; I am sorry there is still Mechlin and Brussels lace made, and glad there is no more India muslin, and rejoice in the disuse of every minute manual labor which tends to make a mere machine of God's likeness. But oh, for all that, how incomparably inferior is the finest, faultless, machine-made lace and muslin to the exquisite irregularity of the human fabric!... Good-bye, my dearest Harriet. We start for Aix-la-Chapelle at eight to-morrow. I am not in very good strength; the fact is, I am now never in thoroughly good plight without exercise on horseback, and it is a long time since I have had any, and, of course, it is now quite out of the question. I beg, desire, entreat, and command that you will immediately get and read Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet," and tell me instantly what you think of it.

Your affectionate
FANNY.

WIESBADEN, Friday, September, 1841.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Walking along the little brook-side on the garden path under the trees towards the Sonnenberg, you may well imagine how vividly your image and that of Catherine Sedgwick were present to me. You took this walk together, and it was from her lively description of it that I knew, the moment I set my feet in the path, both where I was and where I was going. That walk is very pretty. I did not follow it to the end, because my children were with me, and it was too far for them; but yesterday I went to the ruin on horseback, and came home along the rough cart-road, on the hill on the other side of the valley, whence the views reminded me somewhat of the country round Lenox, in Massachusetts, though not perhaps of the prettiest part of the latter.

I have not yet in my travels seen anything much more picturesque than the prettiest parts of the American Berkshire; and upon the whole (castles, of course, excepted) was rather disappointed in the Rhine, which is not, I think, as beautiful a river as the Hudson. Knowing the powerful charm of affectionate association, and the halo which happiness throws over any place where we attain to something approaching it, I have sometimes suspected that my admiration of and delight in that Lenox and Stockbridge scenery was derived in some measure from those sources, and that the country round them is not in reality as beautiful as it always appears in my eyes and to my memory. But, comparing it now with scenery admired by the travelling taste of all Europe, I am satisfied that the American scenery I am so fond of is intrinsically lovely, and compares very favorably with everything I have seen hitherto on the Continent.

As for your friend Anne (my children's American nurse), coming up the Rhine she sat looking at the shores, her brown eyes growing rounder and rounder, and her handsome face full of as much good-humored contempt as it could express, every now and then exclaiming, "Well, to be sure, it's a pretty river, and it's well enough; but my! they hadn't need to make such a fuss about it." The fact is, that the noble breadth of the river forms one of its most striking features to a European, and this, you know, is no marvel to "us of the new world." Moreover, I suspect Anne does not consider the baronial castles "of much 'count," either; and, to confess the truth, I am rather disturbed at the little emotion produced in me by the romantic ruins and picturesque accompaniments of the Rhine. But it seems to me that I am losing much of my excitability; my imagination has become disgracefully tame, and I find myself here, where I have most desired to be, with a mind chiefly intent upon where, when, how, and on what my children can dine, and feelings principally occupied with the fact that I have no one with me to sympathize in any other thought or emotion if I should attempt to indulge in such.

We arrived at Coblentz one melting summer afternoon, and I walked up to the top of the fortress alone, and the setting of the sun over beyond the lands and rivers at my feet, and the uprising of the moon above, the bristling battlements behind me, filled me with delight; but I had no one to express it to.

This evening at Ehrenbreitstein, and the cathedral at Cologne, are my two events hitherto; the only two things that have stirred or affected me much. That cathedral is a whole liturgy in stone--eloquent, devout stone,--uttering so solemnly its great unfinished God-service of silent prayer and praise through all these centuries. I have seen many beautiful churches, but was never impressed by any as by this huge fragment of one.

My father, as I have written you, stayed behind, saying that he would follow us. He has not done so yet, and I do not expect that he will, for reasons which I will not repeat, as I gave them to you in a long letter which I wrote to you from Liege, which I heartily hope you have received.

[On arriving at Coblentz on a brilliant afternoon, so much of lovely
daylight yet remained that I was most desirous to cross the river
and ascend the great fortress of the Broad Stone of Honor, to see
the sunset from its walls. I could not inspire anybody else with the
same zeal, however; and, under the combined influence of
disappointment and eager curiosity, started alone, at a brisk walk,
and, crossing the bridge, began the ascent, and, gradually
quickening my pace as I neared the summit, arrived, on a full run,
breathless before the sentinel who guarded the last gates and
amiably shook his head at my attempt to enter. The gates were open,
and I saw, across the wide parade-ground, or _place d'armes_, where
groups of soldiers were standing and loitering about, the parapet
wall of the fortress, whence I had hoped to see the day go down over
the Rhine, the Moselle, and all the glorious region round their
confluence. "Oh, _do_ let me in," cried I in very emphatic English
to the sentry, who gravely shook his head. "Where is your father?"
quoth he in German, as I made imploring and impatient gestures,
significant of my despair at the idea of having had that stupendous
climb all for nothing. "I have none," cried I, in English and French
all in a breath. Both were equally Greek to him. He gravely shook
his head. "Where is your husband?" quoth he in German, to which I
replied in German--oh, such German!--that "I had none, that I was a
woman" (which he probably saw), "only a woman, an Englishwoman"
(which he probably heard), "and that I could do no harm to his
fortress; that I had come all alone, and run half the way up, and
that I could not turn back, and he _must_ let me in!" He still shook
his head gravely. I had the tears in my eyes, and felt ready to cry
with vexation. Just then an officer approaching the gates from
within, I addressed my eager supplications in sputtering, stuttering
fragments of German, French, and English to him; and he, laughing
good-naturedly, gave the sentinel the order to admit me; when I made
straight across the great parade-ground, surrounded with the masses
of the huge fortification, to the low parapet wall, whence I beheld
the glorious landscape I had hoped to see, bathed in the sunset--a
vision of splendor, which surpassed even what I had expected, as I
looked down from the dizzy height, over the magnificent river and
its beautiful tributary, and all the near and distant landscape,
melting far away into golden vapory indistinctness. I did not dare
to stay long, having to return again alone; so, thanking my kind
conductor, who had evidently enjoyed my ecstasy at the beauty of his
_Vaterland_, I left the fortress, stopping again at the gate to ask
the name of my friendly sentinel whose resistance to my impetuous
storming of the fort had been as mild and gentle as was consistent
with his resolute refusal to admit me. Having not a scrap of paper
with me, I wrote his name with my pencil on my glove, determined,
when I returned through Coblentz, to bring him some token of my
gratitude for his patient forbearance; and so I ran all the way down
and back to the hotel.

On our return, some weeks after, we visited Ehrenbreitstein with all
the decorous solemnity of decent sight-seeing travellers; and, one
of a party of four, I drove in state, in an open carriage, up the
formidable approach that I had scaled so vehemently before. Duly
armed with admits and permits, and all proper justifications of our
approach, we drove under the huge archway, where stood another
sentinel, and were received with courteous ceremony by some military
gentlemen, under whose escort I leisurely went over the scene of my
first visit, standing again, in more dignified enthusiasm, at the
parapet where I had panted before in the breathless excitement of my
run up the hill, my fight with the sentry, and my victory over him.
Now, having been duly led and conducted and ushered and escorted all
round, as we were about to depart, I begged, as a favor of the
commanding officer, to be allowed to see again my friendly sentinel,
for whom I had brought up a meerschaum of a pretty pattern that I
had bought for him. "What was his name?" "Schneider." "Oh, there are
several so called among the men. Should you know him again?" "Oh
yes, indeed." And now ensued a general cry for Schneiders to present
themselves. One after another was marched up, but without any
resemblance to my friendly foe. Presently a word of command was
given, followed by a brisk rolling of drums, when all the men came
pouring out of the surrounding buildings, and formed in ranks on the
ground. "You have seen them all--all the Schneiders," said the
kindly commandant. "Ah, no! here is yet one;" and from the back
ranks was pushed and pulled and thrust and shoved, perfectly crimson
with shyness and suppressed laughter, one of the handsomest lads I
ever saw. "Is this your man?" said the commanding officer, with a
profound bow, and his face puckered up with laughing. "No," cried I
(for it wasn't), quite overcome with confusion and the general
laughter that followed the production of this last of the
Schneiders. One of the officers then said that some of the troops
had been sent elsewhere, not long after my first visit. "Ah, then,"
said the commandant, who had interested himself in my search with
considerable amusement, "your Schneider, madame, has left
Ehrenbreitstein." And so did we; I, not a little disappointed at not
having seen again the worthy man who had not bayoneted me away from
the gates, when I assailed them and him in such a frenzy.]

We overtook my sister at Mayence, or rather, I and the children remained there, while some of our party went on to Frankfort, where she was. They returned to Mayence in a body: ----, Adelaide, Henry, Miss Cottin, Mary Anne Thackeray, our London friend Chorley, and the illustrious Liszt. Travelling leisurely, as we were compelled to do on account of the children, I missed, to my great regret, my sister's first two public performances--a concert, and a representation of Norma, which she gave at Frankfort, and of which everybody spoke with the greatest enthusiasm. On the evening of the day when she joined us at Mayence, she sang at a concert, and this was the first time that I really have heard her sing in public; for I did not consider the concert at Stafford House a fair test of her powers--the audience was too limited, in number and quality, to deserve the name of a public. The sweetness and freshness of her voice struck me more than ever, but it appears to me rather wanting in power; and the same impression was produced upon me when I heard her sing in the Kursaal here. If there should be deficiency of power in the voice, it will, I fear, affect her success in so large a theatre as Covent Garden.... She sings Norma again to-night at Mayence, and I am going--of course without any anxiety, for her success is already established here; and with great anticipations of pleasure--more even, if possible, from her acting than her singing; for the latter I am already familiar with, but of the former I have no experience, and have always entertained the greatest expectations of it, and I think I shall not be disappointed.

We have obtained very pleasant apartments here, and I have established Anne and the children quite comfortably; they were beginning to suffer from the perpetual moving about, and I shall let them remain undisturbed here, during the rest of our stay in Germany, and shall either stay quietly with them, or accompany my sister, if it is determined that we are to do so, to the places of her various engagements.

Since writing the above, I have seen my sister act Norma, and her performance fully equalled my expectation; which is great praise, for I have always had the highest opinion of her dramatic powers, and was, as I believe you know, earnest with her at one time to leave the opera stage and become an actress in her own language, as I was very sure of her entire success, and thought it a better and higher order of thing than this mere uttering of sound, and perpetual representation of passion and emotion, comparatively unmixed with intellect. To be sure, that would be to sacrifice some of her fine natural endowments, and the art and science of music, in which she has, at so much cost of time and labor, so thoroughly perfected herself, and which is in itself so exquisite a thing.... Her carriage is good, easy, and unembarrassed; her gestures and use of her arms remarkably graceful and appropriate. There is very little too much action, and that which appears to me redundant may simply seem so because her conception of the character is, in some of its parts, impulsive, where it strikes me as concentrated, and would therefore be sterner and stiller in its effect than she occasionally makes it. But she has evidently thought over the whole most carefully, considered the effects she intends to produce, and the means of producing them; and it is a far more finished performance, without any of the special defects which I should have expected in so great a lyrical tragic part, given by so young an artist. I suspect, however, that the severely mechanical element in music renders certainty in the performer's intentions necessary beforehand, to a much greater degree than in a merely dramatic performance; and thus a singer can seldom do the things which an actor sometimes does, upon the sudden inspiration of the moment, occasionally producing thus extraordinary effects. Some of the things my sister did were perfect--I speak now of her acting: they were as fine as some of Pasta's great effects, and her whole performance reminded me forcibly of that finest artist. I cannot help thinking, however, that she is cramped by the music, and I confess I should like to see her act Bianca without singing it, as I am satisfied that she would represent most admirably all characters of power and passion, and find in the great dramatic compositions of our stage, and especially in Shakespeare's plays, scope for her capacity which Italian operas cannot afford.

Her voice is not as powerful as I expected, nor as I think it would have been if she had not striven to acquire artificial compass; that is, high notes which were not originally in her natural register,--the great aim of all singers being to sing the highest music, which is always that of the principal female character. The consequence of this is sometimes that the quality of the natural voice is in a measure sacrificed to the acquisition of notes not originally within its compass....

I have room for no more, dearest Harriet. Good-bye, and God bless you.

Ever affectionately yours,
FANNY.

I wrote you an interminable letter from Liege. Did you ever get it?

[The time we spent on the Rhine during this summer afforded me an
opportunity of almost intimate acquaintance with the celebrated
musician who had persuaded my sister to associate herself with him
in the concerts he gave at the principal places on the Rhine where
we stopped.

Our whole expedition partook more of the character of a party of
pleasure than a business speculation; and though Liszt's and my
sister's musical performances were professional exhibitions of the
highest order, the relations of our whole party were those of the
friendliest and merriest tourists and _compagnons de voyage_.
Nothing could exceed the charm of our delightful travelling through
that lovely scenery, and sojourning in those pleasant picturesque
antique towns, where the fine concerts of our two artists enchanted
us even more, from personal sympathy, than the most enthusiastic
audiences who thronged to hear them.

Liszt was at this time a young man, in the very perfection of his
extraordinary talent, and at the height of his great celebrity. He
was extremely handsome; his features were finely chiselled, and the
expression of his face, especially when under the inspiration of
playing, strikingly grand and commanding.

Of all the pianists that I have ever heard, and I have heard all the
most celebrated of my time, he was undoubtedly the first for fire,
power, and brilliancy of execution. His style, which was strictly
original, and an innovation upon all that had preceded it, may be
called the "Sturm und Drang," or seven-leagued-boot style of playing
on the piano; and in listening to him, it was difficult to believe
that he had no more than the average number of fingers, or that they
were of the average length,--but that, indeed, they were not; he had
stretched his hands like a pair of kid gloves, and accomplished the
most incredible distances, while executing, in the interval between
them, inconceivable musical feats with his three middle fingers.
None of his musical contemporaries, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Chopin,
nor his more immediate rival, Thalberg, ever produced anything like
the volcanic sort of musical effect which he did, perfect eruptions,
earthquakes, tornadoes of sound, such as I never heard any piano
utter but under his touch. But though he was undoubtedly a more
amazing performer than any I ever listened to, his peculiar
eccentricities were so inextricably interwoven with the whole mode
and manner of his performances that, in spite of the many imitators
they have inspired, he could by no means be regarded as the founder
of anything deserving the name of a school of piano-playing. M.
Rubinstein, I presume, in our own day, represents Liszt's peculiar
genius better than any one else.

The close, concise, crowded, and somewhat crabbed style of the great
learned musical school of the Bachs, which may almost be called the
algebra or geometry of musical composition, at any rate its higher
mathematics, had certainly challenged a spirit of the most daring
contrast in the young Hungarian prodigy, who electrified Paris, and
carried its severe body of classical critics by storm, with the
triumphant audacity of his brilliant and powerful style. Liszt
became, at the very opening of his career, so immediately a miracle,
and then an oracle, in the artistic and the great world of Paris
that he was allowed to impose his own terms upon its judgment; and
suffering himself the worst consequences of that order of success,
he achieved too early a fame for his permanent reputation. A want of
sobriety, a fantastical seeking after strange effects--in short, the
characteristics of artistic _charlatanerie_--mixed themselves up
with all that he did, and, as is inevitably the case, deteriorated
the fine original gifts of his genius. When I first heard him, he
had already reached the furthest limit of his powers, because they
were exerted in a mistaken direction; and the exaggeration and false
taste which were covered by his marvellous facility and strength
gradually became more and more predominant in his performances, and
turned them almost into caricatures of the first wonderful specimens
of ability with which he had amazed the musical world.

He could not go on being forever more astonishing than he had ever
been before, and he paid the penalty of having made that his
principal aim. His execution and composition alike became by degrees
incoherent acrobatism, in which all that could call itself art was a
mere combination of extraordinary and all but grotesque
difficulties, devised for the sole purpose of overcoming them;
musical convulsions and contortions, that forever recalled Dr.
Johnson's epigram.

In the summer of 1842 Liszt was but on the edge of this descent; his
genius, his youth, his personal beauty, and the vivid charm of his
manner and conversation had made him the idol of society, as well as
of the artistic world, and he was then radiant with the fire of his
great natural gifts, and dazzling with the success that had crowned
them; he was a brilliant creature....

After this I never saw Liszt again until the summer of 1870. I had
gone to the theatre at Munich, where I was staying, to hear Wagner's
opera of the "Rheingold," with my daughter and her husband. We had
already taken our places, when S---- exclaimed to me, "There is
Liszt." The increased age, the clerical dress, had effected but
little change in the striking general appearance, which my daughter
(who had never seen him since 1842, when she was quite a child)
recognized immediately. I went round to his box, and, recalling
myself to his memory, begged him to come to ours, and let me
present my daughter to him; he very good-naturedly did so, and the
next day called upon us at our hotel, and sat with us a long
time....

His conversation on matters of art (Wagner's music, which he and we
had listened to the evening before) and literature was curiously
cautious and guarded, and every expression of opinion given with
extreme reserve, instead of the uncompromising fearlessness of his
earlier years; and the abbe was indeed quite another from the Liszt
of our summer on the Rhine of 1842.

Liszt never composed any very good music; arrangement of the music
of others was his specialty; and his versions of Schubert's,
Weber's, and Mozart's finest melodies for the piano were the _ne
plus ultra_ of brilliant and powerful adaptation, but required his
own rendering to produce their full effect; and by far the most
extraordinary exhibition of skill I ever heard on the piano was his
performance of the airs from the Don Giovanni, arranged by himself.
His literary style had the same qualities and defects as his music:
brilliancy and picturesqueness, and an absence of genuineness and
simplicity. He wrote a great deal of musical criticism, and an
interesting life of Chopin.

His conversation was sparkling and dazzling, and full of startling
paradoxes; he had considerable power of sarcastic repartee, and once
or twice is reported to have encountered the imperious queen of
Austrian society, Madame de Metternich, with her own weapons, very
successfully.

She patronized Thalberg, and affected to depreciate Liszt; but
having invited them both to her house on one occasion, thought
proper to address the latter with some impertinent questions about a
professional visit he had just been paying to Paris, winding up
with, "Enfin, avez-vous fait de bonnes affaires la-bas?" To which he
replied, "Pardon, Madame la Princesse, j'ai fait un peu de musique;
je laisse les affaires aux banquiers et aux diplomates." Later in
the evening, the lady, probably not well pleased with this rebuff,
accosted him again, as he stood talking to Thalberg, with a sneering
compliment on his apparent freedom from all jealousy of his musical
rival; to which Liszt, who was very sallow, replied, "Mais, Madame
la Princesse, au contraire, je suis furieusement jaloux de
Thalberg; regardez donc les jolies couleurs qu'il a!" After which
Madame la Princesse _le laissa en paix_.