Chapter XX: Part 20

You have misunderstood me entirely upon the subject of truth in works of fiction and art; and I think, if you refer to my letter, if you have it, you will find it so. I hold truth sacred everywhere, but merely lamented over Schiller's departure from it in the instance of "Joan of Arc" more than in that of "Wallenstein."

It has been an annoyance to me to leave the Yellow Springs, independently of the hurried and disagreeable mode of our doing so. I like the country, which is really very pretty, and I have been almost happy once or twice while riding over those hills and through those valleys, with no influences about me but the holy and consolatory ministerings of nature.

My activity of temperament and love of system and order (perhaps you did not know that I possessed those last tendencies) always induce me to organize a settled mode of life for myself wherever I am, no matter for how short a space of time, and in the absence of nervous irritation or excitement, regular physical exercise, and steady intellectual occupation, always produce in me a (considering all things) wonderfully cheerful existence; ... and my spirits, obedient to the laws of my excellent constitution, rise above my mental and sentimental ailments, and rejoice, like those of all healthy animals, in mere physical well-being....

Good-bye, dear T----. Remember me most kindly to S----; and

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

PHILADELPHIA, August 22nd, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,

I am not sure that cordial sympathy is not the _greatest_ service that one human being can offer another in this woe-world. Certainly, without it, all other service is not worth accepting; and it is so strengthening and encouraging a thing to know one's self kindly cared for by one's kind, that I incline to think few benefits that we confer upon each other in this life are greater, if so great....

The horrible heat, and the admonishing pallor that is again overspreading my poor children's cheeks, has led to a determination of again sending them out of town; and I heard yesterday that on Saturday next they are to go to the neighborhood of West Chester. The fact of going out of town again is very agreeable to me on my own account, letting alone my sincere rejoicing that my children are to be removed from this intolerable atmosphere; but all this packing and unpacking which devolves upon me is very laborious and fatiguing, and the impossibility of obtaining any settled order in my life afflicts me unreasonably....

_Peccavi!_ The verses you mentioned are mine, and you certainly might have written much better ones for me in your sleep, if you had taken the least pains. They were indited as many as twenty years ago, and how Mr. Knickerbocker came possessed of them is a mystery to me....

I want you to do me a favor, which I have been thinking to ask you all this week past, and was now just like to have forgotten. Will you ask John O'Sullivan if he would care to have a review of Tennyson's Poems from me, for the _Knickerbocker_, and what he will give me for such review? I am compelled to be anxious for "compensation." Send me an answer to this inquiry, please; and believe me

Very truly yours,
F. A. B.

P.S.--Lord Morpeth is a _lovely_ man, and I love him.

PHILADELPHIA, August 25th, 1843.
DEAR GRANNY,

A thousand thanks for your kind and comfortable letter, from the tone of which it was easy to see that you were "as well as can be expected," both body and soul. Indeed, my dearest Granny, it is true that we do not perceive half our blessings, from the mere fact of their uninterrupted possession. Of our health this seems to me especially true; and it is too often the case that nothing but its suspension or the sight of its deplorable loss in others awakens us to a sense of our great privilege in having four sound limbs and a body free from racking torture or enfeebling, wasting disease. As for me, what I should do without my health I cannot conceive. All my good spirits (and I have a wonderful supply, considering all things) come to me from my robust physical existence, my good digestion, and perfect circulation. Heaven knows, if my cheerfulness had not a good tough root in these, as long as these last, it would fare ill with me; and I fear my spiritual courage and mental energy would prove exceedingly weak in their encounter with adverse circumstances, but for the admirable constitution with which I have been blessed, and which serves me better than I serve myself....

On the tenth of next month I am going up to the dear and pleasant hill-country of Massachusetts, to pay my friends a visit, which, though I must make it very short, will prove a most acceptable season of refreshment to my heart and spirit, from which I expect to derive courage and cheerfulness for the rest of the year, as I shall certainly not see any of them again till next spring, for they are about two hundred and fifty miles away from me, which, even in this country of quite unlimited space, is not considered exactly next-door neighborhood.

You ask after "the farm," which is much honored by your remembrance. It is let, and we are at present living in a boarding-house in town, and I rather think shall continue doing so; but I really do not know in the least what is to become of me from day to day....

I am grieved to hear of the affliction of the Greys. Pray remember me very affectionately to Lady G. Her father's illness must be indeed a sore sorrow to her, devoted as she is to him.

My dear Granny, do not you be induced to _croak_ about England. She may have to go through a sharp _operation_ or two; but, depend upon it, that noble and excellent constitution is by no means vitally impaired, and she will yet head the nations of the earth, in all great and good and glorious things, for a long time to come, in spite of Irish rows and Welsh _consonants_ (is there anything else in Wales? How funny a revolution must be without a vowel in it!) ... I believe that great and momentous changes are impending in England; and when I suggest among them as _possible_ future events the doing away with the law of primogeniture, hereditary legislation, and the Church establishment, of course you will naturally say that I think England is going to the dogs faster even than you do. But I think England will survive all her political changes, be they what they may, and, as long as the national character remains unchanged, will maintain her present position among the foremost peoples of the world; with which important and impressive prophecy comfort yourself, dear Granny.

We are going out of town, to which we returned a fortnight ago, to-morrow at half-past six in the morning, and it is now past midnight, and I have every mortal and immortal thing to pack with my own single pair of hands, which is Irish, Lord bless us! So good-night, dear Granny.

Believe me ever your affectionate
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, August 25th, 1843.

You will pay no more, dear Hal, for this huge sheet of paper, being single, I believe, than for its half; and I do not see why I should cheat myself or you so abominably as by writing on such a miserable allowance as the half sheet I have just finished to you.

Mr. Furness's abolition sermons have thinned his congregation a little--not much.... There is no other Unitarian church in Philadelphia, where the sect is looked upon with holy horror, pious commiseration, and Christian reprobation, but where, nevertheless, Mr. Furness's own character is held in the highest esteem and veneration.

Your question about society here puzzles me a good deal, from the difficulty of making you understand the absolute absence of anything to which you would give that name. I do not think there is anything, either, which foreigners call _societe intime_ in Philadelphia. During a certain part of the year certain wealthy individuals give a certain number of entertainments, evening parties, balls, etc. The summer months are passed by most of the well-to-do inhabitants somewhere out of the city, generally at large public-houses, at what are called fashionable watering-places. Everybody has a street acquaintance with everybody; but I know of no such thing as the easy, intimate society which you seem to think inevitably the result of the institutions, habits, and fortunes in this country.

It does not strike me that social intercourse is easy at all here; the dread of opinion and the desire of conformity seem to me to give a tone of distrust and caution to every individual man and woman, utterly destructive of all freedom of conversation, producing a flatness and absence of all interest that is quite indescribable. I have hitherto always lived in the country, and mixing very little with the Philadelphians have supposed that the mere civil formality at which my intercourse with most of them stops short would lead necessarily to some more intimate intercourse if I ever lived in the city. I now perceive, however, that their communion with each other is limited to this exchange of morning visits, of course almost exclusively among the women; and that society, such as you and I understand it, does not exist here.

Yet, of course, there must be the materials for it, clever and pleasant men and women, and I had sometimes thought, when I foresaw the probability of our leaving our country house and establishing ourselves in the city, that I should find some compensation in the society which I hoped I might be able to gather about me; ... but I am now quite deprived of any such resource as any attempt of the kind might have produced, by my present position in a boarding-house, where I inhabit my bedroom, contriving, for sightliness' sake, to sleep on a wretched sofa-bed that my room by day may look as decent and little encumbered as possible; but where the presence of wash-hand-stand and toilette apparatus necessarily enforces the absence of visitors, except in public rooms open to everybody.... I have received a great many morning visits, and one or two invitations to evening parties, but I do not, of course, like to accept civilities which I have no means of reciprocating, and so I have as little to expect in the way of social recreation as I think anybody living in a large town can have. So much for your inquiries about my social resources in this country. Had I a house of my own in Philadelphia, I should not at all despair of gradually collecting about me a society that would satisfy me perfectly well; but as it is, or rather as I am, the thing is entirely out of the question.

Of the discomfort and disorder of our mode of life I cannot easily give you a notion, for you know nothing of the sort, and, until now, neither did I. The absence of decent regularity in our habits, and the slovenliness of our whole existence, is peculiarly trying to me, who have a morbid love of order, system, and regularity, and a positive delight in the decencies and elegancies of civilized life.

God bless you, dear.

Your affectionate
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, September 1st, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,

I know not how long your letter had been in Philadelphia, because I have been out of town, and in a place so difficult of access that letters are seldom forwarded thither without being lost or delayed long enough to be only fit for losing.

I told you of our sudden removal from the Yellow Springs. In the succeeding fortnight, which we spent in town, the children began again to droop and languish and grow pale, and it was determined to send them into the country again: rooms have been accordingly hired for us three miles beyond West Chester, which is seven miles from the nearest railroad station on the Columbia railroad, altogether about forty miles from town, but for want of regular traffic and proper means of conveyance an exceedingly tedious and unpleasant drive thence to the said farm. Here there is indeed pure air for the children, and a blessed reprieve from the confinement of the city; but so uncivilized a life for any one who has ever been accustomed to the usual decencies of civilization, that it keeps me in a constant state of amazement.

We eat at the hours and table of these worthy people, and I am a little starved, as I find it difficult to get up a dinner appetite before one o'clock in the day; and after that nothing is known in the shape of food but tea at six o'clock. We eat with _two-pronged iron forks_; _i.e._ we who are "sopisticate" do. The more sensible Arcadians, of course, eat exclusively with their knives. The farming men and boys come in to the table from their work, without their coats and with their shirt-sleeves rolled up above their elbows; and my own nursemaid, and the servant-of-all-work of the house, and any visitors who may look in upon our hostess, sit down with us promiscuously to feed; all which, I confess, makes me a little melancholy. It is nonsense talking about positive equality; these people are sorry associates for me, and so, I am sure, am I for them.

To-day I came to town to endeavor to procure some of the common necessaries that we require: table implements that we can eat with, and lights by which we may be able to pursue our occupations after dark.

I read your speech with great pleasure; it was good in every way. I am glad you do not withdraw yourself from the field of action where your like are so much wanted. I cannot give up my hope and confidence in the institutions of your country; they are the expectation of the world; and if the Americans themselves, by word or deed, proclaim their scheme of free government a failure, it seems to me that the future condition of the human race is ominously darkened, and that all endeavor after progress or improvement is a fruitless struggle towards an unattainable end. But this is not so. Your people will yet prove it, and it will and must be through the influence and agency of worthy men like yourself, to whom fitly belongs the task of rallying this faithless people, flying from their standards in the great world-conflict. Call them back, such of you as have voices that can be heard; for your nation is the vanguard of the race, and if they desert their trust its degradation will be protracted for long years to come.

The despondency of some of your best men is deplorable, and the selfish discouragement in which they withdraw from the fight, giving place to public evil for the sake of their personal quiet, a fatal omen to the country. It is curiously unlike the spirit of Englishmen. Never, certainly, were good men and true so needed anywhere as here at this moment, when the noblest principles that men are capable of recognizing in the form of a government seem about to be cast down from the rightful supremacy your fathers gave them, and the light of freedom which they kindled to lighten the world extinguished in distrust and dismay.

God bless you and prosper you in every good work. Remember me most kindly to S----, and believe me always

Yours very truly,
F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, September 9th, 1843.

Your English is undoubtedly better than Cicero's Latin to me, my dear T----, inasmuch as I understand the one and not the other. I shall not stop on my way through New York, on Monday, nor my way back, except to spend a Sunday in your city, when I shall be very glad to see S---- and you.

I am disappointed at the uncertainty you express about being in Lenox while I am there.

Can you ascertain for me whether the Harpers, the New York publishers, would be willing to publish a volume of Fugitive Poems for me, and would give me _anything_ for them? If it is not too much trouble to ascertain this, it would be doing me a great service....

I write in haste, but remain ever yours,

F. A. B.

DEAR T----,

I shall not dine with you to-day for various, all good, reasons, and send you word to that effect, simply because it would not be so civil, either to S---- or you, to leave my excuse till the time when I should present myself.

I had hoped to have returned to Philadelphia with Mr. F---- this morning, but I am to remain till after Thursday, when we were to have given a dinner to Macready. He called this morning, however, and said he had another engagement for Thursday, so what will be done in the matter of our proposed entertainment to him I know not.

I hope your eyes are not the worse for that hateful theatre last night. You cannot imagine how that sort of thing, to which I was once so used, now excites and irritates my nerves. The music, the lights, the noise, the applause, the acting, the grand play itself, "Macbeth,"--it was all violent doses of stimulant; and I begin to think my mental constitution is like gunpowder, only unignitable when in the water: I suppose that accounts for my affection for water, apart from fishing.

I have got the greatest quantity of letters to write, and must begin upon Tennyson, so I shall not want for occupation while I am kept here.

Yours ever truly,
F. A. B.

NEW YORK, September 26th, 1843.
DEAREST HAL,

I was up till past two o'clock last night, and up at 5.30 this morning: I have travelled half the day, from Philadelphia to New York, and shopped the rest of the day, and am now steaming up the Hudson to Albany, on my way to Lenox, where I am going to spend a few days with my friends the Sedgwicks. Although I am very weary, and my eyes ache for want of sleep, I must write to you before I go to bed; for once up in Berkshire, I shall have but little time to myself, and I would not for a great deal that the steamer should go to England without some word from me to you.... So here I am wandering up forlornly enough, with poor Margery for my attendant, who appears to me to be in the last stage of a consumption, and to whom this little excursion may perhaps be slightly beneficial, and will certainly be very pleasurable.... I shall in all probability see none of the Sedgwicks again for a year....

I suppose, dear Hal, we are crossing the Tappan Zee (the broadest part of the Hudson River, where its rapid current spreads from shore to shore into the dimensions of a wide lake), and the boat rocks so much that I feel sick, and must leave off writing and go to bed, after all. God bless you, dear. Good-night.

Dearest Hal, this letter, which I had hoped to finish on board the Hudson night-boat, was cut short by my fatigue and the rocking of the vessel; and, as I expected, during my stay at Lenox no interval of leisure was left me to do so....

I sprained my ankle slightly, jumping from off a fence; and though I have carefully abstained from using my foot since I did so, it is still so weak that I am afraid of standing upon it much, and must consequently abide the results (invariable with me) of want of exercise, headache, sideache, and nervous depression and irritability. When I get to Philadelphia, if I am no better, I will hire a horse for a little while, and shake myself to rights.

God bless you, dear Hal. Good-bye.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, October 10th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,

How much I thank you for your generosity to me! for the watch you are sending me, which I have not yet received. I cannot value it more than I did that precious chain, the loss of which, happening at a time when I was every way most unhappy, really afflicted me deeply.

I hope nothing will happen to this new remembrance of yours and token of your love. I shall feel most anxious till it arrives, and then I think I shall sleep with it round my neck, so great will be my horror of having it stolen from me in this wretched and disorderly lodging-house, where, as it is, I am in perpetual misery lest I should have left any closet or drawer in my bed-room unfastened, and where we are obliged to lock our sitting-room if we leave it for a quarter of an hour, lest our property should be stolen out of it,--a state of anxious and suspicious caution which is as odious as it is troublesome....

When I arrived in New York last Sunday morning on my return from Berkshire, and was preparing to start for Philadelphia the next day, I found I was to stay in New York to meet and greet Mr. Macready, who had just landed in America, and to whom we are to give an entertainment at the Astor House, as we have no house in Philadelphia to which we can invite him....

My next errand, while I was out to-day, was to go and see a person who has thought proper to go out of her mind about me. She is poor and obscure, the sister of a tailor in this town; she had a little independence of her own, but lent it to the State of Pennsylvania, after the fashion of Sydney Smith, and has lost it, or at any rate the income of it, which, after all, is all that signifies to her, as she is no longer young and will probably not live to see the State grow honest, which its friends and well-wishers confidently predict that it will.

This poor woman is really and positively mad about me, as I think you will allow when I tell you that she is never happy when she sees me unless she has hold of my hand _or my gown_; that she has bought a portrait of me by Sully, over which she has put a ducal coronet, as she says I am the _Duchess of Ormond_! It is really a serious effort of good nature in me to go and see her, for her crazy adoration of me is at once ludicrous and painful. But my visits are a most lively pleasure to her--she thanks me for coming with the tears in her eyes, poor thing; and it would be brutal in me to withhold from her a gratification apparently so intense, because to afford it her is irksome and disagreeable to me. Her name is N----, and she told me to-day (but that may have been only another demonstration of her craziness) that there was a large disputed inheritance in Ireland left to heirs unknown of that name; that the true heirs could not be found, and that she really believed she might be entitled to it if she only knew how to set about establishing her right. She is the daughter of an English or Irish man, and her family were well connected in England (I couldn't help thinking, while she was talking, of your and my uncle John's dear Guilford). What a curious thing it would be if this poor, obscure, old, ugly, half-insane woman were really entitled to such a property! She is tolerably well educated too, a good French and Italian scholar, and a reader of obsolete books. She is a very strange creature.

I forget whether I told you that I had taken Margery up to Lenox with me, in the hope that the change of air and scene might be of benefit to her; but ever since her return she has been ill in her bed, poor thing! and though the only servant-girl she had has left her, and she is in the most forlorn and wretched condition possible, neither her mother nor her sisters have been near her to help or comfort her--such is the Roman Catholic horror of a divorced woman (for she has at length sued for and obtained her divorce from her worthless husband). And so, I suppose, they will let her die, such being, it seems, their notion of what is right.... Poor woman! her life has been one entire and perfect misery....

God bless you, dear. Good-bye.

Ever yours,
F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, October 3rd, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,

I have just received, by Harnden's Express, my Tennyson, which I had left at Lenox, and with it your old note, written to me while I was yet there, which the conscientious folk sent me down. It seems odd to read all your directions about my departure from the dear hill-country and my arrival in New York. How far swept down the current of time already seem the pleasant hours spent up there! You do not know how earnestly I desire to live up there. I do believe mountains and hills are kindred of mine--larger and smaller relations, taller and shorter cousins; for my heart expands and rejoices and beats more freely among them, and doubtless, in the days which "I can hardly remember" (as Rosalind says of her Irish Rat-ship), I was a bear or a wolf, or what your people call a "panter" (_i.e._ a panther), or at the very least a wild-cat, with unlimited range of forest and mountain. [The forests and hill-tops of that part of Massachusetts had, when this letter was written, harbored, within memory of man, bears, panthers, and wild-cats.] That cottage by the lake-side haunts me; and to be able to realize that day-dream is now certainly as near an approach to happiness as I can ever contemplate.

I am working at the Tennyson, and shall soon have it ready. Tell me, if you can, where and how I am to send it to John O'Sullivan.

Thank you, my dear T----, for your and S----'s civility to C---- H----. His people are excellent friends of mine, and you cannot conceive anything more disagreeable--painful to me, I might say--than the mortification I felt in receiving him in my present uncomfortable abode, and being literally unable to offer him a decent cup of tea.

It is an age since I saw Mr. G----, so can give you no intelligence of him. J---- C---- and the O----s form my _societe intime_. They come and sit with me sometimes of an evening, otherwise _mon chez moi_ is undisturbed and lonely enough. I walk a great deal every day, for the weather is lovely, and the blessed blue sky an inexhaustible source of delight and enjoyment to me.

To-morrow I am obliged to go out to the farm upon business. I shall go on horseback (upon the legs of my Tennyson article), and expect not only pleasure but profit from my old habitual exercise; but I would a little rather not be going _there_ at all.

I went all over our town house yesterday. It is a fine house, and has an excellent garden, with quite large trees in it. It is let unfurnished for about half the price which such a house in London would command. I confess it was rather a trial to return from looking at this large house of--_mine?_ to the "Maison Vauquier" (see Balzac's "Pere Goriot") which we inhabit.

Thank you for your offer of helping me with my review. I could not possibly think of using your eyes, precious and perilled as they are, instead of my own. I dare say I shall manage with my own translated acquaintance with AEschylus and Homer. However, and at any rate, if I find it necessary to _cram_, I will not do so by proxy.

Good-bye. Give my kindest love to S----.... How is Master C----? How is his voice? Has he worked out that problem yet about that vexed question on which he threw so much light at your house, and about which you were so tiresome? Seriously, that lad is a clever fellow; and I assure you we perpetrated some pretty profound metaphysics between your house and the Astor Hotel that wet Sunday evening.

Believe me yours truly,
F. A. B.

[The young gentleman alluded to in the above letter, who was
visiting the United States, and had brought letters of introduction
to my friends in New York, was the son of an old Yorkshire family,
among whom had existed for several generations a passionate desire
to _fly_, and a firm conviction that they could invent a machine
which would enable them to do so. The last I heard of that young
Icarus above mentioned was from two of his friends and companions,
the sons of Mrs. Norton, who, standing with me above the tremendous
precipice called the Salto di Tiberio, which plunges from the edge
of the rocks of Capri straight down into the Mediterranean, told me
they had had all the difficulty in the world in preventing C----
from launching forth upon his flying machine from that stupendous
pier into mid air, and quite as infallibly mid ocean. With infinite
entreaties they finally persuaded him to send forth his machine,
unfreighted with human life, on its experimental trip. He did so,
and his bird, turning ignominious somersaults on its way, at length
found a perch, and folded its wings on a hoary rock-anchored tree
that stretched out an arm of succor to it above the abyss, and
there, perhaps, it still roosts; and elsewhere, perhaps, its author
is pursuing other flights.]

PHILADELPHIA, Wednesday, May 15th, 1844.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

My last letter to you was pretty nearly filled with dismal private affairs, and now, Heaven knows, all residents in Philadelphia have a gloomy story to tell of public ones. We have had fearful riots here last week between the low American population and the imported population from Ireland, who have also taken the opportunity of the present anarchy and confusion to indulge in violent exhibitions of their own special home-brewed feud of Protestant against Catholic. A few nights ago there was a general mob-crusade against the Roman Catholic churches, several of which, as well as various private dwellings, were burnt to the ground. The city was lighted from river to river with the glare of these conflagrations--this city of "brotherly love;" whole streets looking like pandemonium avenues of brass and copper in the lurid reflected light. Your people have lost little of their agreeable combined facetiousness and ferocity, as I think you will allow when I tell you that, while a large Catholic church was burning, the Orange party caused a band of music to play "Boyne Water;" and when the cross fell from above the porch of the building, these same Christian folk gave three cheers. "Where," I suppose you exclaim, "were the civil authorities and military force?" All on the ground of action, compelled to be idle spectators of these outrages, because they had no warrant to act, and could not shoot down the Sovereign People, even while committing them, without the Sovereign People's leave.

The popular jealousy of power, which always exists more or less under republican institutions, interferes not a little with the efficiency of an organized police or other abiding check upon public effervescence. Rioters, therefore, in times of excitement have generally a fair start of the law, and are able to accomplish plenty of mischief before they can be prevented, because a powerful force of preventive police and municipal officers, invested with permanent authority, are abominations in the eyes of a free and independent American citizen.

As, however, by a very wholesome law, the city pays for all damages committed by public violence upon property, the whole population of the town will be taxed for the _spree_ of these lively gentry; and under the pressure of this salutary arrangement the whole militia turned out, all the decent citizens organized themselves into patrols and policemen, and by the time the riot had raged three days, and the city had incurred a heavy debt for burnt and pillaged property, a stop was put to the disorder. Cannon were planted round all the remaining Catholic churches to protect them; the streets were lined with soldiers; every householder was out on guard in his particular district during the night, and by dint of effectual but, unfortunately, rather tardy measures order has been restored.

My own affairs are far from flourishing, and I am heartily glad to have anything else to speak of, little cheerful as the anything else may be....

I hope all is well with you. Geraldine is almost a woman now, I suppose. I think of you much oftener than I write to you, and am

Ever yours,
FANNY.

May 20th, 1844.

No, my dearest Hal, the day is never long, but always short, even when I rise before six.... I have a vivid consciousness of an increased perception of the minor _goods_ of existence, in the midst of its greatest evils, and things that till now have been mere enjoyments to me now appear to me in the light of positive blessings.

My delight in everything beautiful increases daily, and I now count and appreciate the innumerable alleviations that life has in every twenty-four hours, even in its seasons of severest trial.

A spirit of greater thankfulness is often engendered by suffering itself; it is one of the "sweet uses of adversity," and mitigates it immensely.

A beautiful flower was brought to me to-day; and while I remained absorbed in contemplating it, it seemed to me a very angel of consolatory admonition.

God bless you, dearest friend. How full of sources of comfort He has made this lovely woe-world!

Ever yours,
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, June 9th, 1844.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,

I am sure you will be sorry to hear of the accident which has befallen my poor little F----. She fell last week over the bannisters of the stairs, and broke her arm. The fracture was fortunately a simple one of the smaller bone of the arm, which, I suppose, in a little body of that sort, can hardly be much more than gristle. She is doing well, and, as she appears to have escaped all injury to the head, which was my first horrible apprehension, I have every reason to be thankful that the visitation has not been more severe. The accident occasioned me a violent nervous shock. I am now far from well myself, and I am pursued with debilitating feverish tendencies, which I vainly endeavor to get rid of....

I am much puzzled, my dear Lady Dacre, what to say to you beyond this bulletin. My circumstances do not afford any great variety of cheerful topics for correspondence, and the past and the future are either painful or utterly uncertain.

I am studying German, in the midst of the small facilities for mental culture which my present not very easy or happy position affords, and have serious thoughts of beginning to work at Euclid, and trying to make myself something of a mathematician. Possibly some knowledge of the positive sciences might be of use to me in my further dealings with the world; for the proper comprehension and appreciation of and judicious commerce with which some element, either natural or acquired, is undoubtedly wanting in me.

I have always wished very much that I had been made to study mathematics as a young person, and considering that Alfieri betook himself to Greek at forty-eight, I see no very good reason why I should not get at least as far as the _pons asinorum_ at thirty-four.

I believe this latent hankering after mathematics has been a little fanned in me by reading De Quincey's letters to a young man upon the subject of a late education, which have fallen into my hands just now, and which so earnestly recommend the zealous cultivation of this species of knowledge.

I hope Lord Dacre is well. Pray remember me to him very affectionately, and tell him that I am afraid, in answer to his question, I must reply that the Americans in this part of the United States do not at present appear over-scrupulous about paying their debts. Their demonstrations towards England just now seem to me rather absurd. The "sensible" of the community (alas! nowhere the majority, but here at this moment a most pitiful minority) are of course ashamed of, and sorry for, what is going on; and, moreover, of course do not believe in a war. But I am afraid, if the good sense of England does not keep this country out of a scrape, its own good sense will hardly do it that good turn.

An American wrote to me the other day: "As for our calling ourselves a great people, I think we are a people who, with the greatest possible advantages, have made the least possible use of them; and if anything can teach these people what greatness is, it must be adversity."

Farewell, and God bless you, my dear Lady Dacre.

Believe me ever yours,
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, July 14th, 1844.
MY DEAREST HAL,

I am told that the newspapers in England have been filled with the severest comments upon the late outbreaks of popular disorder in this city of "brotherly love."

About a month ago the town was lighted from one end to the other with the burning of Catholic churches; and now, within the last week, the outrages have recommenced with more fury than ever, because, for a wonder, the militia actually did fire upon the mob, who, unused to any such demonstration of being in earnest on their part, had possessed themselves of cannon and fire-arms, and would have exterminated the small body of militia which could be gathered together at the first outbreak of the riot, but which is now backed by a very considerable force of regular troops.

The disturbance is not in the city proper, but in a sort of suburb not subject to the municipal jurisdiction of Philadelphia, but having a mayor and civil officers of its own.

The cause assigned for all these outrages is fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic Irish; and there is no doubt an intensely bitter feeling between them and the low native population of the cities; added to which, the Irish themselves do not fail to bring over their home feud, and the old Orange spirit of bloody persecution joins itself to the dread of Popery, which is becoming quite a strong feeling among the American lower classes.

It is absurd, and yet sad enough, that not six months ago "Repeal Unions"--Irish Repeal Unions--were being formed all over this country in favor of, and sympathy with, the poor, oppressed Roman Catholics in Ireland; "professional" politicians made their cause and England's oppression of them regular popularity capital; writing and speechifying in the most violent manner, and with the most crass ignorance, upon the subject of their wrongs and the tyranny they endured from our government; and now Philadelphia _flares_ from river to river with the burning of Roman Catholic churches, and the Catholics are shot down in the streets and their houses pillaged in broad daylight.

The arrest of several of the ringleaders of the mob, and the arrival of large numbers of regular troops, have produced a temporary lull in the city; but the spirit of lawless violence has been permitted to grow and strengthen itself in these people for some time past now; and of course, as they were allowed, unchecked and unpunished, to set fire to the property of the negroes, and to murder them without anybody caring what befell the persons or property of "damned niggers," the same turbulent spirit is now breaking out in other directions, where it is rather less agreeable to the _respectable_ portion of the community, but where they will now find considerable difficulty in checking it; and, of course, if it is to choose its own objects of outrage and abuse, the _respectable_ portion of the community may some day be disagreeably surprised by having to take their turn with the poor Roman Catholic Irish and the poor American negroes. The whole is a lamentable chapter of human weakness and wickedness, that would cast shame and scorn upon republican institutions, if it were not that Christianity itself is liable to the same condemnation, judged by some of its apparent results.

You ask me if I apportion my time among my various occupations with the same systematic regularity as formerly. I endeavor to do so, but find it almost impossible.... I read but very little. My leisure is principally given to my German, in which I am making some progress. I walk with the children morning and evening; I still play and sing a little at some time or other of the day, and write interminable letters to people afar off, who I wish were nearer. I walk before breakfast with the children, _i.e._ from seven till eight. Three times a week I take them to the market to buy fruit and flowers, an errand that I like as well as they do. The other three mornings we walk in the square opposite this house. After breakfast they leave me for the morning, which they now pass with their governess or nurse. For the last two months I have ridden every day, but have unhappily disabled my horse for the present, poor fellow! by galloping him during a sudden heavy rain-shower over a slippery road, in which process he injured one of his hip-joints, not incurably, I trust, but so as to deprive me of him for at least three months. [My dear and noble horse never recovered from this injury, but was obliged to be shot. He had been sold, and I had ransomed him back by the publication of a small volume of poems, which gave me the price demanded for him by the livery-stable keeper who had bought him; but the accident I mention in this letter deprived me of him. He was beautiful and powerful, high-spirited and good-tempered, almost a perfect creature, and I loved him very much.]

I shall now walk after breakfast, as, my rides being suppressed, my walks with the chicks are not exercise enough for me. After that, I prepare for my German lesson (which I take three times a week) and write letters. I take the children out again at half-past six, and at half-past seven come in to my dinner; after dinner I go to my piano, and generally sit at it or read until I go to bed, which I do early,--_et voila!_

Almost all the people I know are out of town now, and I do not see a human creature; the heat is intense and the air foul and stifling, and we are gasping for breath and withering away in this city atmosphere....

God bless you, dear Hal.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

[In the autumn of 1845 I returned to England, and resided with my
father in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, until I went to Italy
and joined my sister at Rome; a plan for my returning with my father
to America having been entertained and abandoned in the mean time.]

MORTIMER STREET, October 3d, 1845.

Heaven be praised, my American letters are finished!--eleven long ones, eleven shillings' worth. I am sure somebody (but at this moment I don't rightly know who) ought to pay me eleven shillings for such a batch of work. So now I have nothing to do but answer your daily calls, my dearest Hal, which "nothing," as I write it, looks like a bad joke. If you expect me, however, to write you a long letter on the heels of that heavy American budget, you deceive yourself, my dear friend, and the truth is not in you.

In the first place, I have nothing to say except that I am well and intensely interested by everything about me. I am very sorry to have neglected sending you "Arnold" [his Life, just published at that time], but it shall be done this day.

London, with its distracting quantity of _things to do_, is already laying hold of me; and the species of vertigo which I experience after my lonely American existence, at finding myself once more overwhelmed with visits, messages, engagements, and endless notes to read and answer, is pitiable. I feel as if I had been growing idiotic out there, my life here is such an amazing contrast.

I had a visit yesterday from dear old Lady Charlotte Lindsay, who was exceedingly kind and cordial indeed to me. We said many good words about you. After she was gone, the old Berry sisters (who still hang on the bush) tottered in, and I felt touched to the heart by the affectionate sympathy and kind goodwill exhibited towards me by these three very old and charming ladies.

I had a delightful dinner yesterday at Milman's, where I met Lady Charlotte again, Harness, Lockhart, Empson, and several other clever pleasant people.

To-day I carried my last six American despatches myself to the post, and then trotted all the way up to Horace Wilson's, to see him and my cousin Fanny, by way of exercise....

I am going to dine to-day with Sir Edward Codrington--the admiral, you know. He and his family are old friends of mine; he has been here twice this week, sitting two hours at a time with me, spinning long yarns about the battle of Navarino and all the to-do there was about it. He actually brought me a heap of manuscript papers on the subject to look over, which, quite contrary to my expectation, have interested me very much.

To-morrow, at three o'clock, my maid and I depart for the Hoo; as we go per coach, and the distance is only twenty-five miles, I hope that journey won't ruin me.

My father has just come home from Brighton, instead of remaining there till Monday, as he had intended; he said he felt himself getting fatigued, and therefore thought it expedient to come away. He has caught a slight rheumatic pain in one of his shoulders, but otherwise seems well. To-morrow I will send you another bulletin.

Your affectionate,
FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, October, 1845.

Since beginning this letter, my beloved Hal, I have been reading Channing's sermon upon Dr. Follen's death. It is, in fact, a sermon upon human suffering, in a paroxysm of which I was when I began to write to you; and for a remedy took up this sermon, which has comforted me much.

Chorley was expressing to me, two days ago, his unbounded veneration for the character of Dr. Follen, as it is faintly and imperfectly represented in the memoir which his wife published of him. I knew that I had with me Channing's sketch of him in that sermon on human suffering, and told Chorley that I would look for it for him. I found it yesterday, and merely read that part of it towards the end which referred to Dr. Follen's character; and it is to that circumstance that I attribute a dream I had last night, in which I sat devoutly at _Arnold's_ feet, expressing to him how earnestly I had desired the privilege of knowing him: he was surrounded by Channing, Follen, and others whom I could not remember. In reading to-day the whole of that fine discourse of Channing's, I was led to compare the great similarity of the expressions he uses, in speaking of sceptics and scepticism, to those Arnold makes use of on the same subjects in his letters to Lady Francis Egerton. For instance, "Scepticism is a moral disease, the growth of some open or latent depravity; deliberate, habitual questionings of God's benevolence argue great moral deficiency." Another thing that struck me was the resemblance between Dr. Arnold and Dr. Follen in the matter of independent self-reliance. Channing says of the latter, "He was singularly independent in his judgments. He was not only uninfluenced by authority, and numbers, and interest, and popularity; but by friendship, and the opinions of those he most loved and honored. He seemed almost too tenacious of his convictions."

Do you remember what Sydney Smith says of Francis Horner? This great firmness of opinion in Arnold and Follen reminds me of it by contrast: "Francis Horner was a very modest person, which men of great understanding seldom are. It was his habit to confirm his opinion by the opinions of others, and often to form them from the same source."

MORTIMER STREET, November, 1845.
DEAR EMILY,

During that hour that we spent at Netley, the last few moments of which were made full of hopeful thoughts by the passing away of the visible clouds from the visible sky, I could not but reflect upon the glorious stability of things spiritual, contrasted with the mutability and evanescence of things temporal. Our hearts, which are united by _real_ bonds--the love of truth, the fear of God, and the desire of duty--have remained so united through all these years of absence and distance from each other; and when I thought of our former visit to Netley, I remembered that nothing had failed me but that which could not be abiding and steadfast, for it was not good.

To tell you how thence my soul wandered to the eventual reclaiming of all who have strayed from righteousness, and the possible reunion, in the immeasurable future, of souls which have been sundered here because of sin, and the final redemption of all God's poor erring children, would be to attempt to utter one of those rapid, deep, and ineffable actions of our spirits which are too full of hope, of faith, and the holiest peace, for words to be meant to express them.

MORTIMER STREET, Thursday, 6th, 1845.
DEAREST HAL,

My father came home yesterday afternoon from Brighton. He said he was getting a little tired of his work, and complained of a touch of rheumatism in his shoulder.... He is making arrangements to read at Highgate next week. Harry Chester, some cousin or connection of Emily's, and a quondam kind friend of mine, is at the head of some institution at Highgate, and has been in negotiations with him for three readings at some public hall or lecture-room there. My father is to read there three times, and is to dine each time at some friend's house. Mr. Chester very kindly begged me to accompany him, and dine with them....

I dined at Sir Edward Codrington's yesterday, and was there introduced to a charmingly pretty Mrs. Bruce, formerly Miss Pitt, one of the queen's maids-of-honor; and I assure you my edification was considerable at some of her courtly experiences....

I believe Solomon says that "in the multitude of counsellors is safety;" it does not seem so with me just now, for in my multitude of counsels and counsellors I find only utter bewilderment.

Until Monday I shall be at the Hoo, where you can address me, "To the care of Lord Dacre, the Hoo, Welwyn, Herts."

God bless you, dearest Hal. Give my kind love to Dorothy.

Yours ever,
FANNY.

[The days were not yet, either in England or America, when a married
woman could claim or hold, independently, money which she either
earned or inherited. How infinite a relief from bitter injustice and
hardship has been the legislation that has enabled women to hold and
own independently property left to them by kindred or friends, or
earned by their own industry and exertions. I think, however, the
excellent law-makers of the United States must have been intent upon
atoning for all the injustice of the previous centuries of English
legislation with regard to women's property, when they framed the
laws which, I am told, obtain in some of the States, by which women
may not only hold bequests left to them, and earnings gained by
them, entirely independent of their husbands; but being thus
generously secured in their own rights, are still allowed to demand
their maintenance, and the payment of their debts, by the men they
are married to. This seems to me beyond all right and reason--the
compensation of one gross injustice by another, a process almost
_womanly_ in its enthusiastic unfairness. It must be retrospective
amends for incalculable former wrongs, I suppose.]

MORTIMER STREET, November 17th, 1845.

When I consider that this is the third letter I write to you this blessed day, dear Hal, I cannot help thinking myself a funny woman; and that if you are as fond of me as you pretend to be, you ought to be much obliged to the "streak of madness" which compels me to such preposterous epistolary exertions.