Chapter XXIII: Part 23

As for Mrs. H----, if she had chronicled me, I am afraid it would scarcely have been with good words. I met her at a party at Mrs. Bunsen's (whose husband is the son of Arnold's friend).... The young lady impressed me as one of that numerous class of persons who like to look at a man or woman whose name, for any reason, has been in the public mouth, and probably her curiosity was abundantly satisfied by my being brought up and shown to her. She made no particular impression upon me, but I have no doubt that in sorrow, or joy, or any real genuine condition, instead of what is called society, she might perhaps have interested me. It takes uncommon powers of fascination, or what is even rarer, perfect simplicity, to attract attention or arouse sympathy in the dead atmosphere of modern civilized social intercourse. All is so drearily dry, smooth, narrow, and commonplace that the great deeps of life below this stupid stagnant surface are never seen, heard, or thought of.

If your nieces' constancy in following the round of monotonously recurring amusements of a Dublin season amazes me, they would certainly think it much more amazing to pass one's time as I do, wandering about the country alone, dipping one's head and hands into every wayside fountain one comes to, and sitting down by it only to get up again and wander on to the next spring of living water. The symbol is comforting, as well as the element itself, though it is a mere suggestion of the spiritual wells by which one may find rest and refreshment, and pause and ponder on this dusty life's way of ours.

I rejoice the distress in Ireland is less than was anticipated, and am sorry that I cannot sympathize with your nephew's political views [Colonel Taylor was all his life a consistent and fervent Tory].... Politics appear to me, in a free government, to be the especial and proper occupation of a wealthy landowner; and, in such a country as Ireland, I am sure they might furnish a noble field for the exercise of the finest intelligence and the most devoted patriotism, as well as fill the time with occupation of infinite interest, both of business and benevolence. I should like to be a man with such a work....

My sister's little girl is lovely; she runs about, but does not speak yet. God bless you, my dear friend. Give my love to dear Dorothy. If I can, I will come and see you both at Torquay this next winter. I hope to be in England in November.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

FRASCATI, Wednesday, July 1st, 1846.

... You know of old that the slightest word of blame from you is worse than hot sealing-wax on my skin to me, and that to my self-justifications there is no end. My dear friend, are mental perplexity and despondency, moral difficulty, spiritual apathy, and a general bitter internal struggle with existence, less real trials, less positive troubles, than the most afflicting circumstances generally so classed? I almost doubt it. It may be more difficult to formulate that species of anguish in words, and it may seem a less positive and substantial grief than some others, but the plagues of the soul are _real_ tortures, and I set few sufferings above them, few difficulties and few pains beyond those that have their source not in the outward dispensation of events, but in the inward conditions of our physical and moral constitutions.

Comparing one lot with another, does not rather the equality of the general doom of trouble and sorrow, of difficulty and struggle, witness the impartiality with which we are governed and our several fates distributed to us? The self-assured and self-relying strength of my constitution (I mean by that my character as well as the temperament from which it results) knows nothing of the trials that beset yours--doubt, distrust, despondency. I have health, mental and physical activity, and a "mounting spirit" of indomitable enjoyment that buoyantly protects me from sufferings under which others wince and writhe; nevertheless, I have the sufferings proper to my individuality, and I needs must suffer, if it were only that I may be said to _live_, in the fit and proper sense of the term. Our lots are just; by God they are appointed....

But in spite of abiding sorrow, I have often hours of vivid enjoyment, enjoyment which has nothing to do with happiness, or peace, or hope; momentary flashes, bright gleams of exquisite pleasure, of which the capacity seems indestructible in my nature; and whatever bitterness may lie at my heart's core, it still leaves about it a mobile surface of sensibility, which reflects with a sort of ecstasy every ray of light and every form of beauty.

You certainly do not enjoy as I do, and perhaps therefore you do not suffer as acutely; but we err in nothing more than in our estimate of each other's natures, and might more profitably spend the same amount of consideration upon our own lot, and its capabilities of sorrow or of joy for our own improvement.

Why is it that people do perpetually live below their own pitch? as you very truly described their living. My return to civilized society makes me ponder much upon the causes of the desperate frivolity and dismal inanity which calls itself by that name, and in the midst of which we live and move and have our being. If people did really enjoy and amuse themselves, nothing could be better; because enjoyment and amusement _are_ great goods, and deserve to be labored for _sufficiently_; but the absence of amusement, of enjoyment, of life, of spirits, of vivacity, of _vitality_, in the society of the present day, and its so-called diversions, strikes me with astonishment and compassion. For my own part, I hold a good laugh to be inestimable in pleasure and in profit; good nonsense well talked only less admirable than good sense well delivered; and a spirit of fun the next best thing to a serious spirit; and moreover, thank God, they are quite compatible! I think the stupid shallowness of society has some deep causes; one among which is, of course, that by devoting all their energies and all their faculties and all their time to mere amusement, as they have no right to do, people fail of their aim, and are neither well amused nor well occupied, nor well anything else. For if "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," what does the reverse do for him? This passion for cakes and sugar-candy in adult, not to say advanced, life is rather lugubrious; and of course it strikes me forcibly on my return from America, where the absence of a wholesome spirit of recreation is one of the dreariest features of the national existence....

Here the absolute necessity for mere amusement strikes me as a sort of dry-rot in certain portions of the fabric of civilized society, and tends to make it a sapless crumbling mass of appearances--the most ostentatious appearance of all, that of pleasure, being perhaps the hollowest and most unreal.

It takes, I believe, no meaner qualities than intelligence and goodness to enable a person to be thoroughly, heartily, and satisfactorily amused.

Unless you, my dear friend, deprecate our meeting to part again, I have no intention whatever of leaving England without seeing you once more. I cannot imagine doing such a thing, unless in compliance with your wish, or submission to inevitable necessity. I hope to come down to Torquay, to you and Dorothy, for a few days in the winter.

I am amused at your saying that you don't think any one would feel very comfortable living with me, who had not a great love of truth. Catherine Sedgwick once said it was impossible to tell a lie before me _with any comfort_; and yet I have told my own lies, and certainly sinned, as did not the worthy lady who, being charged with a falsehood, replied unhesitatingly, "Of course, I know it was a lie; _I made it!_ I thought it would do good." Another lady of my acquaintance, speaking of a person we both knew, who was indifferent, to say the least of it, upon the question of veracity, exclaimed, "Oh, but Mrs. C---- is really too bad, for she will tell stories _when there isn't the least necessity for it_."

A---- was a curious instance of the distortion of a very upright nature; for she is undoubtedly a person of great natural truth and integrity, and yet, under the influence of an unfortunate passion, her pre-eminent virtue suffered total eclipse; and she must have condescended, proud and sincere as she was, to much duplicity and much absolute falsehood. Poor girl!

I think one great argument against wrong-doing of every sort is that it almost invariably, sooner or later, leads to a sacrifice of truth in some way or other; and for that reason a hearty love of truth is a great preservative from sin in general.

Your letters, directed either to Rome or here, to the care of Edward Sartoris, have reached me hitherto safely and punctually....

My sister particularly begs me to tell you that she rides ("a-horseback, you cuckoo!") between twelve and sixteen miles almost every day. I cannot clearly tell whether she has grown thinner or I have grown used to her figure.

The heat is beginning to be very oppressive, and I wish I was in England, for I hate hot weather. The whole range of the Sabine Hills, as I see them from my window here, look baked and parched and misty, in the glare beyond the tawny-colored Campagna. Every flower in the garden has bloomed itself away; the trees loll their heads to the hot gusts of the sirocco, mocking one with the enchanting beckoning gesture of a breeze, while the air is in truth like a blast from an oven or the draught at the mouth of a furnace.

I walk before breakfast, and steep myself in perspiration; and get into the fountain in the garden afterwards, and steep myself in cold water; and by dint of the double process, live in tolerable comfort the rest of the day. And I have no right to complain, for this is temperate to the summer climate of Philadelphia.

Mary and Martha Somerville are paying us a visit of a few days, and I have spent the last two mornings in a vast, princely, empty marble gallery here, teaching them to dance the cachuca; and I wish you could have seen Mrs. Somerville watching our exercises. With her eyeglasses to her eyes, the gentle gentlewoman sat silently contemplating our evolutions, and as we brought them to a conclusion, and stood (_not_ like the Graces) puffing and panting round her, unwilling not to say some kindly word of commendation of our effort, she meekly observed, "It's very pretty, very graceful, very"--a pause--"ladylike." She spoke without any malicious intention whatever, dear lady, but she surely left out the _un_. Do you not think it is time I should begin to think of growing old? or do your nieces do anything more juvenile than this, with all their ball-going?

God bless you, my dear Harriet. Good-bye.

I am ever, as ever yours,
FANNY.

FRASCATI, Wednesday, September 2nd, 1846.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

... I think that the women who have contemplated _any_ equality between the sexes have almost all been unmarried, for while the father disposes of the children whom he maintains, and which thus endows him with the power of supreme torture, what mother's heart is proof against the tightening of that screw? At any rate, what number of women is ever likely to be found so organized or so principled as to resist the pressure of this tremendous power? My sister, in speaking to me the other day of what she would or would not give up to her husband of conscientious conviction of right, wound up by saying, "But sooner than lose my children, there is _nothing_ that I would not do;" and in so speaking she undoubtedly uttered the feeling of the great majority of women....

We suppose my father has gone to Germany, with some intention of giving readings there. He has been on the Continent now upwards of three months, but we never hear anything definite or precise about his engagements from himself; and in his letters he never mentions place, person, or purpose, where he is going, or where likely to be; so that I can form no idea how long I may be deprived of my letters, which are directed to London, to his care.

My dearest Hal, I have kept no journal since I have been abroad but such as could be published verbatim. I have kept no record of my own life; I have long felt that to chronicle it would not assist me in enduring it.... Indeed, since I came to Italy, I should have kept no diary at all, but that my doing so was suggested to me as a possible means of earning something towards my present support, and with that view I have noted what I have seen, much to my own disgust and dissatisfaction; for I feel very strongly my own inability to give any fresh interest to a mere superficial description of things and places seen and known by everybody, and written about by all the world and his wife, for the last hundred years. Nevertheless, I have done it; because I could not possibly neglect any means whatever that were pointed out to me of helping myself, and relieving others from helping me.... I have given up my walk and my dip in the fountain before breakfast. We ride for three or four hours every afternoon, and a walk of two hours in the morning besides seemed to me, upon reflection, a disproportionate allowance of mere physical exercise for a creature endowed with brains as well as arms and legs.... Upon the whole, we have reason to be grateful for the health we have all of us enjoyed. There has been a great deal of violent and dangerous illness among the English residents passing the summer at Frascati and Albano; quite enough indeed, I think, to justify the ill repute of unhealthiness with which the whole of this beautiful region is branded. Our whole family has escaped all serious inconvenience, either from the malaria usual to the place or the unusual heat of the summer; the children especially have been in admirable health and lovely looks, the whole time we have been here....

God bless you, my dearest Hal! I am afraid that it is true that I often appear wanting in charity towards the vices and follies of my fellow-creatures; and yet I really have a great deal more than my outbreaks of vehement denunciation would seem to indicate; and of one thing I am sure, that with regard to any wrong or injury committed against myself, a very short time enables me not only to forgive it, but to perceive all the rational excuses and attenuations that it admits of. I certainly am not conscious of any bitterness of heart towards any one.... I believe it is only in the first perception of evil or sense of injury that I am unmeasured or unreasonable in my expression of condemnation--but you know, my dear, _suddenness_ is the curse of my nature.... But my self-love always springs up against the shadow of blame, and so you need pay no heed to what I say in self-justification. If I am censured justly, I shall accept the reproof inwardly, whatever outward show I may make of defending myself against it; for the grace of humility is even more deficient in me than that of charity, and to submit graciously to what seems to me unjust blame is hitherto a virtue I do not possess at all.

[After my return to England, I resumed the exercise of my theatrical
profession; the less distasteful occupation of giving public
readings, which I adopted subsequently, was not then open to me. My
father was giving readings from Shakespeare, and it was impossible
for me to thrust my sickle into a field he was reaping so
successfully. I therefore returned to the stage; under what
disadvantageously altered circumstances it is needless to say.

A stout, middle-aged, not particularly good-looking woman, such as I
then was, is not a very attractive representative of Juliet or
Julia; nor had I, in the retirement of nine years of private life,
improved by study or experience my talent for acting, such as it
was. I had hardly entered the theatre during all those years, and my
thoughts had as seldom reverted to anything connected with my former
occupation. While losing, therefore, the few personal qualifications
(of which the principal one was youth) I ever possessed for the
younger heroines of the drama, I had gained none but age as a
representative of its weightier female personages--Lady Macbeth,
Queen Katherine, etc.

Thus, even less well fitted than when first I came out for the work
I was again undertaking, I had the additional disadvantage of being
an extremely incompetent woman of business; and having now to make
my own bargains in the market of public exhibition, I did so with
total want of knowledge and experience to guide me in my dealings
with the persons from whom I had to seek employment.

I found it difficult to obtain an engagement in London; but Mr.
Knowles, of the Manchester Theatre, very liberally offered me such
terms as I was thankful to accept; and I there made my first
appearance on my return to the stage.

Among the various changes which I had to encounter in doing so, one
that might appear trivial enough occasioned me no little annoyance.
The inevitable rouge, rendered really indispensable by the ghastly
effect of the gaslight illumination of the stage, had always been
one of its minor disagreeables to me; but I now found that, in
addition to rouged cheeks, my fair theatrical contemporaries--fair
though they might be--literally whitewashed their necks, shoulders,
arms, and hands; a practice which I found it impossible to adopt;
and in spite of my zealous friend Henry Greville's rather indignant
expostulation, to the effect that what so beautiful a woman as
Madame Grisi condescended to do, for the improvement of her natural
charms, was not to be disdained by a person so comparatively ugly, I
steadily refused to make a whited sepulchre of _that_ description of
myself, and continued to confront the public with my own skin,
looking, probably, like a gypsy, or, when in proximity with any
feminine coadjutor, like a bronze figure arm-in-arm with a
plaster-of-Paris cast.

Before, however, beginning my new existence of professional toil, I
stayed a few days at Bannisters, with Mrs. FitzHugh and my dear
friend, her daughter Emily.]

BANNISTERS, Tuesday, 13th, 1846.

You say, my dear Hal, that you see Emily and me perpetually, in various positions, holding various conversations. Had you a vision of us this morning, by the comfortable fire in my room, I reading, and she listening to, your letter?...

Thank you, my dear friend, for your _flagellatory_ recipe, which I beg to decline. The sponging with vinegar and water I do practise every morning, and as I persevere in it until my fingers can hardly hold the sponge for cold, and my throat is as crimson as if it were flayed, I hope it will answer the same purpose as lashing myself, which I object to, partly, I suppose, for Sancho Panza's reasons, and partly because of its great resemblance to, not to say identity with, the superstitious practices of the idolatrous and benighted Roman Catholic Church.

The amount of medical advice and assistance which I have received since I have been restored to the affectionate society of my dear Emily and her kind mother is hardly to be told....

I shall not answer your letter seriously: I am convinced it is bad for you. I believe Dorothy never laughs (you know the Devil in "Faust" says the Almighty never does), and I am satisfied that what you are languishing for is a little _absurdity_, which she cannot by any possibility afford you.

How I wish I was with you! because, though I am no more absurd than that sublime woman Dorothy, I at least know how to take the best advantage, both for you and myself, of the great gifts you possess in that line; and the mutual sweetness and utility of our intercourse is, I am persuaded, principally owing to the judicious use I make of the extraordinary amount of absurdity it has pleased Heaven to vouchsafe you, my most precious friend.

And so you think I shall have plenty of "admiring friends" for my "gay hours" (!!!!), but shall be glad to fall back, in my less delightful ones, upon the devoted affection of--you? (Oh, Harriet, oughtn't you to be ashamed of yourself?)

I have more friends, I humbly and devoutly thank God for them, than almost any one I know; those I depend upon I can count upon the fingers of one hand, and you are the _thumb_.

In the useless struggle you persist in making to be reasonable (why don't you give it up? I've known you hopelessly at it now forty years or thereabouts), you really make use of very singular and, permit me to say, inappropriate language. After detailing, in a manner that nearly made me cry and laugh with distress for you and disapprobation of you, all your unnecessary agonies of anxiety about me, you suddenly rein yourself up with an extra-reasonable jerk, and say that "the foolish importance you attach to _trifles_ is as great as ever."

Now, my dearest friend, for such you undoubtedly are, allow me to observe that this mode of speaking of me does not appear to me either reasonable or appropriate. From what point of view I can appear a _trifle_ to the most partial and rational of my friends, I am at a loss to conjecture. The parallel seems to me to halt on all its feet. A _white_, _light_, _sweet_, and _agreeable_ article of human consumption bears, I apprehend, extremely small affinity to a _dark_, _heavy_, _tart_, and _uneatable_ female. However, if you find that this, to me, singularly distorted mode of viewing facts assists your hitherto unsuccessful efforts at mental and moral equipoise, I am perfectly willing to be a trifle in your estimation, or indeed anywhere but on your table.

The pretty, pretty plan you devise for our meeting here during Passion week, dear Hal, is a baseless vision. Our friends go up to London the week after next, and I do not know when I shall be able again to stay so far from it.

I have written to Moxon about the publication of my journal, and I received a note from him this morning, intimating his purpose of visiting me here, in the course of to-day, at which I feel rather nervously dismayed.... There is a great quantity of it, and I suppose my return to the stage may perhaps have some effect in increasing its sale.

Emily and I walk every day together, up and down the shrubbery and round the gardens; and innumerable are the ejaculations of "Oh, how I wish dear Hal was with us!" You are our proper complement, the missing side of the triangle, and it is unnatural for us two to be together here without you.

Mrs. FitzHugh is certainly a wonderful old woman, especially in her kindliness and happy, easy cheerfulness....

We drive every day for about an hour in the pony-carriage, and walk again for about half an hour afterwards....

And now, God bless you, my dearest Hal. I long to see you, and am most thankful for all the tender, devoted, anxious affection you bestow on me; I am unspeakably _grateful_ to you. Kiss dear Dorothy for me, and tell her for goodness' sake to exert herself, and either be, or allow you to be, slightly ridiculous, or she will die of perfection, and you of a plethora of absurdity, or ridiculousness _rentre_--struck in, as the French say.

I forgot to tell you that ---- has declined my terms, but offered me others, which I have declined. I have still two other managers, with one of whom I think I may perhaps be able to come to some agreement.

Since writing thus far, I have seen Moxon, who has offered me far more than I expected for my journal before reading it; begging me to let him pay me a portion of it at once, and adding that if, upon perusal of the manuscript, he thinks his profits likely to warrant his giving me more than the sum now named, he should not consider himself justified in not doing so by the fact of his having offered me less.

Good-bye, dearest.

Yours ever,
FANNY.

[It is impossible to have been more generous than Mr. Moxon was in
this whole transaction. While talking about the dealings of
booksellers with authors, he said that he always bore in mind the
liberality he had benefited by when, starting in business a poor and
obscure publisher, he had been munificently assisted by Rogers,
whose timely aid had laid the foundation of his prosperity. "As I
was dealt by," he said, "I endeavor to deal by others, and should be
glad to inspire them with the grateful regard towards me which I
shall always retain for him." Rogers surely did himself more
injustice by his tongue than all his enemies put together could have
done him; his acts of kindly generosity were almost as frequent as
his bitter, biting, cruel words.]

BANNISTERS, Saturday, 16th.

Yes, my dear Hal, I do intend to correct my own proofs (I thought my proofs corrected me)....

I have just returned from a delightful visit of two hours, which our dear friend Emily contrived for me, to ----, the dentist! Not content with cheering and soothing my sadder hours with the number and variety of her medical resources (pills, draughts, doses, potions, lotions, lozenges, etc.), her ever active and considerate affection hit upon this agreeable method of relieving my stay at Bannisters of any possible tedium, and two hours of the darkest, dampest, dreariest winter weather have thus been charmed away through her tender and ingenious solicitude for my enjoyment.

My dear Hal, what you say about laughing _with_ people, as an _instead_ for laughing _at_ them, is, like most things you say, frightful nonsense. And what sort of a laugh, moreover, is it that you offer that unfortunate Dorothy for her feeble participation? Nothing of a healthy, wholesome, vigorous, vital, individual, personal kind; but some pitiful pretence of wit or humor, having for its vague or indefinite object ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that belongs to real individual absurdity, and the direct ridicule of it, judiciously and dexterously applied; the only efficient--I had almost said legitimate--object of a rational creature's amusement. If Dorothy depends upon you for her entertainment (otherwise than as you involuntarily, unconsciously, naturally, and simply furnish it to me), I pity her; and if you depend upon her for yours, I pity you still more--for I doubt if even I, according to my own system, could extract any from her, she is so _painfully_ _un_ridiculous. You must be deplorably dull together, I am--certain, I was going to say--satisfied; but that's neither kind nor civil, and I heartily wish for both _your_ sakes that I was with you.

I am not sure that that visit may not be accomplished yet; for my reappearance on the stage does not seem likely to take place so very immediately but that I might perhaps contrive to run down to you for a short time. But, indeed, all my concerns are like so many pennies tossed up in the air for "heads or tails," and I cannot tell how they will fall, or what results I may arrive at.

I have been asked to go down to Manchester, to act, and if I have any great difficulty or delay to encounter in finding an engagement in London, I shall probably do so.... The step I am about to take is so painful to me that all petty annoyances and minor vexations lose their poignancy in the contemplation of it (_a quelque chose--a bien des choses malheur est bon_), and having at length made up my mind to it, smaller _repugnancies_ connected with it have ceased to affect me with any acuteness....

Moxon cannot publish my Italian journal immediately, because the whole of the American edition must be ready to go to press before he brings it out here. I suppose it will come out some time after Easter. Emily told you of his first offer for it, and of his gallant mode of making it. He is surely a pearl and a pattern of publishers.

Kiss that facetious "Virgin Martyr" for me. Such a laugh as you two are likely to get up together! I declare it brings the tears to my eyes to think of it.

I rejoice in your account of H---- W----. It must be a blessing to every one belonging to him to see him do well such a duty as that of an Irish proprietor, in these most miserable times.

I have at present nothing further to impart to you but the newest news, that I am

Ever yours,
FANNY.

[The last sentence of this letter refers to the failure of the
potato-crop, and the consequent terrible famine that desolated
Ireland.]

10, PARK PLACE, ST. JAMES'S, February 1st, 1847.

I feel almost certain, my dear Hal, that it will be better for me to be _alone_ when I come out at Manchester than to have you with me, even if in all other respects it were expedient you should be there. My strength is much impaired, my nerves terribly shattered, and to see reflected in eyes that I love that pity for me which I shall feel only too keenly for myself, on the first night of my return to the stage, might, I fear, completely break down my courage. I am glad for this reason that I am to come out at Manchester, where I know nobody, and not in London, where, although I might not distinguish them, I should know that not a few who cared for me, and were sorry for me, were among my spectators. I am now so little able to resist the slightest appeal to my feelings that, at the play (to which I have been twice lately), the mere sound of human voices simulating distress has shaken and affected me to a strange degree, and this in pieces of a common and uninteresting description. A mere exclamation of pain or sorrow makes me shudder from head to foot. Judge how ill prepared I am to fulfil the task I am about to undertake....

This, however, is one of the most painful aspects of my work. It has a more encouraging one. It is an immense thing for me to be still able to work at all, and keep myself from helpless dependence upon any one.... The occupation, the mere _business_ of the business, will, I am persuaded, be good rather than bad for me; for though one may be strong against sorrow, sorrow and inactivity combined are too much for any strength. Such a burden might not kill one, but destroy one's vitality to a degree just short of, and therefore worse than, death--crush, instead of killing and releasing one....

I was reading over "The Hunchback" last night, and could not go through the scenes between Julia and Clifford, when he assumes the character of Lord Rochdale's secretary, without an agony of crying. I do not see how I am ever to act it again intelligibly, but I suppose when I _must_ do it I _shall_. Things that have to be done are done, somehow or other.

God bless you, my dear Hal.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

One word to Dorothy.

Now, my beloved and best Dorothy, haven't you enough to do with that most troublesome soul, Harriet, without being my "good angel" too? [Miss W---- often went by the name of Harriet's "good angel."] I have never seen mine; but if I have one, I should think he or she must be a sort of spiritual heavenly steam-engine, _a three-hundred angel-power_, in order effectually to take care of me.

My dearest Hal, I have missed the dear nuisance of your letters so dreadfully these few days past, that I began seriously to meditate writing to you to know if I had offended you in any way. As for how I fare in this cold weather, the weather is nothing to me, and I used not to mind cold at all, but rather to like it; but my flesh is forsaking my bones at such a rate that I am beginning to shiver for want of covering, and I think to be reduced to a skeleton--a live one, I mean--while the thermometer is as low as it is will be very uncomfortable.

The satisfaction I had in my visit to my brother was that of seeing a person for whom I have a very warm affection, and, in some respects, a very sincere admiration. I believe, too, it was a comfort to poor John to see me and receive the expressions of my love and sympathy.... For his warm heart, his truthfulness and great simplicity of character, his worldly poverty, his great intellectual wealth, but, above all, for that he is my brother, I love him. He and his children are living in a poor small cottage, on a wild corner of common near Cassiobury. How I thought of our old--no, our young days, driving along past "The Grove" and the Cassiobury Park paling. My brother's present home is certainly not an extravagant residence, and though, of course, sufficient for absolute necessary comfort (how much comfort is _necessary_?), is nothing more.... John has advertised in the _Times_ for a pupil to prepare for college, and should he be able to obtain one, it would, of course, materially assist him. In the mean time he is working with infinite ardor and industry upon an important work, the "History of the English Law." A friend of his, whom I met there, who is, I think, a competent judge, which, of course, I am not, of any such matter, assured me that the work was one of great erudition and research, but at the same time so dry and difficult, and therefore little likely to be popular, that it would not be easy to persuade any publisher to undertake it. He, Mr. B----, carried the first volume, which is complete, to town with him, to show it to persons capable of appreciating it, and endeavor to get it a little known, so as to procure an offer for its publication. Poor John! his perseverance in the studies he loves is very great, his devotion to them very deep, and if he could only live upon his means with his beloved mistress, Learning, I should think he had made a noble and honorable choice, however bitterly disappointed my father may feel at his not choosing to follow more lucrative pursuits.

I am going to act in _Dublin_. I have neither time nor space for more.

God bless you.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

10, PARK PLACE, Friday, 12th, 1847.

Direct to me at Manchester, "Theatre Royal," my dear Hal, that is all; or, indeed, I should prefer your directing to the Albion Hotel, that same house where you and I were so charmed by the sunlight on the carpet.

You say I do not know the value of letters. I think I do, for if I had not the very highest value for them I should long ago have given way to my detestation of writing, and put an end to my innumerable correspondences. Your letters have more than once been snatched up by me, and pressed to my lips; so have my sister's.... I hate writing, it is true, but am content to pay that price for the intercourse of my friends; and though I may not love letters as you do, I do think I have a reasonable appreciation of their value.

I share in your feeling, dearest Harriet, about my being in Dublin while you are absent from it. I do not know that it seems to me "wrong," but it certainly does seem as unnatural as that there should be a theatre open in Dublin at all at this time, when famine and such dire distress are prevailing in parts of the country.

I am troubled, too, at the uncertainty of how and when we are to meet; and the reason why these various considerations do not, perhaps, engross so much of my thoughts as they do of yours is because I have so many immediate and necessarily absorbing claims upon my attention.

I incline with you, however, to think that I shall not go to Dublin. I have not heard again from the manager, and I begin to hope that he has thought better of his invitation to me. As my work is a matter of necessity, I could not, of course, refuse an engagement in Dublin; but it does seem monstrous that there should be people willing to pay for theatrical entertainments there at this time.

If I do not go I shall lose an opportunity of seeing my brother Henry, which I am looking forward to with great pleasure--the only pleasure in the whole expedition, since you will not be there, which will indeed seem most strange and very _inappropriate_.

Harriet, _you_ certainly have a passion for writing, for in your last you have repeated every word I said about my brother John, just as if you had invented it yourself. You are like Ariel, very; and I am like Prospero, very ("Dull thing! I said so"); or, no, I am like Falstaff, to be sure, and you like Prince Hal, with "damnable iteration." ...

Various of my London men friends threaten coming down to Manchester during my engagement there; Charles and Henry Greville, Chorley, and even Moxon, who declared, if my play was brought out, he must be in the pit the first night to see it. [This was my play called "An English Tragedy," which there was some talk of bringing out at Manchester.] I dare say the courage of all of them will give out before this bitter cold, and I shall not be sorry if it does, for I want no sympathizers to make me pitiful over myself.

I am tolerably well just now, and really believe that when once I am fairly out of the fangs of the dressmakers I shall gather strength rapidly.

The crudest fact in my fate at present is that I have actually not been able to get all my things made here, and am taking the materials for my Juliet and Queen Katharine dresses to be made up at Manchester; and this is horrid, because, but for this, my off evenings would have really been seasons of rest and quiet. However, it is of no use lamenting over any one detail of such a whole as this business....

Give my love to dear Dorothy. She is half my good angel, by her own voluntary assumption of the character....

Do not be troubled overmuch for or about me, my dearest friend; but commend me, as I do you and myself, to God, and believe me

Ever yours,
FANNY.

10, PARK PLACE, Saturday Evening.
MY DEAR HAL,

I never did, and I never shall, offer anything I write to anybody. If my friends ask me for anything I write, I will get it for them, just as I would anything else they ask me to get or to do for them; but I have no idea of volunteering such a bestowal upon anybody. Emily asked me for a copy of my "Year of Consolation," and I have promised her one, and I will certainly give you one if you wish for it. As for accounting, by any process of reasoning of mine, for your desire to have my book, I am quite unable to do so.

My love for my friends would never make me wish to read their books, unless I thought their book likely to be worth reading. Now, I cannot assume this with regard to my own, especially as I don't believe it.

Our friends' characters, their love for us, and ours for them, is the stuff of which our adhesion is made; and unless I had a genius for a friend, I should care little for any other mental exhibitions from those I loved than those their daily intercourse afforded me. In personal intercourse, unless a person is a genius, you really get that which is best intellectually, as well as every other way, from your friend. Even in the case of a great genius, I should think his daily intercourse likely to be more valuable in an intellectual point of view than his best works; but then, of such a mind one would naturally wish to possess all and every product that one could obtain. If I thought myself a genius, I might offer you my books unasked--perhaps.

I shall be at the Albion at Manchester, and if you wish to hear from me, you will do well to write to me there....

I have had a most terrible day of fatigue and worry, breaking my back with packing my things, and my heart with paying my bills.

Dear Henry Greville goes to within fifty miles of Manchester with me to-morrow, and stays at a friend's house, whence he and Alfred Potocki purpose coming on for the play on Tuesday evening. After all, I am not sorry he is coming; his regard for me is not of a sort to make me dread the weakening effect of his sympathy, and it will be comfortable to know that among that strange audience I have just such a kind well-wisher as he is, to keep up whatever courage I have.

Perhaps you may yet see me in Dublin, for the manager wishes me to renew my engagement after the first six nights; and, of course, if he pays me my terms, I shall be glad to remain there as long as he likes.

Give my dear love to dear Dorothy. I am thoroughly worn out, and feel quite unwell; and oh, how cold it will be in that railroad carriage to-morrow!

God bless you, dear.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

ALBION HOTEL, MANCHESTER, Monday, 15th.
MY DEAR HAL,

I cannot tell you exactly _all_ why I dislike writing letters, because my dislike is made up of so many elements. One reason is that the limits of a letter do not permit of one's saying satisfactorily what one has to say upon any subject. I think frequently that my letters must be highly unsatisfactory because of my tendency to discussion, which makes them more like imperfect essays than letters, the chief charm and use of which is to tell of daily events, interests, and occurrences; how one is, what one does, where one goes, etc. Now, while I fear my letters must be unsatisfactory to my friends because they seldom contain details of this sort, they are still more so to me, because I have neither room nor time in them to say anything about anything as I wish to say it. Then, I have an indescribable impatience of the mere mechanical process.

You say that I talk, though I do not write, willingly to my friends, but whenever I get upon any subject that interests me, with anybody whom I am not afraid of wearying, I talk till I have said all I have to say; and though I never spoke about anything that I cared for without afterwards perceiving that I had left unsaid many important things upon the subject while I spoke, I spoke all that came into my mind at the time. In writing this is never the case, and fast as my pen flies, it seems to me to stick to the paper; while in speaking, what with my voice, my face, and my whole body, I manage to convey an immensity of matter (stuff, you know, I mean) in an incredibly short time. Impatience of all my limitations, therefore, is one cause of my dislike to letter-writing.

You say that I do not object to conversation, though I do to correspondence: and it is quite true that I sometimes have great pleasure in talking; but if I had to talk, even upon the subjects that interest me most, as much as I have to write in the discharge of my daily correspondence, I should die of exhaustion, and fancy, too, that I was guilty of a reprehensible waste of time. That I am doing what gives my friends pleasure, and is but their due, alone prevents my thinking my letter-writing a waste of time. As therefore it is not to me, as to you, a pleasurable occupation in itself, I do not think it can be compared with "reading Shakespeare, Schiller," or indeed any book worth reading. The exercise of justice towards, and consideration for, others is a form of virtue, and _therefore_ letter-writing is, in some cases, a good employment of time.

I have a desire for mental culture, only equalled by my sense of my profound ignorance, and the feeling of how little knowledge is attained, even by scholars leading the most active and assiduously studious existences.

My delight in my own superficial miscellaneous reading is not so much for the information I retain (for I forget, or at least seem to do so, much of what I read), as for the sense of mental activity produced at the time, by reading; and though I forget much, something doubtless remains, upon the whole.

Knowledge, upon any subject, is an enchanting _curiosity_ to me; fine writing on elevated subjects is a source of the liveliest pleasure to me; in all kinds of good poetry I find exquisite enjoyment; and not having a particle of satisfaction in letter-writing for its own sake, I cannot admit any parallel between reading and writing (whatever I might think of arithmetic). I have sometimes fancied, too, that but for the amount of letter-writing I perform, I might (perhaps) write carefully and satisfactorily something that might (perhaps) be worth reading, something that might (perhaps) in some degree approach my standard of a tolerably good literary production--some novel or play, some work of imagination--and that my much letter-writing is against this; but I dare say this is a mistaken notion, and that I should never, under any circumstances, write anything worth anything.

I have always desired much to cultivate the accomplishment of drawing; it is an admirable sedative--a soothing, absorbing, and satisfactory pursuit; but I have never found time to follow it up steadily, though snatching at it now and then according as opportunity favored me. I give but little time to my music now (though some every day, because I will not let go anything I have once possessed); for I shall never be a proficient in it, and I already have as much of it at my command as answers my need of it as a recreation. Any of these occupations is more agreeable to me than letter-writing; so is needlework, so is walking out, so is--almost anything else I could do. Now, as Shylock says, "Are you answered yet?"

I should be sorry my brother Henry went to the trouble or expense of coming over to Manchester or Liverpool to see me, as there is every probability of my being in Dublin early in March, where I shall act till the 22nd, and perhaps longer.

I have the privilege of sitting with an engraving of Lord Wilton, in his peer's robes, _hung_ opposite to me--enough surely for any reasonable woman's happiness....

God bless you, dear; give my love to dear Dorothy. I rejoice for her that the cold is gone.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

My kind friend Henry Greville, and that very charming young Alfred Potocki, brother of the Austrian Ambassadress, Madame de Dietrichstein, and a great friend of Henry's, came down with me half way, yesterday; they stopped at a friend's house about fifty miles from Manchester, and come up to-morrow to see the play, so that I shall have the comfort of people that I like, and not the trial of people that I love, near me on that occasion.

I am not very nervous about my _plunge_; the only thing that I dread is the noise (noise of any sort being what my nerves can no longer endure at all) which I am afraid may greet me. I wish I could avoid my "reception," as it is called, because any loud sound shakes me now from head to foot; this is the one thing that I do dread--I have gained some self-possession and strength in these past years, and I hope my acting itself, as well as my comfort in acting, may benefit by my increased self-command. Poor Hayes (my maid) says that the peace of being alone with me, after our late lodging, is like having left _Hell_; we shall see what she says to-morrow night at the theatre,--poor thing. Farewell.

ALBION HOTEL, MANCHESTER, Wednesday, 17th.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,

I acted Julia in "The Hunchback" last night (the first time for thirteen years); got up this morning with a dreadful cough and sore throat, the effect of over-exertion and exposure; went to rehearsal after breakfast, rehearsed Lady Macbeth and Juliana in "The Honeymoon" (a _dancing_ part!); have written to three managers, from whom I have received "proposals;" have despatched accounts of myself to my father and sundry of my friends; have corrected forty pages of proof of my Italian journal; have prepared all my dresses for to-morrow; have received sundry visits (among others, that of a doctor, whom I was obliged to send for), and have wished that I had not had so much to do.

I am so far satisfied with my last night's experiment, that I think it has proved that my strength will serve to go through this sort of labor for a couple of years; and I hope during that time, by moving from one place to another, that my attraction may hold out sufficiently to enable me to secure the small capital upon which I can contrive to live independently.

The theatre here is beautiful; the company very fair; the plays are well and carefully got up. The audience were most exceedingly kind and cordial to me, and I think I have every reason to be thankful, and grateful, and more than satisfied. The manager wants me to renew my engagement, which is a sign, I suppose, that he is satisfied too.

With affectionate respects to my lord, believe me, my dear Lady Dacre,

Ever yours,
FANNY.

MANCHESTER, Thursday, 18th.

I cannot tell how many books have been written by geniuses, dear Hal, and therefore, being unable to answer the first question in your letter, pass on to the next.

The people that I have to deal with here seem to me very much like all other people everywhere else. The proprietor and manager of the theatre is an active, enterprising, intelligent man, who knows the _value_ of liberality, and that generosity is sometimes the most remunerative as well as amiable and popular line of action. He is a shrewd man of business, a little rough in his manner, but kindly and good-natured withal, and extremely civil and considerate to me. He is anxious that I should renew my engagement, and I shall be very willing to do so, on my return from Dublin.

My stage-manager is a brother of James Wallack, well bred, and pleasant to deal with, and also very kind and courteous to me. Everybody in the theatre is civil and good to me, and I am heartily grateful to them all. As for my good host and hostess of the Albion, they really look after me in the most devoted and affectionate manner, so that I am quite of my poor maid's opinion, that this is a paradise of peace and comfort compared with Mrs. ----'s lodging-house.

My dressing-room at the theatre is wretched in point of size and situation, being not much larger than this sheet of paper, and up a sort of steep ladder staircase: in other respects, it is tidy enough, and infinitely better than the dark barrack-room you remember me dressing in when I was in Manchester years ago, when I was a girl--alas! I don't mean a pun! It is not the same theatre, but a new one, built by the Mr. Knowles who engaged me to act here, and one of the prettiest, brightest, and most elegant playhouses I ever saw; admirable for the voice, and of a most judicious size and shape. Unfortunately, a large hotel has been built immediately adjoining it (I suspect by the same person, who is a great speculator, and apt, I should think, to have many, if not too many, irons in the fire), and the space that should have been appropriated to the accommodation of the actors, behind the scenes in the theatre, has been sacrificed to the adjoining building, which is a pity.