Chapter III: Part 3

I wish Mr. and Mrs. F---- lived near me instead of being merely come to spend a few weeks in this neighborhood.... I do not keep a diary any more; I do not find chronicling my days helps me to live them, and for many reasons I have given up my journal. Perhaps I may resume it when we set out for the South....

We are now altogether proprietors of this place, and I really think, as I am often told, that it is getting to be prettier and better kept than any other in this neighborhood. It is certainly very much improved, and no longer looks quite unlike an English place, but there are yet a thousand things to be done to it, in the contemplation of which I try to forget its present mongrel appearance.

Now, dear, I have answered as many of your questions as my paper allows. Do not, I beseech you, send me back word that my letter was "thoroughly unsatisfactory."

God bless you.

I am ever your affectionate
F. A. B.

BRANCHTOWN, Wednesday, October 5th.
MY DEAREST H----,

It is a great disappointment to me that I am not going to the South this winter. There is no house, it seems, on the plantation but a small cottage, inhabited by the overseer, where the two gentlemen proprietors can be accommodated, but where there is no room for me, my baby, and her nurse, without unhousing the poor overseer and his family altogether. The nearest town to the estate, Brunswick, is fifteen miles off, and a wretched hole, where I am assured it will be impossible to obtain a decent lodging for me, so that it has been determined to leave me and baby behind, and the owner will go with his brother, but without us, on his expedition to Negroland. As far as the child is concerned, I am well satisfied; ... but I would undergo much myself to be able to go among those people. I know that my hands would be in a great measure tied. I certainly could not free them, nor could I even pay them for their labor, or try to instruct them, even to the poor degree of teaching them to read. But mere personal influence has a great efficiency; moral revolutions of the world have been wrought by those who neither wrote books nor read them; the Divinest Power was that of One Character, One Example; that Character and Example which we profess to call our Rule of life. The power of individual personal qualities is really the great power, for good or evil, of the world; and it is upon this ground that I feel convinced that, in spite of all the cunningly devised laws by which the negroes are walled up in a mental and moral prison, from which there is apparently no issue, the personal character and daily influence of a few Christian men and women living among them would put an end to slavery, more speedily and effectually than any other means whatever.

You do not know how profoundly this subject interests me, and engrosses my thoughts: it is not alone the cause of humanity that so powerfully affects my mind; it is, above all, the deep responsibility in which we are involved, and which makes it a matter of such vital paramount importance to me.... It seems to me that we are possessed of power and opportunity to do a great work; how can I not feel the keenest anxiety as to the use we make of this talent which God has entrusted us with? We dispose of the physical, mental, and moral condition of some hundreds of our fellow-creatures. How can I bear to think that this great occasion of doing good, of dealing justly, of setting a noble example to others, may be wasted or neglected by us? How can I bear to think that the day will come, as come it surely must, when we shall say: We once had it in our power to lift this burden from four hundred heads and hearts, and stirred no finger to do it; but carelessly and indolently, or selfishly and cowardly, turned our back upon so great a duty and so great a privilege.

I cannot utter what I feel upon this subject, but I pray to God to pour His light into our hearts, and enable us to do that which is right.

In every point of view, I feel that we ought to embrace the cause of these poor people. They will be free assuredly, and that before many years; why not make friends of them instead of deadly enemies? Why not give them at once the wages of their labor? Is it to be supposed that a man will work more for fear of the lash than he will for the sake of an adequate reward? As a matter of policy, and to escape personal violence, or the destruction of one's property, it were well not to urge them--ignorant, savage, and slavish, as they are--into rebellion. As a mere matter of worldly interest, it would be wise to make it worth their while to work with zeal and energy for hire, instead of listlessly dragging their reluctant limbs under a driver's whip.

Oh, how I wish I was a man! How I wish I owned these slaves! instead of being supported (disgracefully, as it seems to me) by their unpaid labor....

You tell me, dear H----, that you are aged and much altered, and you doubt if I should know you. That's a fashion of speech--you doubt no such thing, and know that I should know you if your face were as red as the fiery inside of Etna, and your hair as white as its snowy shoulders.

I have had the skin peeled off the back of my neck with standing in the sun here, and my whole face and hands are burnt, by constant exposure, to as fine a coffee-color as you would wish to see of a summer's day. Yet, after all, I got as sharp a sunstroke on my shoulders, driving on a coach-box by the side of Loch Lomond once, as could be inflicted upon me by this American sky. The women here, who are careful, above all things, of their appearance, marvel extremely at my exposing myself to the horrors of tanning, freckling, etc.; but with hair and eyes as dark as mine, a gipsy complexion doesn't signify, and I prefer burning my skin to suffocating under silk handkerchiefs, sun-bonnets, and two or three gauze veils, and sitting, as the ladies here do, in the dark till the sun has declined. I am certainly more like a Red Indian squaw than when last you saw me; but that change doesn't signify, it's only skin deep....

You speak of the beauty of the Italian sky, and say that to pass the mornings with such pictures, and the evenings with such sunsets, is matter to be grateful for.

I have been spending a month with my friends, the Sedgwicks, in a beautiful hilly region in the State of Massachusetts; and I never looked abroad upon the woods and valleys and lakes and mountains without thinking how great a privilege it was to live in the midst of such beautiful things. I felt this the more strongly, perhaps, because the country in my own neighborhood here is by no means so varied and interesting.

I am glad you are to have the pleasure of meeting your own people abroad, and thus carrying your home with you: give my kindest love to them all whenever you see them....

I have not been hot this summer: the weather has been rainy and cold to a most uncommon degree; and I have rejoiced therefore, and so have the trees and the grass, which have contrived to look green to the end of the chapter, as with us....

If I am not allowed to go to the South this winter, it is just possible that I may spend three months in England.

Good-bye, my dearest H----.

I am ever yours,
F. A. B.

[This was the last letter I wrote to my friend from America this
year; it was decided that I should not go to the South, and so
lonely a winter as I should have had to spend in the country being
rather a sad prospect, it was also decided that I should return to
England, and remain during my temporary widowhood with my own family
in London.

I sailed at the beginning of November, and reached England, after a
frightfully stormy passage of eight and twenty days. I and my
child's nurse were the only women on board the packet, and there
were very few male passengers. The weather was dreadful; we had
violent contrary winds almost the whole time, and one terrific gale
that lasted nearly four days; during which time I and my poor little
child and her nurse were prisoners in the cabin, where we had not
even the consolation of daylight, the skylights being all closely
covered to protect us from the sea, which broke all over the decks.
I begged so hard one day to have the covering removed, and a ray of
daylight admitted, if only for five minutes, that I was indulged,
and had reason to repent it; the sea almost instantly broke the
windows and poured down upon us like Niagara, and I was thankful to
be covered up again as quick as possible in dry darkness.

This storm was made memorable to me by an experience of which I have
read one or two descriptions, by persons who have been similarly
affected in seasons of great peril, and which I have never ceased
regretting that I did not make a record of as soon as possible; but
the lapse of time, though it has no doubt enfeebled, has in no other
way altered, the impressions I received.

The tempest was the first I had ever witnessed, and was undoubtedly
a more formidable one than I have ever since encountered in eighteen
passages across the Atlantic. I was told, after it was over, that
the vessel had sprung its mainmast--a very serious injury to a
sailing ship, I suppose, by the mode in which it was spoken of; and
for three days we were unable to carry any sail whatever for the
fury of the wind.

At the height of the storm, in the middle of a night which my
faithful friend and servant, Margery O'Brien, passed in prayer,
without once rising from her knees, the frightful uproar of the
elements and the delirious plunging and rearing of the convulsed
ship convinced me that we should inevitably be lost. As the vessel
reeled under a tremendous shock, the conviction of our impending
destruction became so intense in my mind, that my imagination
suddenly presented to me the death-vision, so to speak, of my whole
existence.

This kind of phenomenon has been experienced and recorded by persons
who have gone through the process of drowning, and afterwards
recovered; or have otherwise been in imminent peril of their lives,
and have left curious and highly interesting accounts of their
sensations.

I should find it impossible adequately to describe the vividness
with which my whole past life presented itself to my perception; not
as a procession of events, filling a succession of years, but as a
whole--a total--suddenly held up to me as in a mirror, indescribably
awful, combined with the simultaneous acute and almost despairing
sense of _loss_, of _waste_, so to speak, by which it was
accompanied. This instantaneous, involuntary retrospect was followed
by a keen and rapid survey of the religious belief in which I had
been trained, and which then seemed to me my only important
concern....

The tension, physical and mental, of the very short space of time in
which these processes took place, gave way to a complete exhaustion,
in which, strangely enough, I found the sort of satisfaction that a
child does in crooning itself to sleep, in singing, one after
another, every song I could call to memory; and my repertory was a
very numerous one, composed of English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh,
French, German, Italian, and Spanish specimens, which I "chanted
loudly, chanted lowly," sitting on the floor, through the rest of
the night, till the day broke, and my sense of danger passed away,
but not the recollection of the never-to-be-forgotten experience it
had brought to me.

I have often since wondered if any number of men going into action
on a field of battle are thus impressed. Several thousands of human
beings, with the apparition of their past life thus suddenly
confronting them, is not a bad suggestion of the Day of Judgment.

I have heard it asserted that the experience I have here described
was only that of persons who, in the full vigor of life and health,
were suddenly put in peril of immediate death; and that whatever
regret, repentance, or remorse might afflict the last moments of
elderly persons, or persons prepared by previous disease for
dissolution, this species of revelation, by the sudden glare of
death, of the whole past existence was not among the phenomena of
death-beds.

As a curious instance of the very mistaken inferences frequently
drawn from our actions by others, when the storm had sufficiently
subsided to allow of our very kind friend, the captain, leaving his
post of vigilant watch on deck, to come and inquire after his poor
imprisoned female passengers, he congratulated me upon my courage.
"For," said he, "at the very height of the storm, I was told that
you were heard singing away like a bird."

I am not sure that I succeeded in making him understand that that
was only because I had been as frightened as I was capable of being,
and, having touched the extremest point of terror, I had subsided
into a sort of ecstacy of imbecility, in which I had found my
"singing voice."

I returned to my home and family, and stayed with them in London all
the time of my visit to England, which, from unforeseen
circumstances, was prolonged far beyond what had originally been
intended.

I returned to the intercourse of all my former friends and
acquaintance, and to the London society of the day, which was full
of delightful interest for me, after the solitary and completely
unsocial life I had been leading for the two previous years.

My friend, Miss S----, was still abroad, and her absence was the
only drawback to the pleasure and happiness of my return to my own
country.

My father resided then in Park Place, St. James's, in a house which
has since become part of the Park Hotel; we have always had a
tending towards that particular street, which undoubtedly is one of
the best situated in London: quiet in itself, not being a
thoroughfare, shut in by the pleasant houses that look into the
Green Park below Arlington Street, and yet close to St. James's
Street, and all the gay busyness of the West End, Pall Mall, and
Piccadilly.

While we were living at No. 10 Park Place, my cousin, Horace Twiss,
was our opposite neighbor, at No. 5, which became my own residence
some years afterwards; and, since then, my sister had her London
abode for several years at No. 9. The street seems always a sort of
home to me, full of images and memories of members of my family and
their intimates who visited us there.

My return to London society at this time gave me the privilege of an
acquaintance with some of its most remarkable members, many of whom
became, and remained, intimate and kind friends of mine for many
years. The Miss Berrys, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lady Morley, Lord
and Lady Lansdowne, Lord and Lady Ellesmere, Lord and Lady Dacre,
Sydney Smith, Rogers, were among the persons with whom I then most
frequently associated; and in naming these members of the London
world of that day, I mention only a small portion of a brilliant
society, full of every element of wit, wisdom, experience, refined
taste, high culture, good breeding, good sense, and distinction of
every sort that can make human intercourse valuable and delightful.

I was one of the youngest members of that pleasant society, and have
seen almost all its brilliant lights go out. Eheu! of what has
succeeded to them in the London of the present day, I know nothing.]

PARK PLACE, St. James's, December 28th, 1836.

Nevertheless, and in spite of all your doubts, and notwithstanding all the improbabilities and all the impossibilities, here I am, dearest H----, in very deed in England, and in London, once again. And shall it be that I have crossed that terrible sea, and am to pass some time here, and to return without seeing you? I cannot well fancy that. Surely, now that the Atlantic is no longer between us, though the Alps may be, we shall meet once more before I go back to my dwelling-place beyond the uttermost parts of the sea. The absolute impossibility of taking the baby to the South determined the arrangements that were made; and as I was at any rate to be alone all the winter, I obtained leave to pass it in England, whither I am come, alone with my chick, through tempestuous turbulence of winds and waves, and where I expect to remain peaceably with my own people, until such time as I am fetched away. When this may be, however, neither I nor any one else can tell, as it depends upon the meeting and sitting of a certain Convention, summoned for the revising of the constitution of the State of Pennsylvania; and there is at present an uncertainty as to the time of its opening. It was at first appointed to convene on the 1st of May, and it was then resolved that I should return early in March, so as to be in America by that time; but my last news is that the meeting of the Convention may take place in February, and my stay in England will probably be prolonged for several months in consequence....

Your various propositions, regarding negro slavery in America, I will answer when we meet, which I hope will be ere long.... I wish to heaven I could have gone down to Georgia this winter!...

Your impression of Rome does not surprise me; I think it would be mine. I have not seen dear Emily, but expect that pleasure in about a fortnight....

My father took his farewell of the stage last Friday. How much I could say upon that circumstance alone! The house was immensely full, the feeling of regret and good-will universal, and our own excitement, as you may suppose, very great. My father bore it far better than I had anticipated, and his spirits do not appear to have suffered since; I know not whether the reaction may not make itself felt hereafter.

Perhaps his present occupation of licenser may afford sufficient employment of a somewhat kindred nature to prevent his feeling very severely the loss of his professional excitement; and yet I know not whether a sufficient _succedaneum_ is to be found for such a dram as that, taken nightly for more than forty years....

Who do you think Adelaide and I went to dine with last Friday? You will never guess, so I may as well tell you--the C----s! The meetings in this world are strange things. She sought me with apparent cordiality, and I had no reason whatever for avoiding her. She is very handsome, and appears remarkably amiable, with the simple good breeding of a French great lady, and the serious earnestness of a devout Roman Catholic. They are going to Lisbon, where he is attache to the Embassy.

I had a letter from Mr. Combe the other day, full of the books he had been publishing, and the lectures he had been delivering. He seems to be very busy, and very happy. [Mr. Combe had lately married my cousin, Cecilia Siddons.] ...

Farewell, my dearest H----.

I am ever your most affectionate,
F. A. B.

PARK PLACE, ST. JAMES'S, May 13th, 1837.
MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

You will never believe I am alive, not sooner to have answered your kind letter; yet I was grateful for your expressions of regard, and truly sorry for all you have had to undergo. Certainly the chances of this life are strange--that you should be in Toronto, and I in London now, is what neither of us would have imagined a little while ago.

I wish I could think you were either as happy or as well amused as I am. I hope, however, you have recovered your health, and that you will be able to visit some of the beautiful scenery of the St. Lawrence this summer; that, at least, you may have some compensation for your effort in crossing the Atlantic.

I heard of you from my friend, Miss Sedgwick, whose sympathies were as much excited by your personal acquaintance as her admiration had been by your books. I heard of you, too, from Theodore Fay, whom I saw a short time since, and who gave me a letter of yours to read, which you wrote him from New York. [Mr. Theodore Fay was a graceful writer of prose and poetry, and achieved some literary reputation in his own country; he was for some time United States Minister at Berlin.]

Lady Hatherton, whom I met the other evening at old Lady Cork's, was speaking of you with much affection; and all your friends regret your absence from England; and none more sincerely than I, who shall, I fear, have the ill fortune to miss you on both sides of the Atlantic.

I find London more beautiful, more rich and royal, than ever; the latter epithet, by-the-bye, applies to external things alone, for I do not think the spirit of the people as royal, _i.e._, loyal, as I used to fancy it was.

Liberalism appears to me to have gained a much stronger and wider influence than it had before I went away; liberal opinions have certainly spread, and I suppose will spread indefinitely. Toryism, on the other hand, seems as steadfast in its old strongholds as ever; the Tories, I see, are quite as wedded as formerly to their political faith, but at the same time more afraid of all that is not themselves, more on the defensive, more socially exclusive; I think they mix less with "the other side" than formerly, and are less tolerant of difference of opinion.

I find a whole race of _prima donnas_ swept away; Pasta gone and Malibran dead, and their successor, Grisi, does not charm and enchant me as they did, especially when I hear her compared to the former noble singer and actress. When I look at her, beautiful as she is, and think of Pasta, and hear her extolled far above that great queen of song, by the public who cannot yet have forgotten the latter, I am more than ever impressed with the worthlessness of popularity and public applause, and the mistake of those who would so much as stretch out their little finger to obtain it. I came to England just in time to see my father leave the stage, and close his laborious professional career. After a long life of public exhibition, and the glare of excitement which inevitably attends upon it, to withdraw into the sober twilight of private life is a great trial, and I fear he finds it so. His health is not as good as it was while he still exercised his profession, and I think he misses the stimulus of the daily occupation and nightly applause.

What a dangerous pursuit that is which weans one from all other resources and interests, and leaves one dependent upon public exhibition for the necessary stimulus of one's existence! This aspect of it alone would make me deprecate that profession for any one I loved; it interferes with every other study, and breaks the thread of every other occupation, and produces mental habits which, even if distasteful at first, gradually become paramount to all others, and, in due time, inveterate; and besides perpetually stimulating one's personal vanity and desire for admiration and applause, directs whatever ambition one has to the least exalted of aims, the production of evanescent effects and transitory emotions.

I am thankful that I was removed from the stage before its excitement became necessary to me. That reminds me that, within the last two days, Pasta has returned to England: they say she is to sing at Drury Lane, Grisi having possession of the Opera House. Now, will it not be a pity that she should come in the decline of her fine powers, and subject herself to comparisons with this young woman, whose voice and beauty and popularity are all in their full flower? If I knew Pasta, I think I would go on my knees to beg her not to do it.

I find my sister's voice and singing very much improved, and exceedingly charming. She speaks always with warm regard of you, and remembers gratefully your kindness to her.

My dear Mrs. Jameson, it is a great disappointment to me that I cannot welcome you to my American home, and be to you that pleasant thing, an old friend in a foreign land. It appears to me that we shall have the singular ill-luck of passing each other on the sea; at least, if it is true that you return in the autumn.

Much as I had desired to see my own country again, my visit to it has had one effect which I certainly had not anticipated, and for which I am grateful: it has tended to reconcile me to my present situation in life, comparatively remote as it is from the best refinements of civilization and all the enjoyments of society.... The turmoil and dissipation of a London life, amusing as they are for a time, soon pall upon one, and I already feel, in my diminished relish for them, that I am growing old.

To live in the country in England!--that indeed would be happiness and pleasure; but we shall never desert America and the duties that belong to us there, and I should be the last person to desire that we should do so; and so I think henceforth England and I are "Paradises Lost" to each other,--and this is a very strange life; with which "wise saw," but not "modern instance," I will conclude, begging you to believe me,

Ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.

[Madame Pasta did return then to the stage, and her brilliant young
rival, Grisi, was to her what the Giessbach would be to a great wave
of the Atlantic. But, alas! she returned once more after that to the
scene of her former triumphs in London; the power, majesty, and
grace of her face, figure, and deportment all gone, her voice
painfully impaired and untrue, her great art unable to remedy, in
any degree, the failure of her natural powers.

She came as an agent and emissary of the political party of Italian
liberty, to help the cause of their _Italia Unita_, and our people
received her with affectionate respect, for the sake of what she had
been; but she accepted their applause with melancholy gestures of
disclaimer, and sorrowful head-shaking over her own decline. Those
who had never heard or seen her before were inclined to laugh; those
who had, _did_ cry.

The latent expression of a face is a curious study for the
physiognomist, and is sometimes strikingly at variance with that
which is habitual, as well as with the general character of the
features. That fine and accurate observer of the symptoms of
humanity, George Eliot, gives her silly, commonplace, little
second-heroine in "Adam Bede," Hester, a pathetic and sentimental
expression, to which nothing in her mind or character corresponds,
and which must have been an inheritance from some ancestress in whom
such an expression had originated with a meaning.

Madame Pasta was not handsome, people of uneducated and unrefined
taste might have called her plain; but she had that indescribable
quality which painters value almost above all others--style, and a
power and sweetness of expression, and a grandeur and grace of
demeanor, that I have never seen surpassed. She was not handsome,
certainly; but she was _beautiful_, and never, by any chance, looked
common or vulgar.

Madame Grisi was almost perfectly handsome; the symmetry of her head
and bust, and the outline of her features resembled the ideal models
of classical art--it was the form and face of a Grecian goddess; and
her rare natural gifts of musical utterance and personal loveliness
won for her, very justly, the great admiration she excited, and the
popularity she so long enjoyed. In a woman of far other and higher
endowments, that wonderful actress, Rachel, whose face and figure,
under the transforming influence of her consummate dramatic art,
were the perfect interpreters of her perfect tragic conceptions, an
ignoble, low-lived expression occasionally startled and dismayed
one, on a countenance as much more noble and intellectual, as it was
less beautiful than Grisi's,--the outward and visible sign of the
inward and spiritual disgrace, which made it possible for one of her
literary countrymen and warmest admirers to say that she was
adorable, because she was so "_deliceusement canaille_." Emilie,
Camille, Esther, Pauline, such a "delightful blackguard"!

Grazia, the Juno of the Roman sculptors of her day, their model of
severe classical beauty, had a perfectly stolid absence of all
expression; she was like one of the oxen of her own Campagna, a
splendid, serious-looking animal. No animal is ever vulgar, except
some dogs, who live too much with men for the interest of their
dignity, and catch the infection of _the_ human vice.

With us coarse-featured English, and our heavy-faced Teutonic
kinsfolk, a thick outline and snub features are generally supposed
to be the vulgar attributes of our lower classes; but the
predominance of spirit over matter vindicates itself strikingly
across the Atlantic, where, in the lowest strata of society, the
native American rowdy, with a face as pure in outline as an ancient
Greek coin, and hands and feet as fine as those of a Norman noble,
strikes one dumb with the aspect of a countenance whose vile,
ignoble hardness can triumph over such refinement of line and
delicacy of proportion. A human soul has a wonderful supremacy over
the matter which it _informs_. The American is a whole nation with
well-made, regular noses; from which circumstance (and a few
others), I believe in their future superiority over all other
nations. But the _lowness_ their faces are capable of "flogs
Europe."]

BANNISTERS, August 1st, 1837.
MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

After a riotous London season, my family has broken itself into small pieces and dispersed. My mother is at her cottage in Surrey, where she intends passing the rest of the summer; my father and sister are gone to Carlsbad--is not that spirited?--though indeed they journey in search of health, rather than pleasure. My father has been far from well for some time past, and has at length been literally packed off by Dr. Granville, to try the Bohemian waters.

I am at present staying with my friends, the Fitz Hughs, at Bannisters. I leave this place on Friday for Liverpool, where I shall await the arrival of the American packet; after that, we have several visits to pay, and I hope, when we have achieved them, to join my father and Adelaide at Carlsbad. I am pretty sure that we shall winter in America; for, indeed, I was to have written to you, to beg you to spend that season with us in Philadelphia, but as I had already received your intimation of your intended return to England in the autumn, I knew that such an offer would not suit your plans.

How glad you will be to see England again! and how glad your friends will be to see you again! Miss Martineau, who was speaking of you with great kindness the other day, added that your publishers would rejoice to see you too.

I do not know whether her book on America has yet reached you. It has been universally read, and though by no means agreeable to the opinions of the majority, I think its whole tone has impressed everybody with respect for her moral character, her integrity, her benevolence, and her courage.

She tells me she is going to publish another work upon America, containing more of personal narrative and local description; after which, I believe, she thinks of writing a novel. I shall be quite curious to see how she succeeds in the latter undertaking. The stories and descriptions of her political tales were charming; but whether she can carry herself through a work of imagination of any length with the same success, I do not feel sure.

I saw the Montagues, and Procters, and Chorley (who is, I believe, a friend of yours), pretty often while I was in London, and they were my chief informers as to your state of being, doing, and suffering. I am sorry that the latter has formed so large a portion of your experience in that strange and desolate land of your present sojourn. You do not say in your last letter whether you intend visiting the United States before your return, or shall merely pass through so much of them as will bring you to the port from which you sail. As I am not there to see you, I should hardly regret your not traveling through them; for, in spite of your popularity, which is very great in all parts of the country that I have visited, I do not think American tastes, manners, and modes of being would be, upon the whole, congenial to you.

I believe I told you how I had met your friend, Lady Hatherton, at a party at old Lady Cork's, and how kindly she inquired after you....

We are here in the midst of the elections, with which the whole country is in an uproar just now. My friends are immovable Tories, and I had the satisfaction of being personally hissed (which I never was before), in honor of their principles, as I drove through the town of Southampton to-day in their carriage.

The death of poor old King William, and the accession of the little lady, his niece, must be stale news, even with you, now. She was the last excitement of the public before the "dissolution of London," and her position is certainly a most interesting one. Poor young creature! at eighteen to bear such a burden of responsibility! I should think the mere state and grandeur, and slow-paced solemnity of her degree, enough to strike a girl of that age into a melancholy, without all the other graver considerations and causes for care and anxiety which belong to it. I dare say, whatever she may think now, before many years are over she would be heartily glad to have a small pension of L30,000 a year, and leave to "go and play," like common folk of fortune. But, to be sure, if "_noblesse oblige_," royalty must do so still more, or, at any rate, on a wider scale; and so I take up my burden again--poor young Queen of England!...

Emily sends you her best remembrances.... We shall certainly remain in England till October, so that I feel sure that I shall have the pleasure of seeing you here before I return to my _other_ country--for I reckon that I have two; though, as the old woman said, and you know, "between two stools," etc.

I should have thought you and Sir Francis Head would have become infinite cronies. I hear he is so very clever; and as you tell me he says so many fine things of me, I believe it.

Ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.

[The admirable novel of "Deerbrook" sufficiently answered all who
had ever doubted Miss Martineau's capacity for that order of
composition; in spite of Sydney Smith's determination that no
village "poticary," as he called it, might, could, would, or ever
should, be a hero of romance, and the incessant ridicule with which
he assailed the choice of such a one. If, he contended, he takes his
mistress's hand with the utmost fervor of a lover, he will, by the
mere force of habit, end by feeling her pulse; if, under strong
emotion, she faints away, he will have no salts but Epsom about him,
wherewith to restore her suspended vitality; he will put cream of
tartar in her tea, and (a) flower of brimstone in her bosom. There
was no end to the fun he made of "the medicinal lover," as he called
him. Nevertheless, the public accepted the Deerbrook M. D., and all
the paraphernalia of gallipots, pill-boxes, vials, salves,
ointments, with which the facetious divine always represented him as
surrounded; and vindicated, by its approval, the authoress's choice
of a hero.

I do not know whether Mr. Gibson is not, to me, decidedly the hero
of Mrs. Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters." I like him infinitely
better than all the younger men of the story; and I think the
preponderating interest with which one closes George Eliot's
wonderful "Middlemarch" is decidedly in behalf of Lydgate, the
country surgeon and hospital doctor. To be sure, we have come a
long way since the Liberalism of Sydney Smith and 1837.

I was indebted to my kind friend, Lord Lansdowne, for the memorable
pleasure of being present at the first meeting between Queen
Victoria and her Houses of Parliament. The occasion, which is always
one of interest when a new sovereign performs the solemnity, was
rendered peculiarly so by the age and sex of the sovereign. Every
person who, by right or favor, could be present, was there; and no
one of that great assembly will ever forget the impression made upon
them. Lady Lansdowne, who was Mistress of the Robes, was herself an
important member of the group round the throne, and I went with her
niece, Lady Valletort, under Lord Lansdowne's escort, to places most
admirably situated for hearing and seeing the whole ceremony. The
queen was not handsome, but very pretty, and the singularity of her
great position lent a sentimental and poetical charm to her youthful
face and figure.

The serene, serious sweetness of her candid brow and clear soft eyes
gave dignity to the girlish countenance, while the want of height
only added to the effect of extreme youth of the round but slender
person, and gracefully moulded hands and arms. The queen's voice was
exquisite; nor have I ever heard any spoken words more musical in
their gentle distinctness, than the "My Lords and Gentlemen" which
broke the breathless silence of the illustrious assembly, whose gaze
was riveted upon that fair flower of royalty. The enunciation was as
perfect as the intonation was melodious, and I think it is
impossible to hear a more excellent utterance than that of the
queen's English, by the English queen.]

WEDNESDAY, July 26th, 1837.
_Bannisters!_
(Think of that, Master Brook!!)

DEAREST H----,

These overflowing spirits of mine all come of a gallop of fifteen miles I have been taking with dear Emily, over breezy commons and through ferny pine-woods, and then coming home and devouring luncheon as fast as it could be swallowed; and so you get the result of all this physical excitement in these very animal spirits; and if my letter is "all sound and fury, signifying nothing," under the circumstances how can I help it?

That rather ill-conducted person, Ninon de l'Enclos, I believe, said her soup got into her head; and though "comparisons are odious," and I should be loth to suggest any between that wonderful no-better-than-she-should-be and myself, beyond all doubt my luncheon has got into my head, though I drank nothing but water with it; but I rather think violent exercise in the cold air, followed immediately by eating, will produce a certain amount of intoxication, just as easily as stimulating drink would. I suppose it is only a question of accelerated circulation, with a slight tendency of blood to the head.

However that may be, I wish you would speak to Emily (you needn't bawl, though you are in Ireland), and tell her to hold her tongue and not disturb me. She is profanely laughing at a sermon of Dr. South's, and interrupting me in this serious letter to you with absurd questions about such nonsense as Life, Death, and Immortality. I can't get on for her a bit, so add her to the cold ride and the hot lunch in the list of causes of this crazy epistle--I mean, the causes of its craziness.

Do you know old South? I don't believe you do even this much of him:--

"Old South, a witty Churchman reckoned,
Was preaching once to Charles the Second:
When lo! the King began to nod,
Deaf to the zealous man of God;
Who, leaning o'er his pulpit, cried
To Lauderdale by Charles's side:--
'My Lord, why, 'tis a shameful thing!
You snore so loud, you'll wake the King!'"

I quote by memory, through my luncheon, and I dare say all wrong; but it doesn't matter, for I don't believe you know it a bit better than I remember it. I and my baby came here on Monday, and shall stay until to-morrow week; after that I go to Liverpool, to meet and be met; and after that I know nothing, of course.... If, however, by that time you are likely to be near London, we will come up thither forthwith, and you must come and stay in Park Place with us. We shall be alone keeping house there; for my mother is in the country, and my father and Adelaide are going to Carlsbad, where we think to join them by-and-by; in the mean time, we hope to enjoy ourselves much sight-seeing all over London, which we shall then have entirely to ourselves; and you had better come and help us.

Good-bye, dearest H----.

Yours ever,
F. A. B.

[This letter was written from Bannisters, the charming country home
of my dear friend, Miss Fitz Hugh. For years it had been a resort of
rest for Mrs. Siddons, who was always made welcome as one of her own
sisters, by Mrs. Fitz Hugh; and for years it was a resort of rest
for me, to whom my friend was as devoted as her mother had been to
my aunt.]

LIVERPOOL, Saturday, August 17th, 1837.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I have but one instant in which to write. I hope this will meet you at Emily's, in Orchard Street [No. 18 Orchard Street, Portman Square, Mr. Fitz Hugh's town house]; it is to entreat you to remain there until I come to town, which must be in less than a week....

I left Bannisters--most unnecessarily, as it has proved--a fortnight ago, which time I have been spending in heart-eating suspense, waiting in vain, and bolstering up my patience, which kept sinking every day more and more, like an empty sack put to stand upright. I have, since I arrived here, received a letter which has caused me considerable distress, inasmuch as I find I must leave England without again seeing my father and Adelaide, who are gone to Carlsbad in the full expectation of our joining them there....

The political body upon whose movements ours are just now depending has not dispersed, but is merely adjourned to the 17th October. This allows its absent member but a few days in Europe, as we must sail on the 8th September; and those few days are gradually becoming fewer in consequence of this long prevalence of contrary winds, which is keeping the vessel just at the entrance of the Channel, within one good day's sail of me.

All this is a trial, and my heart has sunk, as hour after hour I have watched that watery horizon, and seen the masts appear and disappear, and yet no tidings of the ship I look for.

I have ridden, bathed, tried to write, tried to read, marked my Shakespeare for you, and laid my hand--but, God knows, not with all my heart--to whatsoever I found to do: still I have been ashamed and displeased at the little command I have achieved over my impatience, and the little use I have made of my time. It has been my great good fortune to meet with old friends, and to make new ones, during this period of my probation; and never was kindly intercourse more needed and more appreciated. But, after all, is it not always thus? and are not unexpected pleasures and enjoyments furnished us quite as often as the trials which render them doubly welcome?

'Tis now the 14th of August, and yet no tidings of that ship. There is no ground whatever for anxiety, for it is the prevalence of calm, and light contrary winds, which alone delay its arrival.

Dearest Harriet, I shall soon see you again, and will not that be a blessing to both of us? Farewell, my dear friend. How long it is since we have been even thus near each other! how long since we have hoped so soon to hear each other's voice!

Ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.

[This letter was written from Crosby, a little strip of sandy beach,
three miles from Liverpool, to which I betook myself with my child,
rather than remain in the noisy, smoky town, while waiting for the
arrival of the vessel from America which I was expecting.

I dare say Crosby is by this time a flourishing, fashionable
bathing-place. It was then a mere row of very humble seaside
lodging-houses, where persons constrained as I was to remain in the
close vicinity of Liverpool, were able to obtain fresh air, salt
water, and an uninterrupted sea view.

A Liverpool lady told me that, having once spent some weeks at this
place one summer, her son, a lad of about twelve years old, used to
ride along the sands to Liverpool every day for his lessons, and
that she could see him through the telescope all the way to the
first houses on the outskirt of the town. Just about midway,
however, there was a spot of treacherous quicksand, and I confess I
wondered at my friend's courage in watching her boy pass that point:
he knew it well, and was little likely to take his pony too near it;
but I confess I would rather have trusted to his caution to avoid
the place, than watched him pass it through a telescope.

From Liverpool, the long-expected ship having arrived, we went to
London, and spent as much time with our friends there and elsewhere
as our very limited leisure would then allow; and by the 10th of
September, we were again on the edge of English ground, about to
sail for the United States.]

LIVERPOOL, Friday, September 8th, 1837.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,

My time in England is growing painfully short, for the watch says half-past eleven, and at two o'clock I shall be on board the ship. My promise, as well as my desire, urge me to write you a few parting words. And yet what can they be, that may give you the slightest pleasure?

My parting with my poor mother was calmer than I had ventured to anticipate, and I thank Heaven that I was not obliged to leave England without seeing her once more. I have heard from my sister, who had just received the news of my sudden departure from England when she wrote. She was bitterly disappointed; but yet I think this unexpected parting without seeing each other again is perhaps well. Our last leave-taking, when she started with my father for Carlsbad, was quite cheerful, because we looked soon to meet again. We have been spared those exceedingly painful moments of clinging to what we are condemned to lose, and in the midst of novelty and variety she will miss me far less than had I left her lonely, in the home where we have been together for the past year.

Dear Lady Dacre, pray, if it is in your power to show her kindness at any time, do so; but I am sure that you would, and that such a request on my part is unnecessary.

The days that we spent in London after leaving you formed a sad contrast to the happy time we enjoyed at the Hoo. We were plunged in bustle and confusion; up to our eyes in trunks, packing-cases, carpet-bags, and valises; and I don't believe Marius in the middle of his Carthaginian ruins was more thoroughly _uncomfortable_ than I, in my desolate, box-encumbered rooms.

You know that we were disappointed of our visit to Bowood, but we spent a few days delightfully at Bannisters, and I am happy to say that _we_ are leaving England with the desire and determination to return as soon as possible.

I found on my arrival here a most pressing and cordial invitation from Sydney Smith (I cannot call him Mr.) to Combe Flory, which, like many other pleasant things, must be foregone. Pray, if you are with him when or after you receive this, thank him again for his kindness and courtesy to us. I did not quite like him, you know, when first I met him at Rogers's; but that was Lady Holland's fault; even now, his being a clergyman hurts my mind a little sometimes, and I fancy I should like him more entirely if he were not so. I have a superstitious veneration for the cloth, which his free-and-easy wearing of it occasionally disturbs a little; but I feel deeply honored by his notice, and most grateful for the good-will which he expresses towards me, and should have been too glad to have heard him laugh once more at his own jokes, which I acknowledge he does with a better grace than any man alive,--though the last time I had that pleasure it was at my own expense: I gave him an admirable chance, and I think he used his advantage most unmercifully.

And now, dear Lady Dacre, what message will you give your kind and good husband from me? May I, with "one foot on land and one on sea," send him word that I love him almost as well as I do you? This shall rest with you, however. Pray thank him with all my heart, as I do you, for your manifold kindnesses to me. God bless and preserve you both, and those you love! Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Sullivan. I cannot tell you how my heart is _squeezed_, as the French say, at going away. Luckily, I am too busy to cry to-day, and to-morrow I shall be too sea-sick, and so, farewell!

Believe me, my dear Lady Dacre,
Yours affectionately,
F. A. B.

[The occasion of my becoming acquainted with my admirable and very
kind friend, the Rev. Sydney Smith, was a dinner at Mr. Rogers's, to
which I had been asked to meet Lord and Lady Holland, by special
desire, as I was afterwards informed, of the latter, who, during
dinner, drank out of her neighbor's (Sydney Smith's) glass, and
otherwise behaved herself with the fantastic, despotic impropriety
in which she frequently indulged, and which might have been
tolerated in a spoilt beauty of eighteen, but was hardly becoming in
a woman of her age and "personal appearance." When first I came out
on the stage, my father and mother, who occasionally went to Holland
House, received an invitation to dine there, which included me;
after some discussion, which I did not then understand, it was
deemed expedient to decline the invitation for me, and I neither
knew the grounds of my parents' decision, nor of how brilliant and
delightful a society it had then closed the door to me. On my return
to England after my marriage, Lady Holland's curiosity revived with
regard to me, and she desired Rogers to ask me to meet her at
dinner, which I did; and the impression she made upon me was so
disagreeable that, for a time, it involved every member of that
dinner-party in a halo of undistinguishing dislike in my mind.

My sister had joined us in the evening, and sat for a few moments by
Lady Holland, who dropped her handkerchief. Adelaide, who was as
unpleasantly impressed as myself by that lady, for a moment made no
attempt to pick it up; but, reflecting upon her age and size, which
made it difficult for her to stoop for it herself, my sister picked
it up and presented it to her, when Lady Holland, taking it from
her, merely said, "Ah! I thought you'd do it." Adelaide said she
felt an almost irresistible inclination to twitch it from her hand,
throw it on the ground again, and say, "Did you? then now do it
yourself!"