Chapter XXX: Part 30

Is it not well that people of great genius are always _proud as well as humble_, and that the consciousness of their own nobility spreads, as it were, the wings of an angel between them and all the baseness and barrenness through which they are often compelled to wade up to the lips? Whenever I think of Burns, my heart tightens itself, to use a French expression, for a most painful _physical emotion_. Do you know Schiller's exquisite poem of the "Division of the Earth"? I will send you a translation, if you do not--a rough one I made of it when it was one of my German lessons. My version is harsh and poor enough, but the thoughts are preserved, and _the_ thought is worthy of that noble poet....

29, KING STREET, Saturday, 12th.
MY DEAREST HAL,

How many pleasant things I might lament over _if_ I might! I shall not see St. Leonard's again with you. Emily has misunderstood in saying that my engagement at the Princess Theatre does not begin till the 27th; it begins on the 21st, next Monday week, and I shall only just have time to get my wardrobe ready and study Desdemona and Cordelia, which I am asked to play, and re-learn the music of Ophelia, which I have quite forgotten....

I have an engagement offered me in Dublin, and it is rather provoking that I cannot accept it now, for this, I believe, is the height of the gay season there. As it is, I fear I shall not be able to go over there till May; but perhaps then you will go with me, or be there, and that will be some compensation for the less money I shall make.

It's curious all these engagements offering now within these few days: to be sure, it never rains but it pours, so that accounts for it philosophically.

Did I tell you what a nice long visit I had from Thackeray the other day? Oh, have you read that "Vanity Fair" of his? It is wonderful! He was a schoolfellow of my brother John's, you know, and is a very old friend of mine, but I had not seen him for some time. I wrote to ask him for his autograph for Henry Greville, and he wrote me an extremely kind note, and came himself after it, and sat with me a very long time, and was delightful.

Lady Charlotte Greville, who has just removed into a beautiful new house she has arranged for herself, wrote to say she was coming to town immediately, and hoped I would give my first London reading in her drawing-room. Was not that nice and kind and good-natured of her, dear old lady? But of course I declined, at any rate for the present, as I mean to exhaust my natural enemies, the managers, before I have recourse to my friends, in any way whatever. Kiss Dorothy for me, and don't let her break your spirit with inquisitorial and vexatious supervision of your actions. A timely resistance to friendly tyranny is a great saving of trouble.

Good-bye, you bad dear.

I am yours ever,
FANNY.

[I wish to record a slight anecdote of my friend William Thackeray,
which illustrates his great kindness and amiability, his _sweetness_
of temper and disposition.

I met him at Miss Berry's at dinner, a few days before he began his
course of lectures on the English essayists, and he asked me to come
and hear him, and told me he was so nervous about it, that he was
afraid he should break down.

I had an engagement which prevented my hearing his first lecture,
but I promised him to go and see him at his room before he began it,
to cheer him.

He was to lecture at Willis Rooms, in the same room where I read,
and going thither before the time for his beginning, found him
standing like a forlorn disconsolate giant in the middle of the
room, gazing about him. "Oh, Lord," he exclaimed, as he shook hands
with me, "I'm sick at my stomach with fright." I spoke some words of
encouragement to him, and was going away, but he held my hand, like
a scared child, crying, "Oh, don't leave me!" "But," said I,
"Thackeray, you mustn't stand here. Your audience are beginning to
come in," and I drew him from the middle of his chairs and benches,
which were beginning to be occupied, into the retiring-room
adjoining the lecture-room, my own readings having made me perfectly
familiar with both. Here he began pacing up and down, literally
wringing his hands in nervous distress. "Now," said I, "what shall
I do? Shall I stay with you till you begin, or shall I go, and leave
you alone to collect yourself?" "Oh," he said, "if I could only get
at that confounded thing" (his lecture), "to have a last look at
it!" "Where is it?" said I. "Oh, in the next room on the
reading-desk." "Well," said I, "if you don't like to go in and get
it, I'll fetch it for you." And remembering well the position of my
reading-table, which had been close to the door of the
retiring-room, I darted in, hoping to snatch the manuscript without
attracting the attention of the audience, with which the room was
already nearly full. I had been used to deliver my reading seated,
at a very low table, but my friend Thackeray gave his lectures
standing, and had had a reading-desk placed on the platform, adapted
to his own very tall stature, so that when I came to get his
manuscript it was almost above my head. Though rather disconcerted,
I was determined not to go back without it, and so made a half jump,
and a clutch at the book, when every leaf of it (they were not
fastened together), came fluttering separately down about me. I
hardly know what I did, but I think I must have gone nearly on
all-fours, in my agony to gather up the scattered leaves, and
retreating with them, held them out in dismay to poor Thackeray,
crying, "Oh, look, look, what a dreadful thing I have done!" "My
dear soul," said he, "you couldn't have done better for me. I have
just a quarter of an hour to wait here, and it will take me about
that to page this again, and it's the best thing in the world that
could have happened." With which infinite kindness he comforted me,
for I was all but crying, at having, as I thought, increased his
distress and troubles. So I left him, to give the first of that
brilliant course of literary historical essays with which he
enchanted and instructed countless audiences in England and America.

The last time I saw Thackeray, was at a dinner at my dear friend,
Mr. Harness'. As we were about to seat ourselves at table, I being
between Mr. Harness and Thackeray, his daughter Annie (now Mrs.
Ritchie) was going to place herself on the other side of her father.
"No, no," said our dear host, "that will not do. I cannot have the
daughter next the father." And Miss Thackeray was invited to take
another place. She had just published her story, "The History of
Elizabeth," in which she showed herself to have inherited some of
the fine elements of her father's literary genius. As we sat down, I
said to him, "But it appears very evident, I think, that the
daughter _is_ to be _next_ to the father." He looked at me for a
moment with a beaming face, and then said, "Do you know, I have
never read a word of that thing?" "Oh," cried I, "Thackeray! Why
don't you? It is excellent! It would give you so much pleasure!" "My
dear lady, I couldn't, I couldn't!" said he with tears in his eyes.
"It would _tear my guts out_!"--which powerful English description
of extreme emotion would have startled me less in French or Italian;
"Cela m'arracherait les entrailles," or "mi sois-cerelbero."

In the evening, he talked back to our early times, and my coming out
at Covent Garden, and how, "We all of us," said he (and what a noble
company of young brains and hearts they were!), "were in love with
you, and had your portrait by Lawrence in our rooms"--which made me
laugh and cry, and abuse him for tantalizing me with the ghost of a
declaration at that late hour of both our days. And so we parted,
and I never met him again. On his way home that evening, his
daughter told me that he had spoken kind compassionate words of
commendation of me. I have kept them in grateful remembrance. Fine
genius! and tender gentle heart! the classic writer of the keenest
and truest satire of the social vices of our day; the master of
English style, as powerful and pure as that of the best models,
whose works he has so admirably illustrated.

"Vanity Fair" will, I suppose, be always considered Thackeray's
masterpiece--though everybody loves, beyond all his other portraits,
the exquisite one of Colonel Newcome--but it seems to me that
"Esmond" is a more extraordinary literary feat than any other of his
works--except, indeed, "Lyndon of Barry Lyndon," which is even a
more remarkable production of the same order.]

KING STREET, Monday, 14th.

If you begin your letter with such questions as "What do you think of me?" I do not know any reason in life why my answer should ever have an end, even within the liberal limits of the two pages which you extort from me daily. That is a question I cannot answer; although, I must say, I should have expected from you rather more of that constancy and consistency (a male rather than a female quality, however), which, having determined on a certain course as best, does not lament having abided by it when the issue appears unprosperous. I think women are seldom of a sufficiently determined mind to make their opinion or resolution itself their consolation under defeat. They are more liable to mental as well as moral misgivings and regrets than men, and an unfortunate result easily induces them to repent a course they deliberately adopted.

_Sole vales Veritas_ is the motto upon a little pencil-case contained in the small work-case Emily has given me. She had it engraved on the seal, and though it is not altogether so congenial a motto to me as Arnold and Robertson's Christian device "Forward!" (and is moreover axiomatic rather than hortatory), I use it partly for her sake, and partly because it is undeniable.

Pilate wished to know what is truth--or rather pretended that he did--and I have a very general conviction that "What is truth?" is the speech of Pilate to this day; _i.e._, of those who know, but will not do, what they know to be right. It is very seldom, indeed, that the mind earnestly desires a conviction, strives for one, prays for one, and labors to attain one, that it does not acquire what, to all intents and purposes, _is_ truth for that individual soul.

God's perfect and absolute Truth remedies in a thousand ways the defectiveness of the partial truth that we arrive at; and so that the _endeavor_ after truth be true, the highest result of all is reached, _truth towards God_, though, humanly speaking, the mental result may be a failure. What _absolute truth_ is, my dearest Hal, you will certainly not know before you die, and possibly not then. In the mean time, I take it, you have, or may have if you will, that which will serve your turn. At any rate, I have--which is not at all the same thing--but that don't signify.

I am very glad I was welcome in Bedford Place, and that Miss ---- was good enough to be pleased with me.

There is great goodness in her voice and manner, and to have kept her face unwrinkled and her hair unblanched till the present age (as it is no result of selfish insensibility in her), bespeaks a virtuous life, and sweet serene temper.

I wonder more women to whom their good looks are precious, do not ponder upon the _beauty_ of holiness.... I have not heard from Adelaide or E---- for some time, but of them, that they and the children are well; that she is in good looks, and admirable voice; that their house is the pleasantest in Rome, and their parties _the_ thing to which everybody is anxious to be admitted: so all is prosperous and pleasant with them. I have told you of her nice new house in Eaton Place. It is in a considerable state of forwardness, the bedrooms being all papered, and the drawing-rooms nearly painted. Henry Greville has had it all done for her, and in very good taste; the grates are all up, and I should think in another fortnight they might take possession if they were here.

I have read more of Stanley's sermons, and am struck with their resemblance, in tone and spirit, to that book of my friend Mr. Furness, which I do not know if I ever gave you to read, called, "Jesus and His Biographers."

Stanley's sermons are excellent, but they seem to me curiously unorthodox. There is an inletting of new views upon the subject of the Christian Revelation, against which the Protestantism of the Church of England--in many respects illogical and anomalous, as it appears to its opponents--will have to fight a hard and difficult battle.

Lady Ellesmere was absolutely in despair about the bill for admitting the Jews to Parliament, and had influence enough with Lord Ellesmere to make him vote against it. This is sad enough; but she is so excellent that her influence over him, in one case where it is bad is good in a great many others....

God bless you, my dear. Give my love to Dorothy: I am both yours, but yours most particularly,

FANNY.

P.S. My course with regard to my engagement at the Princess Theatre was determined by my father's opinion, and confirmed by the advice of all my friends who spoke to me upon the subject--Emily, Harness, the Grevilles, and others; and all that Mr. Maddox said in his various conversations with me upon the subject, enabled the best experienced among us to form a very fair idea of what he could afford to give, and what I was justified in asking.

29, KING STREET, Friday, February 18th, 1848.

I have been this morning to a rehearsal of Macbeth, at which Macready did not attend; so that in point of fact, as far as I was concerned, it was _nil_. He is, I believe, finishing some country engagements, and I suppose had not returned to town. I have another rehearsal to-morrow, at which it is to be hoped he will attend, as otherwise my being there is really quite a work of supererogation.

My men friends--among whom I include my father--one and all, did what I think women would not have done. The minute Mr. Maddox agreed to the terms I had demanded, they lamented bitterly (even my dear Mr. Harness--who is a good man) that I had not stood out for higher ones, feeling quite sure I should have got them. Now, this I think quite as contemptible, and a great deal more dishonest, than the womanly process (Emily's and yours) of lamenting that I had not taken less than I had demanded, because you feared my doing so had broken off the negotiation altogether. I think, upon the whole, it behooves people to know what they mean, and to abide by it, without either weak regrets at an ill result, or selfish ones that it is not better than what one had made up one's mind to--when it seems that it might have been so. I do wish people would learn to be like my aunt's cook, and "stand upon their own bottom, with fortitude and similarity." (A woman that Mrs. Siddons was engaging as cook, replied to the question, "Can you make pastry?" "Well, no, ma'am--not exactly to say, the very finest of pastry. I can make plain puddings and pies, but--I am not a professed puff pastry cook, and I think it best to say so, as every one should stand upon their own bottom, with fortitude and similarity, I think.")

I act Lady Macbeth on Monday, on Wednesday Queen Katharine, and on Friday Desdemona, for the first time in my life. I have a beautiful and correct dress for her (you know I always liked my clothes), for which, nevertheless, I expect to be much exclaimed against, as our actresses have always thought proper to dress her in white satin. I have arrayed her in black (the only habit of the noble Venetian ladies) and gold, in a dress that looks like one of Titian's pictures.

That smothering scene, my dear Harriet, is most extremely horrible, and like nothing in the world but the catastrophe of poor Madame de Praslin. I think I shall make a desperate fight of it, for I feel horribly at the idea of being murdered in my bed. The Desdemonas that I have seen, on the English stage, have always appeared to me to acquiesce with wonderful equanimity in their assassination. On the Italian stage they run for their lives round their bedroom, Pasta in the opera (and Salvini in the tragedy, I believe), clutching them finally by the hair of the head, and then murdering them. The bedgown in which I had arrayed Desdemona for the night would hardly have admitted of this flight round the stage; besides that, Shakespeare's text gives no hint of any such attempted escape on poor Desdemona's part; but I did think I should like not to be murdered, and therefore, at the last, got up on my knees on my bed, and threw my arms tight round Othello's neck (having previously warned Mr. Macready, and begged his pardon for the liberty), that being my notion of the poor creature's last appeal for mercy.

What do you think of our fine ladies amusing themselves with giving parties, at which they, and their guests, take chloroform as a pastime? Lady Castlereagh set the example, and was describing to me her sensations under the process. I told her how imprudent and wrong I thought such experiments, and mentioned to her the lecture Brand gave upon the subject, in which the poor little guinea-pig, who underwent his illustrations for the benefit of the audience, died on the table during the lecture; to which she replied, "Oh yes; that she knew that, _for she was present_." Can you conceive, after such a spectacle, trying similar experiments upon one's ignorant self? Is it not very brave? or is it only idiotical?...

I have been making a desperate struggle, _giving my reasons_ (four pages of them--think of it!) to the committee of the Liverpool Institution, to induce them to let me read Shakespeare _straight through_ to them; at least, each play I read, divided into two readings, and with only the omissions required by modern manners: but I fear they will not let me. I shall be grievously disappointed....

Was there ever such a to-do as that woman Lola Montez is kicking up? Everybody is turning Catholic as fast as possible, and the good Churchwomen are every way in despair. They already see their sons all circumcised, and their daughters refusing to eat ham, and their brothers and husbands confessing the Real Presence. The lady members of the Established Church, especially the more serious ones, are in great tribulation at all that is going on. Lady Ellesmere is desperate at the Jews coming into Parliament, and Lord Ellesmere has voted against them. He, poor man, has been, within the last few days, all but at death's door with the gout, and perhaps near finding out how different, or _in_different, these differences _really_ are. It is wonderful to hear everybody talk.

Good-bye. I am yours and Dorothy's

Most respectfully,
FANNY.

[My first intention in undertaking my readings from Shakespeare was
to make, as far as possible, of each play a thorough study in its
entireness; such as a stage representation cannot, for obvious
reasons, be. The dramatic effect, which of course suffers in the
mere delivery from a reading-desk, would, I hoped, be in some
measure compensated for by the possibility of retaining the whole
beauty of the plays as poetical compositions. I very soon, however,
found my project of making my readings "studies of Shakespeare" for
the public quite illusory.

To do so would have required that I should take two, and sometimes
three, evenings to the delivery of one play; a circumstance which
would have rendered it necessary for the same audience, if they
wished to hear it, to attend two and three consecutive readings; and
in many other respects I found the plan quite incompatible with the
demand of the public, which was for a dramatic entertainment, and
not for a course of literary instruction.

My father had found it expedient, in this mode of illustrating
Shakespeare, to make one play the subject of each reading; taking
two hours for the performance, and dividing the piece as fairly as
possible in two parts; retaining the whole _story_ of the play, and
so much only of the wisdom and beauty bestowed on its development by
the author, as could be kept well within the two hours' delivery,
and make the reading resemble as nearly as possible, in dramatic
effect, the already garbled and coarsely mutilated stage plays the
general public are alone familiar with. I was grievously
disappointed, but could not help myself. In Germany I should have
had no such difficulty; but the German public is willing to take its
amusements in earnest.

The readings were to be my livelihood, and I had to adapt them to
the audiences who paid for them--

"For those who live to please, must please to live."

I gladly availed myself of my father's reading version of the
plays, and read those he had delivered, cut and prepared for the
purpose according to that. When I came to cut and prepare for
reading the much greater number which I read, and he did not, I
found the task a very difficult one; and was struck with the
judgment and taste with which my father had performed it. I do not
think it possible to have adapted these compositions better or more
successfully to the purposes for which he required them. But I was
determined, at least, not to limit my repertory to the few most
theatrically popular of Shakespeare's dramas, but to include in my
course _all_ Shakespeare's plays that it was possible to read with
any hope of attracting or interesting an audience. My father had
limited his range to a few of the most frequently acted plays. I
delivered the following twenty-four: King Lear, Macbeth, Cymbeline,
King John, Richard II., two parts of Henry IV., Henry V., Richard
III., Henry VIII., Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra,
Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The
Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure, Much Ado about Nothing, As You
Like It, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, and The
Tempest.

These plays I read invariably through once before repeating any of
them; partly to make such of them as are seldom or never acted,
familiar to the public, by delivering them alternately with those
better known; and partly to avoid, what I much dreaded, becoming
mechanical or hackneyed myself in their delivery by perpetual
repetition of the same pieces, and so losing any portion of the
inspiration of my text by constant iteration of those garbled
versions of it, from which so much of its nobler and finer elements
are of hard necessity omitted in such a process as my reading of
them. I persisted in this system for my own "soul's sake," and not
to debase my work more than was inevitable, to the very considerable
detriment of my gains.

The public _always_ came in goodly numbers to hear "Macbeth,"
"Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and "The Merchant of Venice;" and
Mendelssohn's exquisite music, made an accompaniment to the reading
of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," rendered that a peculiarly popular
performance. But to _all_ the other plays the audiences were
considerably less numerous, and to some few of them I often had but
few listeners. Mr. Mitchell, who for a considerable length of time
_farmed_ my readings, protested bitterly against this system, which
involved, of course, less profits than he might have made by
repeating only the most popular plays; and my own agents, when I was
reading on my own account, did not fail to represent to me that I
was what they called sacrificing my interests, _i.e._ my receipts,
to this plan of operations; but man does not live by bread alone,
and for more than twenty years that I followed the trade of a
wandering rhapsodist, I never consciously sacrificed my sense of
what was due to my work, for the sake of what I could make by it. I
have wished, and hoped, and prayed, that I might be able to use my
small gift _dutifully_; and to my own profound feeling of the
_virtue_ of these noble works, have owed whatever power I found to
interpret them. My great reward has been, passing a large portion of
my life in familiar intercourse with that greatest and best English
mind and heart, and living almost daily in that world above the
world, into which he lifted me. One inspiration alone could have
been purer or higher; and to that, my earthly master's work, done as
well as it was in me to do it, often helped, and from it, never
hindered me.]

29, KING STREET, Saturday, February 19th.

_Imprimis_, will you and Dorothy fasten your dinner-napkins with these things, or rings, which I have made for you? for my imagination is sick with the memory of those bits of strings you use. I have made these too short, and so have been obliged to put strings to them, having originally intended them to be complete rounds; but my needle performances are always ill-managed and untidy, and as such I commend these to your indulgent acceptance. I wrought at them those bitter evenings that I spent in those barns of theatres in Norfolk, where the occupation contributed to entertain the warmth of my heart, which was all the heat I had to keep me alive....

I must tell you rather a droll observation of the worthy Hayes. When I explained to her that I had made those worsted bands to fasten your dinner-napkins, for which you had nothing but strings, she said, "Dear me! I wonder at that! And Miss S---- seemed so fond of clever, curious contrivances, for everything." I screamed with delight when she said that, for hadn't I cursed that "curious contrivance" of an inkstand you gave me (Dorothy cursed hers too, no doubt, after her own blessed fashion)? and didn't I curse that execrable "curious contrivance" of a taper you gave me at St. Leonard's, with which I was so enchanted _before I used it_, and which wasted me by its own small fire every time I did use it, and for the final burning out of which I was so thankful? But are not Hayes's comments on your character comical?

I am sorry to say I have not the same dressing-room I had before at the Princess's Theatre. Mr. Macready is quite too great a man to give it up to anybody, and my attiring apartment now is up a steep flight of stairs, which is a great discomfort to me on several grounds, for I fear the call-boy will hardly come so far out of his way to summon me, and I shall have to sit in the greenroom, which, however, I won't, if I can by any means avoid it; but the proximity of the other room to the stage, and its being on the same level with it, was a great advantage.

I am going to dine with Lady Grey (the Countess, widow of _the_ Lord Grey), and after that to the opera with Henry Greville and Alfred Potocki, who have a box, and have given me a ticket, which I am very glad of.

I had a three hours' rehearsal this morning, and Macready was there. As far as I could judge, he was less unfair in his mode of acting than I had been led to expect. To be sure, at night, he may stand two yards behind me while I am speaking to him, as I am told he often does. He is not courteous or pleasant, or even well-bred; remains seated while one is standing talking to him; and a discussion having arisen as to the situation of a table, which he wished on the stage, and I wished removed, he exhibited considerable irritability and ill-humor.

He is unnecessarily violent in acting, which I had always heard, and congratulated myself that in Lady Macbeth, I could not possibly suffer from this; but was much astonished and dismayed when at the exclamation, "Bring forth men-children only," he seized me ferociously by the wrist, and compelled me to make a demivolte, or pirouette, such as I think that lady did surely never perform before, under the influence of her husband's admiration.

God bless you, dear,

Ever yours,
FANNY.

[I have always had a cordial esteem and respect for Mr. Macready's
character, which has been increased by reading the record he has
himself left of his life. Of his merits as an actor, I had not a
very high opinion, though in one or two parts he was excellent, and
in the majority of the tragical ones he assumed, better than his
contemporaries, my father, Charles Young, and Charles Kean. He was
disqualified for sentimental tragedy by his appearance, and he was
without comic power of any kind. _Parts_ of his Macbeth, Lear,
Othello, and King John, were powerful and striking, but his want of
musical ear made his delivery of Shakespeare's blank-verse
defective, and painful to persons better endowed in that respect. It
may have been his consciousness of his imperfect declamation of
blank-verse that induced him to adopt what his admirers called the
natural style of speaking it; which was simply chopping it up into
prose--a method easily followed by speakers who have never learned
the difference between the two, and that blank-verse demands the
same care and method that music does, and when not uttered with due
regard to its artificial construction, and rules of rhythm and
measure, is precisely as faulty as music sung out of time.

The school of "natural speaking" reached its climax, I presume, in
the performance of a charming young actress, of whose delivery of
the poetry of Portia it was said in high commendation, by her
admirers, that she gave the blank verse so _naturally_ that it was
impossible to tell that it was not _prose_. What she did with
Shakespeare's _prose_ in the part these judicious critics did not
mention.

Mr. Macready's eye was as sensitive and cultivated as his ear was
the reverse. He had a painter's feeling for color and grouping and
scenic effect; was always picturesque in his appearance, dress,
attitudes, and movements; and all the pieces that were put upon the
stage under his supervision were admirable for the appropriate
harmony of the scenery, decorations, dresses, and whole effect; they
were carefully accurate, and extremely beautiful. "Acis and
Galatea," as produced under his direction, was one of the most
exquisite dramatic spectacles I ever saw, in spite of the despair to
which he reduced the chorus and ballet nymphs by rigorously
forbidding all padding, bustle, crinoline, or other artificial
adjunct to their natural graces, in the severely simple classical
costume of the Greek mythological opera.

Mr. Macready's great parts were Virginius, in Knowles's play of
that name; Werner, in Lord Byron's romantic drama; and Rob Roy, in
the melodrama taken from Scott's novel. These were original
performances, in which nobody has surpassed or equalled him; genuine
artistic creations, which, more than his rendering of Shakespeare's
characters, entitled him to his reputation as a great actor.

He was unpopular in the profession, his temper was irritable, and
his want of consideration for the persons working with him strange
in a man of so many fine qualities. His artistic vanity and
selfishness were unworthy of a gentleman, and rendered him an object
of dislike and dread to those who were compelled to encounter them.

He was quite aware of this himself, for once, when he came to see
me, while the negotiation was pending about my engagement to act
with him, he alluded to his own unpopularity, said he was sure I had
heard all sorts of disagreeable stories about him, but assured me,
laughing, that "the devil was not nearly so black as he was
painted."

It was quite impossible for me to tell Mr. Macready that I had heard
he was _pleasant_ to act with, remembering, as I did while he spoke
to me, the various accounts I had received of actors whose eyes had
been all but thrust out by his furious fighting in Macbeth; of
others nearly throttled in his paternal vengeance on Appius
Claudius; of actresses whose arms had been almost wrenched out of
their sockets, and who had been bruised black and blue, buffeted
alike by his rage and his tenderness. One special story I thought
of, and was dying to tell him, of one pretty and spirited young
woman, who had said, "I am told Mr. Macready, in such a part, gets
hold of one's head, and holds it in chancery under his arm, while he
speaks a long speech, at the end of which he releases one, more dead
than alive, from his embrace; but I shall put so many pins in my
hair, and stick them in in such a fashion, that if he takes me by
the head, he will have to let me instantly go again."

My personal experience of Macready's stage temper was not so bad as
this, though he began by an act of unwarrantable selfishness in our
performance of "Macbeth."

From time immemorial, the banquet scene in "Macbeth" has been
arranged after one invariable fashion: the royal dais and throne,
with the steps leading up to it, holds the middle of the stage,
sufficiently far back to allow of two long tables, at which the
guests are seated on each side, in front of it, leaving between them
ample space for Macbeth's scene with Banquo's ghost, and Lady
Macbeth's repeated rapid descents from the dais and return to it, in
her vehement expostulations with him, and her courteous invitations
to the occupants of both the tables to "feed, and regard him not."
Accustomed to this arrangement of the stage, which I never saw
different anywhere in all my life for this scene, I was much
astonished and annoyed to find, at my first rehearsal, a long
banqueting-table set immediately at the foot of the steps in front
of the dais, which rendered all but impossible my rapid rushing down
to the front of the stage, in my terrified and indignant appeals to
Macbeth, and my sweeping back to my place, addressing on my way my
compliments to the tables on either side. It was as much as I could
do to pass between the bottom of the throne steps and the end of the
transverse table in front of them; my train was in danger of
catching its legs and my legs, and throwing it down and me down, and
the whole thing was absolutely ruinous to the proper performance of
my share of the scene. If such a table had been in any such place in
Glamis Castle on that occasion, when Macbeth was seized with his
remorseful frenzies, his wife would have jumped over or overturned
it to get at him.

All my remonstrances, however, were in vain. Mr. Macready persisted
in his determination to have the stage arranged solely with
reference to himself, and I was obliged to satisfy myself with a
woman's vengeance, a snappish speech, by at last saying that, since
it was evident Mr. Macready's Macbeth depended upon where a table
stood, I must contrive that my Lady Macbeth should not do so. But in
that scene it undoubtedly did.

As I had been prepared for this sort of thing in Macready, it didn't
surprise me; but what did was a conversation I had with him about
"Othello," when he expressed his astonishment at my being willing to
play Desdemona; "For," said he, "there is absolutely nothing to be
done with it, nothing: nobody can produce any effect in it; and
really, Emilia's last scene can be made a great deal more of. I
could understand your playing that, but not Desdemona, out of which
nothing really can be made." "But," said I, "Mr. Macready, it is
Shakespeare, and no character of Shakespeare's is beneath my
acceptance. I would play Maria in 'Twelfth Night' to-morrow, if I
were asked to do so." Whereupon he shrugged his shoulders, and
muttered something about "all that being very fine, no doubt," but
evidently didn't believe me; and as I should have given him credit
for my own feeling with regard to any character in Shakespeare's
plays, I was as much surprised at his thinking I should refuse to
act any one of them as I was at his coarse and merely technical
acting estimate of that exquisite Desdemona, of which, according to
him, "nothing could be made;" _i.e._, no violent stage effect could
be produced. Is not Shakespeare's refusing to let Desdemona sully
her lips with the coarse epithet of reproach with which her husband
brands her, and which no lady in England of his day would have
hesitated a moment to use, a wonderful touch of delicacy?

Macready certainly was aware of the feeling of his fellow-actors
about his violence and want of personal self-control on the stage;
for as he stood at the side scene by me, in the last act of "King
Lear," ready to rush on with me, his Cordelia, dead in his arms, he
made various prefatory and preparatory excuses to me, deprecating
beforehand my annoyance at being dragged and pulled about after his
usual fashion, saying that necessarily the scene was a disagreeable
one for the "poor corpse." I had no very agreeable anticipation of
it myself, and therefore could only answer, "Some one must play it
with you, Mr. Macready, and I feel sure that you will make it as
little distressing to me as you can;" which I really believe he
intended to do, and thought he did.]

I have received this morning from Liverpool, in answer to my letter about my readings, a very earnest request that I would give _lectures_ upon Shakespeare. This I have declined doing, not having either the requisite knowledge or ability nor the necessary time properly to prepare a careful analysis of the smallest portion of such over-brimming subjects as those plays. I should like to study again Hazlitt's and Coleridge's comments upon Shakespeare; the former I used to think excellent.

Mrs. Grote herself wrote those stanzas upon Mendelssohn which you saw in the _Spectator_. She urged me vehemently, while I was with her at the Beeches, to do something of the kind; but I could not. She then showed me her verses, which please me better now than they did then; for then the painful association of his former existence in that place, and the excitement of his beautiful music, which she plays extremely well, had affected my imagination and feelings so much that I should have found it very difficult to be satisfied with any poetical tribute to him that was not of the very highest order.

She and I walked together to the spot in the beautiful woodland where he had lain down to rest, and where she wishes to erect a monument; and I cannot tell you how profoundly I was touched, as we stood silently there, while the great heavy drops, melting in the winter evening's sunshine, fell from the boughs of the beech-trees like slow tears upon the spot where he had lain.

I have read more of Stanley's "Sermons," and quite agree with you in the difference you draw between them and Mr. Furness's book; the spirit of both is kindred....

I don't know anything about the income-tax. I am getting frightfully behind the times, having read no _Times_ for a long time; but as regards income-tax, or any other tax, there is no telling how long one may be free from such galls in America. If they indulge in a few more such national diversions as this war in Mexico, they will have to pay for their whistle, in some shape or other, and in more shapes than one.

It is deplorable to hear the despondency of all public and political men that I see, with regard to the condition of the country. With the Tories, one has long been familiar with their cries that "the sky is falling:" but now the Liberals, at least those who all their lives have been professing Liberals, seem to think "the sky is falling" too; and their lamentable misgivings are really sad to listen to.

I dined on Saturday at Lady Grey's, with the whole Grey family. Lord Dacre, and all of them, spoke of Cobden and Bright as of another Danton and Mirabeau, likened their corn-law league, and peace protests, to the first measures of the first leaders of the French Revolution; and predicted with woful headshakings a similar end to their proceedings. I do not know whether this is an injustice to the individuals in question, but it seems to me an injustice to the whole people of England collectively, and to their own class, the aristocracy of England, which has incurred no such retribution, but which has invariably furnished liberal and devoted leaders to every step of popular progress--their own father an eminent instance of devotion to it. Such misgivings seem to me, too, quite unjust to the powerful, enlightened, and wealthy class which forms the sound body of our sound-hearted nation: and equally unjust to those below it, in whom, in spite of much vice and more ignorance, of poverty and degradation, the elements of evil do not exist in the degree and with the virulence that spawned that hideous mob of murderers who became at last the only government of revolutionary France. The antecedent causes have not existed here for such results; and it is an insult to the whole English people to prophesy thus of it.

[Lord Dacre, because of his devotion to the agricultural interest,
as he conceives it, and being himself a great practical farmer,
seemed to me at once, at the time of the repeal of the corn laws, to
renounce his Liberalism; and though one of the most enlightened,
generous, and broad-minded politicians I have ever known, _till
then_, to become suddenly timid, faithless, and almost selfish, in
his fear of the consequences of Sir Robert Peel's measures.]

What a fine thing faith in God is, even when one's own individual interests must perish, even though the temporary interests of one's country may appear threatened with adversity! What an _uncommonly_ fine thing it is under such circumstances to do right, and to be able to believe in right doing!... As I listened to the persons by whom I was surrounded, and considered their position and circumstances--their forks and spoons, their very good dinner, and all their etceteras of luxury and enjoyment,--I thought that, having all they have, if they had faith in God and in their fellow-creatures besides, they would have the portion of those who have none of the good things of this world--they would have too much.

Will the days ever come when men will see that _Christ_ believed in humanity as none of His followers has ever done since; that _He_, knowing its infirmity better than any other, trusted in its capacity for good more than any other? We are constantly told that people can't be taught this, and can't learn that, and can't do t'other; and _He_ taught them nothing short of absolute perfection: "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." Are we to suppose He did not mean what he said?

"I must eat my dinner," as Caliban says, and, therefore, farewell.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

P.S.--I did not impart these sentiments of mine to my fellow-guests at Lady Grey's, but kept them in my bosom, and went to the opera, and saw little Marie Taglioni dance, in a way that clearly shows that she is _la niece de sa tante_, and stands in that wonderful dancer's shoes.

KING STREET, Wednesday, 23d, 1848.

The staircase I have to go up to my dressing-room at the Princess's Theatre is one with which you are unacquainted, my dearest Hal, for it is quite in another part of the house, beyond the green-room, and before you come to the stage.... Not only had I this inconvenient distance and height to go, but the dressing-room appointed for me had not even a fireplace in it; at this I remonstrated, and am now accommodated decently in a room with a fire, though in the same inconvenient position as regards the stage.... Mr. Maddox assured me that Macready poisoned every place he went into, to such a degree, with musk and perfumes, that if he were to give up his room to me I should not be able to breathe in it. With my passion for perfumes, this, however, did not appear to me so certain; but the room I now have answers my purpose quite well enough....

Macready is not pleasant to act with, as he keeps no specific time for his exits or entrances, comes on while one is in the middle of a soliloquy, and goes off while one is in the middle of a speech to him. He growls and prowls, and roams and foams, about the stage, in every direction, like a tiger in his cage, so that I never know on what side of me he means to be; and keeps up a perpetual snarling and grumbling like the aforesaid tiger, so that I never feel quite sure that he _has done_, and that it is my turn to speak. I do not think fifty pounds a night would hire me to play another engagement with him; but I only say, I don't think,--fifty pounds a night is a consideration, four times a week, and I have not forgotten the French proverb, "Il ne faut pas dire, fontaine jamais de ton eau je ne boirai."

I do not know how Desdemona might have affected me under other circumstances, but my only feeling about acting it with Mr. Macready is dread of his personal violence. I quail at the idea of his laying hold of me in those terrible passionate scenes; for in "Macbeth" he pinched me black and blue, and almost tore the point lace from my head. I am sure my little finger will be rebroken, and as for that smothering in bed, "Heaven have mercy upon me!" as poor Desdemona says. If that foolish creature wouldn't persist in _talking_ long after she has been smothered and stabbed to death, one might escape by the off side of the bed, and leave the bolster to be questioned by Emilia, and apostrophized by Othello; but she will uplift her testimony after death to her husband's amiable treatment of her, and even the bolster wouldn't be stupid enough for that.

Did it ever occur to you what a witness to Othello's agony in murdering his wretched wife his inefficient clumsiness in the process was--his half smothering, his half stabbing her? _That_ man not to be able to kill _that_ woman outright, with one hand on her throat, or one stroke of his dagger, how tortured he must have been, to have bungled so at his work!

I wish I was with you and Dorothy at St. Leonard's, instead of struggling here for my life--livelihood, at any rate--with Macready; but that's foolish. He can't _touch_ me to-night, that's one comfort, for I am Queen Katharine.

Farewell, believe me

Ever yours most respectfully,
FANNY.

[It was lucky for me, under the circumstances, that my notion of
Queen Katharine's relations with Cardinal Wolsey were different from
those of a lady whom I saw in the part, who at the end of the scene
where he finds her working among her women affably gave him her
hand. Katharine of Arragon would have been more likely (though not
likely) to give him her foot.]

KING STREET, Friday, 23d.
DEAR HAL,

... I had heard a very good summary of D'Israeli's speech from Lord Dacre, the day I dined at Lady Grey's, and know why he said Cobden was like Robespierre. Here's goodly work in Paris now! What wonderful difficult people to teach those French are! However, their lesson will, of course, be set them over and over again, till they've learnt it. Henry Greville had a letter from Adelaide the day before yesterday, in which she says that the people had risen _en masse_ at Rome, and, with the Princes Borghese and Corsini at their head, had gone to the Quirinal, and demanded of the pope that no ecclesiastic (himself, I suppose, excepted) should have any office in the government, and the pope _had consented_.

She gave a most comical account of the King of Naples, who, it seems, during the late troubles walked up and down his room, wringing his hands, and apostrophizing a figure of the Virgin with "Madonna mia! Madonna mia! ma che imbroglio che m'ha fatto quel Vicario del figlio tuo!" Isn't that funny?

In a letter posted this morning I have told you my general impression of Macready's Macbeth. It is generally good,--better than good in parts,--but nowhere very extraordinary. It is a fair, but not a fine, performance of the part.

I cannot believe that he is purposely unjust to his fellow-actors: but he is so absorbed in himself and his own effects as to be absolutely regardless of them; which, of course, is just as bad for them, though the _guilt_ of his selfishness must be according to its being deliberate or unconscious.

I played the first scene in Lady Macbeth fairly well; the rest hardly tolerably, I think. Macready's stage arrangements destroyed any possible effect of mine in the banquet scene, and his strange demeanor disturbed and distracted me all through the play. The terrible, great invocation to the powers of evil, with which Lady Macbeth's part opens, was the only thing of mine that was good in the whole performance.

Dear Harriet, I have no time to prepare lectures on Shakespeare, and it makes me smile, a grim, verjuice smile, when you, sitting quietly down there at St. Leonard's, propose to me such an addition to my present work. I have been three hours and a half at rehearsal to-day; to-morrow I act a new part; this evening I try on all my new dresses; Saturday I shall be three hours at rehearsal again; and, meantime, I must study to recover Ophelia and her songs, which I have almost forgotten.

A commentary upon Shakespeare deserves rather more leisure and quiet thought than I can now bestow upon it; even such an inadequate one as I am capable of would require much preparatory study, had I the ability which the theme demands, and which no amount of leisure Of study would give me.... I have been in a state of miserable nervousness for the last two days--in terror during my whole performance of Queen Katharine, lest I should forget the words, and yet, while laboring to fix all my attention upon them, distracted with the constant recurrence of _bits_ of Desdemona to my mind, which I fancied I was not perfect in, and then _bits_ of Ophelia's songs, which I had forgotten, and have been trying to recover. The mere apprehension of having to sing that music turns me dead sick whenever I think of it; in short, a perfect nightmare of fright present and future, through which I have had to act every night, _tant bien que mal_, but naturally _bien plus mal que bien_.... I do really believe, as my dear German master used to insist, that people can _prevent themselves_ from going mad.

My dearest Harriet, Arnold believed in eternal damnation; and those who do so must have one very desperate corner in their mind--which, however, reserved for the wicked in the next world, must, I should think, sometimes throw lurid reflections over people and things in this. Whoever can conceive that idea has certainly touched the bottom of despair. "Lasciate ogni speme voi ch'entrate;" and I do not see why those who despair of their fellow-creatures in the next world should not do so in this. I can do neither--believe in hell hereafter, or a preparation for it here.