Chapter IX: Part 9

The St. Simon's house being sufficiently roomy, I presently set about making it as far as possible convenient and comfortable. I had a fine large table, such as might have become some august board of business men, made of plain white pine and covered in with sober-looking dark green merino. I next had a settee constructed--cushions, covers, etc., cut out and mainly stitched by my own fair fingers; we stuffed it with the native moss; and I had a pretty white _peignoir_ made for it, with stuff which I got from that emporium of fashionable luxury, Darien; and this was quite an item of elegance, as well as comfort. Another table in my sitting-room was an old, rickety, rheumatic piece of furniture of the "old Major's," the infirmities of which I gayly concealed under a Macgregor plaid shawl, never burdening its elderly limbs with any greater weight than a vase of flowers; and by the help of plenty of this exquisite, ornamental furniture of nature's own providing, and a tolerable collection of books, which we had taken down to the South with us, my sitting-room did not look uncomfortable or uncheerful.

If, however, I am to winter there again this year, I shall endeavor to make it a little more like the dwelling of civilized human beings by the introduction of locks to the doors, instead of wooden latches pulled by pack-thread; and bells, of which at present there is but one in the whole house, and that is a noose, hanging just outside the sitting-room door, by which I expected to be caught and throttled every time I went in and out....

I am ever yours,
F. A. B.

LENOX, August 9th, 1839.

I turn from interchange of thought and feeling with my friends here, dearest Harriet, to read again an unanswered letter of yours; and as I dwell upon your affectionate words, while my eyes wander over the beautiful landscape which my window commands, my mind is filled with the consideration of the great treasure of love that has been bestowed upon me out of so many hearts, and I wonder as I ponder. God knows how devoutly I thank Him for this blessing above all others, granted to me in a measure so far above my deserts, that my gratitude is mingled with surprise and a sense of my own unworthiness, which enhances my appreciation of my great good fortune in this respect.... In seasons of self-reproach and self-condemnation it is an encouragement and a consolation, and helps to lift one from the dust, to reflect that good and noble spirits have loved one--spirits too good and too noble, one would fain persuade one's self, to love what is utterly base and unworthy....

You ask me if I have kept any journal, or written anything lately. During my winter in the South I kept a daily journal of whatever occurred to interest me, and I am now busily engaged in copying it.... Since the perpetration of that "English Tragedy," now in your safe keeping, I have written nothing else; and probably, until I find myself again under the influence of some such stimulus as my mind received on returning to England, my intellectual faculties will remain stagnant, so far as any "worthy achievement," as Milton would say, is concerned. You see, I persist in considering that play in that light....

I am ashamed to say that I am exceedingly sleepy. I have been riding sixteen miles over these charming hills. The day is bright and breezy, and full of shifting lights and shadows, playing over a landscape that combines every variety of beauty,--valleys, in the hollows of which lie small lakes glittering like sapphires; uplands, clothed with grain-fields and orchards, and studded with farm-houses, each the centre of its own free domain; hills clothed from base to brow with every variety of forest tree; and woods, some wild, tangled, and all but impenetrable, others clear of underbrush, shady, moss-carpeted and sun-checkered; noble masses of granite rock, great slabs of marble (of which there are fine quarries in the neighborhood), clear mountain brooks and a full, free-flowing, sparkling river;--all this, under a cloud-varied sky, such as generally canopies mountain districts, the sunset glories of which are often magnificent. I have good friends, and my precious children, an easy, cheerful, cultivated society, my capital horse, and, in short, most good things that I call mine--on this side of the water--with one heavy exception....

My dearest Harriet, my drowsiness grows upon me, so that my eyelids are gradually drawing together as I look out at the sweet prospect, and the blue shimmer of the little lake and sunny waving of the trees are fading all away into a dream before me. Good-bye.

Your sleepy and affectionate
F. A. B.

[When I was in London, some time after the date of this letter, I
received an earnest request from one of the most devoted of the New
England abolitionists, to allow the journal I kept while at the
South to be published, and so give the authority of my experience to
the aid of the cause of freedom. This application occasioned me
great trouble and distress, as it was most painful to me to refuse
my testimony on the subject on which I felt so deeply; but it was
impossible for me then to feel at liberty to publish my journal.

When the address, drawn up at Stafford House, under the impulse of
Mrs. Beecher Stowe's powerful novel, and the auspices of Lord
Shaftesbury and the Duchess of Sutherland (by Thackeray denominated
the "Womanifesto against Slavery"), was brought to me for my
signature, I was obliged to decline putting my name to it, though I
felt very sure no other signer of that document knew more of the
facts of American slavery, or abhorred it more, than I did; but
also, no other of its signers knew, as I did, the indignant sense of
offense which it would be sure to excite in those to whom it was
addressed; its absolute futility as to the accomplishment of any
good purpose, and the bitter feeling it could not fail to arouse,
even in the women of the Northern States, by the assumed moral
superiority which it would be thought to imply.

I would then gladly have published my journal, had I been at liberty
to do so, and thus shown my sympathy with the spirit, though not the
letter, of the Stafford House appeal to the women of America.

It was not, however, until after the War of Secession broke out,
while residing in England, and hearing daily and hourly the
condition of the slaves discussed, in a spirit of entire sympathy
with their owners, that nothing but the most absolute ignorance
could excuse, that I determined to publish my record of my own
observations on a Southern plantation.

At the time of my doing so, party feeling on the subject of the
American war was extremely violent in England, and the people among
whom I lived were all Southern sympathizers. I believe I was
suspected of being _employed_ to "advocate" the Northern cause (an
honor of which I was as little worthy as their cause was in need of
such an advocate); and my friend, Lady ----, told me she had
repeatedly heard it asserted that my journal was not a genuine
record of my own experiences and observation, but "cooked up" (to
use the expression applied to it) to serve the purpose of party
special pleading. This, as she said, she was able to contradict upon
her own authority, having heard me read the manuscripts many years
before at her grandmother's, Lady Dacre's, at the Hoo.

This accusation of having "cooked up" my journal for a particular
end may perhaps have originated from the fact that I refused to
place the whole of it in the hands of the printers, giving out to be
printed merely such portions as I chose to submit to their
inspection, which, as the book was my personal diary, and contained
matter of the most strictly private nature, was not perhaps
unreasonable. The republication of this book in America had not been
contemplated by me; my purpose and my desire being to make the facts
it contained known in England. In the United States, by the year
1862, abundant miserable testimony of the same nature needed no
confirmation of mine. My friend, Mr. John Forbes, of Boston,
however, requested me to let him have it republished in America, and
I very gladly consented to do so.[4]

[4] I have omitted from the letters written on the plantation,
at the same time as this diary, all details of the condition of
the slaves among whom I was living; the painful effect of which
upon myself however, together with my general strong feeling
upon the subject of slavery, I have not entirely
suppressed--because I do not think it well that all record
should be obliterated of the nature of the terrible curse from
which God in His mercy has delivered English America.

In countless thousands of lamentable graves the bitter wrong
lies buried--atoned for by a four-years' fratricidal war: the
beautiful Southern land is lifting its head from the disgrace of
slavery and the agony of its defense. May its free future days
surpass in prosperity (as they surely will a thousand-fold)
those of its former perilous pride of privilege--of race
supremacy and subjugation.

An extremely interesting and clever book, called "A Fool's Errand,"
embodies under the form of a novel, an accurate picture of the
social condition of the Southern States after the war--a condition
so replete with elements of danger and difficulty, that the highest
virtue and the deepest wisdom could hardly have coped successfully
with them; and from a heart-breaking and perhaps unsuccessful
struggle with which, Abraham Lincoln's murder delivered him, I
believe, as a reward for his upright and noble career.]

LENOX, September 11th, 1839.

Thank you, my dear Lady Dacre, for your kindness in writing to me again. I would fain know if doing so may not have become a painful effort to you, or if my letters may not have become irksome to you. Pray have the real goodness to let me know, if not by your own hand, through our friends William Harness or Emily Fitzhugh, if you would rather not be disturbed by my writing to you, and trust that I shall be grateful for your sincerity.

You know I do not value very highly the artificial civilities which half strangle half the world with a sort of floss-silk insincerity; and the longer I live the more convinced I am that real tenderness to others is quite compatible with the truth that is due to them and one's self.

My regard for you does not maintain itself upon our scanty and infrequent correspondence, but on the recollection of your kindness to me, and the impression our former intercourse has left upon my memory; and though ceasing to receive your letters would be foregoing an enjoyment, it could not affect the grateful regard I entertain for you. Pray, therefore, my dear Lady Dacre, do not scruple to bid me hold my peace, if by taking up your time and attention in your present sad circumstances [the recent loss of her daughter] I disturb or distress you.

Your kind wishes for my health and happiness are as completely fulfilled as such benedictions may be in this world of imperfect bodies and minds. I ride every day before breakfast, some ten or twelve miles (yesterday it was five and twenty), and as this obliges me to be in my saddle at seven in the morning, I am apt to consider the performance meritorious as well as pleasurable. (Who says that early risers always have a Pharisaical sense of their own superiority?) I am staying in the beautiful hill-region of Massachusetts, where I generally spend part of my summer, in the neighborhood of my friends the Sedgwicks, who are a very numerous clan, and compose the chief part of the population of this portion of Berkshire, if not in quantity, certainly in quality.

There was some talk, at one time, of my going to the hot sulphur springs of Virginia; but the difficulties of the journey thither, and miseries of a sojourn there, prevented my doing so, as I could not have taken my children with me. We shall soon begin to think of flying southward, for we are to winter in Georgia again....

My youngest child does not utter so much as a syllable, which circumstance has occasioned me once or twice seriously to consider whether by any possibility a child of mine could be _dumb_. "I cannot tell, but I think not," as Benedict says. It would have been clever of me to have had a dumb child.

Have you read Charles Murray's book about America? and how do you like it? Do you ever see Lady Francis Egerton nowadays? How is she? What is she doing? Is she accomplishing a great deal with her life? She always seemed to me born to do so. My dear Lady Dacre, do not talk of not seeing me again. We hope to be in England next autumn, and one of the greatest pleasures I look forward to in that expectation is once more seeing you and Lord Dacre. You say my sister will marry a foreigner. She has my leave to marry a German, but the more southern blood does not mingle well with our Teutonic race....

I am sorry the only book of Catharine Sedgwick's which you have read is, "Live and Let Live," because it is essentially an American book, and some Americans think it a little exaggerated in its views, even for this country. A little story, called "Home," and another called "The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man," are, I think, better specimens of what she can do....

F. A. B.

LENOX, September 30th, 1839.

And so, dearest Harriet, Cecilia writes you that my head is enlarged, my _benevolence_ and _causality_ increased, and that Mr. Combe thinks me much improved. Truly, it were a pity if I were the reverse, for it was more than two years since he had seen me; but though I heartily wish this might be the case, I honestly confess to you that I do not feel as if my mental and moral progress, during the last two years, has been sufficient to push out any visible augmentation of the "bumps" of my skull in any direction.

Your saucy suggestion as to my having conciliated his good opinion by exhibiting a greater degree of faith in phrenology is, unluckily, not borne out by the facts; for, instead of more, I have a little less faith in it; and that, perversely enough, from the very circumstance of the more favorable opinion thus expressed with regard to my own "development."

In the first instance, both Mr. Combe and Cecilia expressed a good deal of surprise to some of my friends here, at their high estimate of my brain.... Having very evidently never themselves perceived any sufficient grounds for such an exalted esteem. Moreover, Mr. Combe wrote a letter to Lucretia Mott (the celebrated Quakeress, who is a good friend of mine), when he heard that she had made my acquaintance, cautioning her against falling into the mistake which _all my American friends_ committed, of "exaggerating my reasoning powers." This was all well and good, and only amused me as rather funny; some of _my American friends_ being tolerably shrewd folk, and upon the whole, no bad judges of brains. But then the next thing that happens is, that I see the Combes myself for a short, hurried, and most confused five minutes, during which, even if Mr. Combe's judgment were _entirely_ in his eyes, he had no leisure for exercising it on me; and yet he now states (for Cecy is only his echo in this matter) that my disposition is much improved, and my reasoning powers much increased; and it is but two years since I was in his house, and this moral and mental progress, visible to the naked eye, on my thickly hair-roofed cranium, has taken place since then;--if so, so much the better for me, and I have made better use of my time than I imagined!

To tell you the truth, dear Harriet, I have not thought about phrenology, one way or the other, but I have thought this phrenological verdict about myself nonsense.

Mr. Combe has certainly not been influenced by any signs of conversion on my part; but I suppose he may have been influenced by the opinion held of me by my friends here, some of whom are sensible enough on all other subjects not to be suspected of idiocy, even though they do think me a rational, and, what is more, a reasoning creature.

It has been a real distress to me not to see more of Mr. Combe and Cecilia. I have always had the highest regard for him, for his kind, humane heart, and benevolent, liberal, enlightened mind. Cecy, too, during my short visit to her in Scotland, appeared to me a far more lovable person than during my previous intercourse with her: and as kinsfolk and countryfolk, without any consideration for personal liking, I feel annoyed at not being able to offer them any kindness or hospitality. But we literally seem to be running round each other; they are now at Hartford, in Connecticut, not fifty miles away from here, where they intend staying some weeks, and will probably not be in Philadelphia until we have departed for the South. When I saw them in New York, they were both looking extremely well; Cecilia fat, and cheerful, and apparently very happy, in spite of her "incidents of American travel." ...

The heat of the summer while we remained at Butler Place was something quite indescribable, and hardly varied at all for several weeks, either night or day, from between 90 and 100 degrees.

People sat up all night at their windows in town; and as for me, more than once, in sheer desperation, after trying to sleep on a cane sofa under the piazza, I wandered about more than half the night, on the gravel walks of the garden, bare-footed,--_et dans le simple appareil d'une beaute qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil_.

We tried to sleep upon _everything_ in vain,--Indian matting was as hot as woolen blankets. At last I laid a piece of oilcloth on my bed, without even as much as a sheet over it, and though I could not sleep, obtained as much relief from the heat as to be able to lie still. It was terrible!...

I have been for two months up here, not having been allowed to go to the Virginia springs, on account of the difficulty of carrying my children there; but I am promised that we shall all go there next summer, when there is to be something like a passable road, by which the health-giving region may be approached....

I have an earnest desire to return to Europe in the autumn--not to stay in England, unless my father should be there, but to go to him, wherever he may be, and to spend a little time with my sister.... All this, however, lies far ahead, and God knows what at present invisible prospects may reveal and develop themselves on the surface of the future, as a nearer light falls on it....

My youngest child's accomplishments are hitherto unaccompanied by a syllable of speech or utterance, and the idea sometimes occurs to me whether a child of mine could have enough genius to be dumb.

Good-bye, my dearest Harriet.

Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, October 10th, 1839.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

Your interesting letter of 26th July reached me about ten days ago, at Lenox, where, according to my wont, I was passing the hot months. I had heard from dear Mr. Harness, a short time before, that you had suffered much annoyance from the withdrawal of your father's pension. Your own account of the disasters of your family excited my sincere sympathy; and yet, after reflecting a little, it appeared to me as if the exertions you felt yourself called upon to make in their behalf were happier in themselves than the general absence of any immediate object in life, which I know you sometimes feel very bitterly. At any rate, to be able to serve, effectually to save from distress, those so dear to you, must be in itself a real happiness; and to be blessed by your parents and sisters as their stay and support in such a crisis, is to have had such an opportunity of concentrating your talents as I think one might be thankful for. I cannot, consistently with my belief, say I am sorry you have thus suffered, but I pray God that your troubles may every way prove blessings to you.

Your account of your "schoolmaster's party" interested me very much. [A gathering of teachers, promoted by Lady Byron, for purposes of enlightened benevolence.] Lady Byron must be a woman of a noble nature. I hope she is happy in her daughter's marriage. I heard a report a short time ago that Lady Lovelace was coming over to this country with her husband. I could not well understand for what purpose: that he should come from general interest and curiosity about the United States, I can well imagine; but that she should come from any motive, but to avoid being separated from her husband, is to me inconceivable....

I should like to have seen that play of Mr. Chorley's which you mention to me. He once talked about it to me. It is absurd to say, but for all its absurdity, I'll say it,--he does not _look_ to me like a man who could write a good play: he speaks too softly, and his eyelashes are too white; in spite of all which, I take your word for it that it is good. You ask after mine: Harriet has got the only copy, on the other side of the water; if you think it worth while to ask her for it, you are very welcome to read it. I was not aware that I had read you any portion of it; and cannot help thinking that you have confounded in your recollection something which I did read you--and which, as I thought, appeared to distress you, or rather not to please you--with some portion of my play, of which I did not think that I had ever shown you any part. I have some thoughts of publishing it here, or rather in Boston. I have run out my yearly allowance of pin-money, and want a few dollars very badly, and if any bookseller will give me five pounds for it, he shall be welcome to it....

I beg you will not call this a scrap of a letter, because it is all written upon one sheet: if you do, I shall certainly call yours a letter of scraps, being written on several; and am ever,

Very truly yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, October 19th, 1839.
DEAREST HARRIET,

I have just been reading over a letter of yours written from Schwalbach, in August; and in answer to some speculation of mine, which I have forgotten, you say, "Our birth truly is no less strange than our death. The beginning--and whence come we? The end--and whither go we?" Now, I presume that you did not intend that I should apply myself to answer these questions categorically. You must have thought you were speaking to me, dearest Harriet, and have only written down the vague cogitations that rose in the shape of queries to your lips, as you read my letter, which suggested them; opening at the same time, doubtless, a pair of most _intensely sightless_ eyes, upon the gaming-table of the Cursaal, if it happened to be within range of vision.

For myself, the older I grow the less I feel strength or inclination to speculate. The daily and hourly duties of life are so indifferently fulfilled by me, that I feel almost rebuked if my mind wanders either to the far past or future while the present, wherein lies my salvation, is comparatively unthought of. To tell you the truth, I find in the daily obligations to do and to suffer which come to my hands, a refuge from the mystery and uncertainty which veil all before and after life.

For indeed, when the mind sinks bewildered under speculations as to our former fate or future destinies, the sense of things _to be done_, of duties to be fulfilled, even the most apparently trivial in the world, is an unspeakable relief; and though the whole of this existence of ours, material and spiritual, affords but this _one_ foothold (and it sometimes seems so to me), it is enough that every hour brings work; and more than enough--_all_--if that work be but well done.

Thus the beginning and the end trouble me seldom; but the difficulty of dealing rightly with what is immediately before and around me does trouble me infinitely; but that trouble is neither uncertainty nor doubt.

Our possible separation hereafter from those we have loved here, is almost the only idea connected with these subjects which obtrudes itself sometimes upon my mind. Yet, though I cannot conceive how Heaven would not be Hell without those I love, I am willing to believe that my spirit will be fitted to its future sphere by Him with whom all things are possible.

It seems rationally consistent with all we believe, and the little we know, to entertain a strong hope that the affections we have cherished here will not be left behind us, or forgotten elsewhere; but I would give much to _believe_ this as well as to _hope_ it, and those are quite distinct things.

Two conclusions spring from this wide waste of uncertainty; that the more we can serve and render happy those with whom our lives are bound up here, the better; for we may not elsewhere be allowed to minister to them: and the less we cling to these earthly affections, the less we grasp them as sources of personal happiness the better; as they may be withdrawn from us, and God, whose place they too often usurp in our souls, be the one Friend who shall supply the place of them all.

Conjecture as we may, however, upon these subjects, the general experience of humanity is that of struggle with the _present_, the _actual_; and could I but be satisfied with the mode in which I fulfill my daily duties, and govern my heart and mind in their discharge, I should feel at peace as regards all such speculations--"I'd jump the life to come."

You speak of the unhealthy life led by the members of the bar in Ireland, and their disregard of all the "natural laws," which yet, you say, does not appear to affect their constitutions materially. I presume, as far as the usual exercise of their profession goes, lawyers must lead pretty much the same sort of life everywhere; but in this country, everybody's habits are essentially unhealthy, and superadded to the special bad influences of a laborious and sedentary profession, make fearful havoc with life. The diet and the atmosphere to which most Americans accustom themselves, are alike destructive of anything like health. Even the men, compared with ours, are generally inactive, and have no idea of taking regular exercise as a salutary precaution. The absence of social enjoyment among the wealthier classes, and of cheerful recreation among the artisan and laboring part of the population, leaves them absorbed in a perpetual existence of care and exertion, varied only by occasional outbursts of political excitement; indeed, they appear to prefer a life of incessant toil to any other, and they seem to consider any species of amusement or recreation as a simple waste of time, taking no account of the renovation of health, strength, and spirits to be gained by diversion and leisure. All that travelers have said about their neglect of physical health is true; and you will have additional evidence furnished upon this subject, I believe, by Mr. Combe, who intends publishing his American experiences, and who will probably do full justice to the perpetual infraction of his ever-present and sacred rules of life, by the people of the United States....

Expostulations with people with regard to their health are never wise--they who most need such admonition are least likely to accept it; and, indeed, how many of us learn anything but from personal suffering? which too often, alas, comes too late to teach. I suppose, it is only the _exceeding_ wise who are taught anything even by their own experience; to expect the foolish to learn by that of others, is to be one of their number....

Experience is God's teaching; and I think the seldomer one interferes between children and that best of teachers, the better. I think it would be well if we oftener let them follow their wills to their consequences; for these are always _just_, but they are sometimes, according to our judgments, too severe; and so we not seldom, out of cowardice, interpose between our children and the teaching of experience; and substitute, because we will not see them suffer, our own authority for the inestimable instruction of consequences.

I do not think I agree with you about the very early cultivation of the reasoning powers, but have left myself no room for further _educational_ disquisition.

Farewell, dear.

Believe me, ever yours affectionately,
F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, December, 1839.
MY DEAR T----,

The expression of one's sympathy can never, whatever its sincerity, be of the value it would have possessed if uttered when first excited. In this, above all things, "they give twice who give quickly." I feel this very much in writing to you now upon the events which have lately so deeply troubled the current of your life--your good father's death, and the birth of your second baby, together with the threatened calamity from which its mother's recovery has spared you. Tardy as are these words, my sympathy has been sincerely yours during this your season of trial; and though I have done myself injustice in not sooner writing to you, believe me I have felt more for you and yours than any letter could express, though I had written it the moment the news reached me....

That your father died as full of honor as of years, that his life was a task well fulfilled, and his death not unbecoming so worthy a life, is matter of consolation to you, and all who knew and loved him less than you. I scarce know how you could have wished any other close to his career; the pang of losing such a friend you could not expect to escape, but there was hardly a circumstance (as regarded your father himself) which it seems to me you can regret. Poor M---- will be the bitterest sufferer [the lady was traveling in Europe at the time of her father's death], and for her, indeed, my compassion is great, strengthened as it is by my late experience, and constant apprehension of a similar affliction,--I mean my mother's death, and the dread of hearing, from across this terrible barrier, that I have lost my father. I pity her more than I can express; but trust that she will find strength adequate to her need.

Give my kindest love to your wife. I rejoice in her safety for your sake and that of her children, more even than for her own; for it always seems well to me with those who have gone to rest, but her loss would have been terrible for you, and her girl has yet to furnish her some work, and some compensation....

If Anne is with you, remember me very kindly to her, and

Believe me ever most truly yours,
F. A. B.

[The little daughter referred to in the above letter became Mrs.
Charles Norton, one of the loveliest and most charming of young
American women, snatched by an untimely death from the midst of an
adoring family and friends.]

PHILADELPHIA, Friday, December 14th, 1839.
DEAREST HARRIET,

... It is perhaps well for you that this letter has suffered an interruption here, as had this not been the case you might have been edified with a yet further "complaint." ...

We have shut up our house in the country, and are at present staying in Philadelphia, at my brother-in-law's; but we are expecting every day to start for the plantation in Georgia, where I hope we are to find what is yet lacking to us in health and strength.

I look forward with some dismay now to this expedition, in the middle of winter, with two young children, traveling by not very safe railroads and perhaps less safe steamboats, through that half-savage country, and along that coast only some months ago the scene of fearful shipwreck.... I have already written you word of our last residence there, of the small island in the Altamaha and below its level--the waters being only kept out by dykes, which protect the rice-marshes, of which the plantation is composed, from being submerged. The sole inhabitants, you know, are the negroes, who cultivate the place, and the overseer who manages them.... As early as March the heat becomes intense, and by the beginning of April it is no longer safe for white people to remain there, owing to the miasma which exhales from the rice-fields....

We shall find, no doubt, our former animal friends, from the fleas up to the alligators: the first, swarming in the filthy negroes' huts; the last, expatiating in the muddy waters of the Altamaha. I trust they will none of them have forgotten us. Did I tell you before of those charming creatures, the moccasin snakes, which, I have just been informed, abound in every part of the southern plantations? Rattlesnakes I know by sight: but the moccasin creature, though I may have seen him, I do not feel acquainted, or at any rate familiar, with. Our nearest civilized town, you know, is Savannah, and that is sixty miles off. I cannot say that the expedition is in any way charming to me, but the alternative is remaining alone here; and, as it is possible to live on the plantation with the children, I am going. Margery, of course, comes with me....

Did I tell you, my dear Irishwoman, that we had no _potatoes_ on the plantation, and that Indian meal holds the place of wheaten flour, bread baked of the latter being utterly unknown?... Do not be surprised if I dwell upon these small items of privation, even now that I am about to go among those people the amelioration of whose condition I have considered as one of my special duties. With regard to this, however, I have, alas! no longer the faintest shadow of hope....

Yours most truly,
F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, January 15th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,

My last to you was dated the fourteenth of December, and it is now the tenth of January, a whole month; and you and Dorothy are, I presume, sundered, instead of together, and surrounded with ice and snow, and all wintry influences, instead of those gentle southern ones in which you had imagined you would pass the dismal season.

I can fancy Ardgillan comfortably poetical (if that is not a contradiction in terms) at this time of year, with its warm, bright, cheerful drawing-room looking out on the gloomy sea. But perhaps you are none of you there?--perhaps you are in Dublin?--on Mr. Taylor's new estate?--or where--where, dear Harriet--where are you? How sad it seems to wander thus in thought after those we love, and conjecture of their whereabouts almost as vaguely as of the dwelling of the dead!...

I am annoyed by the interruption which all this ice and snow causes in my daily rides. My horse is rough-shod, and I persist in going out on him two or three times a week, but not without some peril, and severe inconvenience from the cold, which not only cuts my face to pieces, but chaps my skin from head to foot, through my riding-dress and all my warm under-clothing. I do not much regret our prolonged sojourn in the North, on my children's account, who, being both hearty and active creatures, thrive better in this bracing climate than in the relaxing temperature of the South....

Dear Harriet, I have nothing to tell you; my life externally is _nothing_; and who can tell the inward history of their bosom--that internal life, which is often so strangely unlike the other? Suppose I inform you that I have just come home from a ride of an hour and a half; that I went out of the city by Broad Street, and returned by Islington Lane and the Ridge Road--how much the wiser will you be? that the roads were frozen as hard as iron, and here and there so sheeted with ice that I had great difficulty in preventing my horse from slipping and falling down with me, and, being quite alone, without even a servant, I wondered what _I_ should do if _he_ did. I have a capital horse, whom I have christened Forester, after the hero of my play, and who grins with delight, like a dog, when I talk to him and pat him. He is a bright bay, with black legs and mane, tall and large, and built like a hunter, with high courage and good temper. I have had him four years, and do not like to think what would become of me if anything were to happen to him. It would be necessary that I should commit suicide, for his fellow is not to be found in "these United States." Dearest Harriet, we hope to come over to England next September; and if your sister will invite me, I will come and see you some time before I re-cross the Atlantic. I am very anxious about my father, and still more anxious about my sister, and feel heart-weary for the sight of some of my own people, places, and things; and so. Fate prospering, to speak heathen, I shall go _home_ once more in the autumn of this present 1840: till when, dearest Harriet, God bless you! and after then, and always,

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

[My dear horse, having been sold to a livery-stable keeper, I
repurchased him by the publication of a small volume of poems, which
thus proved themselves to _me_ excellent verses. The gallant animal
broke his hip-joint by slipping in a striding gallop over some wet
planks, and I had to have him shot. His face--I mean the anguish in
it after the accident--is among the tragical visions in my memory.]

PHILADELPHIA, February 9th, 1840.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

... You ask me if I have read your book on Canada. With infinite interest and pleasure, and great sympathy and admiration, and much gratitude for the vindication of women's capabilities, both physical and mental, which all your books (but this perhaps more than all the others) furnish.

It has been, like all your previous works, extremely popular here; and if you have received no remuneration for it, you are not justly dealt by, as I am sure its sale has been very considerable, and very profitable. [Mrs. Jameson was, undoubtedly, one of the greatest sufferers by the want of an author's copyright in America: her works were all republished there; and her laborious literary career, her careful research and painstaking industry, together with her restricted means and the many claims upon them, made it a peculiar hardship, in her case, to be deprived of the just reward of the toil by which she gave pleasure and instruction to so many readers in America, as well as in her own country.] Your latest publication, "Social Life in Germany," I have not seen, but have read numerous extracts from it, in the American literary periodicals.

You ask me if you can "do anything" about my play? I thought I must have told you of my offering it to Macready, who civilly declined having anything to do with it. Circumstances induced me to destroy my own copy of it: the one Macready had is in Harriet's custody, another copy I have given to Elizabeth Sedgwick, and I now neither know nor care anything more about it. Once upon a time I wrote it, and that is quite enough to have had to do with it. Prescott, the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, is urgent with me to let him have it published in Boston; perhaps hereafter, if I should want a penny, and be able to turn an honest one by so doing, I may.

It is odd that I have not the remotest recollection of reading any of that play to you. You have mentioned it several times to me, and I have never been able to recall to my mind, either when I read it to you, or what portion of it I inflicted upon you. You were lucky, and I wonder that I let you off with a _portion_ of it; for, for nearly a year after I finished it, I was in such ecstasies with my own performance, that I martyrized every soul that had a grain of regard for me, with its perusal....

J---- B---- and his brother have just started for Georgia, leaving his wife and myself in forlorn widowhood, which, (the providence of railroads and steamboats allowing) is not to last more than three months. I have been staying nearly three months in their house in town, expecting every day to depart for the plantation; but we have procrastinated to such good effect that the Chesapeake Bay is now unnavigable, being choked up with ice, and the other route involving seventy miles of night traveling _on the worst road in the United States_ (think what that means!), it has been judged expedient that the children and myself should remain behind. I am about, therefore, to return with them to the Farm, where I shall pass the remainder of the winter,--how, think you? Why, reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," which I have never read yet, and which I now intend to study with classical atlas, Bayle's dictionary, the Encyclopaedia, and all sorts of "aids to beginners." How quiet I shall be! I think perhaps I may die some day, without so much as being aware of it; and if so, beg to record myself in good season, before that imperceptible event,

Yours very truly,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, February 16th, 1840.

I have just been looking over a letter of yours, dearest Harriet, as old as the 19th of last September, describing your passage over the Spluegen. About four days ago I was looking over some engravings of the passes of the Alps, in a work called "Switzerland Illustrated," by Bartlett, and lingered over those attempts of human art with the longing I have for those lands, which I always had, which has never died away entirely, but seems now reviving again in some of its earliest strength: I can compare it to nothing but the desire of thirst for water, and I must master it as I may, for of those mountain-streams I fear I never shall drink, or look upon their beauty, but in the study of my imagination.

In the hill-country of Berkshire, Massachusetts, where I generally spend some part of the summer among my friends the Sedgwicks, there is a line of scenery, forming part of the Green Mountain range, which runs up into the State of Vermont, and there becomes a noble brotherhood of mountains, though in the vicinity of Stockbridge and Lenox, where I summer, but few of them deserve a more exalted title than hill. They are clothed with a various forest of oak, beech, chestnut, maple, and fir; and down their sides run wild streams, and in the valleys between them lie exquisite lakes. Upon the whole, it is the most picturesque scenery I have ever seen; particularly in the neighborhood of a small town called Salisbury, thirty miles from Lenox. This is situated in a plain surrounded by mountains, and upon the same level in its near neighborhood lie four beautiful small lakes; close above this valley rises Mount Washington, or, as some Swiss charcoal-burners, who have emigrated thither, have christened it, Mount Rhigi.

In a recess of this mountain lies a deep ravine and waterfall; and a precipice, where an arch of rock overhangs a basin, where, many hundred feet below, the water boils in a mad cauldron, and then plunges away, by leaps of forty, twenty, and twelve feet, with the intermediate runs necessary for such jumps, through a deep chasm in the rocks, to a narrow valley, the whole character of which, I suppose, may represent Swiss scenery in _very small_.

A week ago J---- B---- and ---- left Philadelphia for the South; and yesterday I received a letter giving a most deplorable account of their progress, if progress it could be called, which consisted in going _nine miles in four hours_, and then returning to Washington, whence they had started, the road being found utterly impassable. Streams swollen with the winter snows and spring rains, with their bridges all broken up by the ice or swept away by the water, intersect these delightful ways; and one of these, which could not admit of fording, turned them back, to try their fate in a steamboat, through the ice with which the Chesapeake is blocked up. This dismal account has in some measure reconciled me to having been left behind with the children; they have neither of them been as well as usual this winter, and the season is now so far advanced, our intended departure being delayed from day to day for three months, that, besides encountering a severe and perilous journey, we should have arrived in Georgia to find the weather almost oppressively hot, and, if we did wisely, to return again, at the end of a fortnight, to the North.

I have come back to Butler Place with the bairns, and have resumed the monotonous tenor of my life, which this temporary residence in town had interrupted, not altogether agreeably; and here I shall pass the rest of the winter, teaching S---- to read, and sliding through my days in a state of external quietude, which is not always as nearly allied to content as it might seem to (_ought_ to) be....

When the children's bed-time comes, and their little feet and voices are still, the spirit of the house seems to have fallen asleep. I send my servants to bed, for nobody here keeps late hours (ten o'clock being considered late), and, in spite of assiduous practicing, reading, and answering of letters, my evenings are sad in their absolute solitude, and I am glad when ten o'clock comes, the hour for my retiring, which I could often find in my heart to anticipate....

I have taken vehemently to worsted-work this winter, and, _instead of a novel or two_, am going to read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," which I have never read, and by means of Bayle, classical atlas, and the Encyclopaedia, I mean to make a regular school-room business of it.

Good-bye, dear. Events are so lacking in my present existence, that I am longing for the spring as I never did before--for the sight of leaves and flowers, and the song of birds, and the daily development of the great natural pageant of the year. I am grateful to God for nothing more than the abundant beauty with which He has adorned His creation. The pleasure I derive from its contemplation has survived many others, and should I live long, will, I think, outlive all that I am now capable of....

Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, February 17th, 1840.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,

... I believe too implicitly in your interest in me and mine, ever to have _nothing_ to say to you; but my sayings will be rather egotistical, for the monotony of my life affords me few interests but those which centre in my family, the head of which left me ten days ago, with his brother, for their southern estate. I have since had a letter, which, as it affords an accurate picture of winter traveling in this country, would, I flatter myself, make your sympathetic hair stand on end. Listen. On Sunday morning, before day, they set out, two post-coaches, with four horses, each carrying eight passengers. They got to Alexandria, which is close to Washington, whence they started without difficulty, stopped a short time to gird up their loins and take breath, and at seven o'clock set off. It rained hard; the road was deep with mud, and very bad; several times the passengers were obliged to get out of the coach and walk through the rain and mud, the horses being unable to drag the load through such depths of mire. They floundered on, wading through mud and fording streams, until eleven o'clock, when they stopped to breakfast, having come but _eight miles_ in _four hours_. They consulted whether to go on or turn back: the majority ruled to go on; so after breakfast they again took the road, but had proceeded but one mile when it became utterly impassable--the thaw and rain had so swelled a stream that barred the way that it was too deep to ford; and when it was quite apparent that they must either turn back or be drowned, they reluctantly adopted the former course, and got back to Washington late in the evening, having passed nearly all day in going _nine miles_. I think you will agree with me, my dear Lady Dacre, that my children and myself were well out of that party of pleasure; though the very day before the party set off it was still uncertain whether we should not accompany them.

The contrary having been determined, I am now very quietly spending the winter with my chickens at the Farm.... An imaginative nature makes, it is true, happiness as well as unhappiness for itself, but finds inevitable ready made disappointment in the mere realities of life.... I make no excuse for talking "nursery" to you, my dear Lady Dacre. These are my dearest occupations; indeed, I might say, my only ones.

Have you looked into Marryatt's books on this country? They are full of funny stories, some of them true stories enough, and some, little imitation Yankee stories of the captain's own.

Do explain to me what Sydney Smith means by disclaiming Peter Plymley's letters as he does? Surely he _did_ write them.

This very youthful nation of the United States is "carrying on," to use their own favorite phrase, in a most unprecedented manner. Their mercantile and financial experiments have been the dearest of their kind certainly; and the confusion, embarrassment, and difficulty, in consequence of these experiments, are universal. Money is scarce, credit is scarcer, but, nevertheless, they will not lay the lesson to heart. The natural resources of the country are so prodigious, its wealth so enormous, so inexhaustible, that it will be presently up and on its feet again running faster than ever to the next stumbling-post. _Moral_ bankruptcy is what they have to fear, much more than failure of material riches. It is a strange country, and a strange people; and though I have dear and good friends among them, I still feel a stranger here, and fear I shall continue to do so until I die, which God grant I may do at home! _i.e._, in England.

Give my kindest remembrance to Lord Dacre. We hope to be in England in September, and I shall come and see you as soon as ever I can.

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

BUTLER PLACE, March 1st, 1840.

Thank you, my dearest Harriet, for your extract from my sister's letter to you.... The strongest of us are insufficient to ourselves in this life, and if we will not stretch out our hands for help to our fellows, who, for the most part, are indeed broken reeds and quite as often pierce as support us, we needs must at last stretch them out to God; and doubtless these occasions, bitter as they may seem, should be accounted blest, which make the poor proud human soul discover its own weakness and God's all-sufficiency....

My winter--or rather, what remains of it--is like to pass in uninterrupted quiet and solitude; and you will probably have the satisfaction of receiving many _short_ letters from me, for I know not where I shall find the material for long ones. To be sure, S----'s sayings and F----'s looks might furnish me with something to say, but I have a dread of beginning to talk about my children, for fear I should never leave off, for that is apt to be a "story without an end."