Chapter VI: Miss Mitford (3)

Having just finished Mr. Hawthorne's book, dear Mr. Fields, I shall
get K---- to put it up and direct it so that it may be ready the
first time Sam has occasion to go to Reading, at which time this
letter will be put in the post; so that when you read this, you may
be assured that the precious volumes are arrived at the Paddington
Station, whence I hope they may be immediately transmitted to you.
If not, send for them. They will have your full direction, carriage
paid. I say this, because the much vaunted Great Western is like all
other railways, most uncertain and irregular, and we have lost a
packet of plants this very week, sent to us, announced by letter and
never arrived. Thank you heartily for the perusal of the book. I
shall not name it in a letter which I mean to enclose to Mr.
Hawthorne, not knowing that you mean to tell him, and having plenty
of other things to say to him besides. To you, and only to you, I
shall speak quite frankly what I think. It is full of beauty and of
power, but I agree with ---- that it would not have made a
reputation as the other two books did, and I have some doubts
whether it will not be a disappointment, but one that will soon be
redeemed by a fresh and happier effort. It seems to me too long,
too slow, and the personages are to my mind ill chosen. Zenobia puts
one in mind of Fanny Wright and Margaret Fuller and other unsexed
authorities, and Hollingsworth will, I fear, recall, to English
people at least, a most horrible man who went about preaching peace.
I heard him lecture once, and shall never forget his presumption,
his ignorance, or his vulgarity. He is said to know many languages.
I can answer for his not knowing his own, for I never, even upon the
platform, the native home of bad English, heard so much in so short
a time. The mesmeric lecturer and the sickly girl are almost equally
disagreeable. In short, the only likeable person in the book is
honest Silas Foster, who alone gives one the notion of a man of
flesh and blood. In my mind, dear Mr. Hawthorne mistakes exceedingly
when he thinks that fiction should be based upon, or rather seen
through, some ideal medium. The greatest fictions of the world are
the truest. Look at the "Vicar of Wakefield," look at the "Simple
Story," look at Scott, look at Jane Austen, greater because truer
than all, look at the best works of your own Cooper. It is precisely
the want of reality in his smaller stories which has delayed Mr.
Hawthorne's fame so long, and will prevent its extension if he do
not resolutely throw himself into truth, which is as great a thing
in my mind in art as in morals, the foundation of all excellence in
both. The fine parts of this book, at least the finest, are the
truest,--that magnificent search for the body, which is as perfect
as the search for the exciseman in Guy Mannering, and the burst of
passion in Eliot's pulpit. The plot, too, is very finely
constructed, and doubtless I have been a too critical reader,
because, from the moment you and I parted, I have been suffering
from fever, and have never left the bed, in which I am now writing.
Don't fancy, dear friend, that you had anything to do with this. The
complaint had fixed itself and would have run its course, even
although your ... society has not roused and excited the good
spirits, which will, I think, fail only with my life. I think I am
going to get better. Love to all.

Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

Tuesday. (No date.)

My Dear Friend: Being fit for nothing but lying in bed and reading
novels, I have just finished Mr. Field's and Mr. Jones's "Adrien,"
and as you certainly will not have time to look at it, and may like
to hear my opinion, I will tell it to you. Mr. Field, from the
Preface, is of New York. The thing that has diverted me most is the
love-plot of the book. A young gentleman, whose father came and
settled in America and made a competence there, is third or fourth
cousin to an English lord. He falls in love with a fisherman's
daughter (the story appears to be about fifty years back). This
fisherman's daughter is a most ethereal personage, speaking and
reading Italian, and possessing in the fishing-cottage a pianoforte
and a collection of books; nevertheless, she one day hears her
husband say something about a person being "well born and well
bred," and forthwith goes away from him, in order to set him free
from the misery entailed upon him, as she supposes, by a
disproportionate marriage. Is not this curious in your republic? We
in England certainly should not play such pranks. A man having
married a wife, his wife stays by him. This dilemma is got over by
the fisherman's turning out to be himself fifth or sixth cousin of
another English lord. But, having lived really as a fisherman ever
since his daughter's birth, he knew nothing of his aristocratic
descent. I think this is the most remarkable thing in the book.
There are certain flings at the New England character (the scene is
laid beside the waters of your Bay) which seem to foretell a not
very remote migration on the part of Mr. Jones, though they may come
from his partner; nothing very bad, only such hits as this: "He was
simple, humble, affectionate, three qualities rare anywhere, but
perhaps more rare in that part of the world than anywhere else." For
the rest the book is far inferior to the best even of Mr. James's
recent productions, such as "Henry Smeaton." These two authors speak
of the corpse of a drowned man as beautified by death, and retaining
all the look of life. You remember what Mr. Hawthorne says of the
appearance of his drowned heroine,--which is right? I have had the
most delightful letter possible (you shall see it when you come)
from dear Dr. Holmes, and venture to trouble you with the enclosed
answer. Yesterday, Mr. Harness, who had heard a bad account of me
(for I have been very ill, and, although much better now, I gather
from everybody that I am thought to be breaking down fast), so like
the dear kind old friend that he is, came to see me. It was a great
pleasure. We talked much of you, and I think he will call upon you.
Whether he call or not, do go to see him. He is fully prepared for
you as Mr. Dyce's friend and Mr. Rogers's friend, and my very dear
friend. Do go; you will find him charming, so different from the
author people that Mr. Kenyon collects. I am sure of your liking
each other. Surely by next week I may be well enough to see you. You
and Mrs. W---- would do me nothing but good. Say everything to her,
and to our dear kind friends, the Bennochs. I ought to have written
to them, but I get as much scolded for writing as talking.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

(No date.)

How good and kind you are to me, dearest Mr. Fields! kindest of all,
I think, in writing me those.... One comfort is, that if London lose
you this year I do think you will not suffer many to elapse before
revisiting it. Ah, you will hardly find your poor old friend next
time! Not that I expect to die just now, but there is such a want of
strength, of the power that shakes off disease, which is no good
sign for the constitution. Yesterday I got up for a little while,
for the first time since I saw you; but, having let in too many
people, the fever came on again at night, and I am only just now
shaking off the attack, and feel that I must submit to perfect
quietness for the present. Still the attack was less violent than
the last, and unattended by sickness, so that I am really better and
hope in a week or so to be able to get out with you under the trees,
perhaps as far as Upton.

One of my yesterday's visitors was a glorious old lady of
seventy-six, who has lived in Paris for the last thirty years, and I
do believe came to England very much for the purpose of seeing me.
She had known my father before his marriage. He had taken her in his
hand (he was always fond of children) one day to see my mother; she
had been present at their wedding, and remembered the old
housekeeper and the pretty nursery-maid and the great dog too, and
had won with great difficulty (she being then eleven years old) the
privilege of having the baby to hold. Her descriptions of all these
things and places were most graphic, and you may imagine how much
she must have been struck with my book when it met her eye in Paris,
and how much I (knowing all about her family) was struck on my part
by all these details, given with the spirit and fire of an
enthusiastic woman of twenty. We had certainly never met. I left
Alresford at three years old. She made an appointment to spend a day
here next year, having with her a daughter, apparently by a first
husband. Also she had the same host of recollections of Louis
Napoleon, remembered the Emperor, as Premier Consul, and La Reine
Hortense as Mlle. de Beauharnais. Her account of the Prince is
favorable. She says that it is a most real popularity, and that, if
anything like durability can ever be predicated of the French, it
will prove a lasting one. I had a letter from Mrs. Browning to-day,
talking of the "Facts of the Times," of which she said some
gentlemen were speaking with the same supreme contempt and disbelief
that I profess for every paragraph in that collection of falsehoods.
For my own part, I hold a wise despotism, like the Prince
President's, the only rule to live under. Only look at the figure
our _soi-disant_ statesmen cut,--Whig and Tory,--and then glance
your eye across the Atlantic to your "own dear people," as Dr.
Holmes says, and their doings in the Presidential line. Apropos to
Dr. Holmes you'll see him read and quoted when--and his doings are
as dead as Henry the Eighth.--has no feeling for finish or polish or
delicacy, and doubtless dismisses Pope and Goldsmith with supreme
contempt. She never mentions that horrid trial, to my great comfort.
Did I tell you that I had been reading Louis Napoleon's most
charming three volumes full?

Among my visitors yesterday was Miss Percy, the heiress of Guy's
Cliff, one of the richest in England, and, what is odd, the
translator of "Emilie Carlen's Birthright," the only Swedish novel I
have ever got fairly through, because Miss Percy really does her
work well, and I can't read ----'s English. Miss Percy, who, besides
being very clever and agreeable, is also pretty, has refused some
scores of offers, and declares she'll never marry; she has a dread
of being sought for her money.....

God bless you, dearest, kindest friend. Say everything for me to
your companions.

Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.

(No date)

Yes, dearest Mr. Fields, I continue to get better and better, and
shall be delighted to see you and Mr. and Mrs. W---- on Friday. I
even went in to surprise Mr. May on Saturday, so, weather
permitting, we shall get up to Upton together. I want you to see
that relique of Protestant bigotry. No doubt many of my dear
countrymen would play just the same pranks now, if the spirit of the
age would permit; the will is not wanting, witness our courts of
law.

I have been reading the "Life of Margaret Fuller." What a tragedy
from first to last! She must have been odious in Boston in spite of
her power and her strong sense of duty, with which I always
sympathize; but at New York, where she dwindled from a sibyl to a
"lionne," one begins to like her better, and in England and Paris,
where she was not even that, better still; so that one is prepared
for the deep interest of the last half-volume. Of course her
example must have done much injury to the girls of her train. Of
course, also, she is the Zenobia of dear Mr Hawthorne. One wonders
what her book would have been like.

Mr. Bennett has sent me the "Nile Notes." We must talk about that,
which I have not read yet, not delighting much in Eastern travels,
or, rather, being tired of them. Ah, how sad it will be when I
cannot say "We will talk"! Surely Mr. Webster does not mean to get
up a dispute with England! That would be an affliction; for what
nations should be friends if ours should not? What our ministers
mean, nobody can tell,--hardly, I suppose, themselves. My hope was
in Mr. Webster. Well, this is for talking. God bless you, dear
friend.

Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

August 7, 1852.

Hurrah! dear and kind friend, I have found the line without any
other person's aid or suggestion. Last night it occurred to me that
it was in some prologue or epilogue, and my little book-room being
very rich in the drama, I have looked through many hundreds of those
bits of rhyme, and at last made a discovery which, if it have no
other good effect, will at least have "emptied my head of Corsica,"
as Johnson said to Boswell; for never was the great biographer more
haunted by the thought of Paoli than I by that line. It occurs in an
epilogue by Garrick on quitting the stage, June, 1776, when the
performance was for the benefit of sick and aged actors.

A veteran see! whose last act on the stage
Entreats your smiles for sickness and for age;
Their cause I plead, plead it in heart and mind,
_A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind_.

Not finding it quoted in Johnson convinced me that it would probably
have been written after the publication of the Dictionary, and
ultimately guided me to the right place. It is singular that
epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of
my plays, "Foscari," and prologues at another, "Rienzi."

I have but a moment to answer your most kind letter, because I have
been engaged with company, or rather interrupted by company, ever
since I got up, but you will pardon me. Nothing ever did me so much
good as your visit. My only comfort is the hope of your return in
the spring. Then I hope to be well enough to show Mr Hawthorne all
the holes and corners my own self. Tell him so. I am already about
to study the State Trials, and make myself perfect in all that can
assist the romance. It will be a labor of love to do for him the
small and humble part of collecting facts and books, and making
ready the palette for the great painter.

Talking of _artists_, one was here on Sunday who was going to Upton
yesterday. His object was to sketch every place mentioned in my
book. Many of the places (as those round Taplow) he had taken, and
K---- says he took this house and the stick and Fanchon and probably
herself. I was unluckily gone to take home the dear visitors who
cheer me daily and whom I so wish you to see.

God bless you all, dear friends.

Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, September 24, 1852

My Very Dear Mr. Fields: I am beginning to get very fidgety about
you, and thinking rather too often, not only of the breadth of the
Atlantic, but of its dangers. However I must hear soon, and I write
now because I am expecting a fellow-townsman of yours, Mr. Thompson,
an American artist, who expected to find you still in England, and
who is welcomed, as I suppose all Boston would be ... People do not
love you the less, dear friend, for missing you.

I write to you this morning, because I have something to say and
something to ask. In the first place, I am better. Mr. Harness, who,
God bless him, left that Temple of Art, the Deepdene, and Mr. Hope's
delightful conversation, to come and take care of me, stayed at
Swallowfield three weeks. He found out a tidy lodging, which he has
retained, and he promises to come back in November; at present he is
again at the Deepdene. Nothing could be so judicious as his way of
going on; he came at two o'clock to my cottage and we drove out
together; then he went to his lodgings to dinner, to give me three
hours of perfect quiet; at eight he and the Russells met here to
tea, and he read Shakespeare (there is no such reader in the world)
till bedtime. Under his treatment no wonder that I improved, but the
low-fever is not far off; doing a little too much, I fell back even
before his departure, and have been worse since. However, on the
whole, I am much better.

Now to my request. You perhaps remember my speaking to you of a copy
of my "Recollections," which was in course of illustration in the
winter. Mr. Holloway, a great print-seller of Bedford Street, Covent
Garden, has been engaged upon it ever since, and brought me the
first volume to look at on Tuesday. It would have rejoiced the soul
of dear Dr. Holmes. My book is to be set into six or seven or eight
volumes, quarto, as the case may be; and although not unfamiliar
with the luxuries of the library, I could not have believed in the
number and richness of the pearls which have been strung upon so
slender a thread. The rarest and finest portraits, often many of one
person and always the choicest and the best,--ranging from
magnificent heads of the great old poets, from the Charleses and
Cromwells, to Sprat and George Faulkner of Dublin, of whom it was
thought none existed, until this print turned up unexpectedly in a
supplementary volume of Lord Chesterfield; nothing is too odd for
Mr. Holloway. There is a colored print of George the Third,--a full
length which really brings the old king to life again, so striking
is the resemblance, and quantities of theatrical people, Munden and
Elliston and the Kembles. There are two portraits of "glorious John"
in Penruddock. Then the curious old prints of old houses. They have
not only one two hundred years old of Dorrington Castle, but the
actual drawing from which that engraving was made; and they are rich
beyond anything in exquisite drawings of scenery by modern artists
sent on purpose to the different spots mentioned. Besides which
there are all sorts of characteristic autographs (a capital one of
Pope); in short, nothing is wanting that the most unlimited expense
(Mr. Holloway told me that his employer, a great city merchant of
unbounded riches, constantly urged him to spare no expense to
procure everything that money would buy), added to taste, skill, and
experience, could accomplish. Of course the number of proper names
and names of places have been one motive for conferring upon my book
an honor of which I never dreamt; but there is, besides, an
enthusiasm for my writings on the part of Mrs. Dillon, the lady of
the possessor, for whom it is destined as a birthday gift. Now what
I have to ask of you is to procure for Mr. Holloway as many
autographs and portraits as you can of the American writers whom I
have named,--dear Dr. Holmes, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier,
Prescott, Ticknor. If any of them would add a line or two of their
writing to their names, it would be a favor, and if; being about it,
they would send two other plain autographs, for I have heard of two
other copies in course of illustration, and expect to be applied to
by their proprietors every day. Mr. Holloway wrote to some trade
connection in Philadelphia, but probably because he applied to the
wrong place and the wrong person, and because he limited his
correspondent to time, obtained no results. If there be a print of
Professor Longfellow's house, so much the better, or any other
autographs of Americans named in my book. Forgive this trouble, dear
friend. You will probably see the work when you come to London in
the spring, and then you will understand the interest that I take
in it as a great book of art. Also my dear old friend, Lady Morley
(Gibbon's correspondent), who at the age of eighty-three is caught
by new books and is as enthusiastic as a girl, has commissioned me
to inquire about your new authoress, the writer of ----, who she is
and all about her. For my part, I have not finished the book yet,
and never shall. Besides my own utter dislike to its painfulness,
its one-sidedness, and its exaggeration, I observe that the sort of
popularity which it has obtained in England, and probably in
America, is decidedly _bad_, of the sort which cannot and does not
last,--a cry which is always essentially one-sided and commonly
wrong....

Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours,

M.R.M.

October 5, 1852.

DEAREST MR. FIELDS: You will think that I persecute you, but I find
that Mr. Dillon, for whom Mr. Holloway is illustrating my
Recollections so splendidly, means to send the volumes to the binder
on the 1st of November. I write therefore to beg, in case of your
not having yet sent off the American autographs and portraits, that
they may be forwarded direct to Mr. Holloway, 25 Bedford Street,
Covent Garden, London. It is very foolish not to wait until all the
materials are collected, but it is meant as an offering to Mrs.
Dillon, and I suppose there is some anniversary in the way. Mr.
Dillon is a great lover and preserver of fine engravings; his
collection, one of the finest private collections in the world, is
estimated at sixty thousand pounds. He is a friend of dear Mr.
Bennoch's, who, when I told him the compliment that had been paid to
my work by a great city man, immediately said it could be nobody but
Mr. Dillon. I have twice seen Mr. Bennoch within the last ten days,
once with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thompson, your own Boston artist, whom
I liked much, and who gave me the great pleasure of talking of you
and of dear Mr. and Mrs. W----, last time with his own good and
charming wife and ----. Only think of ----'s saying that
Shakespeare, if he had lived now, would have been thought nothing
of, and this rather as a compliment to the age than not! But, if you
remember, he printed amended words to the air of "Drink to me only."
Ah, dear me, I suspect that both William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson
will survive him; don't you? Nevertheless he is better than might be
predicated from that observation.

All my domestic news is bad enough. My poor pretty pony keeps his
bed in the stable, with a violent attack of influenza, and Sam and
Fanchon spend three parts of their time in nursing him. Moreover we
have had such rains here that the Lodden has overflowed its banks,
and is now covering the water meadows, and almost covering the lower
parts of the lanes. Adieu, dearest friend.

Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, October 13, 1852.

More than one letter of mine, dearest friend, crossed yours, for
which I cannot sufficiently thank you. Nobody can better understand
than I do, how very, very glad your own people, and all the good
city, must feel to get you back again,--I trust not to keep; for in
spite of sea-sickness, that misery which during the summer I have
contrived to feel on land, I still hope that we shall have you here
again in the spring. I am impatiently waiting the arrival of
portraits and autographs, and if they do not come in time to bind, I
shall charge Mr. Holloway to contrive that they may be pasted with
the copy of my Recollections to which Mr. Dillon is paying so high
and so costly a compliment. Now I must tell you some news.

First let me say that there is an admirable criticism in one of the
numbers of the Nonconformist, edited by Edward Miall, one of the new
members of Parliament, and certainly the most able of the dissenting
organs, on our favorite poet, Dr. Holmes. Also I have a letter from
Dr. Robert Dickson, of Hertford Street, May Fair, one of the highest
and most fashionable London physicians, respecting my book, liking
Dr. Holmes better than anybody for the very qualities for which he
would himself choose to be preferred, originality and justness of
thought, admirable fineness and propriety of diction, and a power of
painting by words, very rare in any age, and rarest of the rare in
_this_, when vagueness and obscurity mar so much that is high and
pure. I shall keep this letter to _show_ Dr. Holmes, tell him with
my affectionate love. If it were not written on the thickest paper
ever seen, and as huge as it is thick, I would send it; but I'll
keep it for him against he comes to claim it. The description of
spring is, Dr. Dickson says, remarkable for originality and truth.
He thanks me for those poems of Dr. Holmes as if I had written them.
Now be free to tell him all this. Of course you have told Mr.
Hawthorne of the highly eulogistic critique on the "Blithedale
Romance" in the Times, written, I believe, by Mr. Willmott, to whom
I lent the veritable copy received from the author. Another thing
let me say, that I have been reading with the greatest pleasure some
letters on African trees copied from the New York Tribune into
Bentley's Miscellany, and no doubt by Mr. Bayard Taylor. Our chief
London news is that Mrs. Browning's cough came on so violently, in
consequence of the sudden setting in of cold weather, that they are
off for a week or two to Paris, then to Florence, Rome, and Naples,
and back here in the summer. Her father still refuses to open a
letter or to hear her name. Mrs. Southey, suffering also from
chest-complaint, has shut herself up till June. Poor Anne Hatton,
who was betrothed to Thomas Davis, and was supposed to be in a
consumption, is recovering, they say, under the advice of a
clairvoyante. Most likely a broken vessel has healed on the lungs,
or perhaps an abscess. Be what it may, the consequence is happy, for
she is a lovely creature and the only joy of a fond mother. Alfred
Tennyson's boy was christened the other day by the name of Hallam
Tennyson, Mr. Hallam standing to it in person. This is just as it
should be on all sides, only that Arthur Hallam would have been a
prettier name. You know that Arthur Hallam was the lost friend of
the "In Memoriam," and engaged to Tennyson's sister, and that after
his death, and even after her marrying another man, Mr. Hallam makes
her a large allowance.

We have just escaped a signal misfortune; my dear pretty pony has
been upon the point of death with influenza. Would not you have been
sorry if that pony had died? He has, however, recovered under Sam's
care and skill, and the first symptom of convalescence was his
neighing to Sam through the window. You will have found out that I
too am better. I trust to be stronger when you come again, well
enough to introduce you to Mr. Harness, whom we are expecting here
next month. God bless you, my dear and kind friend. I send this
through dear Mr Bennoch, whom I like better and better; so I do Mrs.
Bennoch, and everybody who knows and loves you. Ever, my dear Mr.
Fields,

Your faithful and affectionate friend, M.R.M.

P.S.--October 17. I have kept this letter open till now, and I am
glad I did so. Acting upon the hint you gave of Mr. De Quincey's
kind feeling, I wrote to him, and yesterday I had a charming letter
from his daughter, saying how much her father was gratified by mine,
that he had already written an answer, amounting to a good-sized
pamphlet, but that when it would be finished was doubtful, so she
sent hers as a precursor.

Swallowfield, November 11, 1852.

I write, dearest friend, and although the packet which you had the
infinite goodness to send, has not reached me yet, and may not
possibly before my letter goes,--so uncertain is our railway,--yet
I will write because our excellent friend, Mr. Bennoch, says that he
has sent it off.... You will understand that I am even more obliged
by your goodness about Mr. Dillon's book than by any of the thousand
obligations to myself only. Besides my personal interest, as so
great a compliment to my own work, Mr. Dillon appears to be a most
interesting person. He is a friend of Mr. Bennoch's, from whom I had
his history, one most honorable to him, and he has written to me
since I wrote to you and proposes to come and see me. _You_ must see
him when you come to England, and must see his collection of
engravings. Would not dear Dr. Holmes have a sympathy with Mr.
Dillon? Have you such fancies in America? They are not common even
here; but Miss Skerrett (the Queen's factotum) tells me that the
most remarkable book in Windsor Castle is a De Grammont most richly
and expensively illustrated by George the Fourth, who, with all his
sins as a monarch, was the only sovereign since the Stuarts of any
literary taste.

Here is your packet! O my dear, dear friend, how shall I thank you
half enough! I shall send the parcels to-morrow morning, the very
first thing, to Mr. Holloway. The work is at the binder's, but
fly-leaves have been left for the American packet of which I felt so
sure, although even I could hardly foresee its value. One or two
duplicates I have kept. Tell Mr. Hawthorne that I shall make a dozen
people rich and happy by his autograph, and tell Dr. Holmes I could
not find it in my heart to part with the "Mary" stanza. Never was a
writer who possessed more perfectly the art of doing great things
greatly and small things gracefully. Love to Mr. Hawthorne and to
him.

Poor Daniel Webster! or rather poor America! Rich as she is, she
cannot afford the loss, the greatest the world has known since our
Sir Robert. But what a death-bed, and what a funeral! How noble an
end of that noble life! I feel it the more, hearing and reading so
much about the Duke's funeral, which by dint of the delay will not
cause the slightest real feeling, but will be attended just like
every show, and yet as a show will be gloomy and poor. How much
better to have laid him simply here at Strathfieldsaye, and left it
as a place of pilgrimage,--as Strathfield will be,--although between
the two men, in my mind, there was no comparison; the one was a
genius, the other mere soldier,--pure physical force measured with
intellect the richest and the proudest. I have twenty letters
speaking of him as one of the greatest among the statesmen of the
age. The Times only refuses to do him justice. But when did the
Times do justice to any one? Look how it talks of our Emperor.

Your friend Bayard Taylor came to see me a fortnight ago, just
before he sailed on his tour round the world. I told him the first
of Bentley's reprinting his letters from the New York Tribune; he
had not heard a word of it. He seemed an admirable person, and it is
good to have such travellers to follow with one's heart and one's
earnest good wishes.

Also I have had two packets,--one from Mrs. Sparks, with a nice
letter, and some fresh and glorious autumnal flowers, and a
collection of autumn leaves from your glorious forests. I have
written to thank her. She seems full of heart, and she says that she
drove into Boston on purpose to see you, but missed you. When you do
meet, tell me about her. Also, I have through you, dear friend, a
most interesting book from Mr. Ware. To him, also, I have written,
but tell him how much I feel and prize his kindness, all the more
welcome for coming from a kinsman of dear Mrs. W----. Tell her and
her excellent husband that they cannot think of us oftener or more
warmly than we think of them. O, how I should like to visit you at
Boston! But I should have your malady by the way, and not your
strength to stand it....

God bless you, my dear and excellent friend! I seem to have a
thousand things to say to you, but the post is going, and a whole
sheet of paper would not hold my thanks.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, November 25, 1852.

My Dear Friend: Your most kind and welcome letter arrived to-day,
two days after the papers, for which I thank you much. Still more do
I thank you for that kind and charming letter, and for its
enclosures. The anonymous poem [it was by Dr. T.W. Parsons] is far
finer than anything that has been written on the death of the Duke
of Wellington, as indeed it was a far finer subject. May I inquire
the name of the writer? Mr. Everett's speech also is superb, and how
very much I prefer the Marshfield funeral in its sublime simplicity
to the tawdry pageantry here! I have had fifty letters from persons
who saw the funeral in St. Paul's, and seen as many who saw that or
the procession, and it is strange that the papers have omitted alike
the great successes and the great failures. My young neighbor, a
captain in the Grenadier Guards (the Duke's regiment), saw the
uncovering the car which had been hidden by the drapery, and was to
have been a great effect, and he says it was exactly what is
sometimes seen in a theatre when one scene is drawn up too soon and
the other is not ready. Carpenters and undertaker's men were on all
parts of the car, and the draperies and ornaments were everywhere
but in their places. Again, the procession waited upwards of an hour
at the cathedral door, because the same people had made no provision
for taking the coffin from the car; again, the sunlight was let into
St. Paul's, mingling most discordantly with the gas, and the naked
wood of screens and benches and board beams disfigured the grand
entrance. In three months' interval they had not time! On the other
hand, the strong points were the music, the effect of which is said
to have been unrivalled; the actual performance of the service,--my
friend Dean Milman is renowned for his manner of reading the funeral
service, he officiated at the burial of Mrs. Lockhart (Sir Walter's
favorite daughter),--and none who were present could speak of it
without tears; the clerical part of the procession, which was a real
and visible mourning pageant in its flowing robes of white with
black bands and sashes; the living branches of laurel and cypress
amongst the mere finery; and, above all, the hushed silence of the
people, always most and best impressed by anything that appeals to
the imagination or the heart.

I suppose you will have seen how England is flooded, and you will
like to hear that this tiny speck has escaped. The Lodden is over
the park, and turns the beautiful water meadows down to
Strathfieldsaye into a no less beautiful lake, two or three times a
week; but then it subsides as quickly as it rises, so there is none
of the lying under water which results in all sorts of pestilential
exhalations, and this cottage is lifted out of every bad influence,
nay, a kind neighbor having had my lane scraped, I walk dry-shod
every afternoon a mile and a half, which is more than I ever
expected to compass again, and for which I am most thankful. But we
have had our own troubles. K---- has lost her father. He was seized
with paralysis and knew nobody, so they desired her not to come, and
Sam went alone to the funeral. After all, _this_ is her home, and
she has pretty well got over her affliction, and the pony is well
again, and strong enough to draw you and me in the spring,--for I am
looking forward to good and happy days again when you shall return
to England.

Your magnificent present for Mr. Dillon's book was quite in time,
dear friend. I had warned them to leave room, and Mr. Holloway and
the binders contrived it admirably. They are most grateful for your
kindness, and most gratefully shall I receive the promised volumes.
I have not yet got "the pamphlet," and am much afraid it is buried
in what Miss De Quincey calls her "father's chaos"; but I have
charming letters from her, and am heartily glad that I wrote. You
have the way (like Mr. Bennoch) of making friends still better
friends, and bringing together those who, without you, would have
had no intercourse. It is the very finest of all the fine arts. Tell
dear Dr. Holmes that the more I hear of him, the more I feel how
inadequate has been all that I have said to express my own feelings;
and tell President Sparks that his charming wife ought to have
received a long letter from me at the same moment with yourself. Mr.
Hawthorne's new work will be a real treat. Tell me if Mr. Bennoch
has sent you some stanzas on Ireland, which have more of the very
highest qualities of Beranger than I have ever seen in English
verse. We who love him shall have to be very proud of dear Mr.
Bennoch. Tell me, too, if our solution of the line, "A
fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind," was the first; and why the
new President is at once called General and talked of as a civilian.
The other President goes on nobly, does he not?

Say everything for me to dear Mr. and Mrs. W---- and all friends.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, December 14, 1852.

O my very dear friend, how much too kind you are to me, who have
nothing to give you in return but affection and gratitude! Mr.
Bennett brought me your beautiful book on Saturday, and you may
think how heartily we wished that you had been here also. But you
will come this spring, will you not? I earnestly hope nothing will
come in the way of that happiness. Before leaving the subject of our
good little friend, let me say that, talking over our own best
authors and your De Quincey (N.B. The pamphlet has not arrived yet,
I fear it is forever buried in De Quincey's "chaos"),--talking of
these things, we both agreed that there was another author, probably
little known in America, who would be quite worthy of a reprint,
William Hazlitt. Is there any complete edition of his Lectures and
Essays? I should think they would come out well, now that Thackeray
is giving his Lectures. I know that Charles Lamb and Talfourd
thought Hazlitt not only the most brilliant, but the soundest of all
critics. Then his Life of Napoleon is capital, that is, capital for
an English life; the only way really to know the great man is to
read him in the _mémoires_ of his own ministers, lieutenants, and
servants; for _he was_ a hero to his _valet de chambre_, the
greatness was so real that it would bear close looking into. And our
Emperor, I have just had a letter from Osborne, from Marianne
Skerrett, describing the arrival of Count Walewski under a royal
salute to receive the Queen's recognition of Napoleon III. She,
Marianne, says, "How great a man that, is, and how like a fairy tale
the whole story!" She adds, that, seeing much of Louis Philippe, she
never could abide him, he was so cunning and so false, not cunning
enough to hide the falseness! Were not you charmed with the bits of
sentiment and feeling that come out all through our hero's Southern
progress? Always one finds in him traits of a gracious and graceful
nature, far too frequent and too spontaneous to be the effect of
calculation. It is a comfort to find, in spite of our delectable
press, ministers are wise enough to understand that our policy is
peace, and not only peace but cordiality. To quarrel with France
would be almost as great a sin as to quarrel with America. What a
set of fools our great ladies are! I had hoped better things of Lord
Carlisle, but to find that long list at Stafford House in female
parliament assembled, echoing the absurdities of Exeter Hall,
leaving their own duties and the reserve which is the happy
privilege of our sex to dictate to a great nation on a point which
all the world knows to be its chief difficulty, is enough to make
one ashamed of the title of Englishwoman. I know a great many of
these committee ladies, and in most of them I trace that desire to
follow the fashion, and concert with duchesses, which is one of the
besetting sins of the literary circles in London. One name did
surprise me, ----, considering that one of her husband's happiest
bits, in the book of his that will live, was the subscription for
sending flannel waistcoats to the negroes in the West Indies; and
that in this present book a certain Mrs. Jellyby is doing just what
his wife is doing at Stafford House!

Even if I had not had my earnest thanks to send you, I should have
written this week to beg you to convey a message to Mr. Hawthorne.
Mr. Chorley writes to me, "You will be interested to hear that a
Russian literary man of eminence was so much attracted to the 'House
of the Seven Gables' by the review in the Athenaeum, as to have
translated it into Russian and published it feuilletonwise in a
newspaper." I know you will have the goodness to tell Mr. Hawthorne
this, with my love. Mr. Chorley saw the entrance of the Empereur
into the Tuileries. He looked radiant. The more I read that elegy on
the death of Daniel Webster, the more I find to admire. It is as
grand as a dirge upon an organ. Love to the dear W----s and to Dr.
Holmes.

Ever, dearest Mr. Fields, most gratefully yours, M.R.M.

1853

Swallowfield, January 5, 1853.

Your most welcome letter, my very dear friend, arrived to-day, and
I write not only to acknowledge that, and your constant kindness,
but because, if, as I believe, Mr. Bennoch has told you of my
mischance, you will be glad to hear from my own hand that I am
going on well. Last Monday fortnight I was thrown violently from my
own pony-chaise upon the hard road in Lady Russell's park. No bones
were broken, but the nerves of one side were so terribly bruised
and lacerated, and the shock to the system was so great, that even
at the end of ten days Mr. May could not satisfy himself, without a
most minute re-examination, that neither fracture nor dislocation
had taken place, and I am writing to you at this moment with my
left arm bound tightly to my body and no power whatever of raising
either foot from the ground. The only parts of me that have escaped
uninjured are my head and my right hand, and this is much. Moreover
Mr. May says that, although the cure will be tedious, he sees no
cause to doubt my recovering altogether my former condition, so
that we may still hope to drive about together when you come back
to England....

I wrote I think, dearest friend, to thank you heartily for the
beautiful and interesting book called "The Homes of American
Authors." How comfortably they are housed, and how glad I am to
find that, owing to Mr. Hawthorne's being so near the new
President, and therefore keeping up the habit of friendship and
intercourse, the want of which habit so frequently brings college
friendship to an end, he is likely to enter into public life. It
will be an excellent thing for his future books,--the fault of all
his writings, in spite of their great beauty, being a want of
reality, of the actual, healthy, every-day life which is a
necessary element in literature. All the great poets have
it,--Homer, Shakespeare, Scott. It will be the very best school for
our pet poet.

Nobody under the sun has so much right as you have to see Mr.
Dillon's book, which is in six quarto volumes, not one. Our dear
friend Mr. Bennoch knows him, and tells me to-day that Mr. Dillon
has invited him to go and look at it. He has just received it from
the binders. Of course Mr. Bennoch will introduce you. I was so
glad to read what looked like a renewed pledge of your return to
England.

Mr. Bentley has sent me three several applications for a second
series. At present Mr. May forbids all composition, but I suppose
the thing will be done. I shall introduce some chapters on French
poetry and literature. At this moment I am in full chase of Casimer
Delavigne's _ballads_. He thought so little of them that he
published very few in his Poésies,--one in a note,--and several of
the very finest not at all. They are scattered about here and
there. ---- has reproduced two (which I had) in his Memories; but I
want all that can be found, especially one of which the refrain is,
"Chez l'Ambassadere de France." I was such a fool, when I read it
six or seven years ago, as not to take a copy. Do you think Mr.
Hector Bossange could help me to that, or to any others not printed
in the Memories? ...Of course I shall devote one chapter to _our_
Emperor. Ah, how much better is such a government as his than one
which every four years causes a sort of moral earthquake; or one
like ours, where whole sessions are passed in squabbling! The loss
of his place has saved Disraeli's life, for everybody said he could
not have survived three months' badgering in the House. A very
intimate friend of his (Mr. Henry Drummond, the very odd, very
clever member for Surrey) says that he had certainly broken a
bloodvessel. One piece of news I have heard to-day from Miss
Goldsmid, that the Jews are certain now to gain their point and be
admitted to the House of Commons; for my part, I hold that every
one has a claim to his civil rights, were he Mahometan or Hindoo,
and I rejoice that poor old Sir Isaac, the real author of the
movement, will probably live to see it accomplished. The thought of
succeeding at last in the pursuit to which he has devoted half his
life has quite revived him.

And now Heaven bless you, my very dear friend. None of the poems on
Wellington are to be compared to that dirge on Webster. I rejoice
that my article should have pleased his family. The only bit of my
new book that I have written is a paper on Taylor and Stoddard. Say
everything for me to the Ticknors and Nortons and your own people,
the W----s.

Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, February 1, 1853.

Ah, my dear friend! ask Dr. Holmes what these severe bruises and
lacerations of the nerves of the principal joints are, and he will
tell you that they are much more slow and difficult of cure, as well
as more painful, than half a dozen broken bones. It is now above six
weeks since that accident, and although the shoulder is going on
favorably, there is still a total loss of muscular power in the
lower limbs. I am just lifted out of bed and wheeled to the
fireside, and then at night wheeled back and lifted into
bed,--without the power of standing for a moment, or of putting one
foot before the other, or of turning in bed. Mr. May says that warm
weather will probably do much for me, but that till then I must be a
prisoner to my room, for that if rheumatism supervenes upon my
present inability, there will be no chance of getting rid of it. So
"patience and shuffle the cards," as a good man, much in my state,
the contented Marquess, says in Don Quixote.... I assure you I am
not out of spirits; indeed, people are so kind to me that it would
be the basest of all ingratitude if I were not cheerful as well as
thankful. I think that in a letter which you must have received by
this time, I told you how it came about, and thanked you for the
comely book which shows how cosily America lodges my brethren of the
quill. Dr. Holmes ought to have been there, and Dr. Parsons, but
their time will come and must. Nothing gratifies me more than to
find how many strangers, writing to me of my Recollections, mention
Dr. Holmes, classing him sometimes with Thomas Davis, sometimes with
Praed. If I write another series of Recollections, as, when Mr. May
will let me, I suppose I must, I shall certainly include Dr.
Parsons....