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.