something about. Parker sent me down a copy 'from the Author' for which
I hereby thank you. If you believe my word, you already know my
Estimation of so much that is in it: you have already guessed that I
should have made a different selection from the great Volume which is
now in Tatters. As I differ in Taste from the world, however, quite as
much as from you, I do not know but you have done very much better in
choosing as you have; the few people I have seen are very much pleased
with it, the Cowells at Oxford delighted. A Bookseller there sold all
his Copies the first day they came down: and even in Bath a Bookseller
(and not one of the Principal) told me a fortnight ago he had sold some
twenty copies. I have not been in Town since it came out: and have now
so little correspondence with literati I can't tell you about them.
There was a very unfair Review in the _Athenaeum_; which is the only
Literary Paper I see: but I am told there are laudatory ones in
_Examiner_ and _Spectator_.
I was five weeks at Oxford, visiting the Cowells in just the same way
that I am visiting my Sister here. I also liked Oxford greatly: but not
so well I think as Bath: which is so large and busy that one is drowned
in it as much as in London. There are often concerts, etc., for those
who like them; I only go to a shilling affair that comes off every
Saturday at what they call the Pump Room. On these occasions there is
sometimes some Good Music if not excellently played. Last Saturday I
heard a fine Trio of Beethoven. Mendelssohn's things are mostly tiresome
to me. I have brought my old Handel Book here and recreate myself now
and then with pounding one of the old Giant's Overtures on my sister's
Piano, as I used to do on that Spinnet at my Cottage. As to Operas, and
Exeter Halls, I have almost done with them: they give me no pleasure, I
scarce know why.
I suppose there is no chance of your being over in England this year,
and perhaps as little Chance of my being in Italy. All I can say is, the
latter is not impossible, which I suppose I may equally say of the
former. But pray write me. You can always direct to me at Donne's, 12,
St. James' Square, or at Rev. G. Crabbe's, Bredfield, Woodbridge. Either
way the letter will soon reach me. Write soon, Frederic, and let me hear
how you and yours are: and don't wait, as you usually do, for some
inundation of the Arno to set your pen agoing. Write ever so shortly and
whatever-about-ly. I have no news to tell you of Friends. I saw old
Spedding in London; only doubly calm after the death of a Niece he
dearly loved and whose deathbed at Hastings he had just been waiting
upon. Harry Lushington wrote a martial Ode on seeing the Guards march
over Waterloo Bridge towards the East: I did not see it, but it was much
admired and handed about, I believe. And now my paper is out: and I am
going through the rain (it is said to rain very much here) to my
Sister's. So Goodbye, and write to me, as I beg you, in reply to this
long if not very interesting letter.
FOOTNOTES:
[124] "Fitz's" remarks on Landor's judgment of "Pictures, Books and Men"
are very amusing; for they have been often repeated in regard to his own
on all these subjects. In fact the two, though FitzGerald was not so
childish as Landor, had much in common.
[125] The curious eulogy--preferring it to Oxford as being "large and
busy" enough to "drown one as much" as London--is also very
characteristic of FitzGerald. You can be alone in the country _and_ in a
large town--hardly in a small one.
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE (1809-1893)
To what has been said before of this remarkably gifted lady
little need be added. The two letters which follow, derived
from _Further Records_ (London, 1890), were written rather
late in her life, but are characteristic, in ways partly
coinciding, partly divergent, of her strong intellect[126]
and her powers of expression. The note to the ghost-story
leaves open the question whether Fanny did or did not know
the accepted doctrine that the master and mistress of a
haunted house are exempt from actual haunting. The "whiff of
grape-shot" (as Carlyle might have called it) on the
"Bakespearian" absurdity is one of the best things on the
subject that the present writer, in a long and wide
experience, has come across.
45. TO H---- [EXTRACT]
YORK FARM, BRANCHTOWN,
PHILADELPHIA, Monday May 18th, 1874.
One evening that my maid was sitting in the room from which she could
see the whole of the staircase and upper landing, she saw the door of my
bedroom open, and an elderly woman in a flannel dressing-gown, with a
bonnet on her head, and a candle in her hand come out, walk the whole
length of the passage, and return again into the bedroom, shutting the
door after her. My maid knew that I was in the drawing-room below in my
usual black velvet evening dress; moreover, the person she had seen bore
no resemblance either in figure or face to me, or to any member of my
household, which consisted of three young servant women besides herself,
and a negro man-servant. My maid was a remarkably courageous and
reasonable person, and, though very much startled (for she went directly
upstairs and found no one in the rooms), she kept her counsel, and
mentioned the circumstance to nobody, though, as she told me afterwards,
she was so afraid lest I should have a similar visitation, that she was
strongly tempted to ask Dr. W----'s advice as to the propriety of
mentioning her experience to me. She refrained from doing so, however,
and some time later, as she was sitting in the dusk in the same room,
the man-servant came in to light the gas and made her start, observing
which, he said, "Why, lors, Miss Ellen, you jump as if you had seen a
ghost." In spite of her late experience, Ellen very gravely replied,
"Nonsense, William, how can you talk such stuff! You don't believe in
such things as ghosts, do you?" "Well," he said, "I don't know just so
sure what to say to that, seeing it's very well known there was a ghost
in this house." "Pshaw!" said Ellen. "Whose ghost?" "Well, poor Mrs.
R----'s ghost, it's very well known, walks about this house, and no
great wonder either, seeing how miserably she lived and died here." To
Ellen's persistent expressions of contemptuous incredulity, he went on,
"Well, Miss Ellen, all I can say is, several girls" (_i.e._
maid-servants) "have left this house on account of it"; and there the
conversation ended. Some days after this, Ellen coming into the
drawing-room to speak to me, stopped abruptly at the door, and stood
there, having suddenly recognized in a portrait immediately opposite to
it, and which was that of the dead mistress of the house, the face of
the person she had seen come out of my bedroom. I think this a very tidy
ghost story; and I am bound to add, as a proper commentary on it, that I
have never inhabited a house which affected me with a sense of such
intolerable melancholy gloominess as this; without any assignable reason
whatever, either in its situation or any of its conditions. My maid, to
the present day, persists in every detail (and without the slightest
variation) of this experience of hers, absolutely rejecting my
explanation of it; that she had heard, without paying any particular
attention to it, some talk among the other servants about the ghost in
the house, which had remained unconsciously to her in her memory, and
reproduced itself in this morbid nervous effect of her imagination.
46. To H---- [EXTRACT]
YORK FARM, Sunday, December 6th, 1874.
My dearest H----,
It is not possible for me to feel the slightest interest in the sort of
literary feat which I consider writing upon "who wrote Shakespeare?" to
be. I was very intimate with Harness, Milman, Dyce, Collier--all
Shakespearian editors, commentators, and scholars--and this absurd
theory about Bacon, which was first broached a good many years ago,
never obtained credit for a moment with them; nor did they ever
entertain for an instant a doubt that the plays attributed to William
Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon were really written by him. Now I am
intimately acquainted and in frequent communication with William Donne,
Edward FitzGerald, and James Spedding, all thorough Shakespeare
scholars, and the latter a man who has just published a work upon Bacon,
which has been really the labour of his life; none of these men,
competent judges of the matter, ever mentions the question of "Who wrote
Shakespeare?" except as a ludicrous thing to be laughed at, and I think
they may be trusted to decide whether it is or is not so.
I have a slight feeling of disgust at the attack made thus on the
personality of my greatest mental benefactor; and consider the whole
thing a misapplication, not to say waste, of time and ingenuity that
might be better employed. As I regard the memory of Shakespeare with
love, veneration, and gratitude, and am proud and happy to be his
countrywoman, considering it among the privileges of my English birth, I
resent the endeavour to prove that he deserved none of these feelings,
but was a mere literary impostor. I wonder the question had any interest
for you, for I should not have supposed you imagined Shakespeare had not
written his own plays, Irish though you be. Do you remember the
servant's joke in the farce of "High Life Below Stairs" where the cook
asks, "Who wrote Shakespeare?" and one of the others answers, with, at
any rate, partial plausibility, "Oh! why, Colley Cibber, to be sure!"
FOOTNOTES:
[126] Sometimes one thinks her the wisest woman who ever lived. "Nothing
seems stranger than the delusions of other people _when they have ceased
to be our own_" suggests La Rochefoucauld and comes near to Solomon; but
whosoever may have anticipated or prompted her, he is not at the moment
within my memory. But she is often not wise at all: and even her good
wits are not always left unaffected by her bad temper. It is really
amusing to read Mrs. Carlyle's rather mischievous account of Mrs. Butler
(F. K.'s married name) calling and carrying a whip "to keep her hand
in": and _then_ to come on F. K.'s waspish resentment at these words,
when they were published.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
(1811-1863)
So much has been said of Thackeray's letter-writing powers
in the Introduction that not much need be added here on the
general side. But a few words may be allowed on what we may
call the _conditioning_ circumstances which affected these
powers, and made the result so peculiar. Except in Swift's
case--a thing piquant in itself considering the injustice of
the later writer to the earlier--hardly any body of letters
exhibits these conditions so obviously and in so varied a
fashion. In both there was the utmost intellectual satire
combined with the utmost tenderness of feeling. Thackeray of
course, partly from nature and partly from the influence of
time, did not mask his tenderness and double-edge his
severity with roughness and coarseness. But the combination
was intrinsically not very different. There has also to be
taken into account in Thackeray's case domestic
sorrow--coming quickly and life-long after it began; means
long restricted (partly by his own folly but not so more
tolerable); recognition of genius almost as long deferred;
and yet other "maladies of the soul." The result was a
constant ferment, of which the letters are in a way the
relieving valve or tap. That they are often apparently
light-hearted has nothing surprising in it: for when a man
habitually "eats his heart" it naturally becomes
lighter--till there is nothing of it left.
He is, however, not easy to "sample," there being, as has
been said, no authorised collection to draw upon and other
difficulties in the way. What follows may serve for fault
of a better: and the _Spectator_ letter-pastiche referred to
above under Walpole, will complete it perhaps more
appropriately than may at first appear. For while the latter
is quite Addisonian, not merely in dress but in body, its
soul is blended of two natures--the model's and the
artist's--in the rather uncanny fashion which makes _Esmond_
as a whole so marvellous, except to those stalwarts who hold
that, as nobody before the twentieth century knew anything
about anything, Thackeray could not know about the
eighteenth.
47. TO MISS LUCY BAXTER
WASHINGTON, Saturday
Feb. 19. 1853.
My dear little kind Lucy:
I began to write you a letter in the railroad yesterday, but it bumped
with more than ordinary violence, and I was forced to give up the
endeavour. I did not know how ill Lucy was at that time, only
remembered that I owed her a letter for that pretty one you wrote me
at Philadelphia, when Sarah was sick and you acted as her Secretary.
Is there going to be always Somebody sick at the brown house? If I
were to come there now, I wonder should I be allowed to come and see
you in your night-cap--I wonder even do you wear a night-cap? I should
step up, take your little hand, which I daresay is lying outside the
coverlet, give it a little shake; and then sit down and talk all sorts
of stuff and nonsense to you for half an hour; but very kind and
gentle, not so as to make you laugh too much or your little back ache
any more. Did I not tell you to leave off that beecely jimnayshum? I
am always giving fine advice to girls in brown houses, and they
always keep on never minding. It is not difficult to write lying in
bed--this is written not in bed, but on a sofa. If you write the
upright hand it's quite easy; slanting-dicular is not so pleasant,
though. I have just come back from Baltimore and find your mother's
and sister's melancholy letters. I thought to myself, perhaps I might
see them on this very sofa and pictured to myself their 2 kind faces.
Mr. Crampton was going to ask them to dinner, I had made arrangements
to get Sarah nice partners at the ball--Why did dear little Lucy
tumble down at the Gymnasium? Many a pretty plan in life tumbles down
so, Miss Lucy, and falls on its back. But the good of being ill is to
find how kind one's friends are; of being at a pinch (I do not know
whether I may use the expression--whether "pinch" is an indelicate
word in this country; it is used by our old writers to signify
poverty, narrow circumstances, res angusta)--the good of being poor, I
say, is to find friends to help you, I have been both ill and poor,
and found, thank God, such consolation in those evils; and I daresay
at this moment, now you are laid up, you are the person of the most
importance in the whole house--Sarah is sliding about the room with
cordials in her hands and eyes; Libby is sitting quite disconsolate by
the bed (poor Libby! when one little bird fell off the perch, I wonder
the other did not go up and fall off, too!) the expression of sympathy
in Ben's eyes is perfectly heart-rending; even George is quiet; and
your Father, Mother and Uncle (all 3 so notorious for their violence
of temper and language) have actually forgotten to scold. "Ach, du
lieber Himmel," says Herr Strumpf--isn't his name Herr Strumpf?--the
German master, "die schoene Fraeulein ist krank!" and bursts into tears
on the Pianofortyfier's shoulder when they hear the news (through his
sobs) from black John. We have an Ebony femme de chambre here; when I
came from Baltimore just now I found her in the following costume and
attitude standing for her picture to Mr. Crowe. She makes the beds
with that pipe in her mouf and leaves it about in the rooms. Wouldn't
she have been a nice lady's-maid for your mother and Miss Bally
Saxter?
But even if Miss Lucy had not had her fall, I daresay there would have
been no party. Here is a great snow-storm falling, though yesterday
was as bland and bright as May (English May, I mean) and how could we
have lionized Baltimore, and gone to Mount Vernon, and taken our
diversion in the snow? There would have been nothing for it but to
stay in this little closet of a room, where there is scarce room for 6
people, and where it is not near so comfortable as the brown house.
Dear old b.h., shall I see it again soon? I shall not go farther than
Charleston, and Savannah probably, and then I hope I shall get another
look at you all again before I commence farther wanderings--O, stop! I
didn't tell you why I was going to write you--well, I went on Thursday
to dine with Governor and Mrs. Fish, a dinner in honor of me--and
before I went I arrayed myself in a certain white garment of which the
collar-button-holes had been altered, and I thought of the kind,
friendly little hand that had done that deed for me; and when the
Fisheses told me how they lived in the Second Avenue (I had forgotten
all about 'em)--their house and the house opposite came back to my
mind, and I liked them 50 times better for living near some friends of
mine. She is a nice woman, Madam Fish, besides; and didn't I abuse you
all to her? Good bye, dear little Lucy--I wish the paper wasn't full.
But I have been sitting half an hour by the poor young lady's sofa,
and talking stuff and nonsense, haven't I? And now I get up, and shake
your hand with a God bless you! and walk down stairs, and please to
give everybody my kindest regards, and remember that I am truly your
friend.
W. M. T.
48.
THE "TRUMPET" COFFEE-HOUSE,
WHITEHALL.
'Mr Spectator--
'I am a gentleman but little acquainted with the town, though I have had
a university education, and passed some years serving my country abroad,
where my name is better known than in the coffee-houses and St. James's.
'Two years since my uncle died, leaving me a pretty estate in the county
of Kent; and being at Tunbridge Wells last summer, after my mourning was
over, and on the look-out, if truth must be told, for some young lady
who would share with me the solitude of my great Kentish house, and be
kind to my tenantry (for whom a woman can do a great deal more good than
the best-intentioned man can), I was greatly fascinated by a young lady
of London, who was the toast of all the company at the Wells. Everyone
knows Saccharissa's beauty; and I think, Mr. Spectator, no one better
than herself.
'My table-book informs me that I danced no less than seven-and-twenty
sets with her at the assembly. I treated her to the fiddles twice. I was
admitted on several days to her lodging, and received by her with a
great deal of distinction, and, for a time, was entirely her slave. It
was only when I found, from common talk of the company at the Wells, and
from narrowly watching one, who I once thought of asking the most
sacred question a man can put to a woman, that I became aware how unfit
she was to be a country gentleman's wife; and that this fair creature
was but a heartless worldly jilt, playing with affections that she never
meant to return, and, indeed, incapable of returning them. 'Tis
admiration such women want, not love that touches them; and I can
conceive, in her old age, no more wretched creature than this lady will
be, when her beauty hath deserted her, when her admirers have left her,
and she hath neither friendship nor religion to console her.
'Business calling me to London, I went to St. James's Church last
Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour
during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she
flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I
was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever
I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still staring at
me. I fell in with her afterwards at Court, and at the playhouse; and
here nothing would satisfy her but she must elbow through the crowd and
speak to me, and invite me to the assembly, which she holds at her
house, nor very far from Ch--r--ng Cr--ss.
'Having made her a promise to attend, of course I kept my promise; and
found the young widow in the midst of a half-dozen of card-tables, and a
crowd of wits and admirers. I made the best bow I could, and advanced
towards her; and saw by a peculiar puzzled look in her face, though she
tried to hide her perplexity, that she had forgotten even my name.
'Her talk, artful as it was, convinced me that I had guessed aright. She
turned the conversation most ridiculously upon the spelling of names and
words; and I replied with as ridiculous, fulsome compliments as I could
pay her; indeed, one in which I compared her to an angel visiting the
sick-wells, went a little too far; nor should I have employed it, but
that the allusion came from the Second Lesson last Sunday, which we both
had heard, and I was pressed to answer her.
'Then she came to the question, which I knew was awaiting me, and asked
how I _spelt_ my name? "Madam," says I, turning on my heel, "I spell it
with the y." And so I left her, wondering at the light-heartedness of
the town-people, who forget and make friends so easily, and resolved to
look elsewhere for a partner for your constant reader.
'CYMON WYLDOATS.
'You know my real name, Mr. Spectator, in which there is no such a
letter as _hupsilon_. But if the lady, whom I have called Saccharissa,
wonders that I appear no more at the tea-tables, she is hereby
respectfully informed the reason y.'
CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)
There are few better examples by converse of the saying
(familiar in various forms and sometimes specially applied
to writing and answering letters) that it is only idle
people who have no time to do anything, than Dickens. He was
by no means long-lived: and for the last
three-fifths--practically the whole busy time--of his life,
he was one of the busiest of men. He wrote many universally
known books, and not a few, in some cases not so well known,
articles. He travelled a great deal; edited periodicals for
many years, taking that duty by no means in the spirit of
Olympian aloofness which some popular opinion connects with
editorship; only sometimes shirked society; and had all
sorts of miscellaneous occupations and avocations. His very
fancy for long walks might seem one of the least compatible
with letter-writing; yet a very large bulk of his letters
(by no means mainly composed of editorial ones) has been
published, and there are no doubt many unpublished. There
have been different opinions as to their comparative rank as
letters, but there can be no difference as to the curious
full-bloodedness and plenitude of life which, in this as in
all other divisions of his writing, characterises Dickens's
expression of his thoughts and feelings. Perhaps, as might
be generally though not universally expected, the comic ones
are the more delightful: at any rate they seem best worth
giving here. The first--to a schoolboy who had written to
him about _Nicholas Nickleby_--is quite charming; the
second, to the famous actor-manager who after being a
Londoner by birth and residence for half a century had just
retired, is almost Charles Lamb-like; and the third
deserved to have been put in the original mouth of Mrs.
Gamp![127]
49. TO MASTER HASTINGS HUGHES
DOUGHTY STREET, LONDON.
Dec. 12th. 1838.
Respected Sir,
I have given Squeers one cut on the neck and two on the head, at which
he appeared much surprised and began to cry, which, being a cowardly
thing, is just what I should have expected from him--wouldn't you?
I have carefully done what you told me in your letter about the lamb and
the two "sheeps" for the little boys. They have also had some good ale
and porter, and some wine. I am sorry you didn't say _what_ wine you
would like them to have. I gave them some sherry, which they liked very
much, except one boy, who was a little sick and choked a good deal. He
was rather greedy, and that's the truth, and I believe it went the wrong
way, which I say served him right, and I hope you will say so too.
Nicholas had his roast lamb, as you said he was to, but he could not eat
it all, and says if you do not mind his doing so he should like to have
the rest hashed to-morrow with some greens, which he is very fond of,
and so am I. He said he did not like to have his porter hot, for he
thought it spoilt the flavour, so I let him have it cold. You should
have seen him drink it. I thought he never would have left off. I also
gave him three pounds of money, all in sixpences, to make it seem more,
and he said directly that he should give more than half to his mamma and
sister, and divide the rest with poor Smike. And I say he is a good
fellow for saying so; and if anybody says he isn't I am ready to fight
him whenever they like--there!
Fanny Squeers shall be attended to, depend upon it. Your drawing of her
is very like, except that I don't think the hair is quite curly enough.
The nose is particularly like hers, and so are the legs. She is a nasty
disagreeable thing, and I know it will make her very cross when she sees
it; and what I say is that I hope it may. You will say the same I
know--at least I think you will.