I have said that we all more or less joined in my mother's fishing mania
at Weybridge; but my sister, then a girl of about eleven years, never
had any liking for it, which she attributed to the fact that my mother
often employed her to bait the hook for her. My sister's "tender-hefted"
nature was horribly disgusted and pained by this process, but my own
belief is that had she inherited the propensity to catch fish, even that
would not have destroyed it in her. I am not myself a cruel or
hardhearted woman (though I have the hunter's passion very strongly),
and invariably baited my own hook, in spite of the disgust and horror I
experienced at the wretched twining of the miserable worms round my
fingers, and springing of the poor little live bait with its back
pierced with a hook. But I have never allowed any one to do this office
for me, because it seemed to me that to inflict such a task on any one,
because it was revolting to me, was not fair or sportsmanlike; and so I
went on torturing my own bait and myself, too eagerly devoted to the
sport to refrain from it, in spite of the price I condemned myself to
pay for it. Moreover, if I have ever had female companions on my fishing
excursions, I have invariably done this service for them, thinking the
process too horrid for them to endure; and have often thought that if I
were a man, nothing could induce me to marry a woman whom I had seen
bait her own hook with any thing more sensitive than paste.
I have said that I followed no systematic studies after I left school;
but from that time began for me an epoch of indiscriminate, omnivorous
reading, which lasted until I went upon the stage, when all my own
occupations were necessarily given up for the exercise of my profession.
At this time my chief delight was in such German literature as
translations enabled me to become acquainted with. La Motte Fouqué,
Tieck, Wieland's "Oberon," Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," were my principal
studies; soon to be followed by the sort of foretaste of Jean Paul
Richter that Mr. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" gave his readers; both
matter and manner in that remarkable work bearing far more resemblance
to the great German Incomprehensible than to any thing in the English
language, certainly not excepting Mr. Carlyle's own masterly articles in
the _Edinburgh Review_ on Burns, Elliot the Corn-Law Rhymer, etc.
Besides reading every book that came within my reach, I now commenced
the still more objectionable practice of scribbling verses without stint
or stay; some, I suppose, in very bad Italian, and some, I am sure, in
most indifferent English; but the necessity was on me, and perhaps an
eruption of such rubbish was a safer process than keeping it in the
mental system might have proved; and in the meantime this intellectual
effervescence added immensely to the pleasure of my country life, and my
long, rambling walks in that wild, beautiful neighborhood.
I remember at this moment, by the by, a curious companionship we had in
those walks. A fine, big Newfoundland dog and small terrier were
generally of the party; and, nothing daunted by their presence, an
extremely tame and affectionate cat, who was a member of the family,
invariably joined the procession, and would accompany us in our longest
walks, trotting demurely along by herself, a little apart from the rest,
though evidently considering herself a member of the party.
The dogs, fully occupied with each other, and with discursive raids
right and left of the road, and parenthetical rushes in various
directions for their own special delectation, would sometimes, returning
to us at full gallop, tumble over poor puss and roll her unceremoniously
down in their headlong career. She never, however, turned back for this,
but, recovering her feet, with her back arched all but in two, and every
hair of her tail standing on end with insulted dignity, vented in a
series of spittings and swearings her opinion of dogs in general and
those dogs in particular, and then resumed her own decently demure gait
and deportment; thanking Heaven, I have no doubt, in her cat's soul,
that she was not that disgustingly violent and ill-mannered beast--a
dog.
My brothers shared with us our fishing excursions and these walks, when
at home from school; besides, I was promoted to their nobler
companionship by occasionally acting as long-stop or short-stop (stop of
some sort was undoubtedly my title) in insufficiently manned or boyed
games of cricket: once, while nervously discharging this onerous duty, I
received a blow on my instep from a cricket ball which I did not stop,
that seemed to me a severe price for the honor of sharing my brothers'
manly pastimes. A sport of theirs in which I joined with more
satisfaction was pistol-shooting at a mark: I had not a quick eye, but a
very steady hand, so that with a deliberate aim I contrived to hit the
mark pretty frequently. I liked this quiet exercise of skill better than
that dreadful watching and catching of cannon-balls at cricket; though
the noise of the discharge of fire-arms was always rather trying to me,
and I especially resented my pistol missing fire when I had braced my
courage for the report. My brother John at this time possessed a rifle
and a fowling-piece, with the use of both of which he endeavored to
familiarize me; but the rifle I found insupportably heavy, and as for
the other gun, it kicked so unmercifully, in consequence, I suppose, of
my not holding it hard enough against my shoulder the first time I fired
it, that I declined all further experiments with it, and reverted to the
pretty little lady-like pocket pistols, which were the only fire-arms I
ever used until one fine day, some years later, when I was promoted to
the honor of firing an American cannon on the practicing ground of the
young gentlemen cadets of West Point.
While we retained our little cottage at Weybridge, the house of
Oatlands, the former residence of the Duke of York, and burial-place of
the duchess's favorite dogs, whose cemetery was one of the "lions" of
the garden, was purchased by a Mr. ----, a young gentleman of very large
fortune, who came down there and enlivened the neighborhood occasionally
with his sporting prowesses, which consisted in walking out, attired in
the very height of Bond Street dandyism, with two attendant gamekeepers,
one of whom carried and handed him his gun when he wished to fire it,
the other receiving it from him after it had been discharged. This very
luxurious mode of following his sport caused some sarcastic comment in
the village.
This gentleman did not long retain possession of Oatlands, and it was
let to the Earl of Ellesmere, then Lord Francis Egerton, with whom and
Lady Francis we became acquainted soon after their taking it; an
acquaintance which on my part grew into a strong and affectionate regard
for both of them. They were excellent and highly accomplished, and, when
first I knew them, two of the handsomest and most distinguished-looking
persons I have ever seen.
Our happy Weybridge summers, which succeeded each other for three years,
had but one incident of any importance for me--my catching the
small-pox, which I had very severely. A slight eruption from which my
sister suffered was at first pronounced by our village Æsculapius to be
chicken-pox, but presently assumed the more serious aspect of varioloid.
My sister, like the rest of us, had been carefully vaccinated; but the
fact was then by no means so generally understood as it now is, that the
power of the vaccine dies out of the system by degrees, and requires
renewing to insure safety. My mother, having lost her faith in
vaccination, thought that a natural attack of varioloid was the best
preservative from small-pox, and my sister having had her seasoning so
mildly and without any bad result but a small scar on her long nose, I
was sent for from London, where I was, with the hope that I should take
the same light form of the malady from her; but the difference of our
age and constitution was not taken into consideration, and I caught the
disease, indeed, but as nearly as possible died of it, and have remained
disfigured by it all my life.
I was but little over sixteen, and had returned from school a very
pretty-looking girl, with fine eyes, teeth, and hair, a clear, vivid
complexion, and rather good features. The small-pox did not affect my
three advantages first named, but, besides marking my face very
perceptibly, it rendered my complexion thick and muddy and my features
heavy and coarse, leaving me so moderate a share of good looks as quite
to warrant my mother's satisfaction in saying, when I went on the stage,
"Well, my dear, they can't say we have brought you out to exhibit your
beauty." Plain I certainly was, but I by no means always looked so; and
so great was the variation in my appearance at different times, that my
comical old friend, Mrs. Fitzhugh, once exclaimed, "Fanny Kemble, you
are the ugliest and the handsomest woman in London!" And I am sure, if a
collection were made of the numerous portraits that have been taken of
me, nobody would ever guess any two of them to be likenesses of the same
person.
The effect of natural small-pox on the skin and features varies
extremely in different individuals, I suppose according to their
constitution. My mother and her brother had the disease at the same
time, and with extreme violence; he retained his beautiful bright
complexion and smooth skin and handsome features; my mother was deeply
pitted all over her face, though the fine outline of her nose and mouth
was not injured in the slightest degree; while with me, the process
appeared to be one of general thickening or blurring, both of form and
color. Terrified by this result of her unfortunate experiment, my poor
mother had my brothers immediately vaccinated, and thus saved them from
the infection which they could hardly have escaped, and preserved the
beauty of my youngest brother, which then and for several years after
was very remarkable.
Mrs. F---- is among the most vivid memories of my girlish days. She and
her husband were kind and intimate friends of my father and mother. He
was a most amiable and genial Irish gentleman, with considerable
property in Ireland and Suffolk, and a fine house in Portland Place, and
had married his cousin, a very handsome, clever, and eccentric woman. I
remember she always wore a bracelet of his hair, on the massive clasp of
which were engraved the words, "Stesso sangue, stessa sorte." I also
remember, as a feature of sundry dinners at their house, the first gold
dessert service and table ornaments that I ever saw, the magnificence of
which made a great impression upon me; though I also remember their
being replaced, upon Mrs. F---- wearying of them, by a set of ground
glass and dead and burnished silver, so exquisite, that the splendid
gold service was pronounced infinitely less tasteful and beautiful.
Mrs. F----'s sons were school-fellows of my eldest brother, under Dr.
Malkin, the master of the grammar school of Bury St. Edmunds; and at
this time we always saw Dr. and Mrs. Malkin when they visited London,
and I was indebted to the doctor for a great deal of extremely kind
interest which he took in my mental development and cultivation.
He suggested books for my reading, and set me, as a useful exercise, to
translate Sismondi's fine historical work, "Les Républiques Italiennes,"
which he wished me to abridge for publication. I was not a little proud
of Dr. Malkin's notice and advice; he was my brother's school-master, an
object of respectful admiration, and a kind and condescending friend to
me.
He was a hearty, genial man, of portly person, and fine, intelligent,
handsome face; active and energetic in his habits and movements, in
spite of a slight lameness, which I remember he accounted for to me in
the following manner. He was very intimate with Miss O'Neil before she
left the stage and became Lady Becher. While dancing with her in a
country-dance one evening at her house, she exclaimed, on hearing a
sudden sonorous twang, "Dear me! there is one of the chords of my harp
snapped." "Indeed it is not," replied Dr. Malkin; "it is my
tendo-Achillis which has snapped." And so it was; and from that time he
always remained lame.
Mrs. Malkin was a more uncommon person than her husband; the strength of
her character and sweetness of her disposition were alike admirable, and
the bright vivacity of her countenance and singular grace and dignity of
her person must be a pleasant memory in the minds of all who, like
myself, knew her while she was yet in the middle bloom of life.
Dr. and Mrs. Malkin's sons were my brother's school and college mates.
They were all men of ability, and good scholars, as became their
father's sons. Sir Benjamin, the eldest, achieved eminence as a lawyer,
and became an Indian judge; and the others would undoubtedly have risen
to distinction but for the early death that carried off Frederick and
Charles, and the hesitation of speech which closed almost all public
careers to their brother Arthur.
He was a prominent and able contributor to the "Library of Useful
Knowledge," and furnished a great part of the first of a whole
generation of delightful publications, Murray's "Hand-Book" for
Switzerland.
One of the earliest of Alpine explorers, Arthur Malkin mounted to those
icy battlements which have since been scaled by a whole army of
besiegers, and planted the banner of English courage and enterprise on
"peaks, passes, and glaciers" which, when he first climbed the shining
summits of the Alps, were all but _terra incognita_ to his countrymen.
There is nothing more familiar to the traveling and reading British
public nowadays than Alpine adventures and their records; but when my
friend first conquered the passes between Evolena and Zermatt (still one
of the least overrun mountain regions of Switzerland), their sublime
solitudes were awful with the mystery of unexplored loneliness. Now
professors climb up them, and artists slide down them, and they are
photographed with "members" straddling over their dire crevasses, or
cutting capers on their scornful summits, or turning somersaults down
their infinite precipices. The air of the high Alps was inhaled by few
Englishmen before Arthur Malkin; one can not help thinking that now,
even on the top of the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa, it must have lost some
of its freshness.
I have said that all Dr. Malkin's sons were men of more than average
ability; but one, who never lived to be a man, "died a most rare boy" of
about six years, fully justifying by his extraordinary precocity and
singular endowments the tribute which his bereaved father paid his
memory in a modest and touching record of his brief and remarkable
existence.
My Parisian education appeared, at this time, to have failed signally in
the one especial result that might have been expected from it: all my
French dancing lessons had not given me a good deportment, nor taught me
to hold myself upright. I stooped, slouched, and poked, stood with one
hip up and one shoulder down, and exhibited an altogether disgracefully
ungraceful carriage, which greatly afflicted my parents. In order that I
might "bear my body more seemly," various were the methods resorted to;
among others, a hideous engine of torture of the backboard species, made
of steel covered with red morocco, which consisted of a flat piece
placed on my back, and strapped down to my waist with a belt and secured
at the top by two epaulets strapped over my shoulders. From the middle
of this there rose a steel rod or spine, with a steel collar which
encircled my throat and fastened behind. This, it was hoped, would
eventually put my shoulders down and my head up, and in the meantime I
had the appearance of a young woman walking about in a portable pillory.
The ease and grace which this horrible machine was expected to impart to
my figure and movements were, however, hardly perceptible after
considerable endurance of torture on my part, and to my ineffable joy it
was taken off (my harness, as I used to call it; and no knight of old
ever threw off his iron shell with greater satisfaction), and I was
placed under the tuition of a sergeant of the Royal Foot Guards, who
undertook to make young ladies carry themselves and walk well, and not
exactly like grenadiers either. This warrior having duly put me through
a number of elementary exercises, such as we see the awkward squads on
parade grounds daily drilled in, took leave of me with the verdict, that
I "was fit to march before the Duke of York," then commander of the
forces; and, thanks to his instructions, I remained endowed with a flat
back, well-placed shoulders, an erect head, upright carriage, and
resolute step.
I think my education had come nearly to a standstill at this period,
for, with the exception of these physical exercises, and certain hours
of piano-forte practicing and singing lessons, I was left very much to
the irregular and unsystematic reading which I selected for myself. I
had a good contralto voice, which my mother was very desirous of
cultivating, but I think my progress was really retarded by the
excessive impatience with which her excellent ear endured my
unsuccessful musical attempts. I used to practice in her sitting-room,
and I think I sang out of tune and played false chords oftener, from
sheer apprehension of her agonized exclamations, than I should have done
under the supervision of a less sensitively organized person. I remember
my sister's voice and musical acquirements first becoming remarkable at
this time, and giving promise of her future artistic excellence. I
recollect a ballad from the Mexican opera by Bishop, called Cortex, "Oh,
there's a Mountain Palm," which she sang with a clear, high, sweet, true
little voice and touching expression, full of pathos, in which I used to
take great delight.
The nervous terror which I experienced when singing or playing before my
mother was carried to a climax when I was occasionally called upon to
accompany the vocal performances of our friendly acquaintance, James
Smith (one of the authors of the "Rejected Addresses"). He was famous
for his humorous songs and his own capital rendering of them, but the
anguish I endured in accompanying him made those comical performances of
his absolutely tragical to me; the more so that he had a lion-like cast
of countenance, with square jaws and rather staring eyes. But perhaps he
appeared so stern-visaged only to me; while he sang everybody laughed,
but I perspired coldly and felt ready to cry, and so have but a
lugubrious impression of some of the most amusing productions of that
description, heard to the very best advantage (if I could have listened
to them at all) as executed by their author.
Among our most intimate friends at this time were my cousin Horace Twiss
and his wife. I have been reminded of him in speaking of James Smith,
because he had a good deal of the same kind of humor, not unmixed with a
vein of sentiment, and I remember his songs, which he sang with great
spirit and expression, with the more pleasure that he never required me
to accompany them. One New-Year's Eve that he spent with us, just before
going away he sang charmingly some lines he had composed in the course
of the evening, the graceful turn of which, as well as the feeling with
which he sang them, were worthy of Moore. I remember only the burden:
"Oh, come! one genial hour improve,
And fill one measure duly;
A health to those we truly love,
And those who love us truly!"
And this stanza:
"To-day has waved its parting wings,
To join the days before it;
And as for what the morning brings,
The morning's mist hangs o'er it."
It was delightful to hear him and my mother talk together, and their
disputes, though frequent, seemed generally extremely amicable, and as
diverting to themselves as to us. On one occasion he ended their
discussion (as to whether some lady of their acquaintance had or had not
gone somewhere) by a vehement declaration which passed into a proverb in
our house: "Yes, yes, she did; for a woman will go anywhere, at any
time, with anybody, to see any thing--especially in a gig." Those were
days in which a gig was a vehicle the existence of which was not only
recognized in civilized society, but supposed to confer a diploma of
"gentility" upon its possessor.
Horace Twiss was one of the readiest and most amusing talkers in the
world, and when he began to make his way in London society, which he
eventually did very successfully, ill-natured persons considered his
first step in the right direction to have been a repartee made in the
crush-room of the opera, while standing close to Lady L----, who was
waiting for her carriage. A man he was with saying, "Look at that fat
Lady L----; isn't she like a great white cabbage?" "Yes," answered
Horace, in a discreetly loud tone, "she _is_ like one--all heart, I
believe." The white-heart cabbage turned affably to the rising
barrister, begged him to see her to her carriage, and gave him the
_entrée_ of H---- House. Lord Clarendon subsequently put him in
Parliament for his borough of Wootton-Basset, and for a short time he
formed part of the ministry, holding one of the under-secretaryships. He
was clever, amiable, and good-tempered, and had every qualification for
success in society.
He had married a Miss Searle, one of his mother's pupils at the
fashionable Bath boarding-school, the living image of Scott's Fenella,
the smallest woman that I have ever seen, with fairy feet and tiny
hands, the extraordinary power of which was like that of a steel talon.
On one occasion, when Horace Twiss happened to mention that his bright
little spark of a wife sat working in his library by him, while he was
engaged with his law or business papers, my mother suggested that her
conversation must disturb him. "Oh, she doesn't talk," said he, "but I
like to hear the scissors fall," a pretty conjugal reply, that left a
pleasant image in my mind. His only child by her, a daughter, married
first Mr. Bacon, then editor of the _Times_, and, after his death, John
Delane, who succeeded him in that office and still holds it; so that her
father said "she took the _Times_ and Supplement."
About this time I began to be aware of the ominous distresses and
disturbances connected with the affairs of the theater, that were to
continue and increase until the miserable subject became literally the
sauce to our daily bread; embittering my father's life with incessant
care and harassing vexation; and of the haunting apprehension of that
ruin which threatened us for years, and which his most strenuous efforts
only delayed, without averting it.
The proprietors were engaged in a lawsuit with each other, and finally
one of them threw the whole concern into chancery; and for years that
dreary chancery suit seemed to envelop us in an atmosphere of
palpitating suspense or stagnant uncertainty, and to enter as an
inevitable element into every hope, fear, expectation, resolution,
event, or action of our lives.
How unutterably heart-sick I became of the very sound of its name, and
how well I remember the expression on my father's careworn face one day,
as he turned back from the door, out of which he was going to his daily
drudgery at the theater, to say to my aunt, who had reproached him with
the loss of a button from his rather shabby coat, "Ah, Dall, my dear,
you see it is my chancery suit!"
Lord Eldon, Sir John Leach, Lord Lyndhurst, and Lord Brougham were the
successive chancellors before whom the case was heard; the latter was a
friend of my family, and on one occasion my father took me to the House
of Lords to hear the proceedings. We were shown into the chancellor's
room, where he indeed was not, but where his huge official wig was
perched upon a block; the temptation was irresistible, and for half a
minute I had the awful and ponderous periwig on my pate.
While we were still living in Soho Square our house was robbed; or
rather, my father's writing-desk was broken open, and sixty sovereigns
taken from it--a sum that he could very hardly spare. He had been at the
theater, acting, and my mother had spent the evening at some friend's
house, and the next morning great was the consternation of the family on
finding what had happened. The dining-room sideboard and _cellarette_
had been opened, and wine and glasses put on the table, as if our
robbers had drank our good health for the success of their attempt.
A Bow Street officer was sent for; I remember his portly and imposing
aspect very well; his name was Salmon, and he was a famous member of his
fraternity. He questioned my mother as to the honesty of our servants;
we had but three, a cook, housemaid, and footman, and for all of these
my mother answered unhesitatingly; and yet the expert assured her that
very few houses were robbed without connivance from within.
The servants were had up and questioned, and the cook related how,
coming down first thing in the morning, she had found a certain back
scullery window open, and, alarmed by that, had examined the lower
rooms, and found the dining-room table set out with the decanters and
glasses. Having heard her story, the officer, as soon as she left the
room, asked my mother if any thing else besides the money had been
taken, and if any quantity of the wine had been drank. She said, "No,"
and with regard to the last inquiry, she supposed, as the cook had
suggested when the decanters were examined, that the thieves had
probably been disturbed by some alarm, and had not had time to drink
much.
Mr. Salmon then requested to look at the kitchen premises; the cook
officiously led the way to the scullery window, which was still open,
"just as she found it," she said, and proceeded to explain how the
robbers must have got over the wall of a court which ran at the back of
the house. When she had ended her demonstrations and returned to the
kitchen, Salmon, who had listened silently to her story of the case,
detained my mother for an instant, and rapidly passed his hand over the
outside window-sill, bringing away a thick layer of undisturbed dust,
which the passage of anybody through the window must infallibly have
swept off. Satisfied at once of the total falsity of the cook's
hypothesis, he told my mother that he had no doubt at all that she was a
party to the robbery, that the scullery window and dining-room drinking
scene were alike mere blinds, and that in all probability she had let
into the house whoever had broken open the desk, or else forced it
herself, having acquired by some means a knowledge of the money it
contained; adding, that in the very few words of interrogatory which had
passed between him and the servants, in my mother's presence, he had
felt quite sure that the housemaid and man were innocent; but had
immediately detected something in the cook's manner that seemed to him
suspicious. What a fine tact of guilt these detectives acquire in their
immense experience of it! The cook was not prosecuted, but dismissed,
the money, of course, not being recoverable; it was fortunate that
neither she nor her honest friends had any suspicion of the contents of
three boxes lying in the drawing-room at this very time. They were
large, black leather cases, containing a silver helmet, shield, and
sword, of antique Roman pattern and beautiful workmanship--a public
tribute bestowed upon my uncle, and left by him to my father; they have
since become an ornamental trophy in my sister's house. They were then
about to be sent for safe keeping to Coutts's bank, and in the meantime
lay close to the desk that had been rifled of a more portable but far
less valuable booty.
Upon my uncle John's death his widow had returned to England, and fixed
her residence at a charming place called Heath Farm, in Hertfordshire.
Lord Essex had been an attached friend of my uncle's, and offered this
home on his property to Mrs. Kemble when she came to England, after her
long sojourn abroad with my uncle, who, as I have mentioned, spent the
last years of his life, and died, at Lausanne. Mrs. Kemble invited my
mother to come and see her soon after she settled in Hertfordshire, and
I accompanied her thither. Cashiobury Park thus became familiar ground
to me, and remains endeared to my recollection for its own beauty, for
the delightful days I passed rambling about it, and for the beginning of
that love bestowed upon my whole life by H---- S----. Heath Farm was a
pretty house, at once rural, comfortable, and elegant, with a fine
farm-yard adjoining it, a sort of cross between a farm and a manor
house; it was on the edge of the Cashiobury estate, within which it
stood, looking on one side over its lawn and flower-garden to the grassy
slopes and fine trees of the park, and on the other, across a road which
divided the two properties, to Lord Clarendon's place, the Grove. It had
been the residence of Lady Monson before her (second) marriage to Lord
Warwick. Close to it was a pretty cottage, also in the park, where lived
an old Miss M----, often visited by a young kinswoman of hers, who
became another of my life-long friends. T---- B----, Miss M----'s niece,
was then a beautiful young woman, whose singularly fine face and sweet
and spirited expression bore a strong resemblance to two eminently
handsome people, my father and Mademoiselle Mars. She and I soon became
intimate companions, though she was several years my senior. We used to
take long rambles together, and vaguely among my indistinct
recollections of her aunt's cottage and the pretty woodland round it,
mix sundry flying visions of a light, youthful figure, that of Lord
M----, then hardly more than a lad, who seemed to haunt the path of his
cousin, my handsome friend, and one evening caused us both a sudden
panic by springing out of a thicket on us, in the costume of a
Harlequin. Some years after this, when I was about to leave England for
America, I went to take leave of T---- B----. She was to be married the
next day to Lord M----, and was sitting with his mother, Lady W----, and
on a table near her lay a set of jewels, as peculiar as they were
magnificent, consisting of splendid large opals set in diamonds, black
enamel, and gold....
To return to our Cashiobury walks: T---- B---- and I used often to go
together to visit ladies, the garden round whose cottage overflowed in
every direction with a particular kind of white and maroon pink, the
powerful, spicy odor of which comes to me, like a warm whiff of summer
sweetness, across all these intervening fifty years. Another favorite
haunt of ours was a cottage (not of gentility) inhabited by an old man
of the name of Foster, who, hale and hearty and cheerful in extreme old
age, was always delighted to see us, used to give us choice flowers and
fruit out of his tiny garden, and make me sit and sing to him by the
half-hour together in his honeysuckle-covered porch. After my first
visit to Heath Farm some time elapsed before we went thither again. On
the occasion of our second visit Mrs. Siddons and my cousin Cecilia were
also Mrs. Kemble's guests, and a lady of the name of H---- S----. She
had been intimate from her childhood in my uncle Kemble's house, and
retained an enthusiastic love for his memory and an affectionate
kindness for his widow, whom she was now visiting on her return to
England. And so I here first knew the dearest friend I have ever known.
The device of her family is "Haut et Bon:" it was her description. She
was about thirty years old when I first met her at Heath Farm; tall and
thin, her figure wanted roundness and grace, but it was straight as a
dart, and the vigorous, elastic, active movements of her limbs, and
firm, fleet, springing step of her beautifully made feet and ankles,
gave to her whole person and deportment a character like that of the
fabled Atalanta, or the huntress Diana herself. Her forehead and eyes
were beautiful. The broad, white, pure expanse surrounded with thick,
short, clustering curls of chestnut hair, and the clear, limpid, bright,
tender gray eyes that always looked radiant with light, and seemed to
reflect radiance wherever they turned, were the eyes and forehead of
Aurora. The rest of her features were not handsome, though her mouth was
full of sensibility and sweetness, and her teeth were the most perfect I
ever saw. She was eccentric in many things, but in nothing more so than
the fashion of her dress, especially the coverings she provided for her
extremities, her hat and boots. The latter were not positively masculine
articles, but were nevertheless made by a man's boot-maker, and there
was only one place in London where they could be made sufficiently ugly
to suit her; and infinite were the pains she took to procure the heavy,
thick, cumbrous, misshapen things that as much as possible concealed and
disfigured her finely turned ankles and high, arched, Norman instep.
Indeed, her whole attire, peculiar (and very ugly, I thought it) as it
was, was so by malice prepense on her part. And whereas the general
result would have suggested a total disregard of the vanities of dress,
no Quaker coquette was ever more jealous of the peculiar texture of the
fabrics she wore, or of the fashion in which they were made. She wore no
colors, black and gray being the only shades I ever saw her in; and her
dress, bare and bald of every ornament, was literally only a covering
for her body; but it was difficult to find cashmere fine enough for her
scanty skirts, or cloth perfect enough for her short spencers, or lawn
clear and exquisite enough for her curious collars and cuffs of
immaculate freshness.
I remember a similar peculiarity of dress in a person in all other
respects the very antipodes of my friend H----. My mother took me once
to visit a certain Miss W----, daughter of a Stafford banker, her very
dear friend, and the godmother from whom I took my second name of Anne.
This lady inhabited a quaint, picturesque house in the oldest part of
the town of Stafford. Well do I remember its oak-wainscoted and
oak-paneled chambers, and the fine old oak staircase that led from the
hall to the upper rooms; also the extraordinary abundance and delicacy
of our meals, particularly the old-fashioned nine o'clock supper, about
every item of which, it seemed to me, more was said and thought than
about any food of which I ever before or since partook. It was in this
homely palace of good cheer that a saying originated, which passed into
a proverb with us, expressive of a rather _un_nice indulgence of
appetite.
One of the ladies, going out one day, called back to the servant who was
closing the door behind her: "Tell the cook not to forget the
sally-lunns" (a species of muffin) "for tea, well greased on both sides,
and we'll put on our cotton gowns to eat them."
The appearance of the mistress of this mansion of rather obsolete
luxurious comfort was strikingly singular. She was a woman about sixty
years old, tall and large and fat, of what Balzac describes as "un
embonpoint flottant," and was habitually dressed in a white linen
cambric gown, long and tending to train, but as plain and tight as a bag
over her portly middle person and prominent bust; it was finished at the
throat with a school-boy's plaited frill, which stood up round her heavy
falling cheeks by the help of a white muslin or black silk cravat. Her
head was very nearly bald, and the thin, short gray hair lay in distant
streaks upon her skull, white and shiny as an ostrich egg, which on the
rare occasions of her going out, or into her garden, she covered with a
man's straw or beaver hat.
It is curious how much minor eccentricity the stringent general spirit
of formal conformity allows individuals in England: nowhere else,
scarcely, in civilized Europe, could such a costume be worn in profound,
peaceful defiance of public usage and opinion, with perfect security
from insult or even offensive comment, as that of my mother's old
friend, Miss W----, or my dear H---- S----. In this same Staffordshire
family and its allies eccentricity seemed to prevail alike in life and
death; for I remember hearing frequent mention, while among them, of
connections of theirs who, when they died, one and all desired to be
buried in full dress and with their coffins _standing upright_.
To return to Heath Farm and my dear H----. Nobility, intelligence, and
tenderness were her predominating qualities, and her person, manner, and
countenance habitually expressed them.
This lady's intellect was of a very uncommon order; her habits of
thought and reading were profoundly speculative; she delighted in
metaphysical subjects of the greatest difficulty, and abstract questions
of the most laborious solution. On such subjects she incessantly
exercised her remarkably keen powers of analysis and investigation, and
no doubt cultivated and strengthened her peculiar mental faculties and
tendencies by the perpetual processes of metaphysical reasoning which
she pursued.
Between H---- S---- and myself, in spite of nearly twelve years'
difference in our age, there sprang up a lively friendship, and our time
at Heath Farm was spent in almost constant companionship. We walked and
talked together the livelong day and a good part of the night, in spite
of Mrs. Kemble's judicious precaution of sending us to bed with very
moderate wax candle ends; a prudent provision which we contrived to
defeat by getting from my cousin, Cecilia Siddons, clandestine alms of
fine, long, _life-sized_ candles, placed as mere supernumeraries on the
toilet table of a dressing-room adjoining her mother's bedroom, which
she never used. At this time I also made the acquaintance of my friend's
brother, who came down to Heath Farm to visit Mrs. Kemble and his
sister. He possessed a brilliant intellect, had studied for the bar, and
at the same time made himself favorably known by a good deal of clever
periodical writing; but he died too early to have fully developed his
genius, and left as proofs of his undoubtedly superior talents only a
few powerfully written works of fiction, indicating considerable
abilities, to which time would have given maturity, and more experience
a higher direction.
Among the principal interests of my London life at this time was the
production at our theater of Weber's opera, "Der Freyschütz." Few
operas, I believe, have had a wider or more prolonged popularity; none
certainly within my recollection ever had any thing approaching it.
Several causes conduced to this effect. The simple pathos of the love
story, and the supernatural element so well blended with it, which gave
such unusual scope to the stage effects of scenery, etc., were two
obvious reasons for its success.
From the inimitably gay and dramatic laughing chorus and waltz of the
first scene to the divine melody in which the heroine expresses her
unshaken faith in Heaven, immediately before her lover's triumph closes
the piece, the whole opera is a series of exquisite conceptions, hardly
one of which does not contain some theme or passage calculated to catch
the dullest and slowest ear and fix itself on the least retentive
memory; and though the huntsman's and bridesmaid's choruses, of course,
first attained and longest retained a street-organ popularity, there is
not a single air, duet, concerted piece, or chorus, from which extracts
were not seized on and carried away by the least musical memories. So
that the advertisement of a German gentleman for a valet, who to other
necessary qualifications was to add the indispensable one of not being
able to whistle a note of "Der Freyschütz," appeared a not unnatural
result of the universal furor for this music.
We went to hear it until we literally knew it by heart, and such was my
enthusiasm for it that I contrived to get up a romantic passion for the
great composer, of whom I procured a hideous little engraving (very ugly
he was, and very ugly was his "counterfeit presentment," with high
cheek-bones, long hooked nose, and spectacles), which, folded up in a
small square and sewed into a black silk case, I carried like an amulet
round my neck until I completely wore it out, which was soon after poor
Weber's death.