The immense success of "Der Freyschütz," and the important assistance it
brought to the funds of the theater, induced my father to propose to
Weber to compose an opera expressly for Covent Garden. The proposal met
with ready acceptance, and the chivalric fairy tale of Wieland's
"Oberon" was selected for the subject, and was very gracefully and
poetically treated by Mr. Planché, to whom the literary part of the
work--the libretto--was confided, and who certainly bestowed as much
pains on the versification of his lyrical drama as if it was not
destined to be a completely secondary object to the music in the public
estimation. Weber himself, however, was by no means a man to disregard
the tenor of the words and characters he was to associate with his
music, and was greatly charmed with his English coadjutor's operatic
version of Wieland's fairy epic. He was invited to come over to London
and himself superintend the production of his new work.
Representations of "Der Freyschütz" were given on his arrival, and night
after night the theater was crowded to see him preside in the orchestra
and conduct his own fine opera; and the enthusiasm of the London public
rose to fever height. Weber took up his abode at the house of Sir George
Smart, the leader of the Covent Garden orchestra, and our excellent old
friend--a capital musician and very worthy man. He was appointed
organist to King William IV., and for many years directed those
admirable performances of classical music called the Ancient Concerts.
He was a man of very considerable musical knowledge, and had a peculiar
talent for teaching and accompanying the vocal compositions of Handel.
During the whole of my father's management of Covent Garden, he had the
supervision of the musical representations and conducted the orchestra,
and he was principally instrumental in bringing out Weber's fine operas
of "Der Freyschütz" and "Oberon." Weber continued to reside in Sir
George Smart's house during the whole of his stay in London, and died
there soon after the production of his "Oberon." Sir George Smart was
the first person who presented Mendelssohn to me. I had been acting
Juliet one night, and at the end of the play was raised from the stage
by my kind old friend, who had been in the orchestra during the
performance, with the great composer, then a young man of nineteen, on
his first visit to England. He brought letters of introduction to my
father, and made his first acquaintance with me in my grave-clothes.
Besides my esteem and regard for Sir George's more valuable qualities, I
had a particular liking for some excellent snuff he always had, and used
constantly to borrow his snuff-box to sniff at it like a perfume, not
having attained a sufficiently mature age to venture upon "pinches;" and
a snuff-taking Juliet being inadmissible, I used to wish myself at the
elderly lady age when the indulgence might be becoming: but before I
attained it, snuff was no longer taken by ladies of any age, and now, I
think, it is used by very few men.
In a letter written to me by my mother, during my temporary absence from
London, just after the accession of King William IV., I find the
following passage with reference to Sir George Smart:
"London is all alive; the new king seems idolized by the people, and he
appears no less pleased with them; perhaps Sir George is amongst the
happiest of his subjects. His Majesty swears that nothing shall be
encouraged but _native talent_, and our friend is to get up a concert at
the Duke of Sussex's, where the royal family are all to dine, at which
none but English singers are to perform. Sir George dined with me on
Monday, and I perceive he has already arranged in his thoughts all he
proposes _to tell the queen about you_ on this occasion. It is evident
he flatters himself that he is to be deep in her Majesty's confidence."
Sir George Smart and his distinguished guest, Weber, were constantly at
our house while the rehearsals of "Oberon" went forward. The first day
they dined together at my father's was an event for me, especially as
Sir George, on my entering the room, took me by the hand, and drawing me
toward Weber, assured him that I and all the young girls in England were
over head and ears in love with him. With my guilty satchel round my
neck, I felt ready to sink with confusion, and stammered out something
about Herr von Weber's beautiful music, to which, with a comical,
melancholy smile, he replied, "Ah, my music! it is always my music, but
never myself!"
Baron Carl Maria von Weber was a noble-born Saxon German, whose very
irregular youth could hardly, one would suppose, have left him leisure
to cultivate or exercise his extraordinary musical genius; but though he
spent much of his early life in wild dissipation, and died in middle
age, he left to the world a mass of compositions of the greatest variety
and beauty, and a name which ranks among the most eminent in his
pre-eminently musical country. He was a little thin man, lame of one
foot, and with a slight tendency to a deformed shoulder. His hollow,
sallow, sickly face bore an expression of habitual suffering and ill
health, and the long, hooked nose, salient cheek-bones, light, prominent
eyes, and spectacles were certainly done no more than justice to in the
unattractive representation of my cherished portrait of him.
He had the air and manner of a well-born and well-bred man of the world,
a gentle voice, and a slow utterance in English, which he spoke but
indifferently and with a strong accent; he generally conversed with my
father and mother in French. One of the first visits he paid to Covent
Garden was in my mother's box, to hear Miss Paton and Braham (his prima
donna and tenor) in an oratorio. He was enthusiastic in his admiration
of Braham's fine performance of one of Handel's magnificent songs
("Deeper and deeper still," I think), but when, in the second part of
the concert, which consisted of a selection of secular music, the great
singer threw the house into ecstasies, and was tumultuously encored in
the pseudo-Scotch ballad of "Blue Bonnets over the Border," he was
extremely disgusted, and exclaimed two or three times, "Ah, that is
_beast_!" (Ah, cela est bête!) to our infinite diversion. Much more
aggravating proof was poor Weber destined to have of the famous tenor's
love of mere popularity in his art, and strange enough, no doubt, to the
great German composer was the thirst for ignorant applause which induced
Braham to reject the beautiful, tender, and majestic opening air Weber
had written for him in the character of Huon, and insist upon the
writing of a battle-piece which might split the ears of the groundlings
and the gods, and furnish him an opportunity for making some of the
startling effects of lyrical declamation which never failed to carry his
audience by storm.
No singer ever delivered with greater purity or nobler breadth Handel's
majestic music; the masterly simplicity of his execution of all really
fine compositions was worthy of his first-rate powers; but the desire of
obtaining by easier and less elevated means the acclamations of his
admirers seemed irresistible to him, and "Scots wha hae," with the
flourish of his stick in the last verse, was a sure triumph which he
never disdained. Weber expressed unbounded astonishment and contempt at
this unartistic view of things, and with great reluctance at length
consented to suppress, or rather transfer to the overture, the noble and
pathetic melody designed for Huon's opening song, for which he submitted
the fine warlike cantata beginning--
"Oh,'tis a glorious sight to see
The charge of the Christian chivalry!"
in which, to be sure, Braham charged with the Christians, and routed the
Paynims, and mourned for the wounded, and wept for the dead, and
returned in triumph to France in the joyous cabaletta, with wonderful
dramatic effect, such as, no doubt, the other song would never have
enabled him to produce. But the success of the song did not reconcile
Weber to what he considered the vulgarity and inappropriateness of its
subject, and the circumstance lowered his opinion both of the English
singer and of the English public very grievously.
How well I remember all the discussions of those prolonged, repeated,
anxious, careful rehearsals, and the comical despair of which Miss
Paton, the heroine of the opera, was the occasion to all concerned, by
the curious absence of dramatic congruity of gesture and action which
she contrived to combine with the most brilliant and expressive
rendering of the music. In the great shipwreck scene, which she sang
magnificently, she caught up the short end of a sash tied around her
waist, and twirled it about without unfastening it, by way of signaling
from the top of a rock for help from a distant vessel, the words she
sang being, "Quick, quick, for a signal this scarf shall be _waved_!"
This performance of hers drew from my father the desperate exclamation,
"That woman's an inspired idiot!" while Weber limped up and down the
room silently wringing his hands, and Sir George Smart went off into
ecstatic reminiscences of a certain performance of my mother's, when--in
some musical arrangement of "Blue Beard" (by Kelly or Storace, I think),
in the part of Sister Anne--she waved and signaled and sang from the
castle wall, "I see them galloping! I see them galloping!" after a very
different fashion, that drew shouts of sympathetic applause from her
hearers.
Miss Paton married Lord William Lennox, was divorced from her husband
and married Mr. Wood, and pursued her career as a public singer for many
years successfully after this event; nor was her name in any way again
made a subject of public animadversion, though she separated herself
from Mr. Wood, and at one time was said to have entertained thoughts of
going into a Roman Catholic nunnery. Her singing was very admirable, and
her voice one of the finest in quality and compass that I ever heard.
The effects she produced on the stage were very remarkable, considering
the little intellectual power or cultivation she appeared to possess. My
father's expression of "an inspired idiot," though wrung from him by the
irritation of momentary annoyance, was really not inapplicable to her.
She sang with wonderful power and pathos her native Scotch ballads, she
delivered with great purity and grandeur the finest soprano music of
Handel, and though she very nearly drove poor Weber mad with her
apparent want of intelligence during the rehearsals of his great opera,
I have seldom heard any thing finer than her rendering of the difficult
music of the part of Reiza, from beginning to end, and especially the
scene of the shipwreck, with its magnificent opening recitative, "Ocean,
thou mighty monster!"
"Oberon" was brought out and succeeded; but in a degree so far below the
sanguine expectations of all concerned, that failure itself, though more
surprising, would hardly have been a greater disappointment than the
result achieved at such a vast expenditure of money, time, and labor.
The expectations of the public could not have been realized by any work
which was to be judged by comparison with their already permanent
favorite, "Der Freyschütz." No second effort could have seemed any thing
but second-best, tried by the standard of that popular production; and
whatever judgment musicians and connoisseurs might pronounce as to the
respective merits of the two operas, the homely test of the "proof of
the pudding" being "in the eating" was decidedly favorable to the
master's earlier work; and my own opinion is, that either his
"Euryanthe" or his "Preciosa" would have been more popular with the
general English public than the finer and more carefully elaborated
music of "Oberon." The story of the piece (always a main consideration
in matters of art, with average English men and women) wanted interest,
certainly, as compared with that of its predecessor; the chivalric loves
and adventures of Huon of Bordeaux and the caliph's daughter were
indifferent to the audience, compared with the simple but deep interest
of the fortunes of the young German forester and his village bride; and
the gay and brilliant fairy element of the "Oberon" was no sort of
equivalent for the startling _diablerie_ of Zamiel, and the incantation
scene. The music, undoubtedly of a higher order than that of "Der
Freyschütz," was incomparably more difficult and less popular. The whole
of the part of Reiza was trying in the extreme, even to the powers of
the great singer for whom it was written, and quite sure not to be a
favorite with prime donne from its excessive strain upon the voice,
particularly in what is the weaker part of almost all soprano registers;
and Reiza's first great aria, the first song of the fairy king, and
Huon's last song in the third act, are all compositions of which the
finest possible execution must always be without proportionate effect on
any audience, from the extreme difficulty of rendering them and their
comparative want of melody. By amateurs, out of Germany, the performance
of any part of the music was not likely ever to be successfully
attempted; and I do not think that a single piece in the opera found
favor with the street organists, though the beautiful opening chorus was
made into a church hymn by discarding the exquisite aerial fairy
symphonies and accompaniments; and the involuntary dance of the caliph's
court and servants at the last blast of the magical horn was for a short
time a favorite waltz in Germany.
Poor Weber's health, which had been wretched before he came to England,
and was most unfavorably affected by the climate, sank entirely under
the mortification of the comparatively small success of his great work.
He had labored and fretted extremely with the rehearsals, and very soon
after its production he became dangerously ill, and died--not, as people
said, of a broken heart, but of disease of the lungs, already far
advanced when he came to London, and doubtless accelerated by these
influences. He died in Sir George Smart's house, who gave me, as a
memorial of the great composer whom I had so enthusiastically admired, a
lock of his hair, and the opening paragraph of his will, which was
extremely touching and impressive in its wording.
The plaintive melody known as "Weber's Waltz" (said to have been his
last composition, found after his death under his pillow) was a tribute
to his memory by some younger German composer (Reichardt or Ries); but
though not his own, it owed much of its popularity to his name, with
which it will always be associated. Bellini transferred the air,
verbatim, into his opera of "Beatrice di Tenda," where it appears in her
song beginning, "Orombello, ah Sciagurato!" A circumstance which tended
to embitter a good deal the close of Weber's life was the arrival in
London of Rossini, to whom and to whose works the public immediately
transferred its demonstrations of passionate admiration with even more,
than its accustomed fickleness. Disparaging comparisons and contrasts to
Weber's disadvantage were drawn between the two great composers in the
public prints; the enthusiastic adulation of society and the great world
not unnaturally followed the brilliant, joyous, sparkling, witty
Italian, who was a far better subject for London _lionizing_ than his
sickly, sensitive, shrinking, and rather soured German competitor for
fame and public favor.
The proud, morbid sensitiveness of the Northern genius was certainly in
every respect the very antipodes of the healthy, robust, rejoicing,
artistic nature of the Southern.
No better instance, though a small one, perhaps, could be given of the
tone and temper in which Rossini was likely to encounter both adverse
criticism and the adulation of amateur idolatry, than his reply to the
Duchess of Canizzaro, one of his most fanatical worshipers, who asked
him which he considered his best comic opera; when, with a burst of
joyous laughter, he named "Il Matrimonio Secreto," Cimarosa's enchanting
_chef-d'oeuvre_, from which, doubtless, Rossini, after the fashion of
great geniuses, had accepted more than one most felicitous suggestion,
especially that of the admirable finale to the second act of the
"Barbiere." It was during this visit of his to London, while Weber lay
disappointed and dying in the dingy house in Great Portland Street, that
this same Duchess of Canizzaro, better known by her earlier title of
Countess St. Antonio, as a prominent leader of fashionable taste in
musical matters, invited all the great and gay and distinguished world
of London to meet the famous Italian composer; and, seated in her
drawing-room with the Duke of Wellington and Rossini on either side of
her, exclaimed, "Now I am between the two greatest men in Europe." The
Iron Duke not unnaturally rose and left his chair vacant; the great
genius retained his, but most assuredly not without humorous
appreciation of the absurdity of the whole scene, for he was almost
"plus fin que tous les autres," and certainly "bien plus fin que tous
_ces_ autres."
About this time I returned again to visit Mrs. Kemble at Heath Farm, and
renew my days of delightful companionship with H---- S----. Endless were
our walks and talks, and those were very happy hours in which, loitering
about Cashiobury Park, I made its echoes ring with the music of
"Oberon," singing it from beginning to end--overture, accompaniment,
choruses, and all; during which performances my friend, who was no
musician, used to keep me company in sympathetic silence, reconciled by
her affectionate indulgence for my enthusiasm to this utter postponement
of sense to sound. What with her peculiar costume and my bonnetless head
(I always carried my bonnet in my hand when it was possible to do so)
and frenzied singing, any one who met us might have been justified in
supposing we had escaped from the nearest lunatic asylum.
Occasionally we varied our rambles, and one day we extended them so far
that the regular luncheon hour found us at such a distance from home,
that I--hungry as one is at sixteen after a long tramp--peremptorily
insisted upon having food; whereupon my companion took me to a small
roadside ale-house, where we devoured bread and cheese and drank beer,
and while thus vulgarly employed beheld my aunt's carriage drive past
the window. If that worthy lady could have seen us, that bread and
cheese which was giving us life would inevitably have been her death;
she certainly would have had a stroke of apoplexy (what the French call
_foudroyante_), for gentility and propriety were the breath of life to
her, and of the highest law of both, which can defy conventions, she
never dreamed.
Another favorite indecorum of mine (the bread and cheese was mere mortal
infirmity, not moral turpitude) was wading in the pretty river that ran
through Lord Clarendon's place, the Grove; the brown, clear, shallow,
rapid water was as tempting as a highland brook, and I remember its
bright, flashing stream and the fine old hawthorn trees of the avenue,
alternate white and rose-colored, like clouds of fragrant bloom, as one
of the sunniest pictures of those sweet summer days.
The charm and seduction of bright water has always been irresistible to
me, a snare and a temptation I have hardly ever been able to withstand;
and various are the chances of drowning it has afforded me in the wild
mountain brooks of Massachusetts. I think a very attached maid of mine
once saved my life by the tearful expostulations with which she opposed
the bewitching invitations of the topaz-colored flashing rapids of
Trenton Falls, that looked to me in some parts so shallow, as well as so
bright, that I was just on the point of stepping into them, charmed by
the exquisite confusion of musical voices with which they were
persuading me, when suddenly a large tree-trunk of considerable weight
shot down their flashing surface and was tossed over the fall below,
leaving me to the natural conclusion, "Just such a log should I have
been if I had gone in there." Indeed, my worthy Marie, overcome by my
importunity, having selected what seemed to her a safe, and to me a very
tame, bathing-place, in another and quieter part of the stream, I had
every reason, from my experience of the difficulty of withstanding its
powerful current there, to congratulate myself upon not having tried the
experiment nearer to one of the "springs" of the lovely torrent, whose
Indian name is the "Leaping Water." Certainly the pixies--whose cousin
my friends accused me of being, on account of my propensity for their
element--if they did not omit any opportunity of alluring me, allowed me
to escape scathless on more than one occasion, when I might have paid
dearly for being so much or so little related to them.
This fascination of living waters for me was so well known among my
Lenox friends of all classes, that on one occasion a Yankee Jehu of our
village, driving some of them by the side of a beautiful mountain brook,
said, "I guess we should hardly have got Mrs. Kemble on at all,
alongside of this stream," as if I had been a member of his _team_, made
restive by the proximity of water. A pool in a rocky basin, with foaming
water dashing in and out of it, was a sort of trap for me, and I have
more than once availed myself of such a shower-bath, without any further
preparation than taking my hat and shoes and stockings off. Once, on a
visit to the Catskills, during a charming summer walk with my dear
friend, Catherine Sedgwick, I walked into the brook we were coasting,
and sat down in the water, without at all interrupting the thread of our
conversation; a proceeding which, of course, obliged me to return to the
hotel dripping wet, my companion laughing so immoderately at my
appearance, that, as I represented to her, it was quite impossible for
me to make anybody believe that I had met with an accident and _fallen_
into the water, which was the impression I wished (in the interest of my
reputation for sanity) to convey to such spectators as we might
encounter.
On another occasion, coming over the Wengern Alp from Grindelwald one
sultry summer day, my knees were shaking under me with the steep and
prolonged descent into Lauterbrunnen. Just at the end of the wearisome
downward way an exquisite brook springs into the Lutschine, as it flies
through the valley of waterfalls, and into this I walked straight, to
the consternation of my guides and dear companion, a singularly
dignified little American lady, of Quaker descent and decorum, who was
quite at a loss to conceive how, after such an exploit, I was to present
myself to the inhabitants, tourists, and others of the little street and
its swarming hotels, in my drenched and dripping condition; but, as I
represented to her, nothing would be easier: "I shall get on my mule and
ride sprinkling along, and people will only say, 'Ah, cette pauvre dame!
qui est tombée à l'eau!'"
My visit to my aunt Kemble was prolonged beyond the stay of my friend
H----, and I was left alone at Heath Farm. My walks were, of course,
circumscribed, and the whole complexion of my life much changed by my
being given over to lonely freedom limited only by the bounds of our
pleasure-grounds, and my living converse with my friend exchanged for
unrestricted selection from my aunt's book-shelves; from which I made a
choice of extreme variety, since Lord Byron and Jeremy Taylor were among
the authors with whom I then first made acquaintance, my school
introduction to the former having been followed up by no subsequent
intimacy.
I read them on alternate days, sitting on the mossy-cushioned lawn,
under a beautiful oak tree, with a cabbage-leaf full of fresh-gathered
strawberries and a handful of fresh-blown roses beside me, which
Epicurean accompaniments to my studies appeared to me equally adapted to
the wicked poet and the wise divine. Mrs. Kemble in no way interfered
with me, and was quite unconscious of the subjects of my studies; she
thought me generally "a very odd girl," but though I occasionally took a
mischievous pleasure in perplexing her by fantastical propositions, to
which her usual reply was a rather acrimonious "Don't be absurd, Fanny,"
she did not at all care to investigate my oddity, and left me to my own
devices.
Among her books I came upon Wraxall's "Memoirs of the House of Valois,"
and, reading it with great avidity, determined to write an historical
novel, of which the heroine should be Françoise de Foix, the beautiful
Countess de Châteaubriand. At this enterprise I now set eagerly to work,
the abundant production of doggerel suffering no diminution from this
newer and rather soberer literary undertaking, to which I added a brisk
correspondence with my absent friend, and a task she had set me (perhaps
with some vague desire of giving me a little solid intellectual
occupation) of copying for her sundry portions of "Harris's Hermes;" a
most difficult and abstruse grammatical work, much of which was in
Latin, not a little in Greek. All these I faithfully copied, Chinese
fashion, understanding the English little better than the two dead
languages which I transcribed--the Greek without much difficulty, owing
to my school-day proficiency in the alphabet of that tongue. These
literary exercises, walks within bounds, drives with my aunt, and the
occasional solemnity of a dinner at Lord Essex's, were the events of my
life till my aunt, Mrs. Whitelock, came to Heath Farm and brought an
element of change into the procession of our days.
I think these two widowed ladies had entertained some notion that they
might put their solitude together and make society; but the experiment
did not succeed, and was soon judiciously abandoned, for certainly two
more hopelessly dissimilar characters never made the difficult
experiment of a life in common.
Mrs. Kemble, before she went to Switzerland, had lived in the best
London society, with which she kept up her intercourse by zealous
correspondence; the names of lords and ladies were familiar in her mouth
as household words, and she had undoubtedly an undue respect for
respectability and reverence for titled folk; yet she was not at all
superficially a vulgar woman. She was quick, keen, clever, and shrewd,
with the air, manner, dress, and address of a finished woman of the
world. Mrs. Whitelock was simple-hearted and single-minded, had never
lived in any English society whatever, and retorted but feebly the
fashionable gossip of the day which reached Mrs. Kemble through the
London post, with her transatlantic reminiscences of Prince Talleyrand
and General Washington. She was grotesque in her manner and appearance,
and a severe thorn in the side of her conventionally irreproachable
companion, who has been known, on the approach of some coroneted
carriage, to observe pointedly, "Mrs. Whitelock, there is an
_ekkipage_." "I see it, ma'am," replied the undaunted Mrs. Whitelock,
screwing up her mouth and twirling her thumbs in a peculiarly emphatic
way, to which she was addicted in moments of crisis. Mrs. Kemble, who
was as quick as Pincher in her movements, rang the bell and snapped out,
"Not at home!" denying herself her stimulating dose of high-life gossip,
and her companion what she would have called a little "genteel
sociability," rather than bring face to face her fine friends and Mrs.
Whitelock's flounced white muslin apron and towering Pamela cap, for she
still wore such things. I have said that Mrs. Kemble was not
(superficially) a vulgar woman, but it would have taken the soul of
gentility to have presented, without quailing, her amazingly odd
companion to her particular set of visitors. A humorist would have found
his account in the absurdity of the scene all round; and Jane Austen
would have made a delicious chapter of it; but Mrs. Kemble had not the
requisite humor to perceive the fun of her companion, her acquaintances,
and herself in juxtaposition. I have mentioned her mode of pronouncing
the word equipage, which, together with several similar peculiarities
that struck me as very odd, were borrowed from the usage of London good
society in the days when she frequented it. My friend, Lord Lansdowne,
never called London any thing but _Lunnon_, and always said _obleege_
for oblige, like the Miss Berrys and Mrs. F---- and other of their
contemporaries, who also said _ekkipage_, _pettikits_, _divle_. Since
their time the pronunciation of English in good society, whose usage is
the only acknowledged law in that matter, and the grammatical
construction of the language habitual in that same good society, has
become such as would have challenged the severest criticism, if we had
ventured upon it in my father's house.
The unsuccessful partnership of my aunts was dissolved. Mrs. Kemble
found the country intolerably dull, declared that the grass and trees
made her sick, and fixed her abode in Leamington, then a small,
unpretending, pretty country town, which (principally on account of the
ability, reputation, and influence of its celebrated and popular
resident physician, Dr. Jephson) was a sort of aristocratic-invalid Kur
Residenz, and has since expanded into a thriving, populous, showy,
semi-fashionable, Anglo-American watering-place in summer, and
hunting-place in winter. Mrs. Kemble found the Leamington of her day a
satisfactory abode; the Æsculapius, whose especial shrine it was, became
her intimate friend; the society was comparatively restricted and
select; and the neighborhood, with Warwick Castle, Stoneleigh Abbey, and
Guy's Cliff, full of state and ancientry, within a morning's drive, was
(which she cared less for) lovely in every direction. Mrs. Whitelock
betook herself to a really rural life in a cottage in the beautiful
neighborhood of Addlestone, in Surrey, where she lived in much simple
content, bequeathing her small mansion and estate, at her death, to my
mother, who passed there the last two years of her life and died there.
I never returned to Heath Farm again; sometimes, as I steam by Watford,
the image of the time I spent there rises again before me, but I pass
from it at forty miles an hour, and it passed from me upwards of forty
years ago.
We were now occupying the last of the various houses which for a series
of years we inhabited at Bayswater; it belonged to a French Jew diamond
seller, and was arranged and fitted up with the peculiar tastefulness
which seems innate across the Channel, and inimitable even on the
English side of it. There was one peculiarity in the drawing-room of
this house which I have always particularly liked: a low chimney with a
window over it, the shutter to which was a sliding panel of
looking-glass, so that both by day and candle light the effect was
equally pretty.
At this time I was promoted to the dignity of a bedroom "to myself,"
which I was able to make into a small study, the privacy of which I
enjoyed immensely, as well as the window opening above our suburban bit
of garden, and the sloping meadows beyond it. The following letters,
written at this time to my friend Miss S----, describe the interests and
occupations of my life. It was in the May of 1827. I was between sixteen
and seventeen, which will naturally account for the characteristics of
these epistles.
BAYSWATER, May, 1827.
DEAR H----:
I fear you will think me forgetful and unkind in not having
answered your last letter; but if you do, you are mistaken--nor
ungrateful, which my silence, after the kind interest you have
taken in me and mine, seems to be. But when I tell you that besides
the many things that have occupied my mind connected with the
present situation of our affairs, my hands have been full of work
nearly as dismal as my thoughts--mourning--you will easily
understand and excuse the delay.
Do not be alarmed; the person for whom we are in black has been so
little known to me since my childhood, was so old and infirm, and
so entirely cheerful, resigned, and even desirous of leaving this
world, that few, even of those who knew and loved him better than I
did, could, without selfishness, lament his release. Mr. Twiss, the
father of my cousin Horace, is dead lately; and it is of him that I
speak. He has unfortunately left three daughters, who, though doing
well for themselves in the world, will now feel a sad void in the
circle of their home affections and interests.
And now, dear H----, for myself, or ourselves, rather; for, as you
may well suppose, my whole thoughts are taken up with our
circumstances.
I believe in my last I told you pretty nearly all I knew, or indeed
any of us knew, of our affairs; the matter is now much clearer, and
not a whit pleasanter.
It seems that my father, as proprietor of Covent Garden Theater, in
consequence of this lawsuit and the debts which encumber the
concern, is liable at any time to be called upon for twenty-seven
thousand pounds; which, for a man who can not raise five thousand,
is not a pleasant predicament. On the other hand, Mr. Harris, our
adversary, and joint proprietor with my father, is also liable to
enormous demands, if the debts should be insisted upon at present.
The creditors have declared that they are entirely satisfied that
my father, and Messrs. Forbes and Willett, the other partners, have
done every thing with respect to them which honorable men could do,
and offer to wait till some compromise can be made with Mr. Harris,
who, it is thought, will be willing to enter into any arrangement
rather than be irretrievably ruined, as we all must be unless some
agreement takes place between the proprietors. In the meantime, the
lawyers have advised our party to appeal from the decision of the
Vice-Chancellor. Amid all this perplexity and trouble, we have had
the satisfaction of hearing that John and Henry are both doing
well; we received a letter from the latter a short time ago, full
of affection and kindness to us all. I wish you could have seen my
father's countenance as he read it, and with what fondness and
almost gratitude he kissed dear Henry's name, while the tears were
standing in his eyes. I can not help thinking sometimes that my
father deserved a less hard and toilsome existence.
He has resolved that, come what may, he will keep those boys at
their respective schools, if he can by any means compass it; and if
(which I fear is the case) he finds Bury St. Edmunds too expensive,
we shall remove to Westminster, in order that Henry's education may
not suffer from our circumstances. Last Thursday was my father's
benefit, and a very indifferent one, which I think is rather hard,
considering that he really slaves night and day, and every night
and every day, in that theater. Cecilia Siddons and I have opened a
poetical correspondence; she writes very prettily indeed. Perhaps,
had she not had such a bad subject as myself to treat of, I might
have said more of her verses. You will be sorry to hear that not
only my poor mother's health, but what is almost as precious, her
good spirits, have been dreadfully affected by all her anxiety;
indeed, her nerves have been so utterly deranged that she has been
alternately deaf and blind, and sometimes both, for the last
fortnight. Thank Heaven she is now recovering!
CRAVEN HILL, BAYSWATER, May, 1827.
MY DEAREST H----:
I received your letter the day before yesterday, and felt very much
obliged to you for it, and was particularly interested by your
description of Kenilworth, round which Walter Scott's admirable
novel has cast a halo of romance forever; for many who would have
cared little about it as the residence of Leicester, honored for
some days by the presence of Elizabeth, will remember with a thrill
of interest and pity the night poor Amy Robsart passed there, and
the scene between her, Leicester, and the queen, when that prince
of villains, Varney, claims her as his wife. But in spite of the
romantic and historical associations belonging to the place, I do
not think it would have "inspired my muse."
Of our affairs I know nothing, except that we are going to remove
to Westminster, on account of Henry's schooling, as soon as we can
part with this house.
You will be glad to hear that my mother is a great deal better,
though still suffering from nervousness. She desires to be most
kindly remembered to you and to my aunt Kemble, and would feel very
much obliged to you if you can get from Mrs. Kemble the name and
address of the man who built her pony carriage. Do this, and send
it in the next letter you write to me, which must be long, but not
"long a-coming."
I am glad you like Miss W----, but take care not to like her better
than me; and I am very glad you think of Heath Farm sometimes, for
there, I know, I must be in some corner or other of the picture, be
the foreground what it may. At this time, when the hawthorn is all
out and the nightingales are singing, even here, I think of the
quantities of May we gathered for my wreaths, and the little scrap
of the nightingale's song we used to catch on the lawn between tea
and bedtime. I have been writing a great deal of poetry--at least I
mean it for such, and I hope it is not all very bad, as my father
has expressed himself surprised and pleased at some things I read
him lately. I wish I could send you some of my perpetrations, but
they are for the most part so fearfully long that it is impossible.
You ask about my uncle's monument: I can tell you nothing about it
at present; it is where the memory of the public, the perseverance
of the projectors, Flaxman's genius, and John Kemble's fame are. Do
you know where that is? No more do I.
CRAVEN HILL, BAYSWATER, June 8, 1827.
MY DEAR H----:
I am sure you will rejoice with us all when I inform you that John
has at length exerted himself successfully, and has obtained one of
the highest literary honors conferred by Cambridge on its students:
these are his tutor's very words, therefore I leave you to imagine
how delighted and grateful we all are; indeed, the day we received
the intelligence, we all, with my father at our head, looked more
like hopeful candidates for Bedlam than any thing else. My poor
father jumped, and clapped his hands, and kissed the letter, like a
child; as my mother says, "I am glad he has one gleam of sunshine,
at least;" he sadly wanted it, and I know nothing that could have
given him so much pleasure. Pray tell my aunt Kemble of it. I dare
say she will be glad to hear it. [My brother's tutor was Mr.
Peacock, the celebrated mathematician, well known at Cambridge as
one of the most eminent members of the university, and a private
tutor of whom all his pupils were deservedly proud; even those who,
like my brother John, cultivated the classical studies in
preference to the severe scientific subjects of which Mr. Peacock
was so illustrious a master. His praise of my brother was
regretful, though most ungrudging, for his own sympathy was
entirely with the intellectual pursuits for which Cambridge was
peculiarly famous, as the mathematical university, in
contradistinction to the classical tendency supposed to prevail at
this time among the teachers and students of Oxford.]
And now let me thank you for your last long letter, and the
detailed criticism it contained of my lines; if they oftener passed
through such a wholesome ordeal, I should probably scribble less
than I do. You ask after my novel of "Françoise de Foix," and my
translation of Sismondi's History; the former may, perhaps, be
finished some time these next six years; the latter is, and has
been, in Dr. Malkin's hands ever since I left Heath Farm. What you
say of scriptural subjects I do not always think true; for
instance, "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept," does not
appear to me to have lost much beauty by Byron's poetical
paraphrase. We are really going to leave this pleasant place, and
take up our abode in Westminster; how I shall regret my dear little
room, full of flowers and books, and with its cheerful view. Enfin
il n'y faut plus penser. I have, luckily, the faculty of easily
accommodating myself to circumstances, and though sorry to leave my
little hermitage, I shall soon take root in the next place. With
all my dislike to moving, my great wish is to travel; but perhaps
that is not an absolute inconsistency, for what I wish is never to
remain long enough in a place to take root, or, having done so,
never to be transplanted. I am writing a journal, and its pages,
like our many pleasant hours of conversation, are a whimsical
medley of the sad, the sober, the gay, the good, the bad, and the
ridiculous; not at all the sort of serious, solemn journal you
would write.
CRAVEN HILL, BAYSWATER, ----, 1827.
MY DEAREST H----:
I am afraid you are wondering once more whether I have the gout in
my hands; but so many circumstances have latterly arisen to occupy
my time and attention that I have had but little leisure for
letter-writing. You are now once more comfortably re-established in
your little turret chamber [Miss S----'s room in her home,
Ardgillan Castle], which I intend to come and storm some day,
looking over your pleasant lawn to the beautiful sea and hills. I
ought to envy you, and yet, when I look round my own little
snuggery, which is filled with roses and the books I love, and
where not a ray of sun penetrates, though it is high noon and
burning hot, I only envy you your own company, which I think would
be a most agreeable addition to the pleasantness of my little room.
I am sadly afraid, however, that I shall soon be called upon to
leave it, for though our plans are still so unsettled as to make it
quite impossible to say what will be our destination, it is, I
think, almost certain that we shall leave this place.
We have had Mrs. Henry Siddons, with her youngest daughter, staying
with us for a short time; she is now going on through Paris to
Switzerland, on account of my cousin's delicate health, which
renders Scotland an unsafe residence for her. John is also at home
just now, which, as you may easily believe, is an invaluable gain
to me; I rather think, however, that my mother is not of that
opinion, for he talks and thinks of nothing but politics, and she
has a great dread of my becoming imbued with his mania; a needless
fear, I think, however, for though I am willing and glad to listen
to his opinions and the arguments of his favorite authors, I am
never likely to study them myself, and my interest in the whole
subject will cease with his departure for Cambridge.
Henry returned from Bury St. Edmunds, and my father left us for
Lancaster last night, and we are now in daily expectation of
departing for Weybridge, so that the last fortnight has been one
continual bustle.
I have had another reason for not writing to you, which I have only
just made up my mind to tell you. Dick ---- has been taking my
likeness, or rather has begun to do so. I thought, dear H----, that
you would like to have this sketch, and I was in hopes that the
first letter you received in Ireland from me would contain it; but,
alas! Dick is as inconstant and capricious as a genius need be, and
there lies my fac-simile in a state of non-conclusion; they all
tell me it is very like, but it does appear to me so pretty that I
am divided between satisfaction and incredulity. My father, I
lament to say, left us last night in very bad spirits. I never saw
him so depressed, and feared that my poor mother would suffer
to-day from her anxiety about him; however, she is happily pretty
well to-day, and I trust will soon, what with Weybridge and
pike-fishing, recover her health and spirits entirely.
I suspect this will be the last summer we shall spend at Weybridge,
as we are going to give our cottage up, I believe. I shall regret
it extremely for my mother; it is agreeable to and very good for
her. I do not care much about it for myself; indeed, I care very
little where I go; I do not like leaving any place, but the tie of
habit, which is quickly formed and strong in me, once broken, I can
easily accommodate myself to the next change, which, however, I
always pray may be the last. My mother and myself had yesterday a
serious, and to me painful, conversation on the necessity of not
only not hating society, but tolerating and mixing in it. She and
my father have always been disinclined to it, but their
disinclination has descended to me in the shape of active dislike,
and I feel sometimes inclined to hide myself, to escape sitting
down and communing with my fellow-creatures after the fashion that
calls itself social intercourse. I can't help fancying (which,
however, _may_ be a great mistake) that the hours spent in my own
room reading and writing are better employed than if devoted to
people and things in which I feel no interest whatever, and do not
know how to pretend the contrary.
I must do justice to my mother, however, for any one more
reasonable, amiable, and kind, in this as in most respects, can not
exist than herself; but nevertheless, when I went to bed last night
I sat by my open window, looking at the moon and thinking of my
social duties, and then scribbled endless doggerel in a highly
Byronic mood to deliver my mind upon the subject, after which,
feeling amazingly better, I went to bed and slept profoundly,
satisfied that I had given "society" a death-blow. But really,
jesting apart, the companionship of my own family--those I live
with, I mean--satisfies me entirely, and I have not the least
desire for any other.
Good-by, my dearest H----; do not punish me for not writing sooner
by not answering this for two months; but be a nice woman and write
very soon to yours ever,
FANNY.
P.S.--I am reading the memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, la
Grande Mademoiselle, written by herself: if you never read them,
do; they are very interesting and amusing.
The "Dick" mentioned in this letter was the nephew of my godmother, Miss
A---- W----, of Stafford, and son of Colonel ----, a Staffordshire
gentleman of moderate means, who went to Germany and settled at
Darmstadt, for the sake of giving a complete education in foreign
languages and accomplishments to his daughters. His eldest son was in
the Church. They resided at the little German court till the young girls
became young women, remarkable for their talents and accomplishments. In
the course of their long residence at Darmstadt they had become intimate
with the reigning duke and his family, whose small royalty admitted of
such friendly familiarity with well-born and well-bred foreigners. But
when Colonel ---- brought his wife and daughters back to England, like
most other English people who try a similar experiment, the change from
being decided _somebodies_ in the court circle of a German principality
(whose sovereign was chiefly occupied, it is true, with the government
of his opera-house) to being decided _nobodies_ in the huge mass of
obscure, middle-class English gentility, was all but intolerable to
them.
The peculiar gift of their second son, my eccentric friend Richard, was
a genius for painting, which might have won him an honored place among
English artists, had he ever chosen to join their ranks as a competitor
for fame and fortune.
EASTLANDS COTTAGE, WEYBRIDGE, ----, 1827.
MY DEAR H----:
I wrote to you immediately upon our arriving here, which is now
nearly a month ago, but having received no answer, and not having
heard from you for some time, I conjecture that our charming
post-office has done as it did last year, and kept my letters to
itself. I therefore take the opportunity, which my brother's
departure for town to-morrow gives me, of writing to you and having
my letter posted in London. John's going to town is an extreme loss
to me, for here we are more thrown together and companionable than
we can be in London. His intellectual occupations and interests
engross him very much, and though always very interesting to me,
are seldom discussed with or communicated to me as freely there as
they are here--I suppose for want of better fellowship. I have
latterly, also, summoned up courage enough to request him to walk
with me; and to my some surprise and great satisfaction, instead of
the "I can't, I am really so busy," he has acquiesced, and we have
had one or two very pleasant long strolls together. He is certainly
a very uncommon person, and I admire, perhaps too enthusiastically,
his great abilities.
My father is in Paris, where he was to arrive yesterday, and where
to-morrow he will act in the first regularly and decently organized
English theater that the French ever saw. He is very nervous, and
we, as you may easily conceive, very anxious about it; when next I
write to you I will let you know all that we hear of the result. I
must repeat some part of my last letter, in case you did not
receive it. We have taken a house in James Street, Buckingham Gate,
Westminster, which appears to be in every way a desirable and
convenient abode; in itself it is comfortable and cheerful, and its
nearness to Henry's school and comparative nearness to the theatre,
together with its view over the park, and (though last, not least)
its moderate rent, make up a mass of combined advantages which few
other situations that we could afford can present.
I am extremely busy, dearest H----, and extremely elated about my
play; I know I mentioned it before to you, but you may have
reckoned it as one of the soap-bubbles which I am so fond of
blowing, admiring, and forgetting; however, when I tell you that I
have finished three acts of it, and that the proprietors of Covent
Garden have offered me, if it succeeds, two hundred pounds (the
price Miss Mitford's "Foscari" brought her), you will agree that I
have some reason to be proud as well as pleased.
As nobody but myself can give you any opinion of it, you must be
content to take my own, making all allowances for etc., etc., etc.
I think, irrespective of age or sex, it is not a bad play--perhaps,
considering both, a tolerably fair one; there is some good writing
in it, and good situations; the latter I owe to suggestions of my
mother's, who is endowed with what seems to me really a science by
itself, i.e. the knowledge of producing dramatic effect; more
important to a playwright than even true delineation of character
or beautiful poetry, in spite of what Alfieri says: "Un attore che
dirà bene, delle cose belle si farà ascoltare per forza." But the
"ben dire cose belle" will not make a play without striking
situations and effects succeed, for all that; at any rate with an
English audience of the present day. Moreover (but this, as well as
everything about my play, must be _entre nous_ for the present), my
father has offered me either to let me sell my play to a
bookseller, or to buy it for the theatre at fifty pounds.
Fifty pounds is the very utmost that any bookseller would give for
a successful play, _mais en revanche_, by selling my play to the
theater it cannot be read or known as a literary work, and as to
make a name for myself as a writer is the aim of my ambition, I
think I shall decline his offer. My dearest H----, this quantity
about myself and my pursuits will, I am afraid, appear very
egotistical to you, but I rely on your unchangeable affection for
me to find some interest in what is interesting me so much.
Always you most affectionate
FANNY.