The success of the English theater in Paris was quite satisfactory; and
all the most eminent members of the profession--Kean, Young, Macready,
and my father--went over in turn to exhibit to the Parisian public
Shakespeare the Barbarian, illustrated by his barbarian
fellow-countrymen. I do not remember hearing of any very eminent actress
joining in that worthy enterprise; but Miss Smithson, a young lady with
a figure and face of Hibernian beauty, whose superfluous native accent
was no drawback to her merits in the esteem of her French audience,
represented to them the heroines of the English tragic drama; the
incidents of which, infinitely more startling than any they were used
to, invested their fair victim with an amazing power over her foreign
critics, and she received from them, in consequence, a rather
disproportionate share of admiration--due, perhaps, more to the
astonishing circumstances in which she appeared before them than to the
excellence of her acting under them.
One of the most enthusiastic admirers of the English representations
said to my father, "Ah! parlez moi d'Othello! voilà, voilà la passion,
la tragédie. Dieu! que j'aime cette pièce! il y a tant de
_remue-ménage_."
A few rash and superficial criticisms were hardly to be avoided; but in
general, my father has often said, in spite of the difficulty of the
foreign language, and the strangeness of the foreign form of thought and
feeling and combination of incident, his Parisian audience never
appeared to him to miss the finer touches or more delicate and refined
shades of his acting; and in this respect he thought them superior to
his own countrymen. Lamartine and Victor Hugo had already proclaimed the
enfranchisement of French poetical thought from the rigid rule of
classical authority; and all the enthusiastic believers in the future
glories of the "Muse Romantique" went to the English theater, to be
amazed, if not daunted, by the breadth of horizon and height of empyrean
which her wings might sweep, and into which she might soar, "puisque
Shakespeare l'a bien osé."
ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, October 11, 1827,
MY DEAREST H----,
I do not think you would have been surprised at my delay in
answering your last, when I told you that on arriving here I found
that all my goods and chattels had been (according to my own
desire) only removed hither, and that their arrangement and
bestowal still remained to be effected by myself; and when I tell
you that I have settled all these matters, and moreover _finished
my play_, I think you will excuse my not having answered you
sooner. Last Monday, having in the morning achieved the termination
of the fourth act, and finding that my father did not act on
Tuesday, I resolved, if possible, to get it finished in order to
read it to him on Tuesday evening. So on Monday evening at six
o'clock I sat down to begin my fifth act, and by half-past eleven
had completed my task; I am thus minute because I know you will not
think these details tiresome, and also because, even if it succeeds
and is praised and admired, I shall never feel so happy as when my
father greeted my entrance into the drawing-room with, "Is it done,
my love? I shall be the happiest man alive if it succeeds!"
On Tuesday evening I read it to them, and I was so encouraged by
the delighted looks my father and mother were continually
exchanging, that I believe I read it with more effect than they
either of them had thought me capable of. When it was done I was
most richly rewarded, for they all seemed so pleased with me and so
proud of me, that the most inordinate author's vanity would have
been satisfied. And my dear mother, oh, how she looked at
me!--forgive me, dear, and grant some little indulgence to my
exultation. I thought I deserved some praise, but thrice my deserts
were showered upon me by those I love above everything in the
world.
When commendation and congratulation had a little given way to
reflection, my mother and John entreated my father not to let the
play be acted, or, if he did, to have it published first; for they
said (and their opinion has been sanctioned by several literary
men) that the work as a literary production (I repeat what they
say, mind) has merit enough to make it desirable that the public
should judge of it as a poetical composition before it is submitted
to the mangling necessary for the stage.
Of course, my task being finished, I have nothing more to do with
it; nor do I care whether it is published first or after, provided
only it may be acted: though I dare say that process may not prove
entirely satisfactory to me either; for though Mr. Young and my
father would thoroughly embody my conception of the parts intended
for them, yet there is a woman's part which, considering the
materials history has furnished, ought to be a very fine
one--Louisa of Savoy; and it must be cut down to the capacity of a
second-rate actress. The character would have been the sort of one
for Mrs. Siddons; how I wish she was yet in a situation to afford
it the high preferment of her acceptance!
My father has obtained a most unequivocal success in Paris, the
more flattering as it was rather doubtful, and the excellent
Parisians not only received him very well, but forthwith threw
themselves into a headlong _furor_ for Shakespeare and Charles
Kemble, which, although they might not improbably do the same
to-morrow for two dancing dogs, _we_ are quite willing to attribute
to the merits of the poet and his interpreter. The French papers
have been profuse in their praises of both, and some of our own
have quoted their commendations. My mother is, I think, recovering,
though slowly, from her long illness. She is less deaf, and rather
less blind; but for the general state of her health, time, and time
alone, will, I am sure, restore it entirely. I have just seen the
dress that my father had made abroad for his part in my play: a
bright amber-colored _velours épinglé_, with a border of rich
silver embroidery; this, together with a cloak of violet velvet
trimmed with imitation sable. The fashion is what you see in all
the pictures and prints of Francis I. My father is very anxious, I
think, to act the play; my mother, to have it published before it
is acted; and I sit and hear it discussed and praised and
criticised, only longing (like a "silly wench," as my mother calls
me when I confess as much to her) to see my father in his lovely
dress and hear the _alarums of my fifth act_.
I am a little mad, I suppose, and my letter a little tipsy, I dare
say, but I am ever your most affectionate
FANNY.
16 ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, WESTMINSTER,
October 21, 1827.
MY DEAR H----,
Your letter was short and sweet, but none the sweeter for being
short. I should have thought no one could have been worse provided
than myself with news or letter chit-chit, and yet I think my
letters are generally longer than yours; brevity, in you, is a
fault; do not be guilty of it again: "car du reste," as Madame de
Sévigné says, "votre style est parfait." John returned to Cambridge
on Thursday night. He is a great loss to me, for though I have seen
but little of him since our return to town, that little is too much
to lose of one we love. He is an excellent fellow in every way, and
in the way of abilities he is particularly to my mind. We all miss
him very much; however, his absence will be broken now by visits to
London, in order to keep his term [about this time my brother was
entered at the Inner Temple, I think], so that we shall
occasionally enjoy his company for a day or two. I should like to
tell you something about my play, but unluckily have nothing to
tell; everything about it is as undecided as when last I wrote to
you. It is in the hands of the copyist of Covent Garden, but what
its ultimate fate is to be I know not. If it is decided that it is
to be brought out on the stage before publication, that will not
take place at present, because this is a very unfavorable time of
year. If I can send it to Ireland, tell me how I can get it
conveyed to you, and I will endeavor to do so. I should like you to
read it, but oh, _how_ I should like to go and see it acted with
you! I am now full of thoughts of writing a comedy, and have drawn
out the plan of one--plot, acts, and scenes in due order--already;
and I mean to make it Italian and mediæval, for the sake of having
one of those bewitching creatures, a jester, in it; I have an
historical one in my play, Triboulet, whom I have tried to make an
interesting as well as an amusing personage.
My mother, by the aid of a blister and _my play_, is, I think,
recovering, though slowly, from her illness; she is still, though,
in a state of great suffering, which is by no means alleviated by
being unable to write, read, work, or occupy herself in any manner.
We have been to the play pretty regularly twice a week for the last
three weeks, and shall continue to do so during the whole winter;
which is a plan I much approve of. I am very fond of going to the
play, and Kean, Young, and my father make one of Shakespeare's
plays something well worth seeing. I saw the "Merchant of Venice"
the other evening, for the first time, and returned home a violent
_Keanite_. That man is an extraordinary creature! Some of the
things he did, appeared, on reflection, questionable to my judgment
and open to criticism; but while under the influence of his amazing
power of passion it is impossible to reason, analyze, or do
anything but surrender one's self to his forcible appeals to one's
emotions. He entirely divested Shylock of all poetry or elevation,
but invested it with a concentrated ferocity that made one's blood
curdle. He seemed to me to combine the supernatural malice of a
fiend with the base reality of the meanest humanity. His passion is
prosaic, but all the more intensely terrible for that very reason.
I am to see him to-morrow in "Richard III.," and, though I never
saw the play before, am afraid I shall be disappointed, because
Richard III. is a Plantagenet Prince, and should be a royal
villain, and I am afraid Mr. Kean will not have the innate
_majesty_ which I think belongs to the part; however, we shall see,
and when next I write I will tell you how it impressed me.
You deserve that I should bestow all my tediousness upon you, for
loving me as well as you do. Mrs. Harry Siddons and her daughter
are here for two or three days, on their return from their tour
through Switzerland. Mrs. Harry is all that is excellent, though
she does not strike me as particularly clever; and Lizzy is a very
pretty, very good, very sweet, very amiable girl. Her brother, my
cousin, the midshipman, is here too, having come up from Portsmouth
to meet his mother and sister, so that the house is full. Think of
that happy girl having travelled all through Switzerland, seen the
Jungfrau--Manfred's mountain--been in two violent storms at night
on the lakes, and telling me placidly that "she liked it all very
well." Oh dear, oh dear! how queerly Heaven does distribute
privileges! Good-by, dear.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
16 ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, December, 1827.
MY DEAREST H----,
My heart is full of joy, and I write that you may rejoice with me;
our dear John has distinguished himself greatly, but lest my words
should seem sisterly and exaggerated, I will repeat what Mr.
Peacock, his tutor, wrote to my father: "He has covered himself
with glory. Such an oration as his has not been heard for many
years in Cambridge, and it was as tastefully and modestly delivered
as it was well written." This has made us all _very, very_ happy,
and though the first news of it overcame my poor mother, whose
nerves are far from firm, she soon recovered, and we are
impatiently expecting his return from college. My play is at
present being pruned by my father, and will therefore not occupy my
thoughts again till it comes out, which I hope will be at Easter. I
did not write sooner, because I had nothing to say; but now that
this joy about my brother has come to me, _je te l'envoie_. Since
last you heard from me I have seen the great West India Dock and
the Thames Tunnel. Oh, H----, "que c'est une jolie chose que
l'homme!" Annihilated by any one of the elements if singly opposed
to its power, he by his genius yet brings their united forces into
bondage, and compels obedience from all their manifold combined
strength. We penetrate the earth, we turn the course of rivers, we
exalt the valleys and bow down the mountains; and we die and return
to our dust, and they remain and remember us no more. Often enough,
indeed, the names of great inventors and projectors have been
overshadowed or effaced by mere finishers of their work or adapters
of their idea, who have reaped the honor and emolument due to an
obscure originator, who passes away from the world, his rightful
claim to its admiration and gratitude unknown or unacknowledged.
But these obey the law of their being; they cannot but do the work
God's inspiration calls them to.
But I must tell you what this tunnel is like, or at least try to do
so. You enter, by flights of stairs, the first door, and find
yourself on a circular platform which surrounds the top of a well
or shaft, of about two hundred feet in circumference and five
hundred in depth. This well is an immense iron frame of cylindrical
form, filled in with bricks; it was constructed on level ground,
and then, by some wonderful mechanical process, sunk into the
earth. In the midst of this is a steam engine, and above, or below,
as far as your eye can see, huge arms are working up and down,
while the creaking, crashing, whirring noises, and the swift
whirling of innumerable wheels all round you, make you feel for the
first few minutes as if you were going distracted. I should have
liked to look much longer at all these beautiful, wise, working
creatures, but was obliged to follow the last of the party through
all the machinery, down little wooden stairs and along tottering
planks, to the bottom of the well. On turning round at the foot of
the last flight of steps through an immense dark arch, as far as
sight could reach stretched a vaulted passage, smooth earth
underfoot, the white arches of the roof beyond one another
lengthening on and on in prolonged vista, the whole lighted by a
line of gas lamps, and as bright, almost, as if it were broad day.
It was more like one of the long avenues of light that lead to the
abodes of the genii in fairy tales, than anything I had ever
beheld. The profound stillness of the place, which was first broken
by my father's voice, to which the vaulted roof gave extraordinary
and startling volume of tone, the indescribable feeling of
subterranean vastness, the amazement and delight I experienced,
quite overcame me, and I was obliged to turn from the friend who
was explaining everything to me, to cry and ponder in silence. How
I wish you had been with us, dear H----! Our name is always worth
something to us: Mr. Brunel, who was superintending some of the
works, came to my father and offered to conduct us to where the
workmen were employed--an unusual favor, which of course delighted
us all. So we left our broad, smooth path of light, and got into
dark passages, where we stumbled among coils of ropes and heaps of
pipes and piles of planks, and where ground springs were welling up
and flowing about in every direction, all which was very strange.
As you may have heard, the tunnel caved in once, and let the Thames
in through the roof; and in order that, should such an accident
occur again, no lives may be lost, an iron frame has been
constructed--a sort of cage, divided into many compartments, in
each of which a man with his lantern and his tools is placed--and
as they clear the earth away this iron frame is moved onward and
advances into new ground. All this was wonderful and curious beyond
measure, but the appearance of the workmen themselves, all
begrimed, with their brawny arms and legs bare, some standing in
black water up to their knees, others laboriously shovelling the
black earth in their cages (while they sturdily sung at their
task), with the red, murky light of links and lanterns flashing and
flickering about them, made up the most striking picture you can
conceive. As we returned I remained at the bottom of the stairs
last of all, to look back at the beautiful road to Hades, wishing I
might be left behind, and then we reascended, through wheels,
pulleys, and engines, to the upper day. After this we rowed down
the river to the docks, lunched on board a splendid East Indiaman,
and came home again. I think it is better for me, however, to look
at the trees, and the sun, moon, and stars, than at tunnels and
docks; they make me too _humanity proud_.
I am reading "Vivian Grey." Have you read it? It is very clever.
Ever your most affectionate
FANNY.
16 ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, January, 1828.
DEAREST H----,
I jumped, in despite of a horrid headache, when I saw your letter.
Indeed, if you knew how the sight of your handwriting delights me,
you would not talk of lack of matter; for what have I to tell you
of more interest for you, than the health and proceedings of those
you love must be to me?
Dear John is come home with his trophy. He is really a highly
gifted creature; but I sometimes fear that the passionate eagerness
with which he _pursues his pursuit_, the sort of frenzy he has
about politics, and his constant excitement about political
questions, may actually injure his health, and the vehemence with
which he speaks and writes in support of his peculiar views will
perhaps endanger his future prospects.
He is neither tory nor whig, but a radical, a utilitarian, an
adorer of Bentham, a worshiper of Mill, an advocate for vote by
ballot, an opponent of hereditary aristocracy, the church
establishment, the army and navy, which he deems sources of
unnecessary national expense; though who is to take care of our
souls and bodies, if the three last-named institutions are done
away with, I do not quite see. Morning, noon, and night he is
writing whole volumes of arguments against them, full of a good
deal of careful study and reading, and in a close, concise,
forcible style, which is excellent in itself, and the essays are
creditable to his laborious industry; but they will not teach him
mathematics, or give him a scholarship or his degree. That he will
distinguish himself hereafter I have no doubt; but at present he is
engrossed by a passion (for it seems to me nothing less) which
occupies his mind and time, to the detriment, if not the exclusion,
of all other studies.
I feel almost ashamed of saying anything about myself, after the
two or three scoldings you have sent me of late. Perhaps while my
blue devils found vent in ridiculous verses, they did not much
matter; but their having prompted me lately to throw between seven
and eight hundred pages (about a year's work) into the fire, seems
to me now rather deplorable. You perhaps will say that the fire is
no bad place for seven or eight hundred pages of my manuscript; but
I had spent time and pains on them, and I think they should not
have been thrown away in a foolish fit of despondency. I am at
present not very well. I do not mean that I have any specific
illness, but headaches and side-aches, so that I am one moment in a
state of feverish excitement and the next nervous and low-spirited;
this is not a good account, but a true one.
I have no "new friends," dearest H----; perhaps because my dislike
to society makes me stupid and disagreeable when I am in it. I have
made one acquaintance, which might perhaps grow to a friendship
were it not that distance and its attendant inconveniences have
hitherto prevented my becoming more intimate with the lady I refer
to. She is a married woman; her name is Jameson. She is an
Irishwoman, and the authoress of the "Diary of an Ennuyée." I like
her very much; she is extremely clever; I wish I knew her better. I
have been to one dance and one or two dinners lately, but to tell
you the truth, dear H----, the old people naturally treat me after
my years, as a young person, and the young people (perhaps from my
self-conceit) seem to me stupid and uninteresting, and so, you see,
I do not like society. Cecilia Siddons is out of town at present,
and I have not seen her for some time. You may have heard that the
theatre has gained a lawsuit against Sinclair, the celebrated
singer, by a reversal of the former verdict in the case. We were
not even aware that such a process was going on, and when my father
came home and said, "We have won our cause," my mother and myself
started up, supposing he meant _the_ chancery suit. That,
unfortunately, is still pending, pending, like the sword of
Damocles, over our heads, banishing all security for the present or
hope for the future. The theatre is, I believe, doing very well
just now, and we go pretty often to the play, which I like. I have
lately been seeing my father playing Falstaff several times, and I
think it is an excellent piece of acting; he gives all the humor
without too much coarseness, or _charging_, and through the whole,
according to the fat knight's own expression, he is "Sir John to
all the world," with a certain courtly deportment which prevents
him from degenerating into the mere gross buffoon. They are in sad
want of a woman at both the theatres. I've half a mind to give
Covent Garden one. Don't be surprised. I have something to say to
you on this subject, but have not room for it in this letter. My
father is just now acting in the north of England. We expect him
back in a fortnight. God bless you, dear H----.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
The vehement passion of political interest which absorbed my brother at
this time was in truth affecting the whole of English society almost as
passionately. In a letter written in 1827, the Duke of Wellington, after
speaking of the strong partisan sentiment which was agitating the
country, added, "The ladies and all the youth are with us;" that is,
with the Tory party, which, under his leadership, was still an active
power of obstruction to the imminent changes to which both he and his
party were presently to succumb. His ministry was a period of the
stormiest excitement in the political world, and the importance of the
questions at issue--Catholic emancipation and parliamentary
reform--powerfully affected men's minds in the ranks of life least
allied to the governing class. Even in a home so obscure and so devoted
to other pursuits and interests as ours, the spirit of the times made
its way, and our own peculiar occupations became less interesting to us
than the intense national importance of the public questions which were
beginning to convulse the country from end to end. About this time I met
with a book which produced a great and not altogether favorable effect
upon my mind (the blame resting entirely with me, I think, and not with
what I read). I had become moody and fantastical for want of solid
wholesome mental occupation, and the excess of imaginative stimulus in
my life, and was possessed with a wild desire for an existence of lonely
independence, which seemed to my exaggerated notions the only one fitted
to the intellectual development in which alone I conceived happiness to
consist. Mrs. Jameson's "Diary of an Ennuyée," which I now read for the
first time, added to this desire for isolation and independence such a
passionate longing to go to Italy, that my brain was literally filled
with chimerical projects of settling in the south of Europe, and there
leading a solitary life of literary labor, which, together with the fame
I hoped to achieve by it, seemed to me the only worthy purpose of
existence. While under the immediate spell of her fascinating book, it
was of course very delightful to me to make Mrs. Jameson's acquaintance,
which I did at the house of our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Basil Montagu.
They were the friends of Coleridge, Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Proctor
(Barry Cornwall, who married Mrs. Montagu's daughter), and were
themselves individually as remarkable, if not as celebrated, as many of
their more famous friends. Basil Montagu was the son of the Earl of
Sandwich and the beautiful Miss Wray, whose German lover murdered her at
the theatre by shooting her in her private box, and then blew his own
brains out. Mr. Montagu inherited ability, eccentricity, and personal
beauty, from his parents. His only literary productions that I am
acquainted with were a notice of Bacon and his works, which he published
in a small pamphlet volume, and another volume of extracts from some of
the fine prose writers of the seventeenth century. I have a general
impression that his personal intercourse gave a far better idea of his
intellectual ability than anything that he achieved either in his
profession or in letters.
His conversation was extremely vivid and sparkling, and the quaint
eccentricity of his manner added to the impression of originality which
he produced upon one. Very unlike the common run of people as he was,
however, he was far less so than his wife, who certainly was one of the
most striking and remarkable persons I have known. Her appearance was
extraordinary: she was much above middle height, with a beautiful figure
and face, the outline of which was of classical purity and severity,
while her whole carriage and appearance was dignified and majestic to
the highest degree. I knew her for upwards of thirty years, and never
saw her depart from a peculiar style of dress, which she had adopted
with the finest instinct of what was personally becoming as well as
graceful and beautiful in itself. She was so superior in this point to
her sex generally, that, having found that which was undoubtedly her own
proper individual costume, she never changed the fashion of it. Her
dress deserved to be called (what all dress should be) a lesser fine
art, and seemed the proper expression in clothes of her personality, and
really a part of herself. It was a long, open robe, over an underskirt
of the same material and color (always moonlight silver gray, amethyst
purple, or black silk or satin of the richest quality), trimmed with
broad velvet facings of the same color, the sleeves plain and tight
fitting from shoulder to wrist, and the bosom covered with a fine lace
half-body, which came, like the wimple of old mediæval portraits, up
round her throat, and seemed to belong in material and fashion to the
clear chin-stay which followed the noble contour of her face, and the
picturesque cap which covered, without concealing, her auburn hair and
the beautiful proportions of her exquisite head.
This lady knew no language but her own, and to that ignorance (which one
is tempted in these days occasionally to think desirable) she probably
owed the remarkable power and purity with which she used her mother
tongue. Her conversation and her letters were perfect models of spoken
and written English. Her marriage with Mr. Montagu was attended with
some singular circumstances, the knowledge of which I owe to herself.
She was a Yorkshire widow lady, and came with her only child (a little
girl) to visit some friends in London, with whom Basil Montagu was
intimate. Mrs. S---- had probably occasionally been the subject of
conversation between him and her hosts, when they were expecting her;
for one evening soon after her arrival, as she was sitting partly
concealed by one of the curtains in the drawing-room, Basil Montagu came
rapidly into the room, exclaiming (evidently not perceiving her), "Come,
where is your wonderful Mrs. S----? I want to see her." During the whole
evening he engrossed her attention and talked to her, and the next
morning at breakfast she laughingly complained to her hosts that he had
not been content with that, but had tormented her in dreams all night.
"For," said she, "I dreamt I was going to be married to him, and the day
before the wedding he came to me with a couple of boxes, and said
solemnly, 'My dear Anne, I want to confide these relics to your keeping;
in this casket are contained the bones of my dear first wife, and in
this those of my dear second wife; do me the favor to take charge of
them for me.'" The odd circumstance was that Basil Montagu had been
married twice, and that when he made his third matrimonial venture, and
was accepted by Mrs. S----, he appeared before her one day, and with
much solemnity begged her to take charge of two caskets, in which were
respectively treasured, not the bones, but the letters of her two
predecessors. It is quite possible that he might have heard of her dream
on the first night of their acquaintance, and amused himself with
carrying it out when he was about to marry her; but when Mrs. Montagu
told me the story I do not think she suggested any such rationalistic
solution of the mystery. Her daughter, Anne S---- (afterwards Mrs.
Procter), who has been all my life a kind and excellent friend to me,
inherited her remarkable mother's mental gifts and special mastery over
her own language; but she added to these, as part of her own
individuality, a power of sarcasm that made the tongue she spoke in and
the tongue she spoke with two of the most formidable weapons any woman
was ever armed with. She was an exceedingly kind-hearted person,
perpetually occupied in good offices to the poor, the afflicted, her
friends, and all whom she could in any way serve; nevertheless, such was
her severity of speech, not unfrequently exercised on those she appeared
to like best, that Thackeray, Browning, and Kinglake, who were all her
friendly intimates, sometimes designated her as "Our Lady of
Bitterness," and she is alluded to by that title in the opening chapter
of "Eothen." A daily volume of wit and wisdom might have been gathered
from her familiar talk, which was _crisp_, with suggestions of thought
in the liveliest and highest form. Somebody asking her how she and a
certain acrid critic of her acquaintance got on together, she replied,
"Oh, very well; we sharpen each other like two knives." Being
congratulated on the restoration of cordiality between herself and a
friend with whom she had had some difference, "Oh yes," said she, "the
cracked cup is mended, but it will never hold water again." Both these
ladies, mother and daughter, had a most extraordinary habit of crediting
their friends with their own wise and witty sayings; thus Mrs. Montagu
and Mrs. Procter would say, "Ah yes, you know, as you once said," and
then would follow something so sparkling, profound, concise, incisive,
and brilliant, that you remained, eyes and mouth open, gasping in
speechless astonishment at the merit of the saying you never said (and
couldn't have said if your life had depended on it), and the
magnificence of the gift its author was making you. The princes in the
Arabian Nights, who only gave you a ring worth thousands of sequins,
were shabby fellows compared with these ladies, who declared that the
diamonds and rubies of their own uttering had fallen from your lips.
Persons who lay claim to the good things of others are not rare; those
who do not only disclaim their own, but even credit others with them,
are among the very rarest. In all my intercourse with the inhabitants of
_two_ worlds, I have known no similar instance of self-denial; and
reflecting upon it, I have finally concluded that it was too superhuman
to be a real virtue, and could proceed only from an exorbitant
superabundance of natural gift, which made its possessors reckless,
extravagant, and even unprincipled in the use of their wealth; they had
wit enough for themselves, and to spare for all their friends, and these
were many.
At an evening party at Mrs. Montagu's, in Bedford Square, in 1828, I
first saw Mrs. Jameson. The Ennuyée, one is given to understand, dies;
and it was a little vexatious to behold her sitting on a sofa, in a very
becoming state of blooming _plumptitude_; but it was some compensation
to be introduced to her. And so began a close and friendly intimacy,
which lasted for many years, between myself and this very accomplished
woman. She was the daughter of an Irish miniature-painter of the name of
Murphy, and began life as a governess, in which capacity she educated
the daughters of Lord H----, and went to Italy with the family of Mrs.
R----. When I first knew her she had not long been married to Mr. Robert
Jameson, a union so ill-assorted that it restored Mrs. Jameson to the
bosom of her own family, to whom her conjugal ill-fortune proved a
blessing, for never did daughter and sister discharge with more loving
fidelity the duties of those relationships. Her life was devoted to her
parents while they lived, and after their death to her sisters and a
young niece whom she adopted. Her various and numerous gifts and
acquirements were exercised, developed, and constantly increased by a
life of the most indefatigable literary study, research, and labor. Her
reading was very extensive; her information, without being profound, was
general; she was an excellent modern linguist, and perfectly well versed
in the literature of her own country and of France, Germany, and Italy.
She had an uncommon taste and talent for art, and as she added to her
knowledge of the theory and history of painting familiar acquaintance
with most of the fine public and private galleries in Europe, a keen
sensibility to beauty, and considerable critical judgment, her works
upon painting, and especially the exceedingly interesting volumes she
published on the "Sacred and Legendary Art of the Romish Church," are at
once delightful and interesting sources of information, and useful and
accurate works of reference, to which considerable value is added by her
own spirited and graceful etchings.
The literary works of hers in which I have a direct personal interest,
are a charming book of essays on Shakespeare's female characters,
entitled "Characteristics of Women," which she did me the honor to
dedicate to me; some pages of letterpress written to accompany a series
of sketches John Hayter made of me in the character of Juliet; and a
notice of my sister's principal operatic performances after she came out
on the stage. Mrs. Jameson at one time contemplated writing a life of my
aunt Siddons, not thinking Boaden's biography of her satisfactory; in
this purpose, however, she was effectually opposed by Campbell, who had
undertaken the work, and, though he exhibited neither interest nor zeal
in the fulfillment of his task, doggedly (in the manger) refused to
relinquish it to her. Certainly, had Mrs. Jameson carried out her
intention, Mrs. Siddons would have had a monument dedicated to her
memory better calculated to preserve it than those which the above-named
gentlemen bestowed on her. It would have been written in a spirit of far
higher artistic discrimination, and with infinitely more sympathy both
with the woman and with the actress.