Late in middle life Mrs. Jameson formed an intimate acquaintance, which
at one time assumed the character of a close friendship, with Lady
Byron, under the influence of whose remarkable mind and character the
subjects of artistic and literary interest, which had till then absorbed
Mrs. Jameson's attention and occupied her pen, gave place to others of a
very different kind--those which engrossed for a time, to the exclusion
of almost all others, the minds of men and women in England at the
beginning of the Crimean War; when the fashion of certain forms of
philanthropy set by that wonderful woman, Florence Nightingale, was
making hospital nurses of idle, frivolous fine ladies, and turning into
innumerable channels of newly awakened benevolence and activity--far
more zealous than discreet--the love of adventure, the desire for
excitement, and the desperate need of occupation, of many women who had
no other qualifications for the hard and holy labors into which they
flung themselves.
Mrs. Jameson felt the impulse of the time, as it reached her through
Lady Byron and Miss Nightingale, and warmly embraced the wider and more
enlightened aspect of women's duties beginning to be advocated with
extreme enthusiasm in English society. One of the last books she
published was a popular account of foreign Sisters of Mercy, their
special duties, the organization of their societies, and the sphere of
their operations; suggesting the formation of similar bodies of
religiously charitable sisterhoods in England. She had this subject so
much at heart, she told me, that she had determined to give a series of
public lectures upon it, provided she found her physical power equal to
the effort of making herself heard by an audience in any public room of
moderate size. She tested the strength of her chest and voice by
delivering one lecture to an audience assembled in the drawing-rooms of
a friend; but, as she never repeated the experiment, I suppose she found
the exertion too great for her.
When first I met Mrs. Jameson she was an attractive-looking young woman,
with a skin of that dazzling whiteness which generally accompanies
reddish hair, such as hers was; her face, which was habitually refined
and _spirituelle_ in its expression, was capable of a marvelous power of
concentrated feeling, such as is seldom seen on any woman's face, and is
peculiarly rare on the countenance of a fair, small, delicately featured
woman, all whose personal characteristics were essentially feminine. Her
figure was extremely pretty; her hands and arms might have been those of
Madame de Warens.
Mrs. Jameson told me that the idea of giving public lectures had
suggested itself to her in the course of her conversations with Lady
Byron upon the possible careers that might be opened to women. I know
Lady Byron thought a very valuable public service might be rendered by
women who so undertook to advocate important truths of which they had
made special study, and for the dissemination of which in this manner
they might be especially gifted. She accepted in the most liberal manner
the claim put forward by women to more extended spheres of usefulness,
and to the adoption of careers hitherto closed to them; she was deeply
interested, personally, in some who made the arduous attempt of studying
and practicing medicine, and seemed generally to think that there were
many directions in which women might follow paths yet unopened, of high
and noble exertion, and hereafter do society and the cause of progress
good service.
Lady Byron was a peculiarly reserved and quiet person, with a manner
habitually deliberate and measured, a low, subdued voice, and rather
diffident hesitation in expressing herself: and she certainly conveyed
the impression of natural reticence and caution. But so far from ever
appearing to me to justify the description often given of her, of a
person of exceptionally cold, hard, measured intellect and character,
she always struck me as a woman capable of profound and fervid
enthusiasm, with a mind of rather a romantic and visionary order.
She surprised me extremely one evening as she was accompanying me to one
of my public readings, by exclaiming, "Oh, how I envy you! What would I
not give to be in your place!" As my vocation, I am sorry to say,
oftener appeared to me to justify my own regret than the envy of others,
I answered, "What! to read Shakespeare before some hundreds of people?"
"Oh no," she said; "not to read Shakespeare to them, but to have all
that mass of people under your control, subject to your influence, and
receiving your impressions." She then went on to say she would give
anything to lecture upon subjects which interested her deeply, and that
she should like to advocate with every power she possessed. Lady Byron,
like most enthusiasts, was fond of influencing others and making
disciples to her own views. I made her laugh by telling her that more
than once, when looking from my reading-desk over the sea of faces
uplifted towards me, a sudden feeling had seized me that I must say
something _from myself_ to all those human beings whose attention I felt
at that moment entirely at my command, and between whom and myself a
sense of sympathy thrilled powerfully and strangely through my heart, as
I looked steadfastly at them before opening my lips; but that, on
wondering afterwards _what_ I might, could, would, or should have said
to them from myself, I never could think of anything but two words: "Be
good!" which as a preface to the reading of one of Shakespeare's plays
("The Merry Wives of Windsor," for instance) might have startled them.
Often and strongly as the temptation recurred to me, I never could think
of anything better worth saying to my audience. I have some hope that
sometimes in the course of the reading I said it effectually, without
shocking them by a departure from my proper calling, or deserving the
rebuke of "Ne sutor ultra crepidam."
In February, 1828, I fell ill of the measles, of which the following
note to Miss S---- is a record.
MY DEAREST H----,
I am in a great hurry, because my parcel is not made up yet, and I
expect your brother's emissary to call at every moment. I send you
my play, also an album of mine, also an unfinished sketch of me,
also a copy of my will. The play you must not keep, because it is
my only copy; neither must you keep my album, because I want to
finish one of the pieces of verse begun in it; my picture--such as
it is--begun, but never finished, by Dick ----, I thought you would
like better than nothing. He has finished one that is a very good
likeness of me, but it was done for my mother, or I should have
wished you to have it. My will I made last week, while I was in bed
with the measles, and want you to keep that.
I have been very ill for the last fortnight, but am well again now.
I am pressed for time to-day, but will soon write to you in
earnest.
I'm afraid you'll find my play very long; when my poor father began
cutting it, he looked ruefully at it, and said, "There's plenty of
it, Fan," to which my reply is Madame de Sévigné's, "Si j'eusse eu
plus de temps, je ne t'aurais pas écrit si longuement." Dear H----,
if you knew how I thought of you, and the fresh, sweet mayflowers
with which we filled our baskets at Heath Farm, while I lay parched
and full of pain and fever in my illness!
Yours ever,
FANNY.
My beloved aunt Dall nursed and tended me in my sickness with unwearied
devotion; and one day when I was convalescent, finding me depressed in
spirits and crying, she said laughingly to me, "Why, child, there is
nothing the matter with you; but you are weak in body and mind." This
seemed to me the most degraded of all conceivable conditions, and I fell
into a redoublement of weeping over my own abasement and imbecility.
My attention was suddenly attracted to a large looking-glass opposite my
bed, and it occurred to me that in my then condition of nerves nothing
was more likely than that I should turn visionary and fancy I beheld
apparitions. And under this conviction I got up and covered the glass,
in which I felt sure I should presently "see sic sights as I daured na
tell." I speak of this because, though I was in a physical condition not
unlikely to produce such phenomena, I retained the power of perceiving
that they would be the result of my physical condition, and that I
should in some measure be accessory to my own terror, whatever form it
might assume.
I have so often in my life been on the very edge of ghost-seeing, and
felt so perfectly certain that the least encouragement on my part would
set them before me, and that nothing but a resolute effort of will would
save me from such a visitation, that I have become convinced that of the
people who have seen apparitions, one half have--as I should term
it--chosen to do so. I have all my life suffered from a tendency to
imaginary terrors, and have always felt sure that a determined exercise
of self-control would effectually keep them from having the dominion
over me. The most distressing form of nervous excitement that I have
ever experienced was one that for many years I was very liable to, and
which always recurred when I was in a state of unusual exaltation or
depression of spirits; both which states in me were either directly
caused or greatly aggravated by certain electrical conditions of the
atmosphere, which seemed to affect my whole nervous system as if I had
been some machine expressly constructed for showing and testing the
power of such influences on the human economy.
I habitually read while combing and brushing my hair at night, and
though I made no use of my looking-glass while thus employed, having my
eyes fixed on my book, I sat (for purposes of general convenience) at my
toilet table in front of the mirror. While engrossed in my book it has
frequently happened to me accidentally to raise my eyes and suddenly to
fix them on my own image in the glass, when a feeling of startled
surprise, as if I had not known I was there and did not immediately
recognize my own reflection, would cause me to remain looking at myself,
the intentness with which I did so increasing as the face appeared to me
not my own; and under this curious fascination my countenance has
altered, becoming gradually so dreadful, so much more dreadful in
expression than any human face I ever saw or could describe, while it
was next to impossible for me to turn my eyes away from the hideous
vision confronting me, that I have felt more than once that unless by
the strongest effort of will I immediately averted my head, I should
certainly become insane. Of course I was myself a party to this strange
fascination of terror, and must, no doubt, have exercised some power of
volition in the assumption of the expression that my face gradually
presented, and which was in no sense a distortion or grimace, but a
terrible look suggestive of despair and desperate wickedness, the memory
of which even now affects me painfully. But though in some measure
voluntary, I do not think I was conscious at the time that the process
was so; and I have never been able to determine the precise nature of
this nervous affection, which, beginning thus in a startled feeling of
sudden surprise, went on to such a climax of fascinated terror.
I was already at this time familiar enough with the theory of ghosts, of
which one need not be afraid, through Nicolai of Berlin's interesting
work upon the curious phantasmagoria of apparitions, on which he made
and recorded so many singular observations. Moreover, my mother, from a
combination of general derangement of the system and special affection
of the visual nerves, was at one time constantly tormented by whole
processions and crowds of visionary figures, of the origin and nature of
which she was perfectly aware, but which she often described as
exceedingly annoying by their grotesque and distorted appearance, and
wearisome from their continual recurrence and thronging succession. With
the recovery of her general health she obtained a release from this
disagreeable haunting.
One of the most remarkable and painful instances of affection of the
visual organs in consequence of a violent nervous shock was that
experienced by my friend Miss T----, who, after seeing her cousin, Lady
L----, drowned while bathing off the rocks at her home at Ardgillan, was
requested by Lord L---- to procure for him, before his wife's burial,
the wedding ring from her finger. The poor lady's body was terribly
swollen and discolored, and Miss T---- had to use considerable effort to
withdraw the ring from the dead finger. The effect of the whole
disastrous event upon her was to leave her for several months afflicted
with an affection of the eyes, which represented half of the face of
every person she saw with the swollen, livid, and distorted features of
her drowned cousin; a horrible and ghastly result of the nervous shock
she had undergone, which she feared she should never be delivered from,
but which gradually wore itself out.
The only time I ever saw an apparition was under singularly unfavorable
circumstances for such an experience. I was sitting at midday in an
American railroad car, which every occupant but my maid and myself had
left to go and get some refreshment at the station, where the train
stopped some time for that purpose. I was sitting with my maid in a
small private compartment, sometimes occupied by ladies travelling
alone, the door of which (wide open at the time) communicated with the
main carriage, and commanded its entire length. Suddenly a person
entered the carriage by a door close to where I sat, and passed down the
whole length of the car. I sprang from my seat, exclaiming aloud, "There
is C----!" and rushed to the door before, by any human possibility, any
one could have reached the other end of the car; but nobody was to be
seen. My maid had seen nothing. The person I imagined I had seen was
upwards of two hundred miles distant; but what was to me the most
curious part of this experience was that had I really met the person I
saw anywhere, my most careful endeavor would have been to avoid her,
and, if possible, to escape being seen by her; whereas this apparition,
or imagination, so affected my nerves that I rushed after it as if
desirous of pursuing and overtaking it, while my deliberate desire with
regard to the image I thus sprang towards would have been never to have
seen it again as long as I lived. The state of the atmosphere at the
time of this occurrence was extraordinarily oppressive, and charged with
a tremendous thunder-storm, a condition of the air which, as I have
said, always acts with extremely distressing and disturbing influence
upon my whole physical system.
ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, February, 1828.
MY DEAREST H----,
I have this instant received your letter, and, contrary to John's
wise rule of never answering an epistle till three days after he
receives it, I sit down to write, to talk, to be with you. Pray,
when your potatoes flourish, your fires are put out by the sun, and
your hills are half hid in warm mist, wish one hearty wish for me,
such as I spend by the dozen on you. I confess I am disappointed,
as far as I can be with a letter of yours, at finding you had not
yet received my parcel, for my vanity has been in considerable
anxiety respecting your judgment on my production. Now that the
effervescence of my poetical _furor_ has subsided, and that
repeated perusals have taken a little of the charm of novelty from
my play, my own opinion of it is that it is a clever performance
_for so young a person_, but nothing more. The next will, I hope,
be better, and I think you will agree with me in regard to this.
Dearest H----, in my last letter want of time and room prevented my
enlarging on my hint about the stage, but as far as my own
determination goes at present, I think it is the course that I
shall most likely pursue. You know that independence of mind and
body seems to me the great desideratum of life; I am not patient of
restraint or submissive to authority, and my head and heart are
engrossed with the idea of exercising and developing the literary
talent which I think I possess. This is meat, drink, and sleep to
me; my world, in which I live, and have my happiness; and,
moreover, I hope, by means of fame (the prize for which I pray). To
a certain degree it may be my means of procuring benefits of a more
substantial nature, which I am by no means inclined to estimate at
less than their worth. I do not think I am fit to marry, to make an
obedient wife or affectionate mother; my imagination is paramount
with me, and would disqualify me, I think, for the every-day,
matter-of-fact cares and duties of the mistress of a household and
the head of a family. I think I should be unhappy and the cause of
unhappiness to others if I were to marry. I cannot swear I shall
never fall in love, but if I do I will fall out of it again, for I
do not think I shall ever so far lose sight of my best interest and
happiness as to enter into a relation for which I feel so unfit.
Now, if I do not marry, what is to become of me in the event of
anything happening to my father? His property is almost all gone; I
doubt if we shall ever receive one pound from it. Is it likely
that, supposing I were willing to undergo the drudgery of writing
for my bread, I could live by my wits and the produce of my brain;
or is such an existence desirable?
Perhaps I might attain to the literary dignity of being the lioness
of a season, asked to dinner parties "because I am so clever;"
perhaps my writing faculty might become a useful auxiliary to some
other less precarious dependence; but to write to eat--to live, in
short--that seems to me to earn hard money after a very hard
fashion. The stage is a profession that people who have a talent
for it make lucrative, and which honorable conduct may make
respectable; one which would place me at once beyond the fear of
want, and that is closely allied in its nature to my beloved
literary pursuits.
If I should (as my father and mother seem to think not unlikely)
change my mind with respect to marrying, the stage need be no bar
to that, and if I continue to write, the stage might both help me
in and derive assistance from my exercise of the pursuit of
dramatic authorship. And the mere mechanical labor of writing costs
me so little, that the union of the two occupations does not seem
to me a difficulty. My father said the other day, "There is a fine
fortune to be made by any young woman, of even decent talent, on
the stage now." A fine fortune is a fine thing; to be sure, there
remains a rather material question to settle, that of "even decent
talent." A passion for all beautiful poetry I am sure you will
grant me; and you would perhaps be inclined to take my father and
mother's word for my dramatic capacity. I spoke to them earnestly
on this subject lately, and they both, with some reluctance, I
think, answered me, to my questions, that they thought, as far as
they could judge (and, unless partiality blinds them entirely, none
can be better judges), I might succeed. In some respects, no girl
intending herself for this profession can have had better
opportunities of acquiring just notions on the subject of acting. I
have constantly heard refined and thoughtful criticism on our
greatest dramatic works, and on every various way of rendering them
effective on the stage. I have been lately very frequently to the
theater, and seen and heard observingly, and exercised my own
judgment and critical faculty to the best of my ability, according
to these same canons of taste by which it has been formed. Nature
has certainly not been as favorable to me as might have been
wished, if I am to embrace a calling where personal beauty, if not
indispensable, is so great an advantage. But if the informing
spirit be mine, it shall go hard if, with a face and voice as
obedient to my emotions as mine are, I do not in some measure make
up for the want of good looks. My father is now proprietor and
manager of the theatre, and those certainly are favorable
circumstances for my entering on a career which is one of great
labor and some exposure, at the best, to a woman, and where a young
girl cannot be too prudent herself, nor her protectors too careful
of her. I hope I have not taken up this notion hastily, and I have
no fear of looking only on the bright side of the picture, for ours
is a house where that is very seldom seen.
Good-by; God bless you! I shall be very anxious to hear from you; I
sent you a note with my play, telling you I had just got up from
the measles; but as my note has not reached you, I tell you so
again. I am quite well, however, now, and shall not give them to
you by signing myself
Yours most affectionately,
FANNY.
P.S.--I forgot to answer your questions in telling you all this,
but I will do so methodically now. My side-ache is some disturbance
in my liver, evidently, and does not give way entirely either to
physic or exercise, as the slightest emotion, either pleasurable or
painful, immediately brings it on; my blue devils I pass over in
silence; such a liver and my kind of head are sure to breed them.
Certainly I reverence Jeremy Bentham for his philanthropy, plain
powerful sense, and lucid forcible writing; but as for John's
politics, they are, as Beatrice tells the prince he is, "too costly
for every-day wear." His theories are so perfect that I think
imperfect men could never be brought to live under a scheme of
government of his devising.
I think Mrs. Jameson would like you, and you her, if you met, but
my mind is running on something else than this. My father's income
is barely eight hundred a year. John's expenses, since he has been
at college, have been nearly three. Five hundred a year for such a
family as ours is very close and careful work, dear H----, and if
my going on the stage would nearly double that income, lessen my
dear father's anxieties for us all, and the quantity of work which
he latterly has often felt too much for him, and remove the many
privations which my dear mother cheerfully endures, as well as the
weight of her uncertainty about our future provision, would not
this be a "consummation devoutly to be wished"?
ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, March, 1828.
MY DEAREST H----,
I have been thinking what you have been thinking of my long
silence, about which, however, perhaps you have not been thinking
at all. What, you say in one of your last about my destroying your
letters troubles me a good deal, dearest H----. I really cannot
bear to think of it; why, those letters are one of my very few
precious possessions. When I am unhappy (as I sometimes am), I read
them over, and I feel strengthened and comforted; if it is your
_positive desire_ that I should burn them, of course I must do it;
but if it is only a sort of "I think you had better" that you have
about it, I shall keep them, and you must be satisfied with one of
my old "I can't help it's." As for my own scrawls, I do _not_
desire that you should keep them. I write, as I speak, on the
impulse of the moment, and I should be sorry that the incoherent
and often contradictory thoughts that I pour forth daily should be
preserved against me by anybody.
My father is now in Edinburgh. He has been absent from London about
a week. I had a conversation with him about the stage some time
before he went, in which he allowed that, should our miserably
uncertain circumstances finally settle unfavorably, the theatre
might be an honorable and advantageous resource for me; but that at
present he should be sorry to see me adopt that career. As he is
the best and kindest father and friend to us all, such a decision
on his part was conclusive, as you will easily believe; and I have
forborne all further allusion to the subject, although on some
accounts I regret being obliged to do so.
I was delighted with your long letter of criticisms; I am grateful
to you for taking the trouble of telling me so minutely all you
thought about my play. For myself, although at the time I wrote it
I was rather puffed up and elated in spirit, and looked at it
naturally in far too favorable a light, I assure you I have long
since come to a much soberer frame of mind respecting it. I think
it is quite unfit for the stage, where the little poetical merit it
possesses would necessarily be lost; besides, its construction is
wholly undramatic. The only satisfaction I now take in it is
entirely one of hope; I am very young, and I cannot help feeling
that it offers some promise for the future, which I trust may be
fulfilled. Now even, already, I am sure I could do infinitely
better; nor will it be long, I think, before I try my strength
again. If you could see the multiplicity of subjects drawn up in my
book under the head of "projected works," how you would shake your
wise head, and perhaps your lean sides. I wish I could write a good
prose work, but that, I take it, is really difficult, as good,
concise, powerful, clear prose must be much less easy to write than
even tolerable poetry. I have been reading a quantity of German
plays (translations, of course, but literal ones), and I have been
reveling in that divine devildom, "Faust." Suppose it does send one
to bed with a side-ache, a headache, and a heartache, isn't it
worth while? Did you ever read Goethe's "Tasso"? Certainly he makes
the mad poet a mighty disagreeable person; but in describing him it
seemed to me as if Goethe was literally transcribing my thoughts
and feelings, my mind and being.
Now, dearest H----, don't bear malice, and, because I have not
written for so long, wait still longer before you answer. My mother
has been in the country for a few days, and has returned with a
terrible cough and cold, with which pleasant maladies she finds the
house full here to welcome her, so that we all croak in unison most
harmoniously. I was at the Siddonses' the other evening. My aunt
was suffering, I am sorry to say, with one of her terrible
headaches; Cecilia was pretty well, but as it was a _soirée
chantante_, I had little opportunity of talking to either of them.
Did you mention my notion about going on the stage in any of your
letters to Cecy?
The skies are brightening and the trees are budding; it will soon
be the time of year when we first met. Pray remember me when the
hawthorn blossoms; hail, snow, or sunshine, I remember you, and am
ever your affectionate
FANNY.
The want of a settled place of residence compelled me, many years after
writing this letter, to destroy the letters of my friend, which I had
preserved until they amounted to many hundreds; my friend kept, in the
house that was her home from her fourteenth to her sixtieth year, all
mine to her--several thousands, the history of a whole human life--and
gave them back to me when she was upwards of seventy and I of sixty
years old; they are the principal aid to my memory in my present task of
retrospection.
My life at home at this time became difficult and troublesome, and
unsatisfactory to myself and others; my mind and character were in a
chaotic state of fermentation that required the wisest, firmest, and
gentlest guidance. I was vehement and excitable, violently impulsive,
and with a wild, ill-regulated imagination.
The sort of smattering acquirements from my schooling, and the desultory
reading which had been its only supplement, had done little or nothing
(perhaps even worse than nothing) towards my effectual moral or mental
training. A good fortune, for which I can never be sufficiently
thankful, occurred to me at this time, in the very intimate intercourse
which grew up just then between our family and that of my cousin, Mrs.
Henry Siddons.
She had passed through London on her way to the Continent, whither she
was going for the sake of the health of her youngest daughter, an
interesting and attractive young girl some years older than myself, who
at this time seemed threatened with imminent consumption. She had a
sylph-like, slender figure, tall, and bending and wavering like a young
willow sapling, and a superabundant profusion of glossy chestnut
ringlets, which in another might have suggested vigor of health and
constitution, but always seemed to me as if their redundant masses had
exhausted hers, and were almost too great a weight for her slim throat
and drooping figure. Her complexion was transparently delicate, and she
had dark blue eyes that looked almost preternaturally large. It seems
strange to remember this ethereal vision of girlish fragile beauty as
belonging to my dear cousin, who, having fortunately escaped the doom by
which she then seemed threatened, lived to become a most happy and
excellent wife and mother, and one of the largest women of our family,
all of whose female members have been unusually slender in girlhood and
unusually stout in middle and old age. When Mrs. Henry Siddons was
obliged to return to Edinburgh, which was her home, she was persuaded by
my mother to leave her daughter with us for some time; and for more than
a year she and her elder sister and their brother, a lad studying at the
Indian Military College of Addiscombe, were frequent inmates of our
house. The latter was an extremely handsome youth, with a striking
resemblance to his grandmother, Mrs. Siddons; he and my brother Henry
were certainly the only two of the younger generation who honorably
maintained the reputation for beauty of their elders; in spite of which,
and the general admiration they excited (especially when seen together),
perhaps indeed from some uncomfortable consciousness of their personal
advantages, they were both of them shamefaced and bashful to an unusual
degree.
I remember a comical instance of the shy _mauvaise honte_, peculiar to
Englishmen, which these two beautiful boys exhibited on the occasion of
a fancy ball, to which we were all invited, at the house of our friend,
Mrs. E. G----. To me, of course, my first fancy ball was an event of
unmixed delight, especially as my mother had provided for me a lovely
Anne Boleyn costume of white satin, point-lace, and white Roman pearls,
which raised my satisfaction to rapture. The two Harrys, however, far
from partaking of my ecstasy, protested, pouted, begged off, all but
broke into open rebellion at the idea of making what they called "guys"
and "chimney-sweeps" of themselves; and though the painful sense of any
singularity might have been mitigated by the very numerous company of
their fellow-fools assembled in the ball-room, to keep them in
countenance, and the very unpretending costume of simple and, elegant
black velvet in which my mother had attired them, as Hamlet and Laertes
(it must have been in their very earliest college days), they hid
themselves behind the ball-room door and never showed as much as their
noses or their toes, while I danced beatifically till daylight, and
would have danced on till noon.
Mrs. Henry Siddons, in her last stay with us, obtained my mother's
consent that I should go to Edinburgh to pay her a visit, which began by
being of indeterminate length, and prolonged itself for a year--the
happiest of my life, as I often, while it lasted, thought it would
prove; and now that my years are over I know to have been so. To the
anxious, nervous, exciting, irritating tenor of my London life succeeded
the calm, equable, and all but imperceptible control of my dear friend,
whose influence over her children, the result of her wisdom in dealing
with them, no less than of their own amiable dispositions, was absolute.
In considering Mrs. Henry Siddons's character, when years had modified
its first impression upon my own, my estimate of it underwent, of
course, some inevitable alteration; but when I stayed with her in
Edinburgh I was at the idolatrous period of life, and never, certainly,
had an enthusiastic young girl worshiper a worthier or better idol.
She was not regularly handsome, but of a sweet and most engaging
countenance; her figure was very pretty, her voice exquisite, and her
whole manner, air, and deportment graceful, attractive, and charming.
Men, women, and children not only loved her, but inevitably _fell in
love_ with her, and the fascination which she exercised over every one
that came in contact with her invariably deepened into profound esteem
and confidence in those who had the good fortune to share her intimacy.
Her manner, which was the most gentle and winning imaginable, had in it
a touch of demure playfulness that was very charming, at the same time
that it habitually conveyed the idea of extreme self-control, and a
great reserve of moral force and determination underneath this quiet
surface.
Mrs. Harry's manner was artificial, and my mother told me she thought it
the result of an early determination to curb the demonstrations of an
impetuous temper and passionate feelings. It had become her second
nature when I knew her, however, and contributed not a little to the
immense ascendency she soon acquired over my vehement and stormy
character. She charmed me into absolute submission to her will and
wishes, and I all but worshiped her.
She was a Miss Murray, and came of good Scottish blood, her
great-grandfather having at one time been private secretary to the Young
Pretender. She married Mrs. Siddons's youngest son, Harry, the only one
of my aunt's children who adopted her own profession, and who, himself
an indifferent actor, undertook the management of the Edinburgh theater,
fell into ill-health, and died, leaving his lovely young widow with four
children to the care of her brother, William Murray, who succeeded him
in the government of the theater, of which his sister and himself became
joint proprietors.
Edinburgh at that time was still the small but important capital of
Scotland, instead of what railroads and modern progress have reduced it
to, merely the largest town. Those were the days of the giants, Scott,
Wilson, Hogg, Jeffrey, Brougham, Sidney Smith, the Horners, Lord Murray,
Allison, and all the formidable intellectual phalanx that held mental
dominion over the English-speaking world, under the blue and yellow
standard of the _Edinburgh Review_.
The ancient city had still its regular winter season of fashionable
gayety, during which sedan chairs were to be seen carrying through its
streets, to its evening assemblies, the more elderly members of the
_beau monde_. The nobility and gentry of Scotland came up from their
distant country residences to their town-houses in "Auld Reekie," as
they now come up to London.
Edinburgh was a brilliant and peculiarly intellectual center of society
with a strongly marked national character, and the theater held a
distinguished place among its recreations; the many eminent literary and
professional men who then made the Scotch capital illustrious being
zealous patrons of the drama and frequenters of the play-house, and
proud, with reason, of their excellent theatrical company, at the head
of which was William Murray, one of the most perfect actors I have ever
known on any stage, and among whom Terry and Mackay, admirable actors
and cultivated, highly intelligent men, were conspicuous for their
ability.
Mrs. Henry Siddons held a peculiar position in Edinburgh, her widowed
condition and personal attractions combining to win the sympathy and
admiration of its best society, while her high character and blameless
conduct secured the respect and esteem of her theatrical subjects and
the general public, with whom she was an object of almost affectionate
personal regard, and in whose favor, as long as she exercised her
profession, she continued to hold the first place, in spite of their
temporary enthusiasm for the great London stars who visited them at
stated seasons. "_Our_ Mrs. Siddons," I have repeatedly heard her called
in Edinburgh, not at all with the slightest idea of comparing her with
her celebrated mother-in-law, but rather as expressing the kindly
personal good-will and the admiring approbation with which she was
regarded by her own townsfolk, who were equally proud and fond of her.
She was not a great actress, nor even what in my opinion could be called
a good actress, for she had no natural versatility or power of
assumption whatever, and what was opposed to her own nature and
character was altogether out of the range of her powers.
On the other hand, when (as frequently happened) she had to embody
heroines whose characteristics coincided with her own, her grace and
beauty and innate sympathy with every thing good, true, pure, and
upright made her an admirable representative of all such characters. She
wanted physical power and weight for the great tragic drama of
Shakespeare, and passion for the heroine of his love tragedy; but Viola,
Rosalind, Isabel, Imogen, could have no better representative. In the
first part Sir Walter Scott has celebrated (in the novel of "Waverley")
the striking effect produced by her resemblance to her brother, William
Murray, in the last scene of "Twelfth Night;" and in many pieces founded
upon the fate and fortune of Mary Stuart she gave an unrivaled
impersonation of the "enchanting queen" of modern history.
My admiration and affection for her were, as I have said, unbounded; and
some of the various methods I took to exhibit them were, I dare say,
intolerably absurd, though she was graciously good-natured in tolerating
them.
Every day, summer and winter, I made it my business to provide her with
a sprig of myrtle for her sash at dinner-time; this, when she had worn
it all the evening, I received again on bidding her good night, and
stored in a _treasure_ drawer, which, becoming in time choked with
fragrant myrtle leaves, was emptied with due solemnity into the fire,
that destruction in the most classic form might avert from them all
desecration. I ought by rights to have eaten their ashes, or drunk a
decoction of them, or at least treasured them in a golden urn, but
contented myself with watching them shrivel and crackle with much
sentimental satisfaction. I remember a most beautiful myrtle tree,
which, by favor of a peculiarly sunny and sheltered exposure, had
reached a very unusual size in the open air in Edinburgh, and in the
flowering season might have borne comparison with the finest shrubs of
the warm terraces of the under cliff of the Isle of Wight. From this I
procured my daily offering to my divinity.
The myrtle is the least voluptuous of flowers; the legend of Juno's
myrtle-sheltered bath seems not unnaturally suggested by the vigorous,
fresh, and healthy beauty of the plant, and the purity of its snowy
blossoms. The exquisite quality, too, which myrtle possesses, of
preserving uncorrupted the water in which it is placed, with other
flowers, is a sort of moral attribute, which, combined with the peculiar
character of its fragrance, seems to me to distinguish this lovely shrub
from every other flower of the field or garden.
To return to my worship of Mrs. Harry Siddons. On one occasion the sash
of her dress came unfastened and fell to the ground, and, having secured
possession of it, I retained my prize and persisted in wearing it,
baldric fashion, over every dress I put on. It was a silk scarf, of a
sober dark-gray color, and occasionally produced a most fantastical and
absurd contrast with what I was wearing.
These were childish expressions of a feeling the soberer portion of
which remains with me even now, and makes the memory of that excellent
woman, and kind, judicious friend, still very dear to my grateful
affection. Not only was the change of discipline under which I now lived
advantageous, but the great freedom I enjoyed, and which would have been
quite impossible in London, was delightful to me; while the wonderful,
picturesque beauty of Edinburgh, contrasted with the repulsive dinginess
and ugliness of my native city, was a constant source of the liveliest
pleasure to me.
The indescribable mixture of historic and romantic interest with all
this present, visible beauty, the powerful charm of the Scotch ballad
poetry, which now began to seize upon my imagination, and the
inexhaustible enchantment of the associations thrown by the great modern
magician over every spot made memorable by his mention, combined to
affect my mind and feelings at this most susceptible period of my life,
and made Edinburgh dear and delightful to me above all other places I
ever saw, as it still remains--with the one exception of Rome, whose
combined claim to veneration and admiration no earthly city can indeed
dispute.
Beautiful Edinburgh! dear to me for all its beauty and all the happiness
that I have never failed to find there, for the keen delight of my year
of youthful life spent among its enchanting influences, and for the kind
friends and kindred whose affectionate hospitality has made each return
thither as happy as sadder and older years allowed--my blessing on every
stone of its streets!
I had the utmost liberty allowed me in my walks about the city, and at
early morning have often run up and round and round the Calton Hill,
delighting, from every point where I stopped to breathe, in the noble
panorama on every side. Not unfrequently I walked down to the sands at
Porto Bello and got a sea bath, and returned before breakfast; while on
the other side of the town my rambles extended to Newhaven and the rocks
and sands of Cramond Beach.
While Edinburgh had then more the social importance of a capital, it had
a much smaller extent; great portions of the present new town did not
then exist. Warriston and the Bridge of Dean were still out of town;
there was no Scott's monument in Princess Street, no railroad terminus
with its smoke and scream and steam scaring the echoes of the North
Bridge; no splendid Queen's Drive encircled Arthur's Seat. Windsor
Street, in which Mrs. Harry Siddons lived, was one of the most recently
finished, and broke off abruptly above gardens and bits of meadow land,
and small, irregular inclosures, and mean scattered houses, stretching
down toward Warriston Crescent; while from the balcony of the
drawing-room the eye, passing over all this untidy suburban district,
reached, without any intervening buildings, the blue waters of the Forth
and Inchkeith with its revolving light.
Standing on that balcony late one cold, clear night, watching the rising
and setting of that sea star that kept me fascinated out in the chill
air, I saw for the first time the sky illuminated with the aurora
borealis. It was a magnificent display of the phenomenon, and I feel
certain that my attention was first attracted to it by the crackling
sound which appeared to accompany the motion of the pale flames as they
streamed across the sky; indeed, _crackling_, is not the word that
properly describes the sound I heard, which was precisely that made by
the _flickering_ of blazing fire; and as I have often since read and
heard discussions upon the question whether the motion of the aurora is
or is not accompanied by an audible sound, I can only say that on this
occasion it was the sound that first induced me to observe the sheets of
white light that were leaping up the sky. At this time I knew nothing of
these phenomena, or the debates among scientific men to which they had
given rise, and can therefore trust the impression made on my senses.
I have since then witnessed repeated appearances of these beautiful
meteoric lights, but have never again detected any sound accompanying
their motion. The finest aurora I ever saw was at Lenox, Massachusetts;
a splendid rose-colored pavilion appeared to be spread all over the sky,
through which, in several parts, the shining of the stars was distinctly
visible, while at the zenith the luminous drapery seemed gathered into
folds, the color of which deepened almost to crimson. It was wonderfully
beautiful. At Lenox, too, one night during the season of the appearance
of the great comet of 1858, the splendid flaming plume hovered over one
side of the sky, while all round the other horizon streams of white fire
appeared to rise from altars of white light. It was awfully glorious,
and beyond all description beautiful. The sky of that part of the United
States, particularly in the late autumn and winter, was more frequently
visited by magnificent meteors than any other with which I have been
acquainted.
The extraordinary purity, dryness, and elasticity of the atmosphere in
that region was, I suppose, one cause of these heavenly shows; the clear
transparency of the sky by day often giving one the feeling that one was
looking straight into heaven without any intermediate window of
atmospheric air, while at night (especially in winter) the world of
stars, larger, brighter, more numerous than they ever seemed to me
elsewhere, and yet apparently infinitely higher and farther off, were
set in a depth of dark whose blackness appeared transparent rather than
opaque.
Midnight after midnight I have stood, when the thermometer was twenty
and more degrees below freezing, looking over the silent, snow-smothered
hills round the small mountain village of Lenox, fast asleep in their
embrace, and from thence to the solemn sky rising above them like a huge
iron vault hung with thousands of glittering steel weapons, from which,
every now and then, a shining scimitar fell flashing earthward; it was a
cruel looking sky, in its relentless radiance.
My solitary walks round Edinburgh have left two especial recollections
in my mind; the one pleasant, the other very sad. I will speak of the
latter first; it was like a leaf out of the middle of a tragedy, of
which I never knew either the beginning or the end.