It was years after these events that Lawrence, meeting my father
accidentally in the street one day, stopped him and spoke with great
feeling of his sympathy for us all in my approaching trial, and begged
permission to come and see my mother and become acquainted with me,
which he accordingly did; and from that time till his death, which
occurred but a few months later, he was unwearied in acts of friendly
and affectionate kindness to me. He came repeatedly to consult with my
mother about the disputed point of my dress, and gave his sanction to
her decision upon it. The first dress of Belvidera, I remember, was a
point of nice discussion between them. Plain black velvet and a
lugubrious long vail were considered my only admissible wear, after my
husband's ruin; but before the sale of our furniture, it was conceded
that I might relieve the somber Venetian patrician's black dress with
white satin puffs and crimson linings and rich embroidery of gold and
pearl; moreover, before our bankruptcy, I was allowed (not, however,
without serious demur on the part of Lawrence) to cover my head with a
black hat and white feather, with which, of course, I was enamored,
having never worn anything but my hair on my head before, and feeling an
unspeakable accession of dignity in this piece of attire. I begged hard
to be allowed to wear it through the tragedy, but this, with some
laughter at my intense desire for it, was forbidden, and I was reduced
after the first scene of the play to my own unadorned locks, which I
think greatly strengthened my feeling of the abject misery into which I
had fallen.
When in town, Lawrence never omitted one of my performances, always
occupying the stage box, and invariably sending me the next morning a
letter, full of the most detailed and delicate criticism, showing a
minute attention to every inflection of my voice, every gesture, every
attitude, which, combined with expressions of enthusiastic admiration,
with which this discriminating and careful review of my performance
invariably terminated, was as strong a dose of the finest flattery as
could well have been offered to a girl of my age, on the very first step
of her artistic career. I used to read over the last of these remarkable
criticisms, invariably, before going to the theater, in order to profit
by every suggestion of alteration or hint of improvement they contained;
and I was in the act of reperusing the last I ever received from him,
when my father came in and said, "Lawrence is dead."
I had been sitting to him for some time previously for a pencil sketch,
which he gave my mother; it was his last work, and certainly the most
beautiful of his drawings. He had appointed a day for beginning a
full-length, life-size portrait of me as Juliet, and we had seen him
only a week before his death, and, in the interval, received a note from
him, merely saying he was rather indisposed. His death, which was quite
unexpected, created a very great public sensation, and there was
something sufficiently mysterious about its circumstances to give rise
to a report that he had committed suicide.
The shock of this event was terrible to me, although I have sometimes
since thought it was fortunate for me rather than otherwise. Sir Thomas
Lawrence's enthusiastically expressed admiration for me, his constant
kindness, his sympathy in my success, and the warm interest he took in
everything that concerned me, might only have inspired me with a
grateful sense of his condescension and goodness. But I was a very
romantic girl, with a most excitable imagination, and such was to me the
melancholy charm of Lawrence's countenance, the elegant distinction of
his person, and exquisite refined gentleness of his voice and manner,
that a very dangerous fascination was added to my sense of gratitude for
all his personal kindness to me, and my admiration for his genius; and I
think it not at all unlikely that, had our intercourse continued, and
had I sat to him for the projected portrait of Juliet, in spite of the
forty years' difference in our ages, and my knowledge of his disastrous
relations with my cousins, I should have become in love with him myself,
and been the fourth member of our family whose life he would have
disturbed and embittered. His sentimentality was of a peculiar
mischievous order, as it not only induced women to fall in love with
him, but enabled him to persuade himself that he was in love with them,
and apparently with more than one at a time.
While I was sitting to him for the beautiful sketch he gave my mother,
one or two little incidents occurred that illustrated curiously enough
this superficial pseudo-sensibility of his. On one occasion, when he
spent the evening with us, my mother had made me sing for him; and the
next day, after my sitting, he said in a strange, hesitating, broken
manner, as if struggling to control some strong emotion, "I have a very
great favor to beg of you; the next time I have the honor and pleasure
of spending the evening with you, will you, if Mrs. Kemble does not
disapprove of it, sing this song for me?" He put a piece of music into
my hand, and immediately left us without another word. On our way home
in the carriage, I unrolled the song, the title of which was, "These few
pale Autumn Flowers." "Ha!" said my mother, with, I thought, rather a
peculiar expression, as I read the words; but she added no further
comment. Both words and music were plaintive and pathetic, and had an
original stamp in the melancholy they expressed.
The next time Lawrence spent the evening with us I sang the song for
him. While I did so, he stood by the piano in a state of profound
abstraction, from which he recovered himself, as if coming back from
very far away, and with an expression of acute pain on his countenance,
he thanked me repeatedly for what he called the great favor I had done
him.
At the end of my next sitting, when my mother and myself had risen to
take leave of him, he said, "No, don't go yet,--stay a moment,--I want
to show you something--if I can;" and he moved restlessly about, taking
up and putting down his chalks and pencils, and standing, and sitting
down again, as if unable to make up his mind to do what he wished. At
length he went abruptly to an easel, and, removing from it a canvas with
a few slight sketches on it, he discovered behind it the profile
portrait of a lady in a white dress folded simply across her bosom, and
showing her beautiful neck and shoulders. Her head was dressed with a
sort of sibylline turban, and she supported it upon a most lovely hand
and arm, her elbow resting on a large book, toward which she bent, and
on the pages of which her eyes were fixed, the exquisite eyelid and
lashes hiding the eyes. "Oh, how beautiful! oh, who is it!" exclaimed I.
"A--a lady," stammered Lawrence, turning white and red, "toward
whom--for whom--I entertained the profoundest regard." Thereupon he fled
out of the room. "It is the portrait of Mrs. W----," said my mother;
"she is now dead; she was an exceedingly beautiful and accomplished
woman, the authoress of the words and music of the song Sir Thomas
Lawrence asked you to learn for him."
The great painter's devotion to this lovely person had been matter of
notoriety in the London world. Strangely enough, but a very short time
ago I discovered that she was the kinswoman of my friend Miss Cobb's
mother, of whom Miss Cobb possessed a miniature, in which the fashion of
dress and style of head-dress were the same as those in the picture I
saw, and in which I also traced some resemblance to the beautiful face
which made so great an impression on me. Not long after this Mrs.
Siddons, dining with us one day, asked my mother how the sketch Lawrence
was making of me was getting on. After my mother's reply, my aunt
remained silent for some time, and then, laying her hand on my father's
arm, said, "Charles, when I die, I wish to be carried to my grave by you
and Lawrence." Lawrence reached his grave while she was yet tottering on
the brink of hers.
After my next sitting, my mother, thinking he might be gratified by my
aunt's feeling toward him, mentioned her having dined with us. He asked
eagerly of her health, her looks, her words, and my mother telling him
of her speech about him, he threw down his pencil, clasped his hands,
and, with his eyes full of tears and his face convulsed, exclaimed,
"Good God! did she say that?"
When my likeness was finished, Lawrence showed it to my mother, who,
though she had attended all my sittings, had never seen it till it was
completed. As she stood silently looking at it, he said, "What strikes
you? what do you think?" "It is very like Maria," said my mother, almost
involuntarily, I am sure, for immediately this strange man fell into one
of these paroxysms of emotion, and became so agitated as scarcely to be
able to speak; and at last, with a violent effort, said, "Oh, she is
very like her; she is very like them all!"
In spite of these emotions which I heard and saw Sir Thomas Lawrence
express, I know positively that at his death a lady, who had been an
intimate acquaintance of our family for many years, put on widow's weeds
for him, in the full persuasion that had he lived he would have married
her, and that, the mutual regard they entertained for each other
warranted her assuming the deepest mourning for him. Not the least
curious part of the emotional demonstrations I have described, was the
contrast which they formed to Sir Thomas Lawrence's habitual demeanor,
which was polished and refined, but reserved to a degree of coldness,
and as indicative of reticent discretion and imperturbable self-control
as became a man who lived in such high social places, and frequented the
palaces of royalty and the boudoirs of the great rival beauties of the
English aristocracy. On my twentieth birthday, which occurred soon after
my first appearance, Lawrence sent me a magnificent proof-plate of
Reynolds's portrait of my aunt as the "Tragic Muse," beautifully framed,
and with this inscription: "This portrait, by England's greatest
painter, of the noblest subject of his pencil, is presented to her niece
and worthy successor, by her most faithful humble friend and servant,
Lawrence." When my mother saw this, she exclaimed at it, and said, "I am
surprised he ever brought himself to write those words--her 'worthy
successor.'" A few days after, Lawrence begged me to let him have the
print again, as he was not satisfied with the finishing of the frame. It
was sent to him, and when it came back he had effaced the words in which
he had admitted _any_ worthy successor to his "Tragic Muse;" and Mr.
H----, who was at that time his secretary, told me that Lawrence had the
print lying with that inscription in his drawing-room for several days
before sending it to me, and had said to him, "Cover it up; I cannot
bear to look at it."
One day, at the end of my sitting, Lawrence showed me a lovely portrait
of Mrs. Inchbald, of whom my mother, as we drove home, told me a number
of amusing anecdotes. She was very beautiful, and gifted with original
genius, as her plays and farces and novels (above all, the "Simple
Story") testify; she was not an actress of any special merit, but of
respectable mediocrity. She stuttered habitually, but her delivery was
never impeded by this defect on the stage; a curious circumstance, not
uncommon to persons who have that infirmity, and who can read and recite
without suffering from it, though quite unable to speak fluently. Mrs.
Inchbald was a person of a very remarkable character, lovely, poor, with
unusual mental powers and of irreproachable conduct. Her life was
devoted to the care of some dependent relation, who from sickness was
incapable of self-support. Mrs. Inchbald had a singular uprightness and
unworldliness, and a childlike directness and simplicity of manner,
which, combined with her personal loveliness and halting, broken
utterance, gave to her conversation, which was both humorous and witty,
a most peculiar and comical charm. Once, after traveling all day in a
pouring rain, on alighting at her inn, the coachman, dripping all over
with wet, offered his arm to help her out of the coach, when she
exclaimed, to the great amusement of her fellow-travelers, "Oh, no, no!
y-y-y-you will give me m-m-m-my death of c-c-c-cold; do bring me a-a-a-a
_dry_ man." An aristocratic neighbor of hers, with whom she was slightly
acquainted, driving with his daughter in the vicinity of her very humble
suburban residence, overtook her walking along the road one very hot
day, and, stopping his carriage, asked her to let him have the pleasure
of taking her home; when she instantly declined, with the characteristic
excuse that she had just come from the market gardener's: "And, my lord,
I-I-I have my pocket f-f-full of onions,"--an unsophisticated statement
of facts which made them laugh extremely. At the first reading of one of
her pieces, a certain young lady, with rather a lean, lanky figure,
being proposed to her for the part of the heroine, she indignantly
exclaimed, "No, no, no; I-I-I-I won't have that s-s-s-stick of a girl!
D-d-d-do give me a-a-a girl with _bumps!_" Coming off the stage one
evening, she was about to sit down by Mrs. Siddons in the green-room,
when suddenly, looking at her magnificent neighbor, she said, "No, I
won't s-s-s-sit by you; you're t-t-t-too handsome!"--in which respect
she certainly need have feared no competition, and less with my aunt
than any one, their style of beauty being so absolutely dissimilar.
Somebody speaking of having oysters for supper, much surprise was
excited by Mrs. Inchbald's saying that she had never eaten one.
Questions and remonstrances, exclamations of astonishment, and earnest
advice to enlarge her experience in that respect, assailed her from the
whole green-room, when she finally delivered herself thus: "Oh no,
indeed! I-I-I-I never, never could! What! e-e-e-eat the eyes and
t-t-t-the nose, the teeth a-a-a-and the toes, the a-a-a-all of a
creature!" She was an enthusiastic admirer of my uncle John, and the
hero of her "Simple Story," Doriforth, is supposed to have been intended
by her as a portrait of him. On one occasion, when she was sitting by
the fireplace in the green-room, waiting to be called upon the stage,
she and Miss Mellon (afterward Mrs. Coutts and Duchess of St Albans)
were laughingly discussing their male friends and acquaintances from the
matrimonial point of view. My uncle John, who was standing near,
excessively amused, at length jestingly said to Mrs. Inchbald, who had
been comically energetic in her declarations of who she could or would,
or never could or would, have married, "Well, Mrs. Inchbald, would you
have had me?" "Dear heart!" said the stammering beauty, turning her
sweet sunny face up to him, "I'd have j-j-j-jumped at you!"
One day Lawrence took us, from the room where I generally sat to him,
into a long gallery where were a number of his pictures, and, leading me
by the hand, desired me not to raise my eyes till he told me. On the
word of command I looked up, and found myself standing close to and
immediately underneath, as it were, a colossal figure of Satan. The
sudden shock of finding myself in such proximity to this terrible image
made me burst into nervous tears. Lawrence was greatly distressed at the
result of his experiment, which had been simply to obtain a verdict from
my unprepared impression of the power of his picture. A conversation we
had been having upon the subject of Milton and the character of Satan
had made him think of showing this picture to me. I was too much
agitated to form any judgment of it, but I thought I perceived through
its fierce and tragical expression some trace of my uncle's face and
features, a sort of "more so" of the bitter pride and scornful
melancholy of the banished Roman in the Volscian Hall. Lawrence's
imagination was so filled with the poetical and dramatic suggestions
which he derived from the Kemble brother and sister, that I thought a
likeness of them lurked in this portrait of the Prince of Darkness; and
perhaps he could scarcely have found a better model for his archfiend
than my uncle, to whom his mother occasionally addressed the
characteristic reproof, "Sir, you are as proud as Lucifer!" (He and that
remarkable mother of his must really have been a good deal like
Coriolanus and Volumnia.) To console me for the fright he had given me,
Lawrence took me into his drawing-room--that beautiful apartment filled
with beautiful things, including his magnificent collection of original
drawings by the old masters, and precious gems of old and modern
art--the treasure-house of all the exquisite objects of beauty and
curiosity that he had gathered together during his whole life, and that
(with the exception of Raphael's and Michael Angelo's drawings, now in
the museum at Oxford) were so soon, at his most unexpected death, to be
scattered abroad and become, in separate, disjointed portions, the
property of a hundred different purchasers. Here, he said, he hoped
often to persuade my father and mother and myself to pass our unengaged
evenings with him; here he should like to make my brother John, of whom
I had spoken enthusiastically to him, free of his art collections; and,
adding that he would write to my mother to fix the day for my first
sitting for Juliet, he put into my hands a copy of the first edition of
Milton's "Paradise Lost." I never entered that room or his house, or saw
him again; he died about ten days after that.
Lawrence did not talk much while he took his sketch of me, and I
remember very little that passed between him and my mother but what was
purely personal. I recollect he told me that I had a double row of
eyelashes, which was an unusual peculiarity. He expressed the most
decided preference for satin over every other material for painting,
expatiating rapturously on the soft, rich folds and infinitely varied
lights and shadows which that texture afforded above all others. He has
dressed a great many of his female portraits in white satin. He also
once said that he had been haunted at one time with the desire to paint
a blush, that most enchanting "incident" in the expression of a woman's
face, but, after being driven nearly wild with the ineffectual endeavor,
had had to renounce it, never, of course, he said, achieving anything
but a _red face_. I remember the dreadful impression made upon me by a
story he told my mother of Lady J---- (George the Fourth's Lady J----),
who, standing before her drawing-room looking-glass, and unaware that he
was in the rooms, apostrophized her own reflection with this reflection:
"I swear it would be better to go to hell at once than live to grow old
and ugly."
Lawrence once said that we never dreamed of ourselves as younger than we
were; that even if our dreams reproduce scenes and people and
circumstances of our youth and childhood we were always represented, by
our sleeping imagination, at our present age. I presume he spoke of his
own experience, and I cannot say that I recollect any instance in mine
that contradicts this theory. It seems curious, if it is true, that in
the manifold freaks of our sleeping fancy self-consciousness should
still exist to a sufficient degree to preserve unaltered one's own
conditions of age and physical appearance. I wonder whether this is
really the common experience of people's dreams? Frederick Maurice told
me a circumstance in curious opposition to this theory of Lawrence's. A
young woman whom he knew, of more than usual mental and moral
endowments, married a man very much her inferior in mind and character,
and appeared to him to deteriorate gradually but very perceptibly under
his influence. "As the husband is, the wife is," etc. Toward the middle
of her life she told him that at one time she had carried on a double
existence in her sleeping and waking hours, her dreams invariably taking
her back to the home and period of her girlhood, and that she resumed
this dream-life precisely where she left it off, night after night, for
a considerable period of time,--poor thing!--perhaps as long as the
roots of the young nobler self survived below the soil of a baser
present existence. This story seemed to me always very pathetic. It must
have been dismal to lose that dream life by degrees, as the real one ate
more and more into her nature.
Of Lawrence's merit as a painter an unduly favorable estimate was taken
during his life, and since his death his reputation has suffered an
undue depreciation. Much that he did partook of the false and bad style
which, from the deeper source of degraded morality, spread a taint over
all matters of art and taste, under the vicious influence of the "first
gentleman of Europe," whose own artistic preferences bore witness, quite
as much as the more serious events of his life, how little he deserved
the name. Hideous Chinese pagoda pavilions, with grotesque and monstrous
decorations, barbarous alike in form and in color; mean and ugly
low-roomed royal palaces, without either magnificence or simplicity;
military costumes, in which gold and silver lace were plastered together
on the same uniform, testified to the perverted perception of beauty and
fitness which presided in the court of George the Fourth. Lawrence's own
portrait of him, with his corpulent body girthed in his stays and
creaseless coat, and his heavy falling cheek supported by his stiff
stock, with his dancing-master's leg and his frizzled barber's-block
head, comes as near a caricature as a flattered likeness of the original
(which was a caricature) dares to do. To have had to paint that was
enough to have vulgarized any pencil. The defect of many of Lawrence's
female portraits was a sort of artificial, sentimental _elegantism_.
Pictures of the fine ladies of that day they undoubtedly were; pictures
of _great_ ladies, never; and, in looking at them, one sighed for the
exquisite simple grace and unaffected dignity of Reynolds's and
Gainsborough's noble and gentle women.
The lovely head of Lady Nugent, the fine portrait I have mentioned of
Mrs. W----, the splendid one of Lady Hatherton, and the noble picture of
my grandmother, are among the best productions of Lawrence's pencil; and
several of his men's portraits are in a robust and simple style of art
worthy of the highest admiration. His likeness of Canning (which, by the
bye, might have passed for his own, so great was his resemblance to the
brilliant statesman) and the fine portrait he painted for Lord Aberdeen,
of my uncle John, are excellent specimens of his best work. He had a
remarkable gift of producing likenesses at once striking and favorable,
and of always seizing the finest expression of which a face was capable;
and none could ever complain that Lawrence had not done justice to the
very best look they ever wore. Lawrence's want of conscience with regard
to the pictures which he undertook and never finished, is difficult to
account for by any plausible explanation. The fact is notorious, that in
various instances, after receiving the price of a portrait, and
beginning it, he procrastinated, and delayed, and postponed the
completion, until, in more than one case, the blooming beauty sketched
upon his canvas had grown faded and wrinkled before the image of her
youthful loveliness had been completed.
The renewal of intercourse between Lawrence and my parents, so soon to
be terminated by his death, was the cause to me of a loss which I shall
never cease to regret. My father had had in his library for years
(indeed, as long as I remember) a large volume of fine engravings of the
masterpieces of the great Italian painters, and this precious book of
art we were occasionally allowed to look at for an hour of rare delight;
but it belonged to Sir Thomas Lawrence, and had accidentally been kept
for this long space of time in my father's possession. One of my
mother's first acts, on again entering into friendly relations with
Lawrence, was to restore this piece of property to him; a precipitate
act of honesty which I could not help deploring, especially when, so
soon after this deed of rash restitution, his death brought those
beautiful engravings, with all the rest of his property, to the hammer.
There is no early impression stronger in my mind than that of some of
those masterpieces, which, together with Winckelmann's fine work on
classical art (our familiarity with which I have elsewhere alluded to),
were among the first influences of the sort which I experienced. Nor can
I ever be too grateful that, restricted as were my parents' means of
developing in us the highest culture, they were still such as, combined
with their own excellent taste and judgment, preserved us from that
which is far worse than ignorance, a liking for anything vulgar or
trivial. That which was merely pretty, in music, painting, or poetry,
was never placed on the same level in our admiration with that which was
fine; and though, from nature as well as training, we enjoyed with great
zest every thing that could in any sense be called good, our enthusiasm
was always reserved for that which was best, an incalculable advantage
in the formation of a fine taste and critical judgment. A noble ideal
beauty was what we were taught to consider the proper object and result
of all art. In their especial vocation this tendency caused my family to
be accused of formalism and artificial pedantry; and the so-called
"classical" school of acting, to which they belonged, has frequently
since their time been unfavorably compared with what, by way of
contrast, has been termed the realistic or natural style of art. I do
not care to discuss the question, but am thankful that my education
preserved me from accepting mere imitation of nature as art, on the
stage or in the picture gallery; and that, without destroying my delight
in any kind of beauty, it taught me a decided preference for that which
was highest and noblest.
All being in due preparation for my coming out, my rehearsals were the
only interruption to my usual habits of occupation, which I pursued very
steadily in spite of my impending trial. On the day of my first
appearance I had no rehearsal, for fear of over-fatigue, and spent my
morning as usual, in practicing the piano, walking in the inclosure of
St. James's Park opposite our house, and reading in "Blunt's Scripture
Characters" (a book in which I was then deeply interested) the chapters
relating to St. Peter and Jacob. I do not know whether the nervous
tension which I must have been enduring strengthened the impression made
upon me by what I read, but I remember being quite absorbed by it, which
I think was curious, because certainly such subjects of meditation were
hardly allied to the painful undertaking so immediately pressing upon
me. But I believe I felt imperatively the necessity of moderating my own
strong nervous emotion and excitement by the fulfillment of my
accustomed duties and pursuits, and above all by withdrawing my mind
into higher and serener regions of thought, as a respite and relief from
the pressure of my alternate apprehensions of failure and hopes of
success. I do not mean that it was at all a matter of deliberate
calculation or reflection, but rather an instinct of self-preservation,
which actuated me: a powerful instinct which has struggled and partially
prevailed throughout my whole life against the irregular and passionate
vehemence of my temperament, and which, in spite of a constant tendency
to violent excitement of mind and feeling, has made me a person of
unusually systematic pursuits and monotonous habits, and been a frequent
subject of astonishment, not unmixed with ridicule, to my friends, who
have not known as well as myself what wholesomeness there was in the
method of my madness. And I am persuaded that religion and reason alike
justify such a strong instinctive action in natures which derive a
constant moral support, like that of the unobserved but all-sustaining
pressure of the atmosphere, from the soothing and restraining influence
of systematic habits of monotonous regularity. Amid infinite anguish and
errors, existence may preserve a species of outward symmetry and harmony
from this strong band of minute observance keeping down and assisting
the mind to master elements of moral and mental discord and disorder,
for the due control of which the daily and hourly subjection to
recurring rules is an invaluable auxiliary to higher influences. The
external practice does not supply but powerfully supplements the
internal principle of self-control.
My mother, who had left the stage for upward of twenty years, determined
to return to it on the night of my first appearance, that I might have
the comfort and support of her being with me in my trial. We drove to
the theater very early, indeed while the late autumn sunlight yet
lingered in the sky; it shone into the carriage, upon me, and as I
screened my eyes from it, my mother said, "Heaven smiles on you, my
child." My poor mother went to her dressing-room to get herself ready,
and did not return to me for fear of increasing my agitation by her own.
My dear aunt Dall and my maid and the theater dresser performed my
toilet for me, and at length I was placed in a chair, with my satin
train carefully laid over the back of it; and there I sat, ready for
execution, with the palms of my hands pressed convulsively together, and
the tears I in vain endeavored to repress welling up into my eyes and
brimming slowly over, down my rouged cheeks--upon which my aunt, with a
smile full of pity, renewed the color as often as these heavy drops made
unsightly streaks in it. Once and again my father came to the door, and
I heard his anxious "How is she?" to which my aunt answered, sending him
away with words of comforting cheer. At last, "Miss Kemble called for
the stage, ma'am!" accompanied with a brisk tap at the door, started me
upright on my feet, and I was led round to the side scene opposite to
the one from which I saw my mother advance on the stage; and while the
uproar of her reception filled me with terror, dear old Mrs. Davenport,
my nurse, and dear Mr. Keely, her Peter, and half the _dramatis personæ_
of the play (but not my father, who had retreated, quite unable to
endure the scene) stood round me as I lay, all but insensible, in my
aunt's arms. "Courage, courage, dear child! poor thing, poor thing!"
reiterated Mrs. Davenport. "Never mind 'em, Miss Kemble!" urged Keely,
in that irresistibly comical, nervous, lachrymose voice of his, which I
have never since heard without a thrill of anything but comical
association; "never mind 'em! don't think of 'em, any more than if they
were so many rows of cabbages!" "Nurse!" called my mother, and on
waddled Mrs. Davenport, and, turning back, called in her turn, "Juliet!"
My aunt gave me an impulse forward, and I ran straight across the stage,
stunned with the tremendous shout that greeted me, my eyes covered with
mist, and the green baize flooring of the stage feeling as if it rose up
against my feet; but I got hold of my mother, and stood like a terrified
creature at bay, confronting the huge theater full of gazing human
beings. I do not think a word I uttered during this scene could have
been audible; in the next, the ball-room, I began to forget myself; in
the following one, the balcony scene, I had done so, and, for aught I
knew, I was Juliet; the passion I was uttering sending hot waves of
blushes all over my neck and shoulders, while the poetry sounded like
music to me as I spoke it, with no consciousness of anything before me,
utterly transported into the imaginary existence of the play. After
this, I did not return into myself till all was over, and amid a
tumultuous storm of applause, congratulation, tears, embraces, and a
general joyous explosion of unutterable relief at the fortunate
termination of my attempt, we went home. And so my life was determined,
and I devoted myself to an avocation which I never liked or honored, and
about the very nature of which I have never been able to come to any
decided opinion. It is in vain that the undoubted specific gifts of
great actors and actresses suggest that all gifts are given for rightful
exercise, and not suppression; in vain that Shakespeare's plays urge
their imperative claim to the most perfect illustration they can receive
from histrionic interpretation: a _business_ which is incessant
excitement and factitious emotion seems to me unworthy of a man; a
business which is public exhibition, unworthy of a woman.
At four different periods of my life I have been constrained by
circumstances to maintain myself by the exercise of my dramatic faculty;
latterly, it is true, in a less painful and distasteful manner, by
reading, instead of acting. But though I have never, I trust, been
ungrateful for the power of thus helping myself and others, or forgetful
of the obligation I was under to do my appointed work conscientiously in
every respect, or unmindful of the precious good regard of so many kind
hearts that it has won for me; though I have never lost one iota of my
own intense delight in the act of rendering Shakespeare's creations; yet
neither have I ever presented myself before an audience without a
shrinking feeling of reluctance, or withdrawn from their presence
without thinking the excitement I had undergone unhealthy, and the
personal exhibition odious.
Nevertheless, I sat me down to supper that night with my poor, rejoicing
parents well content, God knows! with the issue of my trial; and still
better pleased with a lovely little Geneva watch, the first I had ever
possessed, all encrusted with gold work and jewels, which my father laid
by my plate and I immediately christened Romeo, and went, a blissful
girl, to sleep with it under my pillow.
BUCKINGHAM GATE, JAMES STREET, December 14th.
DEAREST ----,
I received your letter this morning, before I was out of my room,
and very glad I was to get it. You would have heard from me again
ere this, had it not been that, in your present anxious state of
mind respecting your brother, I did not like to demand your
attention for my proceedings. My trial is over, and, thank heaven!
most fortunately. Our most sanguine wishes could hardly have gone
beyond the result, and at the same time that I hail my success as a
source of great happiness to my dear father and mother, I almost
venture to hope that the interest which has been excited in the
public may tend to revive once more the decaying dramatic art. You
say it is a very fascinating occupation; perhaps it is, though it
does not appear to me so, and I think it carries with it drawbacks
enough to operate as an antidote to the vanity and love of
admiration which it can hardly fail to foster. The mere embodying
of the exquisite ideals of poetry is a great enjoyment, but after
that, or rather _for_ that, comes in ours, as in all arts, the
mechanical process, the labor, the refining, the controlling the
very feeling one has, in order to manifest it in the best way to
the perception of others; and when all, that intense feeling and
careful work can accomplish, is done, an actor must often see those
points of his performance which are most worthy of approbation
overlooked, and others, perhaps crude in taste or less true in
feeling, commended; which must tend much, I think, to sober the
mind as to the value of applause. Above all, the constant
consciousness of the immeasurable distance between a fine
conception and the best execution of it, must in acting, as in all
art, be a powerful check to vanity and self-satisfaction.
As to the mere excitement proceeding from the public applause of a
theater, I am sure you will believe me when I say I do not think I
shall ever experience it. But should I reckon too much upon my own
steadiness, I have the incessant care and watchfulness of my dear
mother to rely on, and I do rely on it as an invaluable safeguard,
both to the purity and good taste of all that I may do on the
stage, and the quiet and soberness of my mind under all this new
excitement. She has borne all her anxieties wonderfully well, and I
now hope she will reap some repayment for them. My dear father is
very happy; indeed, we have all cause for heartfelt thankfulness
when we think what a light has dawned upon our prospects, lately so
dismal and overcast. My own motto in all this must be, as far as
possible, "Beget a temperance in all things." I trust I shall be
enabled to rule myself by it, and in the firm hope that my endeavor
to do what is right will be favored and assisted, I have committed
myself, nothing doubting, to the stormy sea of life. Dearest H----,
the papers will give you a detailed account of my _début_; I only
wish to assure you that I have not embraced this course without due
dread of its dangers, and a firm determination to watch, as far as
in me lies, over its effect upon my mind. It is, after all, but
lately, you know, that I have become convinced that fame and
gratified ambition are not the worthiest aims for one's exertions.
With affectionate love, believe me ever your fondly attached
FANNY.
I most sincerely hope that your brother's health is improving, and
if we do not meet sooner, I shall now look forward to Dublin as our
_point de réunion_; that will not be the least of the obligations I
shall owe this happy turn of affairs.
I do not know whence I derived the deep impression I expressed in this
letter of the moral dangers of the life upon which I was entering;
certainly not from my parents, to whom, of course, the idea that actors
and actresses could not be respectable people naturally did not occur,
and who were not troubled, I am sure, as I then was, with a perception
of the more subtle evils of their calling. I had never heard the nature
of it discussed, and was absolutely without experience of it, but the
vapid vacuity of the last years of my aunt Siddons's life had made a
profound impression upon me,--her apparent deadness and indifference to
everything, which I attributed (unjustly, perhaps) less to her advanced
age and impaired powers than to what I supposed the withering and drying
influence of the overstimulating atmosphere of emotion, excitement, and
admiration in which she had passed her life; certain it is that such was
my dread of the effect of my profession upon me, that I added an earnest
petition to my daily prayers that I might be defended from the evil
influence I feared it might exercise upon me.
As for my success, there was, I believe, a genuine element in it, for
puffing can send upward only things that have a buoyant, rising quality
in themselves; but there was also a great feeling of personal sympathy
for my father and mother, of kindly indulgence for my youth, and of
respectful recollection of my uncle and aunt; and a very general desire
that the fine theater where they had exercised their powers should be
rescued, if possible, from its difficulties. All this went to make up a
result of which I had the credit.
Among my experiences of that nauseous ingredient in theatrical life,
puffery, some have been amusing enough. The last time that I gave public
readings in America, the management of them was undertaken by a worthy,
respectable person, who was not, I think, exceptionally addicted to the
devices and charlatanism which appear almost inseparable from the
business of public exhibition in all its branches. At the end of our
first interview for the purpose of arranging my performances, as he was
taking his leave he said, "Well, ma'am, I think everything is quite in a
nice train. I should say things are in a most favorable state of
preparation; we've a delightful article coming out in the ----." Here he
mentioned a popular periodical. "Ah, indeed?" said I, not quite
apprehending what my friend was aiming at. "Yes, really, ma'am, I should
say first-rate, and I thought perhaps we might induce you to be good
enough to help us a little with it." "Bless me!" said I, more and more
puzzled, "how can I help you?" "Well, ma'am, with a few personal
anecdotes, perhaps, if you would be so kind." "Anecdotes?" said I (with
three points of interrogation). "What do you mean? What about?" "Why,
ma'am" (with a low bow), "about Mrs. Kemble, of course." Now, my worthy
agent's remuneration was to consist of a certain proportion of the
receipts of the readings, and, that being the case, I felt I had no
right absolutely to forbid him all puffing advertisements and decently
legitimate efforts to attract public attention and interest to
performances by which he was to benefit. At the same time, I also felt
it imperatively necessary that there should be some limit to these
proceedings, if I was to be made a party to them. I therefore told him
that, as his interest was involved in the success of the readings, I
could not forbid his puffing them to some extent, as, if I did, he might
consider himself injured. "But," said I, while refusing the contribution
of any personal anecdotes to his forthcoming article, "take care what
you do in that line, for if you overdo it in the least, I will write an
article, myself, on my readings, showing up all their faults, and
turning them into ridicule as I do not believe any one else either would
or could. So puff just as quietly as you can." I rather think my agent
left me with the same opinion of my competency in business that Mr.
Macready had expressed as to my proficiency in my profession, namely,
that "I did not know the rudiments of it."
Mr. Mitchell, who from the first took charge of all my readings in
England, and was the very kindest, most considerate, and most courteous
of all managers, on one occasion, complaining bitterly to my sister of
the unreasonable objection I had to all laudatory advertisements of my
readings, said to her, with a voice and countenance of the most rueful
melancholy, and with the most appealing pathos, "Why, you know, ma'am,
it's really dreadful; you know, Mrs. Kemble won't even allow us to say
in the bills, _these celebrated readings_; and you know, ma'am, it's
really impossible to do with less; indeed it is! Why, ma'am, you know
even Morrison's pills are always advertised as _these celebrated
pills!_"--an illustration of the hardships of his case which my sister
repeated to me with infinite delight.
When I saw the shop-windows full of Lawrence's sketch of me, and knew
myself the subject of almost daily newspaper notices; when plates and
saucers were brought to me with small figures of me as Juliet and
Belvidera on them; and finally, when gentlemen showed me lovely
buff-colored neck-handkerchiefs which they had bought, and which had, as
I thought, pretty lilac-colored flowers all over them, which proved on
nearer inspection to be minute copies of Lawrence's head of me, I not
unnaturally, in the fullness of my inexperience, believed in my own
success.
I have since known more of the manufacture of public enthusiasm and
public triumphs, and, remembering to how many people it was a matter of
vital importance that the public interest should be kept alive in me,
and Covent Garden filled every night I played, I have become more
skeptical upon the subject.
Seeing lately a copy of my play of "Francis the First," with (to my
infinite astonishment) "tenth edition" upon it, I said to a friend, "I
suppose this was a bit of bookseller's puffery; or did each edition
consist of three copies?" He replied, "Oh, no, I think not; you have
forgotten the _furor_ there was about you when this came out." At twenty
I believed it _all_; at sixty-eight I find it difficult to believe _any_
of it.
It is certain, however, that I played Juliet upward of a hundred and
twenty times running, with all the irregularity and unevenness and
immature inequality of which I have spoken as characteristics which were
never corrected in my performances. My mother, who never missed one of
them, would sometimes come down from her box and, folding me in her
arms, say only the very satisfactory words, "Beautiful, my dear!" Quite
as often, if not oftener, the verdict was, "My dear, your performance
was not fit to be seen! I don't know how you ever contrived to do the
part decently; it must have been by some knack or trick which you appear
to have entirely lost the secret of; you had better give the whole thing
up at once than go on doing it so disgracefully ill." This was awful,
and made my heart sink down into my shoes, whatever might have been the
fervor of applause with which the audience had greeted my performance.
My life now became settled in its new shape. I acted regularly three
times a week; I had no rehearsals, since "Romeo and Juliet" went on
during the whole season, and so my mornings were still my own. I always
dined in the middle of the day (and invariably on a mutton-chop, so that
I might have been a Harrow boy, for diet); I was taken by my aunt early
to the theater, and there in my dressing-room sat through the entire
play, when I was not on the stage, with some piece of tapestry or
needlework, with which, during the intervals of my tragic sorrows, I
busied my fingers; my thoughts being occupied with the events of my next
scene and the various effects it demanded. When I was called for the
stage, my aunt came with me, carrying my train, that it might not sweep
the dirty floor behind the scenes; and after spreading it out and
adjusting its folds carefully, as I went on, she remained at the side
scene till I came off again, then gathered it on her arm, and, folding a
shawl around me, escorted me back to my dressing-room and tapestry; and
so my theatrical evenings were passed. My parents would not allow me to
go into the green-room, where they thought my attention would be
distracted from my business, and where I might occasionally meet with
undesirable associates. My salary was fixed at thirty guineas a week,
and the Saturday after I came out I presented myself for the first and
last time at the treasury of the theater to receive it, and carried it,
clinking, with great triumph, to my mother, the first money I ever
earned.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more radical than the change
which three weeks had made in the aspect of my whole life. From an
insignificant school-girl, I had suddenly become an object of general
public interest. I was a little lion in society, and the town talk of
the day. Approbation, admiration, adulation, were showered upon me;
every condition of my life had been altered, as by the wand of a fairy.
Instead of the twenty pounds a year which my poor father squeezed out of
his hard-earned income for my allowance, out of which I bought (alas,
with how much difficulty, seeing how many other things I would buy!) my
gloves and shoes, I now had an assured income, as long as my health and
faculties were unimpaired, of at least a thousand a year; and the thirty
guineas a week at Covent Garden, and much larger remuneration during
provincial tours, forever forbade the sense of destitution productive of
the ecstasy with which, only a short time before I came out, I had found
wedged into the bottom of my money drawer in my desk a sovereign that I
had overlooked, and so had sorrowfully concluded myself penniless till
next allowance day. Instead of trudging long distances afoot through the
muddy London streets, when the hire of a hackney-coach was matter of
serious consideration, I had a comfortable and elegant carriage; I was
allowed, at my own earnest request, to take riding lessons, and before
long had a charming horse of my own, and was able to afford the delight
of giving my father one, the use of which I hoped would help to
invigorate and refresh him. The faded, threadbare, turned, and dyed
frocks which were my habitual wear were exchanged for fashionably made
dresses of fresh colors and fine texture, in which I appeared to myself
transfigured. Our door was besieged with visitors, our evenings bespoken
by innumerable invitations; social civilities and courtesies poured in
upon us from every side in an incessant stream; I was sought and petted
and caressed by persons of conventional and real distinction, and every
night that I did not act I might, if my parents had thought it prudent
to let me do so, have passed in all the gayety of the fashionable world
and the great London season. So much cordiality, sympathy, interest, and
apparent genuine good-will seemed to accompany all these flattering
demonstrations, that it was impossible for me not to be touched and
gratified,--perhaps, too, unduly elated. If I was spoiled and my head
turned, I can only say I think it would have needed a strong head not to
be so; but God knows how pitiful a preparation all this tinsel, sudden
success, and popularity formed for the duties and trials of my
after-life.