JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, May 2d.
MY DEAREST H----,
I received your kind letter the other night (that is, morning) on
my return from a ball, and read your reflections on dissipation
with an attention heightened by the appropriate comment of a bad
headache and abject weariness from top to toe with dancing. The way
in which people _prosecute_ their pleasures in this good town of
London is certainly amazing; and we are (perforce) models of
moderation, compared with most of our acquaintance. I met at that
very ball persons who had been to one and two parties previously,
and were leaving that dance to hurry to another. Independently of
the great fatigue of such a life, it seems to me so strange that
when people are enjoying themselves to their hearts' content in one
place, they cannot be satisfied to remain there until they wish to
return home, but spend half the night in the streets, running from
one house to another, working their horses to death, and wasting
the precious time when they might be DANCING. You see my folly is
not so great but that I have philosophy to spare for my neighbors.
Let me tell you again, dear H----, how truly I rejoice in your
niece's restored health. The spring, too, is the very time for such
a resurrection, when every day and every hour, every cloud and
every flower, offer inexhaustible matter for the capabilities of
delight thus regained. Indeed, "the drops on the trees are the most
beautiful of all!" [E---- T----'s exclamation during one of her
first drives after the long imprisonment of her nervous malady.] A
wonderful feeling of renewed hope seems to fill the heart of all
created things in the spring, and even here in this smoky town it
finds its way to us, inclosed as we are by brick walls, dusty
streets, and all things unlovely and unnatural! I stood yesterday
in the little court behind our house, where two unhappy poplars and
a sycamore tree were shaking their leaves as if in surprise at the
acquisition and to make sure they had them, and looked up to the
small bit of blue sky above them with pleasurable spring tears in
my eyes. How I wish I were rich and could afford to be out of town
now! I always dislike London, and this lovely weather gives me a
sort of _mal du pays_ for the country. My dearest H----, you must
not dream of leaving Ardgillan just when I am coming to see you;
that would be indeed a disappointment. My father is not at home at
this moment, but I shall ask him before I close this letter the
exact time when we shall be in Dublin. I look forward with much
pleasure to making my aunt Dall known to you. She is, I am happy to
say, coming with me, for indeed she is in some sense my "all the
world." You have often heard me speak of her, but it is difficult
for words to do justice to one whose whole life is an uninterrupted
stream of usefulness, goodness, and patient devotion to others. I
know but one term that, as the old writers say, "delivers" her
fully, and though it is not unfrequently applied, I think she is
the only person I know who really deserves it; she is _absolutely
unselfish_. I am sure, dear H----, you will excuse this panegyric,
though you do not know how well it is deserved; the proof of its
being so is that there is not one of us but would say the same of
aunt Dall.
My father's benefit took place last Wednesday, when I acted
Isabella; the house was crowded, and the play very successful; I
think I played it well, and I take credit to myself for so doing,
for I dislike both play and part extremely. The worst thing I do in
it is the soliloquy when I am about to stab Biron, and the best, my
death. My dresses were very beautiful, and I am exceedingly glad
the whole thing is over. I suppose it will be my last new part this
season. I am reading with great pleasure a purified edition, just
published, of the old English dramatists; the work, as far as my
ignorance of the original plays will enable me to judge, seems very
well executed, and I owe the editor many thanks for some happy
hours spent with his book. I have just heard something which annoys
me not a little: I am to prepare to act Mrs. Haller. I know very
well that nobody was ever at liberty in this world to do what they
liked and that only; but when I know with what task-like feeling I
set about most of my work, I am both amused and provoked when
people ask me if I do not delight in acting. I have not an idea
what to do with that part; however, I must apply myself to it, and
try; such mawkish sentiment, and such prosaic, commonplace language
seem to me alike difficult to feel and to deliver.
My dear H----, I shall be in Ireland the whole month of July. I am
coming first to Dublin, and shall afterward go to Cork. You really
must not be away when I come, for if you are, I won't come, which
is good Irish, isn't it? I do not feel as you do, at all, about the
sea. Instead of depressing my spirits, it always raises them; it
seems to me as if the vast power of the great element communicated
itself to me. I feel _strong_, as I run by the side of the big
waves, with something of their strength, and the same species of
wild excitement which thunder and lightning produce in me always
affects me by the sea-shore. I never saw the sea but once violently
agitated, and then I was so well pleased with its appearance that I
took a boat and went out into the bustle, singing with all my
might, which was the only vent I could find for my high spirits; it
is true that I returned in much humiliation, very seasick, after a
short "triumph of Galatea" indeed.
You ask me in one of your last why I do not send you verses any
more, as I used to do, and whether I still write any. So here I
send you some which I improvised the other day in your honor, and
which, written hurriedly as they were, will not, I think, stand the
test of any very severe criticism:--
Whene'er I recollect the happy time
When you and I held converse sweet together,
There come a thousand thoughts of sunny weather,
Of early blossoms, and the young year's prime.
Your memory lives for ever in my mind,
With all the fragrant freshness of the spring,
With odorous lime and silver hawthorn twined,
And mossy rest and woodland wandering.
There's not a thought of you but brings along
Some sunny glimpse of river, field, and sky;
Your voice sets words to the sweet blackbird's song,
And many a snatch of wild old melody;
And as I date it still our love arose
'Twixt the last violet and the earliest rose.
I never go anywhere without a book wherein I may scratch my
valuable ideas, and therefore when we meet I will show you my
present receptacle. I take great delight in writing, and write less
incorrectly than I used to do. I have not time now to go on with
this letter, and as I am anxious you should know when to expect us,
I shall not defer it in the hope of making it more amusing, though
I fear it is rather dull. But you will not mind that, and will
believe me ever your affectionate
FANNY KEMBLE.
The arrangement of Massinger for the family library by my friend the
Reverend Alexander Dyce, the learned Shakespearean editor and
commentator, was my first introduction to that mine of dramatic wealth
which enriched the literature of England in the reigns of Elizabeth and
James the First, and culminated in the genius of Shakespeare. It is by
comparison with them, his contemporaries, that we arrive at a just
estimate of his supremacy. I was so enchanted with these plays of
Massinger's, but more especially with the one called "The Maid of
Honor," that I never rested till I had obtained from the management its
revival on the stage. The part of Camiola is the only one that I ever
selected for myself. "The Maid of Honor" succeeded on its first
representation, but failed to attract audiences. Though less defective
than most of the contemporaneous dramatic compositions, the play was
still too deficient in interest to retain the favor of the public. The
character of Camiola is extremely noble and striking, but that of her
lover so unworthy of her that the interest she excites personally fails
to inspire one with sympathy for her passion for him. The piece in this
respect has a sort of moral incoherency, which appears to me, indeed,
not an infrequent defect in the compositions of these great dramatic
pre-Shakespearites. There is a want of psychical verisimilitude, a
disjointed abruptness, in their conceptions, which, in spite of their
grand treatment of separate characters and the striking force of
particular passages, renders almost every one of their plays
inharmonious as a whole, however fine and powerful in detached parts.
Their selection of abnormal and detestable subjects is a distinct
indication of intellectual weakness instead of vigor; supreme genius
alone perceives the beauty and dignity of human nature and human life in
their common conditions, and can bring to the surface of vulgar,
every-day existence the hidden glory that lies beneath it.
The strictures contained in these girlish letters on the various plays
in which I was called to perform the heroines, of course partake of the
uncompromising nature of all youthful verdicts. Hard, sharp, and
shallow, they never went lower than the obvious surface of things, and
dealt easily, after the undoubting youthful fashion, with a main result,
without any misgiving as to conflicting causes or painful anxiety about
contradictory component parts. At the beginning of life, the ignorant
moral and intellectual standard alike have definite form and decided
color; time, as it goes on, dissolves the outline into vague
indistinctness, and reveals lights and shades so various and
innumerable, that toward the end of life criticism grows diffident,
opinion difficult, and positive judgment almost impossible.
My first London season was now drawing to an end, and preparations were
begun for a summer tour in the provinces. There had been some talk of my
beginning with Brighton, but for some reason or other this fell through.
BATH, May 31, 1830.
MY DEAR H----,
I have owed you an answer, and a most grateful one, for some time
past, for your kindness in writing me so long a letter as your
last; but when I assure you that, what with leave-taking, trying on
dresses, making purchases, etc., etc., and all the preparations for
our summer tour, this is the first moment in which I have been able
to draw a long breath for the last month, I am sure you will
forgive me, and believe, notwithstanding my long silence, that I
was made very happy indeed by your letter. I bade Covent Garden and
my dear London audience farewell on Friday last, when I acted Lady
Townley for the first time. The house was crammed, and as the
proprietors had fixed that night for a second benefit which they
gave me, I was very glad that it was so. I was very nicely dressed,
and to my own fancy acted well, though I dare say my performance
was a little flat occasionally. But considering my own physical
powers, and the immense size of the theatre, I do not think I
should have done better on the whole by acting more broadly; though
I suppose it would have been more effective, I should have had to
sacrifice something of repose and refinement to make it so. I was
very sorry to leave my London audience: they welcomed my first
appearance; they knew the history of our shipwrecked fortunes, and
though perhaps not one individual amongst them would go a mile out
of his way to serve us, there exists in them, taken collectively, a
kind feeling and respect for my father, and an indulgent good-will
toward me, which I do not hope to find elsewhere. I like Bath very
much; I have not been here since I was six years old, when I spent
a year here in hopes of being _bettered_ by my aunt, Mrs. Twiss. A
most forlorn hope it was. I suppose in human annals there never
existed a more troublesome little brat than I was for the few years
after my first appearance on this earthly stage.
This town reminds me a little of Edinburgh. How glad I shall be to
see Edinburgh once more! I expect much pleasure, too, from the
pleasure of my aunt Dall, who some years ago spent some very happy
time in Edinburgh, and who loves it from association. And then,
dear H----, I am looking forward to seeing you once more; I shall
be with you somewhere in the beginning of June. I have had my first
rehearsal here this morning, "Romeo and Juliet;" the theatre is
much smaller than Covent Garden, which rather inconveniences me, as
a novelty, but the audience will certainly benefit by it. My
fellow-laborers amuse me a good deal; their versions of Shakespeare
are very droll. I wonder what your Irish ones will be. I am
fortunate in my Romeo, inasmuch as he is one of my cousins; he has
the family voice and manner very strongly, and at any rate does not
murder the text of Shakespeare. I have no more time to spare now,
for I must get my tea and go to the theater. I must tell you,
though, of an instance of provincial prudery (delicacy, I suppose I
ought to call it) which edified us not a little at rehearsal this
morning: the Mercutio, on seeing the nurse and Peter, called out,
"A sail, a sail!" and terminated the speech in a significant
whisper, which, being literally inaudible, my mother, who was with
me on the stage, very innocently asked, "Oh, does the gentleman
leave out the shirt and the smock?" upon which we were informed
that "body linen" was not so much as to be hinted at before a truly
refined Bath audience. How particular we are growing--_in word!_ I
am much afraid my father will shock them with the speech of that
scamp Mercutio in all its pristine purity and precision. Good-by,
dear H----. Ever your affectionate
F. A. K.
P.S.--My mother desires to be particularly remembered to you. I
want to revive Massinger's "Maid of Honor;" I want to act Camiola.
The necessity for carrying with us into the provinces a sufficient
number of various parts, and especially of plays in which my father and
myself could fill the principal characters, and so be tolerably
independent of incompetent coadjutors, was the reason of my coming out
in the play of "The Provoked Husband," before leaving London. The
passage in this letter about Lady Townley sufficiently shows how bad my
performance of it must have been, and how absolutely in the dark I was
with regard to the real style in which the part should be played. The
fine lady of my day, with the unruffled insipidity of her _low_ spirits
(high spirits never came near her) and the imperturbable composure of
her smooth insolence, was as unlike the rantipole, racketing high-bred
woman of fashion of Sir John Vanbrugh's play as the flimsy elegance of
my silver-embroidered, rose-colored tulle dress was unlike the elaborate
splendor of her hooped and feathered and high-heeled, patched-and-powdered
magnificence, with its falling laces and standing brocades. The part of
Lady Townley was not only beyond my powers, but has never been seen on
the English stage since the days of Mrs. Abington and Miss Farren, the
latter elegant and spirited actress being held by those who had seen
both less like the original great lady than her predecessor; while even
the Théâtre Français, where consummate study and reverend tradition of
elder art still prevail, has lost more and more the secret of _la grande
manière_ in a gradual descent from the _grande dame_ of Mademoiselle
Contat to the pretty, graceful _femme comme il faut_ of Mademoiselle
Plessis; for even the exquisite Célimène of Mademoiselle Mars was but a
"pale reflex" of Molière's brilliant coquette, as played by her great
instructress, Contat. The truth is, that society no longer possesses or
produces that creature, and a good deal of reading, not of a usual or
agreeable kind, would alone make one familiar enough with Lady Townley
and her like to enable an actress of the present day to represent her
with any verisimilitude. The absurd practice, too, of dressing all the
serious characters of the piece in modern costume, and all the comic
ones in that of the time at which it was written, renders the whole
ridiculously incoherent and manifestly impossible, and destroys it as a
picture of the manners of any time; for even stripped of her hoop and
powder, and her more flagrant coarseness of speech, Lady Townley is
still as unlike, in manners, language, and deportment, any modern lady,
as she is unlike the woman of fashion of Hogarth's time, whose costume
she has discarded.
The event fully justified my expectation of far less friendly audiences
out of London than those I had hitherto made my appeals to. None of the
personal interest that was felt for me there existed elsewhere, and I
had to encounter the usual opposition, always prepared to cavil, in the
provinces, at the metropolitan verdict of merit, as a mere exhibition of
independent judgment; and to make good to the expectations of the
country critics the highly laudatory reports of the London press, by
which the provincial judges scorned to have a decision imposed upon
them. Not unnaturally, therefore, I found a much less fervid enthusiasm
in my audiences--who were, I dare say, quite justified in their
disappointment--and a far less eulogistic tone in the provincial press
with regard to my performances. Our houses, however, were always very
crowded, which was the essential point, and for my own part I was quite
satisfied with the notices and applause which were bestowed on me. My
cousin, John Mason, was the Romeo to whom I have referred in this
letter. He was my father's sister's son, and, like so many members of
our family, he and one of his brothers and his sister had made the stage
their profession. He had some favorable physical qualifications for it:
a rather striking face, handsome figure, good voice, and plenty of fire
and energy; he was tolerably clever and well-informed, but without
either imagination or refinement. My father, who thought there was the
making of a good actor in him, was extremely kind to him.
GLASGOW, MONDAY, June 28, 1830.
MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
I believe that you will have felt too well convinced that I had not
had a moment to spare, to be surprised at my not having sooner
acknowledged your very kind letter; nothing but the incessant
occupation of my time would so long have prevented me from doing
so, but I embrace the opportunity which the king's death affords me
of telling you how much obliged to you I was for writing to me, and
writing as you did. I have little news to return you but what
concerns myself, but I shall make no coquettish excuses about that,
for I really believe 'tis the subject that will interest you most
of any I could find. First, then, I am very well, rather tired, and
sitting at an inn window, in a dull, dark, handsome square in
Glasgow. My fortnight in Edinburgh is over, and a short fortnight
it has been, what with rehearsals, riding, sitting for my bust, and
acting. The few hurried glimpses I have caught of my friends have
been like dreams, and now that I have parted from them, no more to
meet them there certainly, the whole seems to me like mere
bewilderment, and I repeat to myself in my thoughts, hardly
believing it, that the next time that I visit Edinburgh I shall not
find the dear companionship of my cousins nor the fond affection of
Mrs. Henry Siddons. This will be a severe loss to me; Edinburgh
will, I fear, be without its greatest charm, and it will remain to
be proved whether these lovely scenes that I have so admired and
delighted in owed all their incomparable fascination to their
intrinsic beauty, or to that most pleasurable frame of mind I
enjoyed at the same time, the consciousness of the kind regard of
the excellent human beings among whom I lived.
You will naturally expect me to say something of my theatrical
experiences in the modern Athens. Our houses have been very fine,
our audiences (as is their national nature) very cold; but upon the
whole I believe they were well pleased with us, notwithstanding the
damping influence of the newspapers, which have one and all been
unfavorable to me. The deathlike stillness of the audience, as it
afforded me neither rest nor stimulus, distressed me a good deal;
which, I think I need not tell you, the newspaper criticisms did
not. I was surprised, in reading them, to find how very generally
their strictures were confined to my external disadvantages,--my
diminutive stature and defective features; and that these far-famed
northern critics discussed these rather than what I should have
expected them to bestow their consideration upon, the dramatic
artist's conception of character, and his (or her) execution of
that conception. But had their verdicts been still more severe, I
have a sufficient consolation in two notes of Sir Walter Scott's,
written to the editor of one of the papers, Ballantyne, his own
particular friend, which the latter sent me, and where he bears
such testimony to my exertions as I do not care to transcribe, for
fear my cheeks should reflect a lasting blush on my paper, but
which I keep as a treasure and shall certainly show you with pride
and pleasure when we meet.
Among the delightful occurrences of last week, I must record our
breakfasting with Walter Scott. I was wonderfully happy. To whom,
since Shakespeare, does the reading world owe so many hours of
perfect, peaceful pleasure, of blessed forgetfulness of all things
miserable and mean in its daily life? The party was a small but
interesting one: Sir Walter and his daughter Anne, his old friend
Sir Adam Ferguson and Lady Ferguson, and Miss Ferrier, the
authoress of "Marriage" and "Inheritance," with both which capital
books I hope, for your own sake, you are acquainted. Sir Walter was
most delightful, and I even forgot all awful sense of his celebrity
in his kind, cordial, and almost affectionate manner toward me. He
is exceedingly like all the engravings, pictures, and busts of him
with which one is familiar, and it seems strange that so varied and
noble an intellect should be expressed in the features of a shrewd,
kindly, but not otherwise striking countenance. He told me several
things that interested me very much; among others, his being
present at the time when, after much searching, the regalia of
Scotland was found locked up in a room in Edinburgh Castle, where,
as he said, the dust of centuries had accumulated upon it, and
where the ashes of fires lit more than two hundred years before
were still lying in the grate. He told me a story that made me cry,
of a poor old lady upward of eighty years of age, who belonged to
one of the great Jacobite families,--she was a Maxwell,--sending to
him at the time the Scottish crown was found, to implore permission
to see it but for one instant; which (although in every other case
the same petition had been refused) was granted to her in
consideration of her great age and the vital importance she seemed
to attach to it. I never shall forget his describing her when first
she saw it, appearing for a moment petrified at sight of it, and
then tottering forward and falling down on her knees, and weeping
and wailing over these poor remains of the royalty of her country
as if it had been the dead body of her child.
Sir Adam Ferguson is a delightful person, whose quick, bustling
manner forms a striking contrast to Walter Scott's quiet tone of
voice and deliberate enunciation I have also made acquaintance with
Jeffrey, who came and called upon us the other morning, and, I
hear, like some of his fellow-townsmen, complains piteously that I
am not prettier. Indeed, I am very sorry for it, and I heartily
wish I were; but I did not think him handsome either, and I wonder
why he is not handsomer? though I don't care so much about his want
of beauty as he seems to do about mine. But I am running on at a
tremendous rate, and quite forget that I have traveled upward of
forty miles to-day, and that I promised my mother, whenever I
could, to go to bed early. Good-by, my dear Mrs. Jameson. I hope
you will be able to make out this scrawl, and to decipher that I am
yours affectionately,
F. A. KEMBLE.
Of the proverbial frigidity of the Edinburgh public I had been
forewarned, and of its probably disheartening effect upon myself. Mrs.
Harry Siddons had often told me of the intolerable sense of depression
with which it affected Mrs. Siddons, who, she said, after some of her
grandest outbursts of passion, to which not a single expression of
applause or sympathy had responded, exhausted and breathless with the
effort she had made, would pant out in despair, under her breath,
"Stupid people, stupid people!" Stupid, however, they undoubtedly were
not, though, as undoubtedly, their want of excitability and
demonstrativeness diminished their own pleasure by communicating itself
to the great actress and partially paralyzing her powers. That this
habitual reserve sometimes gave way to very violent exhibitions of
enthusiasm, the more fervent from its general repression, there is no
doubt; and I think it was in Edinburgh that my friend, Mr. Harness, told
me the whole of the sleep-walking scene in "Macbeth" had once been so
vehemently encored that my aunt was literally obliged to go over it a
second time, before the piece was allowed to proceed.
Scott's opinion of my acting, which would, of course, have been very
valuable to me, let it have been what it would, was written to his
friend and editor (_eheu!_), Ballantyne, who was also the editor of one
of the principal Edinburgh papers, in which unfavorable criticisms of my
performances had appeared, and in opposition to which Sir Walter Scott
told him he was too hard upon me, and that for his part he had seen
nothing so good since Mrs. Siddons. This encouraging verdict was
courteously forwarded to me by Mr. Ballantyne himself, who said he was
sure I would like to possess it. The first time I ever saw Walter Scott,
my father and myself were riding slowly down Princes Street, up which
Scott was walking; he stopped my father's horse, which was near the
pavement, and desired to be introduced to me. Then followed a string of
cordial invitations which previous engagements and our work at the
theater forbade our accepting, all but the pressing one with which he
wound up, that we would at least come and breakfast with him. The first
words he addressed to me as I entered the room were, "You appear to be a
very good horsewoman, which is a great merit in the eyes of an old
Border-man." Every _r_ in which sentence was rolled into a combination
of double _u_ and double _r_ by his Border burr, which made it memorable
to me by this peculiarity of his pleasant speech. My previous
acquaintance with Miss Ferrier's admirable novels would have made me
very glad of the opportunity of meeting her, and I should have thought
Sir Adam Ferguson delightfully entertaining, but that I could not bear
to lose, while listening to any one else, a single word spoken by Walter
Scott.
I never can forget, however, the description Sir Adam Ferguson gave me
of a morning he had passed with Scott at Abbotsford, which at that time
was still unfinished, and, swarming with carpenters, painters, masons,
and bricklayers, was surrounded with all the dirt and disorderly
discomfort inseparable from the process of house-building. The room they
sat in was in the roughest condition which admitted of their occupying
it, at all; the raw, new chimney smoked intolerably. Out-of-doors the
whole place was one chaos of bricks, mortar, scaffolding, tiles, and
slates. A heavy mist shrouded the whole landscape of lovely Tweed side,
and distilled in a cold, persistent, and dumb drizzle. Maida, the
well-beloved staghound, kept fidgeting in and out of the room, Walter
Scott every five minutes exclaiming, "Eh, Adam! the puir brute's just
wearying to get out;" or, "Eh, Adam! the puir creature's just crying to
come in;" when Sir Adam would open the door to the raw, chilly air for
the wet, muddy hound's exit or entrance, while Scott, with his face
swollen with a grievous toothache, and one hand pressed hard to his
cheek, with the other was writing the inimitably humorous opening
chapters of "The Antiquary," which he passed across the table, sheet by
sheet, to his friend, saying, "Now, Adam, d'ye think that'll do?" Such a
picture of mental triumph over outward circumstances has surely seldom
been surpassed: house-builders, smoky chimney, damp draughts, restless,
dripping dog, and toothache form what our friend, Miss Masson, called a
"concatenation of exteriorities" little favorable to literary
composition of any sort; but considered as accompaniments or inspiration
of that delightfully comical beginning of "The Antiquary," they are all
but incredible.
To my theatrical avocation I have been indebted for many social
pleasures and privileges; among others, for Sir Walter Scott's notice
and acquaintance; but among the things it has deprived me of was the
opportunity of enjoying more of his honorable and delightful
intercourse. A visit to Abbotsford, urged upon us most kindly, is one of
the lost opportunities of my life that I think of always with bitter
regret. Sir Walter wanted us to go down and spend a week with him in the
country, and our professional engagements rendered it impossible for us
to do so; and there are few things in my whole life that I count greater
loss than the seven days I might have passed with that admirable genius
and excellent, kind man, and had to forego. I never saw Abbotsford until
after its master had departed from all earthly dwelling-places. I was
staying in the neighborhood, at the house of my friend, Mrs. M----, of
Carolside, and went thither with her and my youngest daughter. The house
was inhabited only by servants; and the housekeeper, whose charge it was
to show it, waited till a sufficient number of tourists and sight-seers
had collected, and then drove us all together from room to room of the
house in a body, calling back those who outstripped her, and the laggers
who would fain have fallen a few paces out of the sound of the dreary
parrotry of her inventory of the contents of each apartment. There was
his writing-table and chair, his dreadnaught suit and thick walking
shoes and staff there in the drawing-room; the table, fitted like a
jeweler's counter, with a glass cover, protecting and exhibiting all the
royal and precious tokens of honor and admiration, in the shape of
orders, boxes, miniatures, etc, bestowed on him by the most exalted
worshipers of his genius, hardly to be distinguished under the thick
coat of dust with which the glass was darkened. Poor Anne Scott's
portrait looked dolefully down on the strangers staring up at her, and,
a glass door being open to the garden, Mrs. M---- and myself stepped out
for a moment to recover from the miserable impression of sadness and
desecration the whole thing produced on us; but the inexorable voice of
the housekeeper peremptorily ordered us to return, as it would be, she
said (and very truly), quite impossible for her to do her duty in
describing the "curiosities" of the house, if visitors took upon
themselves to stray about in every direction instead of keeping together
and listening to what she was saying. How glad we were to escape from
the sort of nightmare of the affair!
I returned there on another occasion, one of a large and merry party who
had obtained permission to picnic in the grounds, but who, deterred by
the threatening aspect of the skies from gypsying (as had originally
been proposed) by the side of the Tweed, were allowed, by Sir Adam
Ferguson's interest with the housekeeper, to assemble round the table in
the dining-room of Abbotsford. Here, again, the past was so present with
me as to destroy all enjoyment, and, thinking how I might have had the
great good fortune to sit there with the man who had made the whole
place illustrious, I felt ashamed and grieved at being there then,
though my companions were all kind, merry, good-hearted people, bent
upon their own and each other's enjoyment. Sir Adam Ferguson had grown
very old, and told no more the vivid anecdotes of former days; and to
complete my mental discomfort, on the wall immediately opposite to me
hung a strange picture of Mary Stuart's head, severed from the trunk and
lying on a white cloth on a table, as one sees the head of John the
Baptist in the charger, in pictures of Herodias's daughter. It was a
ghastly presentation of the guillotined head of a pretty but rather
common-looking French woman--a fancy picture which it certainly would
not have been my fancy to have presiding over my dinner-table.
Only once after this dreary party of pleasure did I return, many years
later, to Abbotsford. I was alone, and the tourist season was over, and
the sad autumnal afternoon offering little prospect of my being joined
by other sight-seers, I prevailed with the housekeeper, who admitted me,
to let me wander about the place, without entering the house; and I
spent a most melancholy hour in the garden and in pacing up and down the
terrace overlooking the Tweed side. The place was no longer inhabited at
all; my ringing at the gate had brought, after much delay, a servant
from Mr. Hope's new residence, built at some distance from Scott's
house, and from her I learned that the proprietor of Abbotsford had
withdrawn to the house he had erected for himself, leaving the poet's
dwelling exclusively as a place of pilgrimage for travelers and
strangers, with not even a servant residing under its roof. The house
abandoned to curious wayfarers; the sons and daughters, the grandson and
granddaughter, every member of the founder's family dead; Mr. Hope
remarried to a lady of the house of Arundel, and living in a
semi-monastic seclusion in a house walled off from the tourist-haunted
shrine of the great man whose memory alone was left to inhabit it,--all
these circumstances filled me with indescribable sadness as I paced up
and down in the gloaming, and thought of the strange passion for
founding here a family of the old Border type which had obfuscated the
keen, clear brain of Walter Scott, made his wonderful gifts subservient
to the most futile object of ambition, driven him to the verge of
disgrace and bankruptcy, embittered the evening of his laborious and
glorious career, and finally ended in this,--the utter extinction of the
name he had illustrated and the family he had hoped to found. And while
his noble works remain to make his memory ever loved and honored, this
_Brummagem_ mediæval mansion, this mock feudal castle with its imitation
baronial hall (upon a diminutive scale) hung round with suits of armor,
testifies to the utter perversity of good sense and good taste resulting
from this one mental infirmity, this craving to be a Border chieftain of
the sixteenth century instead of an Edinburgh lawyer of the nineteenth,
and his preference for the distinction of a petty landholder to that of
the foremost genius of his age. Mr. Combe, in speaking of this feudal
insanity of Scott and the piteous havoc it made of his life, told me
that at one time he and Ballantyne, with whom he had entered into
partnership, were staving off imminent ruin by indorsing and accepting
each other's bills, and carried on that process to the extremest verge
compatible with honesty. What a history of astounding success and utter
failure!
GLASGOW, July 3, 1830.
You will, ere this, my dear Mrs. Jameson, have received my very
tardy reply to your first kind letter. I got your second last night
at the theater, just after I _had given away my jewels to Mr.
Beverley_. I was much gratified by your profession of affection for
me, for though I am not over-desirous of public admiration and
approbation, I am anxious to secure the good-will of individuals
whose intellect I admire, and on whose character I can with
confidence rely. Your letter, however, made me uncomfortable in
some respects; you seem unhappy and perplexed. I am sure you will
believe me when I say that, without the remotest thought of
intruding on the sacredness of private annoyances and distresses, I
most sincerely sympathize in your uneasiness, whatever may be its
cause, and earnestly pray that the cloud, which the two or three
last times we met in London hung so heavily on your spirits, may
pass away. It is not for me to say to you, "Patience," my dear Mrs.
Jameson; you have suffered too much to have neglected that only
remedy of our afflictions, but I trust Heaven will make it an
efficacious one to you, and erelong send you less need of it. I am
glad you see my mother often, and very glad that to assist your
recollection of me you find interest and amusement in discussing
the fitting up of my room with her. Pray do not forget that the
drawing you made of the rooms in James Street is mine, and that
when you visit me in my new abode it will be pleasant to have that
remembrance before us of a place where we have spent some hours
very happily together.
What you say of Mrs. N---- only echoes my own thoughts of her. She
is a splendid creature, nobly endowed every way; too nobly to
become through mere frivolity and foolish vanity the mark of the
malice and envy of such _things_ as she is surrounded by, and who
will all eagerly embrace the opportunity of slandering one so
immeasurably their superior in every respect. I do not know much of
her, but I feel deeply interested in her; not precisely with the
interest inspired by loving or even liking, but with that feeling
of admiring solicitude with which one must regard a person so
gifted, so tempted, and in such a position as hers. I am glad that
lovely sister of hers is married, though matrimony in that world is
not always the securest haven for a woman's virtue or happiness; it
is sometimes in that society the reverse of an "honorable estate."
The poor king's death gave me a holiday on Monday, Tuesday, and
Wednesday, and we eagerly embraced the opportunity its respite
afforded us of visiting Loch Lomond and the entrance to Loch Long.
As almost my first thought when we reached the lake was, "How can
people attempt to describe such places?" I shall not terminate my
letter with "smooth expanses of sapphire-tinted waves," or "purple
screens of heath-clad hills rising one above another into the
cloudless sky." A volume might be written on the mere color of the
water, and give no idea of it, though you are the very person whose
imagination, aided by all that you've seen, would best realize such
a scene from description. It was heavenly, and we had such a
perfect day! I prefer, however, the glimpse we had of Loch Long to
what we saw of Loch Lomond. I brought away an appropriate nosegay
from my trip, a white rose from Dumbarton, in memory of Mary
Stuart, an oak branch from Loch Lomond, and a handful of heather,
for which I fought with the bees on the rocky shore of Loch Long.
I like my Glasgow audience better than my Edinburgh one; they are
not so cold. I look for a pleasant audience in your country, for
which we set out to-morrow, I believe. My aunt desires to be
remembered to you, and so does my father, and bids me add, in
answer to your modest doubt, that you are a person to be always
remembered with pleasure and esteem. I am glad you did not like my
Bath miniature; indeed, it was not likely that you would.
Believe me always yours affectionately,
F. A. K.
During our summer tour my mother, who had remained in London,
superintended the preparation of a new house, to which we removed on our
return to town. My brother Henry's schooling at Westminster was over,
which had been the reason for our taking the house at Buckingham Gate,
and, though it had proved a satisfactory residence in many respects, we
were glad to exchange it for the one to which we now went, which had
many associations that made it agreeable to my father, having been my
uncle John's home for many years, and connected with him in the memory
of my parents. It was the corner house of Great Russell Street and
Montague Place, and, since we left it, has been included in the new
court-yard of the British Museum (which was next door to it) and become
the librarian's quarters, our friend Panizzi being its first occupant
afterward. It was a good, comfortable, substantial house, the two
pleasantest rooms of which, to me, were the small apartment on the
ground floor, lined with books from floor to ceiling, and my own
peculiar lodging in the upper regions, which, thanks to my mother's
kindness and taste, was as pretty a bower of elegant comfort as any
young spinster need have desired. There I chiefly spent my time,
pursuing my favorite occupations, or in the society of my own especial
friends: my dear H---- S----, when she was in London; Mrs. Jameson, who
often climbed thither for an hour's pleasant discussion of her book on
Shakespeare; and a lady with whom I now formed a very close intimacy,
which lasted till her death, my dear E---- F----.
I had the misfortune to lose the water-color sketches which Mrs. Jameson
had made of our two drawing-rooms in James Street, Buckingham Gate. They
were very pretty and skillful specimens of a difficult kind of subject,
and valuable as her work, no less than as tokens of her regard for me.
The beautiful G---- S----, to whose marriage I have referred, had she
not been a sister of her sisters, would have been considered a wit; and,
in spite of this, was the greatest beauty of her day. She always
reminded me of what an American once said in speaking of a countrywoman
of his, that she was so lovely that when she came into the room she took
his breath away. While I was in Bath I was asked by a young artist to
sit for my miniature. His portrait had considerable merit as a piece of
delicate, highly finished workmanship; it was taken in the part of
Portia, and engraved; but I think no one, without the label underneath,
would have imagined in it even the intention of my portrait. Whether or
not the cause lay in my own dissimilar expressions and dissimilar
aspects at different times, I do not know; but if a collection was made
of the likenesses that have been taken of me, to the number of nearly
thirty, nobody would ever imagine that they were intended to represent
the same person. Certainly, my Bath miniature produced a version of my
face perfectly unfamiliar to myself and most of my friends who saw it.