It is very curious that their experience tells so little among
theatrical people in their calculation of the probable success of a new
piece; perhaps it may be said that they cannot positively foresee the
effect each actor or actress may produce with certain parts; but given
the best possible representation of the piece, the precise temper of the
particular audience who decides its fate on the first night of
representation is always an unknown quantity in the calculation, and no
technical experience ever seems to arrive at anything like even
approximate certainty with regard to that. I felt perfectly sure of the
success of "The Hunchback," but I think that was precisely because of my
want of theatrical experience, which left me rather in the position of
one of the public than one of the players, and there was much grave
head-shaking over it, especially on the part of our excellent
stage-manager, Mr. Bartley, who was exceedingly faint-hearted about the
experiment.
My father, with great professional disinterestedness, took the
insignificant part of the insignificant lover, and Knowles himself
filled that of the hero of the piece, the hunchback; a circumstance
which gave the part a peculiar interest, and compensated in some measure
for the loss of the great genius of Kean, for whom it had been written.
The same species of uncertainty which I have said characterizes the
judgments of actors with regard to the success of new pieces sometimes
affects the appreciation authors themselves form of the relative merits
of their own works, inducing them to value more highly some which they
esteem their best, and to which that pre-eminence is denied by popular
verdict. Knowles, while writing "The Hunchback," was so absorbed with
the idea of what Kean's impersonation of it would probably be, that he
was entirely unconscious of what the great actor himself probably
perceived, that on the stage the part of Julia would overweigh and
eclipse that of Master Walter. Knowles felt sure he had written a fine
man's part, and was really not aware that the woman's part was still
finer. What is yet more singular is that while he was writing "The
Wife," which he did immediately afterward, with a view to my acting the
principal female character, he constantly said to me, "I am writing
_such_ a part for you!" and had no notion that the only part capable of
any effect at all in the piece was that of Julian St. Pierre, the
good-for-nothing brother of the duchess.
The play of "The Wife" was singularly wanting in interest, and except in
the character of St. Pierre was ineffective and flat from beginning to
end, in that respect a perfect contrast to "The Hunchback," in which the
interest is vivid and strong, and never flags from the first scene to
the last. I was quite unable to make anything at all of the part of
Marianna, nor have I ever heard of its becoming prominent or striking in
the hands of any one else.
"The Hunchback," according to my confident expectation, succeeded.
Knowles played his own hero with great force and spirit, though he was
in such a state of wild excitement that I expected to see him fly on the
stage whenever he should have been off it, and _vice versâ_, and
followed him about behind the scenes endeavoring to keep him in his
right mind with regard to his exits and his entrances, and receiving
from him explosive Irish benedictions in return for my warnings and
promptings. Throughout the whole first representation I was really as
nervous for and about him as I was about the play itself and my own
particular part in it. My father did the impossible with Sir Thomas
Clifford, in making him both dignified and interesting; and Miss Taylor
was capital in the saucy Helen. My part played itself and was greatly
liked by the audience; the piece was one of the most popular original
plays of my time, and has continued a favorite alike with the public and
the players. The part of the heroine is one, indeed, in which it would
be almost impossible to fail; and every Julia may reckon upon the
sympathy of her audience, the character is so pre-eminently effective
and dramatic.
Of the play as a composition not much is to be said; it has little
poetical or literary merit, and even the plot is so confused and obscure
that nobody to my knowledge (not even the author himself, of whom I once
asked an explanation of it) was ever able to make it out or give a
plausible account of it. The characters are inconsistent and wanting in
verisimilitude to a degree that ought to prove fatal to them with any
tolerably reasonable spectators; in spite of all which the play is
interesting, exciting, affecting, and humorous. The powerfully dramatic
effect of the situations, and the two characters of Master Walter and
Julia, the great scope for good acting in all the scenes in which they
appear, the natural fire, passion, and pathos of the dialogue, in short
the great merits of the piece as an acting play cover all its defects;
even the heroine's vulgar, flighty folly and the hero's absurd
eccentricity interfering wonderfully little with the sympathy of the
audience for their troubles and their final triumph over them. "The
Hunchback" is a very satisfactory play to _see_, but let nobody who has
seen it well acted attempt to read it in cold blood!
It had an immense run, and afforded me an opportunity of testing the
difference between an infinite repetition of the text of Shakespeare and
that of any other writer. I played Juliet upward of a hundred nights
without any change of part and did not weary of it; Julia, in "The
Hunchback," after half the repetition became so tiresome to me that I
would have given anything to have changed parts with my sprightly Helen,
if only for a night, to refresh myself and recover a little from the
extreme weariness I felt in constantly repeating Julia. The audience
certainly would have suffered by the exchange, for Miss Taylor would not
have played my part so much better than I, as I should have played hers
worse than she did. Indeed, her performance of the character of Helen
saved it from the reproach of coarseness, which very few actresses would
have been able to avoid while giving it all the point and lively humor
which she threw into it. I had great pleasure in acting the piece with
her, she did her business so thoroughly well and was so amiable and
agreeable a fellow-worker.
In my last letter to Miss S---- I have spoken of a party at the Countess
of Cork's, to which I went. She was one of the most curious figures in
the London society of my girlish days. Very aged, yet retaining much of
a vivacity of spirit and sprightly wit for which she had been famous as
Mary Monckton, she continued till between ninety and a hundred years old
to entertain her friends and the gay world, who frequently during the
season assembled at her house.
I have still a note begging me to come to one of her evening parties,
written under her dictation by a young person who used to live with her,
and whom she called her "Memory;" the few concluding lines scrawled by
herself are signed "_M. Cork, æt_. 92." She was rather apt to appeal to
her friends to come to her on the score of her age; and I remember
Rogers showing me an invitation he had received from her for one of the
ancient concert evenings (these were musical entertainments of the
highest order, which Mr. Rogers never failed to attend), couched in
these terms: "Dear Rogers, leave the ancient music and come to ancient
Cork, 93." Lady Cork's drawing-rooms were rather peculiar in their
arrangement: they did not contain that very usual piece of furniture, a
pianoforte, so that if ever she especially desired to have music she
hired an instrument for the evening; the rest of the furniture consisted
only of very large and handsome armchairs placed round the apartments
against the walls, to which they were _made fast_ by some mysterious
process, so that it was quite impossible to form a small circle or
coterie of one's own at one of her assemblies. I remember when first I
made this discovery expressing my surprise to the beautiful Lady Harriet
d'Orsay, who laughingly suggested that poor old Lady Cork's infirmity
with regard to the property of others (a well-known incapacity for
discriminating between _meum_ and _tuum_) might probably be the cause of
this peculiar precaution with regard to her own armchairs, which it
would not, however, have been a very easy matter to have stolen even had
they not been chained to the walls. In the course of the conversation
which followed, Lady E----, apparently not at all familiar with
Chesterfield's Letters, said that it was Lady Cork who had originated
the idea that after all heaven would probably turn out very dull to her
_when she got there; sitting on damp clouds and singing "God save the
King_" being her idea of the principal amusements there. This rather
dreary image of the joys of the blessed was combated, however, by Lady
E----, who put forth her own theory on the subject as far more genial,
saying, "Oh dear, no; she thought it would be all splendid _fêtes_ and
delightful dinner parties, and charming, clever people; _just like the
London season, only a great deal pleasanter because there would be no
bores._" With reference to Lady Cork's theory, Lady Harriet said, "I
suppose it would be rather tiresome for her, poor thing! for you know
she hates music, and there would be nothing to steal _but one another's
wings_."
Lady Cork's great age did not appear to interfere with her enjoyment of
society, in which she lived habitually. I remember a very comical
conversation with her in which she was endeavoring to appoint some day
for my dining with her, our various engagements appearing to clash. She
took up the pocket-book where hers were inscribed, and began reading
them out with the following running commentary: "Wednesday--no,
Wednesday won't do; Lady Holland dines with me--naughty lady!--won't do,
my dear. Thursday?" "Very sorry, Lady Cork, we are engaged." "Ah yes, so
am I; let's see--Friday; no, Friday I have the Duchess of C----, another
naughty lady; mustn't come then, my dear. Saturday?" "No, Lady Cork, I
am very sorry--Saturday, we are engaged to Lady D----." "Oh dear, oh
dear! improper lady, too! but a long time ago, everybody's forgotten all
about it--very proper now! quite proper now!"
Lady Cork's memory seemed to me to stretch beyond the limits of what
everybody had forgotten. She was quite a young woman at the time of the
youth of George III., and spoke of Frederick, Prince of Wales, to whose
wife she, then the Honorable Mary Monckton, was maid of honor. It is a
most tantalizing circumstance to me now, to remember a fragment of a
conversation between herself and my mother, on the occasion of the first
visit I was ever taken to pay her. I was a very young girl; it was just
after my return from school at Paris, and the topics discussed by my
mother and her old lady friend interested me so little that I was
looking out of the window, and wondering when we should go away, when my
attention was arrested by these words spoken with much emphasis by Lady
Cork: "Yes, my dear, I was alone in the room, and the picture turned in
its frame, and Lord Bute came out from behind it;" here, perceiving my
eyes riveted upon her, she lowered her voice, and I distinctly felt that
I was expected to look out of the window again, without having any idea,
however, that the question was probably one of the character of a
"naughty lady" of higher rank than those so designated to me some years
later by old Lady Cork, who, if I may judge by this fragment of gossip,
might have cleared up some disputed points as to the relations between
the Princess of Wales and the Prime Minister.
I do not know that Lady Cork's reputation for beauty ever equaled that
she had for wit, but when I knew her, at upward of ninety, she was
really a very comely old woman. Her complexion was still curiously fine
and fair, and there was great vivacity in her eyes and countenance, as
well as wonderful liveliness in her manner. Her figure was very slight
and diminutive, and at the parties at her own house she always was
dressed entirely in white--in some rich white silk, with a white bonnet
covered with a rich blonde or lace vail on her head; she looked like a
little old witch bride. I recollect a curious scene my mother described
to me, which she witnessed one day when calling on Lady Cork, whom she
had known for many years. She was shown into her dressing-room, where
the old lady was just finishing her toilet. She was about to put on her
gown, and remaining a moment without it showed my mother her arms and
neck, which were even then still white and round and by no means
unlovely, and said, pointing to her maid, "Isn't it a shame! she won't
let me wear my gowns low or my sleeves short any more." To which the
maid responded by throwing the gown over her mistress's shoulders,
exclaiming at the same time, "Oh, fie, my lady! you ought to be ashamed
of yourself to talk so at your age!"--a rebuke which the nonagenarian
beauty accepted with becoming humility.
The unfortunate propensity of poor Lady Cork to appropriate all sorts of
things belonging to other people, valueless quite as often as valuable,
was matter of public notoriety, so that the fashionable London
tradesmen, to whom her infirmity in this respect was well known, never
allowed their goods to be taken to her carriage for inspection, but
always exacted that she should come into their shops, where an
individual was immediately appointed to follow her about and watch her
during the whole time she was making her purchases.
Whenever she visited her friends in the country, her maid on her return
home used to gather together whatever she did not recognize as belonging
to her mistress, and her butler transmitted it back to the house where
they had been staying. I heard once a most ludicrous story of her
carrying off, _faute de mieux_, a _hedgehog_ from a place where the
creature was a pet of the porters, and was running tame about the hall
as Lady Cork crossed it to get into her carriage. She made her poor
"Memory" seize up the prickly beast, but after driving a few miles with
this unpleasant spiked foot-warmer, she found means to dispose of it at
a small town, where she stopped to change horses, to a baker, to whom
she gave it in payment for a sponge cake, assuring him that a hedgehog
would be invaluable in his establishment for the destruction of black
beetles, with which she knew, from good authority, that the premises of
bakers were always infested.
The following note was addressed to Lady Dacre on the subject of a
pretty piece called "Isaure," which she had written and very kindly
wished to have acted at Covent Garden for my benefit. It was, however,
judged of too slight and delicate a texture for that large frame, and
the purpose was relinquished. I rather think it was acted in private at
Hatfield House, Lady Salisbury filling the part of the heroine, which I
was to have taken had the piece been brought out at Covent Garden.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,
Will you be kind enough to send "Isaure" to my father? We will take
the greatest possible care of her, and return her to you in all
safety. I am only sorry that he cannot have the pleasure of hearing
you read it; for though it can take its own part very well, you
know even Shakespeare is not the worse for the interpretation of a
sweet voice, musical accent, and correct emphasis. With regard to
the production of the piece on the stage, I do not like to venture
an opinion, because my short experience has been long enough
already to show me how easily I might be mistaken in such matters.
There is no rule by which the humors of an audience can be
predicted. On a benefit night, indeed, I feel sure that the piece
would succeed, and answer your kind intention of adding to the
attractions of the bill, be they what they might; but our judges
are not the same, you know, two consecutive evenings, and therefore
it is impossible to foretell the sentence of a second
representation, for no "benefit" but that of the public itself.
Isaure is a refined patrician beauty, and I am sometimes inclined
to think that the Memphian head alone is of fit proportions for
uttering oracles in the huge space of our modern stage. My father,
however, is, from long experience, the best guesser of these
riddles, and he will tell you honestly his opinion as to your
heroine's public capacity. I am sure he will find his own reward in
making her acquaintance. I am, my dear Lady Dacre, faithfully
yours,
FANNY KEMBLE.
GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
Thank you for the book you were so good as to send me. I have read
that which concerns the Cenci in it, and think Leigh Hunt's
reflections on the story and tragedy very good. I am glad you were
at the play last night, because I thought I acted well--at least, I
tried to do so. I stayed the first act of the new after-piece, and
was rather amused by it. I do not know how the ladies'
"inexpressibles" might affect the fortunes of the second act, but I
liked all their gay petticoats in the first, extremely. The weather
is not very propitious for us; we start to-morrow at nine. I send
you the only copy of Sophocles I can lay my hand on this morning.
Yours ever truly,
F. A. KEMBLE.
A little piece called "The Invincibles," in which a smart corps of young
Amazons in uniform were officered by Madame Vestris in the prettiest
regimentals ever well worn by woman, was the novelty I alluded to. The
effect of the female troop was very pretty, and the piece was very
successful.
I had only lately read Shelley's great tragedy, and Mrs. Jameson had
been so good as to lend me various notices and criticisms upon it. The
hideous subject itself is its weak point, and his selection of it one
cause for doubting Shelley's power as a dramatic writer. Everything else
in the terrible play suggests the probable loss his death may have been
to the dramatic literature of England. At the same time, the tenor of
all his poems denotes a mind too unfamiliar with human life and human
nature in their ordinary normal aspects and conditions for a good writer
of plays. His metaphysical was almost too much for his poetical
imagination, and perhaps nothing between the morbid horror of that Cenci
story and the ideal grandeur of the Greek Prometheus would have excited
him to the dramatic handling of any subject.
His translation from Calderon's "El Magico Prodigioso," and his bit of
the Brocken scene from "Faust," are fine samples of his power of
dramatic style; he alone could worthily have translated the whole of
"Faust;" but I suppose he really was too deficient in the vigorous
flesh-and-blood vitality of the highest and healthiest poetical genius
to have been a dramatist. He could not deal with common folk nor handle
common things; humor, that great _tragic_ element, was not in him; the
heavens and all their clouds and colors were his, and he floated and
hovered and soared in the ethereal element like one native to it. Upon
the firm earth his foot wants firmness, and men and women as they are,
are at once too coarse and complex, too robust and too infinitely
various for his delicate, fine, but in some sense feeble handling.
Browning is the very reverse of Shelley in this respect; both have
written one fine play and several fine dramatic compositions; but
throughout Shelley's poetry the dramatic spirit is deficient, while in
Browning's it reveals itself so powerfully that one wonders how he has
escaped writing many good plays besides the "Blot on the Scutcheon" and
that fine fragmentary succession of scenes, "Pippa Passes."
GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
I fear I am going to disappoint you, and 'tis with real regret that
I do so, but I have been acting every night almost for the last
month, and when to-day I mentioned my project of spending this my
holiday evening with you, both my aunt and my father seemed to
think that in discharging my debt to you I was defrauding nearer
and older creditors; and suggested that my mother, who really sees
but little of me now, might think my going out to-night unkind. I
cannot, therefore, carry out my plan of visiting you, and beg that
you will forgive my not keeping my promise this evening. I am
moreover so far from well that my company would hardly give you
much pleasure, nor could I stay long if I came, for early as it is
my head is aching for its pillow already.
As soon as a week occurs in which I have _two_ holidays I will try
to give you one of them. I send you back Crabbe, which I have kept
for ever; for a great poet, which he is, he is curiously
unpoetical, I think. Yours ever truly,
F.A. KEMBLE.
GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
My mother bids me say that you certainly will suppose she is mad,
or else _Mother Hubbard's dog_; for when you called she was
literally ill in bed, and this evening she cannot have the pleasure
of receiving you, because she is engaged out, here in our own
neighborhood, to a very quiet tea. She bids me thank you very much
for the kindness of your proposed visit, and express her regret at
not being able to avail herself of it. If you can come on Thursday,
between one and two o'clock, I shall be most happy to see you.
Thank you very much for Lamb's "Dramatic Specimens;" I read the
scene you had copied from "Philaster" directly; how fine it is! how
I should like to act it! Mr. Harness has sent me the first volume
of the family edition of the "Old Plays." I think sweeping those
fine dramas clean is a good work that cannot be enough commended.
What treasures we possess and make no use of, while we go on acting
"Gamesters" and "Grecian Daughters," and such poor stuff! But I
have no time for ecstasies or exclamations. Yours ever most truly,
F.A. KEMBLE.
I have said that hardly any new part was ever assigned to me that I did
not receive with a rueful sense of inability to what I called "do
anything with it." Julia in "The Hunchback," and Camiola in "The Maid of
Honor," were among the few exceptions to this preparatory attack of
despondency; but those I in some sort choose myself, and all my other
characters were appointed me by the management, in obedience to whose
dictates, and with the hope of serving the interests of the theater, I
suppose I should have acted Harlequin if I had been ordered to do so.
Lady Teazle and Mrs. Oakley were certainly no exceptions to this
experience of a cold fit of absolute incapacity with which I received
every new part appointed me, and my studying of them might have been
called lugubrious, whatever my subsequent performance of them may have
been. My mother was of invaluable assistance to me in the process, and I
owe to her whatever effect I produced in either part. She had great
comic as well as pathetic power, and the incisive point of her delivery
gave every shade of meaning of the dialogue with admirable truth and
pungency; her own performance of Mrs. Oakley had been excellent; I acted
it, even with the advantage of her teaching, very tamely. Jealousy, in
any shape, was not a passion that I sympathized with; the tragic misery
of Bianca's passion was, however, a thing I could imagine sufficiently
well to represent it; but not so Mrs. Oakley's fantastical frenzies. But
the truth is that it was not until many years later and in my readings
of Shakespeare that I developed any real comic faculty at all; and I
have been amused in the later part of my public career to find comedy
often considered my especial gift, rather than the tragic and pathetic
one I was supposed at the beginning of it to possess.
The fact is that except in broad farce, where the principal ingredient
being humor, animal spirits and a grotesque imagination, which are of no
particular age, come strongly into play, comedy appears to me decidedly
a more mature and complete result of dramatic training than tragedy. The
effect of the latter may, as I myself exemplified, be tolerably achieved
by force of natural gifts, aided but little by study; but a fine
comedian _must_ be a fine artist; his work is intellectual, and not
emotional, and his effects address themselves to the critical judgment
and not the passionate sympathy of an audience. Tact, discretion, fine
taste, are quite indispensable elements of his performance; he must be
really a more complete actor than a great tragedian need be. The
expression of passion and emotion appears to be an interpretation of
nature, and may be forcibly rendered sometimes with but little beyond
the excitement of its imaginary experience on the actor's own
sensibility; while a highly educated perfection is requisite for the
actor who, in a brilliant and polished representation of the follies of
society, produces by fine and delicate and powerful delineations the
picture of the vices and ridicules of a highly artificial civilization.
Good company itself is not unapt to be very good acting of high comedy,
while tragedy, which underlies all life, if by chance it rises to the
smooth surface of polite, social intercourse, agitates and disturbs it
and produces even in that uncongenial sphere the rarely heard discord of
a natural condition and natural expression of natural feeling.
Of my performance of Mrs. Oakley I have but one recollection, which is
that of having once, while acting it with my father, disconcerted him to
such a degree as to compel him to turn up the stage in an uncontrollable
fit of laughter. I remember the same thing happening once when I was
playing Beatrice to his Benedict. I have not the least notion what I did
that struck my father with such irrepressible merriment, but I suppose
there must have been something in itself irresistibly ludicrous to him,
toward whom my manner was habitually respectfully deferential (for our
intercourse with our parents, though affectionate, was not familiar, and
we seldom addressed them otherwise than as "sir" and "ma'am"), to be
pelted by me with the saucy sallies of Beatrice's mischievous wit, or
pummeled with the grotesque outbursts of poor Mrs. Oakley's jealous
fury.
Our personal relation, which thus rendered our performance of comedy
together especially comical to my father, added infinitely to my
distress in all tragedies in which we acted together; the sense of his
displeasure or the sight of his anguish invariably bringing him, my
father, and not the part he was acting, before me; and, as in the play
of "The Stranger" and the pathetic little piece of "The Deserter,"
affecting me with almost uncontrollable emotion.
GREAT RUSSELL STREET, April 10, 1831.
MY DEAREST H----,
I owe you something like an explanatory note after that ejaculatory
one I sent you the other day. You must have thought me crazy; but
indeed, since all these late alarming reports from Spain, until the
news came of John's safety, I did not know how much fear and
anxiety lay under the hope and courage I had endeavored to maintain
about him.
From day to day I had read the reports and tried to reason with
regard to their probability, and to persuade my mother that we had
every cause for hoping the best; and it was really not until that
hope was realized that it seemed as if all my mental nerves and
muscles, braced to the resistance of calamity, had suddenly relaxed
and given way under the relief from all further apprehension of it.
I have kept much of my forebodings to myself, but they have been
constant and wretched enough, and my gratitude for this termination
of them is unspeakable.
I heard last night a report which I have not mentioned to my mother
for fear it should prove groundless. Horace Twiss showed me a note
in which a gentleman assured him that John had positively taken his
passage in a Government vessel, and was now on his way home; even
if this is true, I am afraid to tell my mother, because if the
vessel should be delayed a day or two by weather or any other
cause, her anxiety will have another set of apprehensions to feed
upon, and to prey upon her with. She desires her best love to you;
she likes your pamphlet on "The Education of the People" very much,
at the same time that it has not convinced her that instruction is
wholesome for the lower orders; she thinks the dependence of
helplessness and ignorance a better security (for them, or for
those above them, I wonder?) than the power of reasoning rightly
and a sense of duty, in which opinion, as you will believe, I do
not agree.
Thank you for your account of your visit to Wroxton Abbey [the seat
of the Earl of Guilford]; it interested me very much; trees are not
to me, as they seem to be to you, the most striking and beautiful
of all natural objects, though I remember feeling a good deal of
pain at the cutting down of a particular tree that I was very fond
of.
At the entrance of Weybridge was a deserted estate and dilapidated
mansion, Portmore Park, once a royal domain, through which the
river ran and where we used to go constantly to fish. There was a
remarkably beautiful cedar tree whose black boughs spread far over
the river, and whose powerful roots, knotted in every variety of
twist, formed a cradle from which the water had gradually washed
away the earth. Here I used to sit, or rather lie, reading, or
writing sometimes, while the others pursued their sport, and
enjoying the sound and sight of the sparkling water which ran
undermining my bed and singing treacherous lullabies to me the
while. For two years this tree was my favorite haunt; the third, on
our return to Weybridge from London, on my running to the
accustomed spot, I found the hitherto intercepted sun staring down
upon the water and the bank, and a broad, smooth, white _tabula
rasa_ level with the mossy turf, which was all that remained of my
cedar canopy; and though it afforded an infinitely more commodious
seat than the twisted roots, I never returned there again.
To-morrow we dine with the F----s, and there is to be a dance in
the evening; on Wednesday I act Constance; Thursday there is a
charade party at the M----s'; Friday I play Mrs. Beverley; and
Monday and Wednesday next, Camiola. I hope by and by to act Camiola
very well, but I am afraid the play itself can never become
popular; the size of the theater and the public taste of the
present day are both against such pieces; still, the attempt seemed
to me worth making, and if it should prove successful we might
revive one or two more of Massinger's plays; they are such sterling
stuff compared with the Isabellas, the Jane Shores, the everything
but Shakespeare. You saw in my journal what I think about Camiola.
I endeavor as much as I can to soften her, and if I can manage to
do so I shall like her better than any part I have played, except
my dear Portia, who does not need softening.
I am too busy just now to read "Destiny" [Miss Ferrier's admirable
novel]; my new part and dresses and rehearsals will occupy me next
week completely. I have taken a new start about "The Star of
Seville" [the play I was writing], and am working away hard at it.
I begin to see my way through it. I wish I could make anything like
an acting play of it; we want one or two new ones so very much.
My riding goes on famously, and Fozzard thinks so well of my
progress that the other day he put me upon a man's horse--an
Arab--which frightened me half to death with his high spirits and
capers; but I sat him, and what is more, rode him. Tuesday we go to
a very gay ball a little way out of town; Saturday we go to a party
at old Lady Cork's, who calls you Harriet and professes to have
known you well and to remember you perfectly.
Now, H----, as to what you say of fishing, if you are bloody-minded
enough to desire to kill creatures for sport, in Heaven's name why
don't you do it? The sin lies in the inclination (by the bye, I
think that's _half_ a mistake). Never mind, your inclination to
fish and my desire to be the tigress at the Zoological Gardens have
nothing whatever in common. I admire and envy the wild beast's
swiftness and strength, but if I had them I don't think I would
tear human beings to bits unless I were _she_, which was not what I
wished to be, only as strong and agile as she; do you see? I am in
a great hurry, dear, and have written you an inordinately stupid
letter; never mind, the next shall be inconceivably amusing. Just
now my head is stuffed full of amber-colored cashmere and white
satin. My mother begs to be kindly remembered to Mrs. Kemble.
Always affectionately yours,
F. A. K.
My determination to _soften_ the character of Camiola is another
indication of my imperfect comprehension of my business as an actress,
which was not to reform but to represent certain personages. Massinger's
"Maid of Honor" is a stern woman, not without a very positive grain of
coarse hardness in her nature. My attempt to _soften_ her was an
impertinent endeavor to alter his fine conception to something more in
harmony with my own ideal of womanly perfection. I was a very
indifferent actress and had not begun to understand my work, nor was Mr.
Macready far wrong when, many years after, he spoke to me as "not
knowing the rudiments of my profession."
JOURNAL, 1831.
_Thursday, April 21st._--Walked in the square, and studied Lady
Teazle. The trees are thickly clothed with leaves, and the new-mown
grass, even in the midst of London, smelt fresh and sweet; I was
quite alone in the square, and enjoyed something like a _country_
sensation. I went to Pickersgill, and Mrs. Jameson came while I was
sitting to him; that Medora of his is a fine picture, full of
poetry. We dined with the Harnesses; Milman and Croly were among
the guests (it was a sort of _Quarterly Review_ in the flesh). I
like Mr. Milman; not so the other critic.
_Friday, 22d._--Visiting with my mother; called on Lady Dacre, who
gave me her pretty little piece of "Wednesday Morning," with a view
to our doing it for my father's benefit. It is really very pretty,
but I fear will look in our large theater as a lady's water-color
sketch of a landscape would by way of a scene. I walked in the
square in the afternoon, and studied Lady Teazle, which I do not
like a bit, and shall act abominably. At the theatre to-night the
house was not very full, and the audience were unpleasantly
inclined to be political; they took one of the speeches, "The king,
God bless him," and applied it with vehement applause to his worthy
Majesty, William IV.
_Saturday, 23d._--After my riding lesson, went and sat in the
library to hear Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Hunchback." Mr.
Bartley and my father and mother were his only audience, and he
read it himself to us. A real play, with real characters,
individuals, human beings, it is a good deal after the fashion of
our old playwrights, and does not disgrace its models. I was
delighted with it; it is full of life and originality; a little
long, but that's a trifle. There is a want of clearness and
coherence in the plot, and the comic part has really no necessary
connection with the rest of the piece; but none of that will
signify much, or, I think, prevent it from succeeding. I like the
woman's part exceedingly, but am afraid I shall find it very
difficult to act.
After dinner there was a universal discussion as to the possibility
and probability of Adorni's self-sacrifice in "The Maid of Honor,"
and as the female voices were unanimous in their verdict of its
truth and likelihood, I hold it to be likely and true, for Dante
says we have the "intellect of love," and Cherubino (a very
different kind of authority) says the same thing; and I suppose we
are better judges of such questions than men. The love of Adorni
seems to me, indeed, more like a woman's than a man's, but that
does not tell against its verisimilitude. Our love is characterized
generally by self-devotion and self-denial, but the qualities which
naturally belong to our affection were given to Adorni by his
social and conventional position. He was by birth and fortune
dependent on and inferior to Camiola, as women are by nature
dependent on and inferior to men; and so I think his love for her
has something of a feminine quality.
In the evening went with my mother to a party at old Lady Cork's.
We started for our assembly within a few minutes of Sunday morning.
Such rooms--such ovens! such boxes full of fine folks and foul air!
in which we stood and sat, and looked and listened, and talked
nonsense and heard it talked, and perspired and smothered and
suffocated. On our arrival, as I was going upstairs, I was nearly
squeezed flat against the wall by her potent grace, the Duchess of
St. Albans. We remained half an hour in the steaming atmosphere of
the drawing-rooms, and another half-hour in the freezing hall
before the carriage could be brought up; caught a dreadful cold and
came home; did not get to bed till two o'clock, with an intolerable
face-ache and tooth-ache, the well-earned reward of a well-spent
evening.
[The career of the Duchess of St. Albans was, as far as worldly
circumstances went, a curious one. As Miss Mellon she was one of my
mother's stage contemporaries; a kind-hearted, good-humored, buxom,
rather coarse actress, with good looks, and good spirits of a somewhat
unrefined sort, which were not without their admirers; among these the
old banker, Mr. Coutts, married her, and dying, left her the sole
possessor and disposer of his enormous wealth. My mother, who had always
remained on friendly though not intimate terms with her old stage-mate,
went to see her in the early days of her widowhood, when Mrs. Coutts
gave her this moderate estimate of her "money matters:" "Ah, I assure
you, dear Mrs. Charles, the reports of what poor, dear Mr. Coutts has
left me are very much exaggerated--not, I really believe, more than a
few hundred thousand pounds. To be sure" (after a dejected pause),
"there's the bank--they say about fifty thousand a year."
This small fortune and inconsiderable income proved sufficient to the
moderate desires of the young Duke of St. Albans, who married this
destitute widow, who thenceforth took her place (and a large one) in the
British aristocracy, and chaperoned the young Ladies Beauclerc, her
husband's sisters, in society. She was a good-natured woman, and more
than once endeavored to get my father and mother to bring me to her
balls and magnificent parties. This, however, they steadily declined,
and she, without resenting it, sent her invitations to my youngest
brother alone, to whom she took a great fancy, and to whose accepting
her civilities no objection was made. At her death she left her great
wealth to Mr. Coutts's granddaughter, Miss Burdett Coutts, the lady
whose excellent use of her riches has made her known all over the world
as one of the most munificently charitable of Fortune's stewards.
The Duchess of St. Albans was not without shrewd sense and some humor,
though entirely without education, and her sallies were not always in
the best possible taste. Her box at Covent Garden could be approached
more conveniently by crossing the stage than by the entrance from the
front of the house, and she sometimes availed herself of this easier
exit to reach her carriage with less delay. One night when my father had
been acting Charles II., the Duchess of St. Albans crossing her old
work-ground, the stage, with her two companions, the pretty Ladies
Beauclerc, stopped to shake hands with him (he was still in his stage
costume, having remained behind the scenes to give some orders), and
presenting him to her young ladies, said, "There, my dears; there's your
ancestor." I suppose in her earlier day she might not have been a bad
representative of their "ancestress."]
_Monday, April 25th._--Finished studying Lady Teazle. In the
evening at the theater the house was good, but the audience was
dull and I was in wretched spirits and played very ill.
Dall was saying that she thought in two years of hard work we
might--that is, my father and myself--earn enough to enable us to
live in the south of France. This monstrous theater and its
monstrous liabilities will banish us all as it did my uncle Kemble.
But that I should be sorry to live so far out of the reach of
H----, I think the south of France would be a pleasant abode: a
delicious climate, a quiet existence, a less artificial state of
society and mode of life, a picturesque nature round me, and my own
dear ones and my scribbling with me--I think with all these
conditions I could be happy enough in the south of France or
anywhere.
The audience were very politically inclined, applied all the loyal
speeches with fervor, and called for "God save the King" after the
play. The town is illuminated, too, and one hopes and prays that
the "Old Heart of Oak" will weather these evil days, but sometimes
the straining of the tackle and the creaking of the timbers are
suggestive of foundering even to the most hopeful. The lords have
been vindicating their claim to a share in _common_ humanity by
squabbling like fishwives and all but coming to blows; the bishops
must have been scared and scandalized, lords spiritual not being
fighting men nowadays.
After the play Mr. Stewart Newton, the painter, supped with us--a
clever, entertaining man and charming artist; a little bit of a
dandy, but probably he finds it politic to be so. He told us some
comical anecdotes about the Royal Academy and the hanging of the
pictures.
The poor, dear king [William IV.], who it seems knows as much about
painting as _una vacca spagnuola_, lets himself, his family, and
family animals be painted by whoever begs to be allowed that honor.
So when the pictures were all hung the other day, somebody
discovered in a wretched daub close to the ceiling a portrait of
Lady Falkland [the king's daughter], and another of his Majesty's
favorite _cat_, which were immediately _lowered_ to a more
honorable position, to accomplish which desirable end, Sir William
Beechey [then president of the academy] removed some of his own
paintings. On a similar occasion during the late King George IV.'s
life, a wretched portrait of him having been placed in one of the
most conspicuous situations in the room, the Duke of Wellington and
sundry other distinguished _cognoscenti_ complimented Sir Thomas
Lawrence on it _as his_; this was rather a bitter pill, and must
have been almost too much for Lawrence's courtierly equanimity.
_Wednesday, April 27th._--To the riding school, where Miss
Cavendish and I discoursed on the _stay-at-home_ sensation, and
agreed that it is bad to encourage it too far, as one may narrow
one's social circle till at last it resolves itself into _one's
self_.
Wrote to thank Dr. Thackeray [provost of King's College, Cambridge,
and father of my life-long friend A---- T----] for the Shakespeare
he has sent me, and Lady Dacre for her piece of "Wednesday
Morning." In the evening they all drove out in the open carriage to
see the illuminations; I stayed at home, for the carriage was full
and I had no curiosity about the sight. The town is one blaze of
rejoicing for the Reform Bill triumph; the streets are thronged
with people and choked up with carriages, and the air is flashing
and crashing with rockets and squibs and crackers, to the great
discomfort of the horses. So many R's everywhere that they may
stand for reform, revolution, ruin, just as those who run may
choose to read, or according to the interpretation of every
individual's politics; the most general acceptation in which they
will be taken by the popular understanding will assuredly be _row_.
_Friday, 29th._--Went off to rehearsal without any breakfast, which
was horrible! but not so horrible as my performance of Lady Teazle
promises to be. If I do the part according to my notion, it will be
mere insipidity, and yet all the traditional pokes and pats with
the fan and _business_ of the part, as it is called, is so
perfectly unnatural to me that I fear I shall execute it with a
doleful bad grace. It seems odd that Sir Peter always wears the
dress of the last century, while the costume of the rest of the
_dramatis personæ_ is quite modern. Indeed, mine is a ball dress of
the present day, all white satin and puffs and clouds of white
tulle, and garlands and wreaths of white roses and jasmine; it is
very anomalous, and makes Lady Teazle of no date, as it were, for
her mariners are those of a rustic belle of seventeen hundred and
something, and her costume that of a fine lady of the present day
in the height of the present fashion, which is absurd.
Mrs. Jameson paid me a long visit; she threatens to write a play;
perhaps she might; she is very clever, has a vast fund of
information, a good deal of experience, and knowledge and
observation of the world and society. She wanted me to have spent
the evening with her on the 23d, Shakespeare's birth and death day,
an anniversary all English people ought to celebrate. Lady Dacre
called, in some tribulation, to say that she had committed herself
about her little piece of "Wednesday Morning," and that Lady
Salisbury, who wants it for Hatfield, does not like its being
brought out on the stage.
Lady Dacre says Lady Salisbury is "afraid of comparisons" (between
herself and me, in the part), _I_ think Lady Salisbury, would not
like "our play" to be made "common and unclean" by vulgar
publicity. In the evening I went to the theater to see a new comedy
by a Spaniard. The house was literally empty, which was encouraging
to all parties. The piece is slightly constructed in point of plot,
but the dialogue is admirably written, and, as the work of a
foreigner, perfectly surprising. I was introduced to Don Telesforo
de Trueba, the author, an ugly little young man, all hair and
glare, whiskers and spectacles; he must be very clever and well
worth knowing, Mr. Harness took tea with us after the play.
[The comedy, in five acts, of "The Exquisites" was a satirical piece
showing up the ridiculous assumption of affected indifference of the
young dandies of the day. The special airs of impertinence by which
certain officers of a "crack" regiment distinguished themselves had
suggested several of the most telling points of the play, which was in
every respect a most remarkable performance for a foreigner.]
_Saturday, April 30th._--Received a letter from John; he has
determined not to leave Spain at present; and were he to return,
what is there for him to do here? In the evening to Mrs. C----'s
ball; it was very gay, but I am afraid I am turning "exquisite,"
for I didn't like the music, and my partners bored me, and the
dancing tired me, and my journal is getting like K----'s head--full
of naked facts, unclothed with a single thought.
_Sunday, May 1st._--As sulky a day as ever _glouted_ in an English
sky. The "young morn" came picking her way from the east, leading
with her a dripping, draggled May, instead of Milton's glorious
vision.
After church, sundry callers: Mr. C---- bringing prints of the
dresses for "Hernani," and the W----s, who seem in a dreadful
fright about the present state of the country. I do not suppose
they would like to see Heaton demolished.
In the evening we went to the Cartwrights'. It is only in the
morning that one goes there to be tortured; in the evening it is to
eat delicious dinners and hear delightful music.
Hummel, Moscheles, Neukomm, Horsley, and Sir George Smart, and how
they did play! _à l'envi l'un de l'autre_. They sang, too, that
lovely glee, "By Celia's Arbor." The thrilling shudder which sweet
music sends through one's whole frame is a species of acute
pleasure, very nearly akin to pain. I wonder if by any chance there
is a point at which the two are one and the same thing!
_Tuesday, May 3d._--I wrote the fourth scene of the fifth act of my
play ["The Star of Seville"], and acted Lady Teazle for the first
time; the house was very good, and my performance, as I expected,
very bad; I was as flat as a lady amateur. I stayed after the play
to hear Braham sing "Tom Tug," which was a refreshment to my spirit
after my own acting; after I came home, finished the fifth act of
"The Star of Seville." "Joy, joy for ever, my task is done!" I have
not the least idea, though, that "heaven is won."
_Wednesday, May 4th._--A delightful dinner at the B----s', but in
the evening a regular crush; however, if one is to be squeezed to
death (though 'tis an abolished form of torture), it may as well be
in good company, among the fine world, and lots of pleasant people
besides: Milman, Sotheby, Lockhart, Sir Augustus Calcott, Harness,
Lady Dacre, Joanna Baillie, Lady Calcott, etc.
_Friday, May 6th._--Real March weather: cold, piercing, damp,
wretched, in spite of which I carried Shakespeare to walk with me
in the square, and read all over again for the fiftieth time all
the conjectures of everybody about him and his life. How little we
know _about him_, how intimately we seem to know _him_! I had the
square all to myself, and it was delicious: lilac, syringa,
hawthorn, lime blossoms, and new-mown grass in the midst of
London--and Shakespeare to think about. How grateful I felt for so
much enjoyment! When I got home, corrected the proof-sheets of
"Francis I.," and thought it looked quite pretty in print.
Out so late dancing, Wednesday and Thursday nights, or rather
_mornings_, that I had no time for journal-writing. What a life I
do lead!
_Friday, May 13th._--At twelve o'clock to Bridgewater House for our
first rehearsal of "Hernani." Lady Francis wants us to go down to
them at Oatlands. I should like of all things to see Weybridge once
more; there's many a nook and path in those woods that I know
better than their owners. The rehearsal lasted till three, and was
a tolerably tidy specimen of amateur acting. Mr. Craven is really
very good, and I shall like to act with him very much, and Mr. St.
Aubin is very fair. Was introduced to Mrs. Bradshaw, whose looks
rather disappointed me, because she "did contrive to make herself
look so beautiful" on the stage, in Clari and Mary Copp and
everything she did; I suppose her exquisite acting got into her
face, somehow. Henry Greville is delightful, and I like him very
much. When we left Bridgewater House we drove to my aunt Siddons's.
Every time I see that magnificent ruin some fresh decay makes
itself apparent in it, and one cannot but feel that it must soon
totter to its fall.
What a price she has paid for her great celebrity!--weariness,
vacuity, and utter deadness of spirit. The cup has been so highly
flavored that life is absolutely without savor or sweetness to her
now, nothing but tasteless insipidity. She has stood on a pinnacle
till all things have come to look flat and dreary; mere shapeless,
colorless, level monotony to her. Poor woman! what a fate to be
condemned to, and yet how she has been envied, as well as admired!
After dinner had only just time to go over my part and drive to the
theater. My dear, delightful Portia! The house was good, but the
audience dull, and I acted dully to suit them; but I hope my last
dress, which was beautiful, consoled them. What with sham business
and real business, I have had a busy day.
_Saturday, May 14th._--Received a note from Theodosia [Lady
Monson], and a whole cargo of delicious flowers from Cassiobury.
She writes me that poor old Foster [an old cottager who lived in
Lord Essex's park and whom my friend and I used to visit] is dying.
The last I saw of that "Old Mortality" was sitting with him one
bright sunset under his cottage porch, singing to him and dressing
his hat with flowers, poor old man! yet after walking this earth
upward of ninety-seven years the spirit as well as the flesh must
be weary. His cottage will lose half its picturesqueness without
his figure at the door; I wonder who will take care now of the
roses he was so fond of, and the pretty little garden I used to
forage in for lilies of the valley and strawberries! I shall never
see him again, which makes me sad; I was often deeply struck by the
quaint wisdom of that old human relic, and his image is associated
in my thoughts with evening walks and summer sunsets and lovely
flowers and lordly trees, and he will haunt Cassiobury always to
me. I went with my mother to buy my dresses for "Hernani," which
will cost me a fortune and a half.
GREAT RUSSELL STREET, Saturday.
MY DEAREST H----,
You see I have taken your advice, and, moreover, your paper, in
order that, in spite of the dispersion of Parliament and the
unattainability of franks, our correspondence may lose nothing in
bulk, though it must in frequency. I think you are behaving very
shabbily in not writing to me. Are you consulting your own
pleasure, or my purse? I dedicate so much of my income to purposes
which go under the head of "money thrown away;" don't you think the
cost of our correspondence may be added to that without seriously
troubling my conscience? What shall I say to you? "Reform" is on
the tip of my pen, and great as are our private matters of anxiety,
they scarcely outweigh in our minds the national interest that is
engrossing almost every thinking person throughout the country. You
know I am no politician, and my shallow causality and want of
adequate information alike unfit me from understanding, much less
discussing, public questions of great importance; but the present
crisis has aroused me to intense interest and anxiety about the
course events are taking. You can have no conception of the state
of excitement prevailing in London at this moment. The scene in the
House of Lords immediately preceding the dissolution the papers
will have described to you, though if the spectators and
participators in it may be believed, the tumult, the disorder, the
Billingsgate uproar on that occasion would not be easy to describe.
Lord Londonderry, it seems, thought that the days of _faust-recht_
had come back again, and I fancy more than he are of that opinion.
An illumination was immediately ordered by the Lord Mayor Donkin
(or _key_, as "t'other side" call him); but, owing to the shortness
of the notice he gave, it seems the show of light was not
satisfactory to the tallow chandler part of the population, so
another was appointed two nights after. My mother and the two
Harrys went out in the open carriage to drive through the streets.
I was depressed and disinclined for sight-seeing, and did not go,
which I regretted afterward, as all strong exhibitions of public
feeling are curious and interesting. They say the crowd was immense
in all the principal thoroughfares, and of the lowest order. They
testified their approbation of the various illuminated devices by
shouts and hurrahs and applause; their displeasure against the
various non-illuminators was more violently manifested by assailing
their houses and breaking their windows.
Sundry were the glass sacrifices offered at the shrine of
consistent Tory patriotism at the West End of the town. The mottoes
and sentences on some of the illuminations were noteworthy for
their democratic flavor: "The king and the people," "The people of
England," "The glorious dissolution," "The glorious reform," "The
people and the press," "The people's triumph." A man who seemed by
his dress to belong to the very lowest class (a cross apparently
between a scavenger and a rag-seller), with a branch of laurel
waving in his tattered hat, stopped before this last sentence and
exclaimed, "No--they don't yet; but they will."
I have been having quite a number of holidays at the theater
lately. They have brought out a comedy in which I do not play, and
are going to bring out a sort of historical melodrama on the life
of Bonaparte, so that I think I shall have easy work, if that
succeeds, for the rest of the season. I have just finished
correcting the proof-sheets of "Francis I.," and think it looks
quite pretty in print, and have dedicated it to my mother, which I
hope will please her....
Dear H----, this is Saturday, the 14th, and 'tis now exactly three
weeks since I began this letter. I know not what you will think of
this, but, indeed, I am almost worn out with the ceaseless
occupations of one sort and another that are crowded into every
day, and the impossibility of commanding one hour's quiet out of
the twenty-four....
I am afraid we shall not come to Ireland this summer, after all, my
dear H----. The Dublin manager and my father have not come to
terms, and I hear Miss Inverarity (a popular singer) is engaged
there, so that I conclude we shall not act there this season. This
is so great a disappointment to me that I cannot say anything
whatever about it. I have been acting Lady Teazle for Mr. Bartley
and my father's benefit. It seems to have pleased the public very
well. Without caring for it much myself, I find it light and
amusing work, and much easier for me than Lady Townley, because it
is a natural and that an entirely artificial character; the whole
tone and manners, too, of Sheridan's rustic belle are much more
within my scope than those of the woman of fashion of Sir John
Vanbrugh's play.
On Friday we had our first rehearsal of "Hernani," at Bridgewater
House, and I was greatly surprised with some of the acting, which,
allowing for a little want of technical experience, was, in Mr.
Craven's instance, really very good. He is the grandson of old Lady
Craven, the Margravine of Anspach, and enacts the hero of the
piece, which I think he will do very well. The whole play, I think,
will be fairly acted for an amateur performance. Lord and Lady
Francis have pressed my mother very much to go down for a little
while to Oatlands, the beautiful place close to Weybridge, which
belonged to the Duke of York, and of which they have taken a lease.
My mother has accepted their invitation, and looks forward with
great pleasure to revisiting her dear Weybridge. I know a good deal
more of that lovely neighborhood and all its wild haunts than the
present proprietors of Oatlands. Lady Francis is a famous
horsewoman, and told me by way of inducement to go there that we
would gallop all over the country together, which sounded very
pleasant....
I called on my aunt Siddons the other day, and was shocked to find
her looking wretchedly ill; she has not yet got rid of the
erysipelas in her legs, and complained of intense headache. Poor
woman! she suffers dreadfully.... Cecilia's life has been one
enduring devotion and self-sacrifice. I cannot help wishing, for
both their sakes, that the period of her mother's infirmity and
physical decay may be shortened. I received a charming letter from
Theodosia yesterday, accompanying a still more charming basketful
of delicious flowers from dear Cassiobury--how much nicer they are
than human beings! I don't believe I belong to man (or woman) kind,
I like so many things--the whole material universe, for
example--better than what one calls one's fellow-creatures. She
told me that old Foster (you remember the old cottager in
Cassiobury Park) was dying. The news contrasted sadly with the
sweet, fresh, living blossoms that it came with. The last time that
I saw that old man I sat with him under his porch on a bright sunny
evening, talking, laughing, winding wreaths round his hat, and
singing to him, and that is the last I shall ever see of him. He
was a remarkable old man, and made a strong impression on my fancy
in the course of our short acquaintance. There was a strong and
vivid _remnant_ of mind in him surviving the contest with ninety
and odd years of existence; his manner was quaint and rustic
without a tinge of vulgarity; he is fastened to my memory by a
certain wreath of flowers and sunset light upon the brook that ran
in front of his cottage, and the smell of some sweet roses that
grew over it, and I shall never forget him.
I went to the opera the other night and saw Pasta's "Medea" for the
first time. I shall not trouble you with any ecstasies, because,
luckily for you, my admiration for her is quite indescribable; but
I have seen grace and majesty as perfect as I can conceive, and so
saying I close my account of my impressions. I fancied I was
slightly disappointed in Taglioni, whose dancing followed Pasta's
singing, but I suppose the magnificent tragical performance I had
just witnessed had numbed as it were my power of appreciation of
her grace and elegance, and yet she seemed to me like a _dancing
flower_; so you see I must have like her very much.
God bless you, dear; pray write to me very soon. I want some
consolation for not seeing you, nor the dear girls, nor the sea. I
could think of that fresh, sparkling, fresh looking, glassy sea
till I cried for disappointment.
Ever yours,
F. A. K.
The Miss Inverarity mentioned in this letter was a young Scotch singer
of very remarkable talent and promise, who came out at Covent Garden
just at this time. She was one of the tallest women I ever saw, and had
a fine soprano voice as high as herself, and sang English music well.
She was a very great favorite during the short time that I remember her
on the stage.
MY DEAREST H----,
My mother has just requested me to talk with A---- about her
approaching first communion, and it troubles me because I fear I
cannot do so satisfactorily to her (I mean my mother) and myself. I
think my feeling about the sacrament, or rather the preparation
necessary for receiving it, is different from hers. It is not so
much to me an awful as a merciful institution. One goes to the
Lord's Table because one is weak and wicked and wretched, not
because one is, or even has striven to be, otherwise. A holy
reverence for the holy rite is indispensable, but not, I think,
such a feeling as would chill us with fear, or cast us down in
despondency. The excess of our poverty and humility is our best
claim to it, and therefore, though the previous "preparations," as
it is rather technically called, may be otherwise beneficial, it
does not seem to me necessary, much less indispensable. Our Lord
did not say, "Cleanse yourselves, amend yourselves, strip
yourselves of your own burdens and come to me;" but, "Come to me
and I will cleanse you, I will cure you, I will help you and give
you rest." It is remembering this that I venture to take the
sacrament, but I know other people, and I believe my mother among
them, think a much more specific preparation necessary, and I am
afraid, therefore, that I might not altogether meet my mother's
views in what I might say to A---- upon the subject. I wish you
would tell me what your opinion and feeling is about this.
Your affectionate F. A. K.
_Sunday, May 15th._--Walked home from church with Mrs. Montagu and
Emily and Mrs. Procter, discussing among various things the
necessity for "preparation" before taking the sacrament. I suppose
the publican in the parable had not prepared his prayer, and I
suppose he would have been a worthy communicant.
They came in and sat a long time with my mother talking about Sir
Thomas Lawrence, of whom she spoke as a perfect riddle. I think he
was a dangerous person, because his experience and genius made him
delightfully attractive, and the dexterity of his flattery amounted
in itself to a fine art. The talk then fell upon the possibility of
friendship existing between men and women without sooner or later
degenerating, on one part or the other, into love. The French
rhymster sings--
"Trop tot, hélas, l'amour s'enflamme,
Et je sens qu'il est mal aisé;
Que l'ami d'une belle dame,
Ne soit un amant déguisé."
My father came in while the ladies were still here, and Mrs.
Procter behaved admirably well about her husband's play....
I do think it is too bad of the management to have made use of my
name in rejecting that piece, when, Heaven knows, so far from
_rejecting_, I never even _object_ to anything I am bidden to do;
that is, never visibly or audibly....
Mrs. P---- called, and the talk became political and lugubriously
desponding, and I suddenly found myself inspired with a
contradictory vein of hopefulness, and became vehement in its
defense. In spite of all the disastrous forebodings I constantly
have, I cannot but trust that the spread of enlightenment and
general progress of intelligence in the people of this country--the
good judgment of those who have power and the moderation of those
who desire improvement--will effect a change without a _crash_ and
achieve reform without revolution.
_Wednesday, May 18th._--My mother and I started at two o'clock for
Oatlands. The day was very enjoyable, for the dust and mitigated
east wind were in our backs; the carriage was open, and the sun was
almost too powerful, though the earth has not yet lost its first
spring freshness, nor the trees, though full fledged, their early
vivid green. The turf has not withered with the heat, and the
hawthorn lay thick and fragrant on every hedge, like snow that the
winter had forgotten to melt, and the sky above was bright and
clear, and I was very happy. I had taken "The Abbot" with me, which
I had never read; but my mother did not sleep, so we chatted
instead of my reading. She recalled all our former times at
Weybridge. It was a great pleasure to retrace this well-known road,
and again to see dear old Walton Bridge and the bright, broad
Thames, with the noble chestnut trees on its banks, the smooth,
smiling fields stretching beyond it, and the swans riding in such
happy majesty on its bosom. I really think I do deserve to live in
the country, it is so _delightsome_ to me. We reached Oatlands an
hour before dinner-time and found the party just returned from
riding. We sauntered through part of the grounds to the cemetery of
the Duchess of York's dogs.... We had some music in the evening.
Lady Francis sang and I sang, and was frightened to death, as I
always am when asked to do so....
_Thursday, 19th._--A bright sunny morning, the trees all bowing and
bending, and the water chafing and crisping under a fresh, strong,
but not cold, wind. I lost my way in the park and walked toward
Walton, thinking I was going to Weybridge, but, discovering my
mistake, turned about, and crossing the whole park came out upon
the common and our old familiar cricketing ground. I flew along the
dear old paths to our little cottage, but "Desolate was the
dwelling of Morna"--the house closed, the vine torn down, the grass
knee-deep, the shrubs all trailing their branches and blossoms in
disorderly luxuriance on the earth, the wire fence broken down
between the garden and the wood, the gate gone; the lawn was sown
with wheat, and the little pine wood one tangled maze, without
path, entrance, or issue. I ran up the mound to where John used to
stand challenging the echo with his bugle....
O tempo passato!--the absent may return and the distant be brought
near, the dead be raised and in another world rejoin us, but a day
that is gone is gone, and all eternity can give us back no single
minute of the past! I gathered a rose and some honeysuckle from the
poor disheveled shrubs for my mother, and ran back to Oatlands to
breakfast. After breakfast we went over "Hernani," with Mrs.
Sullivan for prompter, and when that was over everybody went out
walking; but I was too tired with my morning's tramp, and sat under
a tree on the lawn reading a very good little book on the
sacrament, which went over the ground of my late discussion with
Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Procter on the subject of "preparation" for
taking it.
After lunch there was a general preparation for riding, and just as
we were all mounted it began to rain, and persevered till, in
despair, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan rode off without our promised
escort. Mr. C---- arrived just as we had disequipped, and the
gentlemen all dispersed. Lady Francis and I sang together for some
time, and suddenly the clouds withholding their tears, she and I,
in one of those instants of rapid determination which sometimes
make or mar a fate, tore on our habits again, jumped on our horses,
and galloped off together over the park. We had an enchanting,
gray, soft afternoon, with now and then a rain-drop and sigh of
wind, like the last sob of a fit of crying. The earth smelt
deliriously fresh, and shone one glittering, sparkling, vivid
green. Our ride was delightful, and we galloped back just in time
to dress for dinner.
In the evening, sauntering on the lawn and pleasant, bright talk
indoors. Lord John (the present venerable Earl Russell) would be
quite charming if he wasn't so afraid of the rain. I do not think
he is made of sugar, but, politically, perhaps he is the salt of
the earth; he certainly succeeds in keeping himself _dry_.
_Friday, Oatlands._--Walked out before breakfast; the night's rain
had refreshed the earth and revived every growing thing, the east
wind had blown itself away, and a warm, delicious western breeze
came fluttering fitfully over the new-mown lawn. After breakfast we
rehearsed Mr. Craven's and Captain Shelley's and my scenes in
"Hernani." I think they will do very well if they do not shy at the
moment of action, or rather acting. We had some music, and then the
gentlemen went out shooting. I took "The Abbot" and established
myself on a hay-cock, leaving Lady Francis to her own indoor
devices. By and by the whole party came out, and we sat on the lawn
laughing and talking till the gentlemen's carriage was announced,
and our rival heroes took their departure for town, cheek by jowl,
in a pretty equipage of Mr. Craven's, in the most amicable mood
imaginable. As soon as they were off we mounted and rode out, past
our old cottage, down by Brooklands, through the second wood, and
by the Fairies' Oak. O Lord King, Lord King (we were riding through
the property of the Earl of Lovelace, then Lord King), if I was one
of those bishops whom you do not love, I would curse,
excommunicate, and anathematize you for cutting down all those
splendid trees and laying bare those deep, dark, leafy nooks, the
haunts of a thousand "Midsummer Night's Dreams," to the common air
and the staring sun. The sight of the dear old familiar paths
brought the tears to my eyes, for, stripped and thinned of their
trees and robbed of their beauty, my memory restored all their
former loveliness. On we went down to Byefleet to the mill, to
Langton's through the sweet, turfy meadows, by hawthorn hedges
musical as sweet, over the picturesque little bridge and along that
deep, dark, sleepy water flowing so silently in its sullen
smoothness. On we went a long way over a wide common, where the
coarse-grained peaty earth and golden glory of the flowering gorse
reminded me of Suffolk's motto--
"Cloth of gold, do not despise
That thou art mix'd with cloth of frieze;
Cloth of frieze, be not too bold
That thou art mix'd with cloth of gold."
Back by St. George's Hill, snatching many a leaf and blossom as I
rode to carry back to A---- mementoes of our dear Weybridge days,
and so home by half-past seven, just time to dress for dinner. As
we rode along, Lord Francis and I discussed poets and poetry _in
general_--more particularly Byron, Keats, and Shelley; it was a
very pretty and proper discourse for such a ride.
In the evening heard all manner of delicious ghost stories;
afterward made music, Lady Francis and I trying all sorts of duets,
my mother keeping up a "humming" third and Lord Francis listening
and applauding with equal zeal and discretion....
_Saturday, May 21st._--My brother John come home from Spain....
_Sunday, 22d._--What a very odd process dreaming is! I _dreamt_ in
the night that John had come home, and flung myself out of bed in
my sleep to run downstairs to him, which naturally woke me; and
then I remembered that he was come home and that I had seen and
welcomed him, which it seems to me I might as well have dreamed too
while I was about it, and saved myself the jump out of bed. I hate
dreaming; it's like being mad--having one's brain work without the
control of one's will.
Dear A---- took the sacrament for the first time at the Swiss
church. On my return from church in the afternoon found Sir Ralph
and Lady Hamilton and Don Telesforo de Trueba. I like that young
Spaniard; he's a clever man. It was such fun his telling me all the
story of the Star of Seville, little imagining I had just
perpetrated a five-act tragedy on that identical subject.
_Tuesday, May 24th._--Drove down to Clint's studio to see Cecilia's
(Siddons's) portrait. It's a pretty picture of a "fine piece of a
woman," as the Italians say, but it has none of the very decided
character of her face....
_Wednesday, May 25th._--After dinner went over my part, dressed and
set off for Bridgewater House for our dressed rehearsal of
"Hernani." Found the stage in a state of _unfinish_, the house
topsy-turvy, and every body to the right and left. Sat for an hour
in the drawing-room while our very specially small and select
audience arrived. Then heard Lady Francis, Henry Greville, Mrs.
Bradshaw, and Mr. Mitford try their glee--one of Moore's melodies
arranged for four voices--which they sang at the top of their lungs
in order to hear themselves, while the carpenters and joiners
hammered might and main at the other end of the gallery finishing
the theater.
About nine they were getting under way, and we presently began the
rehearsal. The dresses were all admirable; they (not the clothes,
but the clothes pegs) were all horribly frightened. I was a little
nervous and rather sad, and I felt strange among all those foolish
lads, taking such immense delight in that which gives me so very
little, dressing themselves up and acting. To be sure, "nothing
pleaseth but rare accidents." Mr. M----, our prompter, thought fit
by way of prompting to keep up a rumbling bass accompaniment to our
speaking by reading every word of the play aloud, as the singers
are prompted at the opera house, which did not tend much to our
assistance. Everything went very smoothly till an unlucky young
"mountaineer" rushed on the stage and terrified me and Hernani half
to death by _in_articulating some horrible intelligence of the
utmost importance to us, which his fright rendered quite
incomprehensible. He stood with his arms wildly spread abroad,
stuttering, sputtering, madly ejaculating and gesticulating, but
not one articulate word could he get out. I thought I should have
exploded with laughter, but as the woman said who saw the murder,
"I knew I mustn't (faint), and I didn't." With this trifling
exception it all went off very well. Either I was fagged with my
morning's ride or the constitution of the gallery is bad for the
voice; I never felt so exhausted with the mere effort of speaking,
and thought I should have died prematurely and in earnest in the
last scene, I was so tired. When it was over we adjourned with Lord
and Lady Francis and the whole _dramatis personæ_ to Mrs. W----'s
magnificent house and splendid supper....
While we were at table everybody suddenly stood up, my mother and
myself reverently with the rest, when the whole company drank my
health, and I collapsed down into my chair as red and as _limp_ as
a skein of scarlet wool, and my mother with some confusion
expressed my obligation and her own surprise at the compliment. I
talked a good deal to Captain Shelley, who is a nice lad, and,
considering his beauty, and the admiration bestowed on him by all
the fine ladies in London, remarkably unaffected. We are asked down
to Oaklands again, and I hope my work at the theater will allow of
my going. What a shocking mess those young gentlemen actors did
make of their greenroom this evening, to be sure! rouge, swords,
wine, mustaches, soda water, and cloaks strewed in every direction.
I wonder what they would say to the drawing-room decorum of our
Covent Garden greenroom.
_Thursday, May 26th._--Tried on dresses with Mrs. Phillips, and
talked all the while about the characteristics of Shakespeare's
women with Mrs. Jameson, who had come to see me. I pity her from
the bottom of my heart; she has a heavy burden to carry, poor
woman.... Went in the evening to rather a dull dinner, after which,
however, I had the pleasure of hearing Mrs. Frere sing, which she
did very charmingly, and so as quite to justify her great society
musical reputation. After our dinner at the F----s' we went to Mrs.
W----'s evening party, where I sat alone, heard somebody sing a
song, was introduced to a man, spoke incoherently to several
people, got up, was much jostled in a crowd of human beings, and
came home--and that's society. We are asked to a great supper at
Chesterfield House, after a second representation which is to be
given of "Hernani." My mother thinks it is too much exertion and
dissipation for me, and as it is not a ball I do not care to go.
_Friday, May 27th._--At eight o'clock drove with my mother to
Bridgewater House. We went into the library, where there was
nobody, and Lady Francis, Henry Greville, and Lady Charlotte came
and sat with us. I was literally crying with fright. Lady Francis
took me to my dressing-room, my mother rouged me, blessed me, and
went off to join the audience assembled in the great gallery. I
went over my part once and my room a hundred times in every
direction. At nine they began; the audience very wisely were
totally in the dark, which threw out the brilliantly illuminated
stage to great advantage, and considering that they were the finest
folk in England they behaved remarkably well--listened quietly and
attentively, and applauded like Covent Garden galleries. It all
went well except poor Mr. Craven's first speech, in which he got
out. I don't know whether Lady L---- was among the spectators, and
gave him _des éblouissements_. It all went off admirably, however,
and oh, how glad I was when it was over!
_Saturday, May 28th._--I was awakened by a basket of flowers from
Cassiobury, and a letter from Theodosia. Old Foster is dead. I wish
he might be buried near the cottage. I should like to know where to
think of his resting-place, poor old man!...
In the evening Mrs. Jameson, the Fitzhughs, R---- P----, and a Mr.
K----, a friend of John's, and sundry and several came.... We acted
charades, and they all went away in high good humor.
_Sunday, May 29th._--An "eternal, cursed, cold, and heavy rain," as
Dante sings. My mother, A----, and I went to the Swiss church; the
service is shorter and more unceremonious than I like; that sitting
to sing God's praise, and standing to pray to Him, is displeasing
to all my instincts of devotion.
After church my mother was reading Milton's treatise on Christian
doctrine, and read portions of it aloud to me. I always feel afraid
of theological or controversial writings, and yet the faith that
shrinks from being touched lest it should totter is certainly not
on the right foundation. I suppose we ought, on the contrary, to
examine thoroughly the reason of the faith that is in us. Declining
reading upon religious subjects may be prudent, but it may be
indolence, cowardice, or lack of due interest in the matter. I
think I must read that treatise of Milton's.
GREAT RUSSELL STREET, May 29th, 1831.
MY DEAREST H----,
I have but little time for letter-writing, getting daily "deeper
and deeper still" in the incessant occupations of one sort and
another that crowd upon and almost overwhelm me; and now my care is
not so much whether I shall have time to write you a long letter,
as how I shall get leisure to write to you at all. You complain
that, in spite of the present interest I profess in public affairs,
I have given you no details of my opinion about them--my hopes or
fears of the result of the Reform movement. I have other things
that I care more to write to you about than politics, and am chary
of my space, because, though I can cross my letter, I can only have
one sheet of paper. "The Bill," modified as it now is, has my best
prayers and wishes, for to say that the removal of certain abuses
will not give the people bread which they expect is nothing against
it; but, at the same time that I sincerely hope this measure will
be carried, I cannot conceive what Government will do _next_, for
though trade is at this moment prosperous, great poverty and
discontent exist among large classes of the people, and as soon as
these needy folk find out that Reform is really not immediate bread
_and_ cheese _and_ beer, they will seek something else which they
may imagine will be those desired items of existence, and that is
what it may be difficult to give them. In the mean time party
spirit here has reached a tremendous pitch; old friendships are
broken up and old intimacies cease; former cordial acquaintances
refuse to meet each other, houses are divided, and the dearest
relations disturbed, if not destroyed. Society is become a sort of
battle-field, for every man (and woman too) is nothing if not
political. In fact, there really appears to be no middle or
moderating party, which I think strange and to be deplored. It
seems as if it were a mere struggle between the nobility and the
mobility, and the middle-class--that vast body of good sense,
education, and wealth, and efficient to hold the beam even between
the scales--throws itself man by man into one or the other of them,
and so only swells the adverse parties on each side.
Parliament meets again in a few days, and then comes the tug of
war. Lord John Russell was at Oatlands while we were there, and as
the Francis Egertons and their guests were all anti-Reformers, they
led him rather a hard life. He bore all their attacks with great
good humor, however, and with the well-satisfied smile of a man who
thinks himself on the right, and knows himself on the safe side,
and wisely forbore to reply to their sallies. Our visit there was
delightful.
As the distance is but one and twenty miles, my mother and I posted
down in the open carriage. The only guests we found on our arrival
were Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan (she is a daughter of Lady Dacre's, and
a charming person), Lord John Russell, and two of our _corps
dramatique_, Mr. Craven and Captain Shelley, son of Sir John
Shelley, a handsome, good-humored, pleasant young gentleman, who
acts Charles V. in "Hernani." I got up very early the first morning
I was there and went down before breakfast to our little old
cottage. In the lane leading to it I met a poor woman who lived
near us, and whom we used to employ. I spoke to her, but she did
not know me again. I wonder if these four years can have changed me
so much? The tiny house had not been inhabited since we lived
there.... My aunt Siddons is better, and Cecy very well.
Your affectionate
F. A. K.
[The beautiful domain of Oatlands was only rented at this time by Lord
Francis Egerton, who delighted so much in it that he made overtures for
the purchase of it. The house was by no means a good one, though it had
been the abode of royalty; but the park was charming, and the whole
neighborhood, especially the wooded ranges of St. George's Hill,
extremely wild and picturesque.... Lord Francis Egerton bought St.
George's Hill, at the foot of which he built Hatchford, Lady Ellesmere's
charming dower house and residence after his death, and the house of
Oatlands became a country inn, very pleasant to those who had never
known it as the house of former friends, and therefore did not meet
ghosts in all its rooms and garden walks; and the park was cut up into
small villa residences and rascally inclined citizen's boxes. Hatchford,
the widowed home of Lady Ellesmere and burial-place of her brother, to
whose memory she erected there an elaborate mausoleum, has passed out of
the family possessions and become the property of strangers. One son of
the house lives on St. George's Hill, and has his home where I have so
often drawn rein while riding with his father and mother to look over
the wild, wooded slopes to the smiling landscape stretching in sunny
beauty far below us.]
_Monday, May 30th._ ... The Francis Egertons called, and sat a long
time discussing "Hernani." ... I must record such a good pun of
his, which he only, alas, _dreamt_. He dreamt Lord W---- came up to
him, covered with gold chains and ornaments of all sorts, and that
he had called him the "Chain Pier." ... In the evening to
Bridgewater House. As soon as we arrived, I went to my own private
room, and looked over my part. We began at nine. Our audience was
larger than the last time. The play went off extremely well; we
were all improved. I was very anxious to play well, for the
Archbishop of York was in the front row, and he (poor gentleman!)
had never had the happiness of seeing me, the play-house being
forbidden ground to him. [This seems rather inconsistent, as all
the lesser clergy at this time frequented the theater without fear
or reproach. Dr. Hughes, the Very Reverend Prebend of St. Paul's,
Milman, Harness, among our own personal friends, were there
constantly, not to speak of my behind-the-scenes acquaintance, the
Rev. A.F.] I should like to seduce an old Archbishop into a liking
for the wickedness of my mystery, so I did my very best to edify
him, according to my kind and capacity.... At the end of the play,
as I lay dead on the stage, the king (Captain Shelley) was cutting
three great capers, like Bayard on his field of battle, for joy his
work was done, when his pretty dancing shoes attracted, in spite of
my decease, my attention, and I asked, with rapidly reviving
interest in existence, what they meant, on which I was informed
that the supper at Mrs. Cunliffe's was indeed a ball. I jumped up
from the dead, hurried off my stage robes, and hurried on my
private apparel, and followed my mother into the saloon. Here I had
delightful talk (though I believe I was dancing on my mind's feet
all the while) with Lord John Russell, Miss Berry, Lady Charlotte
Lindsay, and that charming person, James Wortley, and I got a
glimpse of Lord O----'s lovely face, who is a beautiful creature.
After being duly stared at by the crowds of my exalted
fellow-beings who filled the room, Lady Francis said she would send
them away, and we adjourned to Mrs. Cunliffe's, and had a very fine
ball; that is to say, we had neither room to dance, nor space to
sit, nor power to move.
"Oh, pleasure is a very pleasant thing," as Byron sings and H----
for ever says, and certainly a good ball is a pleasant thing, and
in spite of the above drawbacks I was enchanted with everything.
Such shoals of partners! such nice people! such perfect music! such
a delightful floor! Danced till the day had one eye wide open, and
then home to bed--what a good thing it is to have one under the
circumstances! I hope I have not been very tipsy to-night, but it
is difficult with so many stimulants to keep _quite_ sober. Broad
daylight! Six o'clock!
_Tuesday, May 21st._--My feet ache so with dancing that I can
hardly stand. Did not some traditional princesses of German
fairyland dance their shoes and stockings to pieces?
Going into the drawing-room I found my darling Dr. Combe there, and
if I had not been so tired I must have made a jump at his neck, I
was so very glad to see him. He brought me a letter from Mr. Combe,
whom I love only one step lower. He sat with us but a short time,
and leaves town to-morrow, which I am sorry for, first, because I
should like to have seen him again so very much, and next, because
I should have been glad that my mother became better acquainted
with the mental charms and seductions of the man whose outward
appearance seems to have allayed some of her apprehensions for the
safety of my heart and those of my Edinburgh cousins. Mrs. W----
called soon after. She is intent upon my acting Mlle. Mar's part in
"Henri Trois." I can do nothing with any French part in Covent
Garden. If they can find a theater of half that size to get it up
in, well and good; but seen from a distance, which defies
discrimination of objects, a thistle is as good as a rose, and in
that enormous frame refinement is mere platitude, and finish of
detail an unnecessary minutia.
We went to the theater to see a new piece, I believe by Mrs.
Norton. The pit and galleries were very indifferent; the dress
circle and private boxes full of fine folk. Lady St. Maur
(Georgiana Sheridan, Mrs. Norton's youngest sister, afterward
Duchess of Somerset and Queen of Beauty) and her husband, with
Corinne and Mr. Norton, in a box opposite ours. What a terrible
piece! what atrocious situations and ferocious circumstances!
tinkering, starving, hanging--like a chapter out of the Newgate
Calendar. But, after all, she's in the right; she has given the
public what they desire, given them what they like. Of course it
made one cry horribly; but then of course one cries when one hears
of people reduced by sheer craving to eat nettles and
cabbage-stalks. Destitution, absolute hunger, cold and nakedness,
are no more subjects for artistic representation than sickness,
disease, and the _real_ details of idiotcy, madness, and death. All
art should be an idealized; elevated representation (not imitation)
of nature; and when beggary and low vice are made the themes of the
dramatist, as in this piece, or of the poet, as in the works of
Crabbe, they seem to me to be clothing their inspirations in wood
or lead, or some base material, instead of gold or ivory. The clay
of the modeler is more _real_, but the marble of the sculptor is
the clay glorified. In Crabbe's writings one has at least the
comfort and consolation of a high moral sense, charming
versification, and an occasional tender, exquisite expression of
the beauties of nature. Our play to-night could not boast of these
_alleviations_.
_Wednesday, June 1st._--At the riding school saw Miss C----, who
wants me to get the play changed at Covent Garden _for this
evening_--"rien que cela!" What a fine thing it is to be "one of
those people!" They fancy that anybody's business of any sort can
be postponed to the first whim that enters their head. My mother
came with Dr. Combe in the carriage to fetch me from the riding
school. At home found a note from Lady Francis and the epilogue
Lord Francis has written to "Hernani," which I am certainly bound
to like, for it is highly complimentary to me.
I went to the real theater in the evening to do real work. The
house was good, but I played like a wretch--ranted, roared, and
acted altogether infamously. The fact was I was tired to death, and
of course violence always has to supply the place of strength.
Unluckily all the F----s were there, and I felt sorry for them. To
be sure, they had never seen "The Hunchback" before, and I should
think would heartily desire never to see it again; my performance
was shameful.
_Thursday, June 2d._--Mr. Hayter called. Lord Francis has spoken to
him about the picture he wishes him to do of me, and he came to
take the position, and I gave him his choice of three or four. I
dare say he will make a very pretty picture. As for my likeness,
that _I_ am not hopeful about. I have gone through the operation in
vain so very often. Murray has sent me some beautiful and
delightful books.... A third representation of "Hernani" is called
for, it seems, and, as far as I am concerned, they are welcome to
it; but Lady Francis came to say that the Duchess of Gloucester
wants it to be acted on the 23d, and I am afraid that will not do
for my theater arrangements; they must try and have it earlier, if
possible. Lady Francis has half bribed me with a ball. They want us
to go down to Oatlands for Saturday and Sunday, and I hope we may
be able to manage it.... After Lady F---- was gone, my mother had a
visit from Mrs. B----; her manner is bad, her matter is good. She
is clever and excellent, and I have a great respect for her. She
interested me immensely by her account of Mrs. Fry's visits to
Newgate. What a blessed, happy woman to do so much good; to be the
means of comfort and consolation, perhaps of salvation, to such
desolate souls! How I did honor and love what I heard of her. Mrs.
B---- said Mrs. Fry would be delighted to take me with her some day
when she went to the prison. My mother laughingly said she was
afraid Mrs. Fry would convert me--surely not to Quakerism. I do not
think I need a new faith, but power to act up to the one I profess.
I need no Quaker saint to tell me I do not do that.
[I had the great honor of accompanying Mrs. Fry in one of her visits to
Newgate, but from various causes received rather a painful impression
instead of the very different one I had anticipated. Her divine labor of
love had become _famous_, and fine ladies of fashion pressed eagerly to
accompany her, or be present at the Newgate exhortations. The
unfortunate women she addressed were ranged opposite their less
excusable sister sinners of the better class, and I hardly dared to look
at them, so entirely did I feel out of my place by the side of Mrs. Fry,
and so sick for their degraded attitude and position. If I had been
alone with them and their noble teacher I would assuredly have gone and
sat down among them. On the day I was there a poor creature sat in the
midst of the congregation attired differently from all the others, who
was pointed out to me as being under sentence of transportation for
whatever crime she committed. Altogether I felt broken-hearted for
_them_ and ashamed for _us_.]
My mother has had a letter from my father (he was acting in the
provinces), who says he has met and shaken hands with Mr. Harris
(his co-proprietor of Covent Garden, and antagonist in our ruinous
lawsuit about it). I wonder what benefit is to be expected from
that operation with--such a person.
_Sunday, June 5th._ ... On my return from afternoon service found
Mr. Walpole with my mother; they amused me extremely by a
conversation in which they ran over, as far as their memories would
stretch (near sixty years), the various fashions and absurd modes
of dress which have prevailed during that period. Toupees, fêtes,
toques, bouffantes, hoops, bell hoops, sacques, polonaises,
levites, and all the paraphernalia of horsehair, powder, pomatum,
and pins, in the days when court beauties had their heads dressed
over-night for the next day's drawing-room, and sat up in their
chairs for fear of destroying the edifice by lying down. No wonder
they were obliged to rouge themselves--the days when once in a
fortnight was considered often enough for ridding the hair of its
horrible paste of flour and grease. We are certainly cleaner than
our grandmothers, and much more comfortable, though it is not so
long since my own head was dressed _à la giraffe_, in three bows
over pins half a foot high, so that I could not sit upright in the
carriage without knocking against the top of it. My mother's and
Mr. Walpole's recollections and descriptions were like seeing a set
of historical caricatures pass before one.
_Monday, June 6th._--The house was very full at the theater this
evening, and Miss C---- sent me round a delicious fresh bouquet. I
acted well, I think; the play was "Romeo and Juliet." It is so very
pleasant to return to Shakespeare, after _reciting_ Bianca and
Isabella, etc. I reveled in the glorious poetry and the bright,
throbbing _reality_ of that Italian girl's existence; and yet
Juliet is nothing like as nice as Portia--_nobody_ is as nice as
Portia. But the oftener I act Juliet the oftener I think it ought
never to be acted at all, and the more absurd it seems to me to try
to act it. After the play my mother sent a note with the carriage
to say she would not go to the ball, so I dressed myself and drove
off with my father from the theater to the Countess de S----'s. At
half-past eleven the ball had not begun. Mrs. Norton was there in
splendid beauty; at about half-past twelve the dancing began, and
it was what is called a very fine ball. While I was dancing with
Mr. C----, I saw my father talking to a handsome and very
magnificent lady, who my partner told me was the Duchess of B----;
after our quadrille, when I rejoined my father, he said to me,
"Fanny, let me present you to ----" here he mumbled something
perfectly inaudible, and I made a courtesy, and the lady smiled
sweetly and said some civil things and went away. "Whose name did
you mention," said I to my father, with some wickedness, "just now
when you introduced me to that lady?" "Nobody's, my dear, nobody's;
I haven't the remotest idea who she is." "The Duchess of B----,"
said I, glibly, strong in the knowledge I had just acquired from my
partner. "Bless my soul!" cried the poor man, with a face of the
most ludicrous dismay, "so it was! I had quite forgotten her,
though she was good enough to remember me, and here I have been
talking cross-questions and crooked answers to her for the last
half-hour!"
Was ever any thing so terrible! I feared my poor father would go
home and remain awake all night, sobbing softly to himself, like
the eldest of the nine Miss Simmonses in the ridiculous novel,
because in her nervous flurry at a great dinner party she had
refused instead of accepting a gentleman's offer to drink wine with
her. Lady G---- then came up, whom he did remember, and who was
"truly gracious;" and I left him consoled, and, I hope, having
forgotten his dreadful duchess again. All the world, as the saying
is, was at this ball, and it certainly was a very fine assembly. We
danced in a splendid room hung with tapestry--a magnificent
apartment, though it seemed to me incongruous for the purpose; dim
burning lights and flitting ghosts and gusts of wind and distant
footfalls and sepulchral voices being the proper _furniture_ of the
"tapestried chamber," and not wax candles, to the tune of sunlight
and bright eyes and dancing feet and rustling silks and gauzes and
laughing voices, and all the shine and shimmer and flaunting
flutter of a modern ball....
At half-past two, though the carriage had been ordered at two, my
father told me he would not "spoil sport," and so angelically
stayed till past four. He is the best of fathers, the most
affectionate of parents, the most benevolent of men! There is a
great difference between being chaperoned by one's father instead
of one's mother: the latter, poor dear! never flirts, gets very
sleepy and tired, and wants to go home before she comes; the former
flirts and talks with all the pretty, pleasant women he meets, and
does not care till what hour in the morning--a frame of mind
favorable to much dancing for the _youngers_. After all, I had to
come away in the middle of a delightful mazurka.
_Tuesday, June 7th._-- ... We had a very pleasant dinner at Mr.
Harness's. Moore was there, but Paganini was the chief subject
discussed, and we harped upon the one miraculous string he fiddles
on without pauses.... After dinner I read one of Miss Mitford's
hawthorny sketches out of "Our Village," which was lying on the
table; they always carry one into fresh air and green fields, for
which I am grateful to them.
_Wednesday, June 8th._--While I was writing to H---- my mother came
in and told me that Mrs. Siddons was dead. I was not surprised; she
has been ill, and gradually failing for so long.... I could not be
much grieved for myself, for of course I had had but little
intercourse with her, though she was always very kind to me when I
saw her.... She died at eight o'clock this morning--peaceably, and
without suffering, and in full consciousness.... I wonder if she is
gone where Milton and Shakespeare are, to whose worship she was
priestess all her life--whose thoughts were her familiar thoughts,
whose words were her familiar words. I wonder how much more she is
allowed to know of all things now than she did while she was here.
As I looked up into the bright sky to-day, while my father and
mother were sadly recalling the splendor of her day of beauty and
great public power, I thought of the unlimited glory she perhaps
now beheld, of the greater holiness and happiness I trust she now
enjoys, and said in my heart, "It must be well to be as she is." I
had never thought it must be well to be as she _was_....
As soon as the news came my father went off to see what he could do
for Cecilia, poor thing, and to bring her here, if she can be
persuaded to leave Baker Street. He was not much shocked, though
naturally deeply grieved by the event; my aunt has now been ill so
long that any day might have brought the termination of the
protracted process of her death. When he returned he said Cecilia
was composed and quiet, but would not leave the house at present. I
have written to Lady Francis to decline going to Oatlands, which we
were to have done this week.
At dinner my father told me some of the arrangements he has made
for the summer. We are to act at Bristol, Bath, Exeter, Plymouth,
and Southampton. He then said, "Suppose we take steamer thence to
Marseilles, and so on to Naples?" My heart jumped into my mouth at
the thought; but how should I ever come back again?... Everything
here is _so ugly_, even without comparison with that which is
beautiful elsewhere; from Italy how should one come back to live in
London?
_Thursday, June 9th._-- ... And so I am to act Lady Macbeth! I feel
as if I were standing up by the great pyramid of Egypt to see how
tall I am! However, it must be done; perhaps I may even do it less
ill than Constance--the greater intensity of the character may
perhaps render majesty less _indispensable_. Power (if one had
enough of it) might atone for insufficient dignity. Lady Macbeth
made herself a queen by dint of wickedness; Constance was royal
born--a radical difference, which ought to be in my favor. But
dear, dear, dear, what a frightful undertaking for a poor girl, let
her be never so wicked!
And _the_ Lady Macbeth will never be seen again! I wish just now
that in honor of my aunt the play might be forbidden to be
performed for the next ten years. My father and myself have a
holiday at the theater--but only for the week--because of Mrs.
Siddons's death, and we are to go down to Oatlands--nobody being
there but ourselves, that is my brother and I--for the rest and
quiet and fresh air of these few days.
_Friday, June 10th._--Before three the carriage was announced, and
we started for the country. We dropped Henry at Lord Waldegrave's
and had a very pleasant drive, though the day was as various in its
moods as if we were in April instead of June. We arrived at about
six, and found Mr. C---- had been made an exception to the
"positively nobody" who was to meet us....
_Saturday, June 11th._--Read the French piece called "Une Faute,"
which half killed me with crying. It is exceedingly clever, but
altogether _too_ true, in my opinion, for real art. It is not
dramatic truth, but absolute imitation of life, and instead of the
mitigated emotion which a poetical representation of tragic events
excites, it produces a sense of positive suffering too acutely
painful for an artistic result; it is a perfectly prosaical
reproduction of the familiar vice and its inseparable misery of
modern everyday life; it wants elevation and imagination--aërial
perspective; it is close upon one, and must be agonizing to see
well acted. My studies were certainly not of the most cheerful
order, for after finishing this morbid anatomy of human hearts I
read an article in the _Phrenological Journal_ on Bouilland's
"Anatomy of the Brain," which made me feel as if my brain was stuck
full of pins and needles.
_Perhaps_ a certain amount of experience must be attained through
experiment, and if the wits of the human species are to be better
understood, governed, and preserved by the results obtained by
cutting and hacking the brains of living animals, _perhaps_ some of
our more immediate mercy is to be sacrificed to our humanity in the
lump; but if this is not the forbidden doing evil that good may
come of it, I do not know what is. One of the effects of Mr.
Bouilland's excruciating experiments on his victims was to turn me
already sick and give me an agonizing pain in _my_ brain. I hope
their beneficial consequences did not end there.
I did all this reading before breakfast, and when I left my room it
was still too early for any one to be up, so I set off for a run in
the park. The morning was lovely, vivid, and bright, with soft
shadows flitting across the sky and chasing one another over the
sward, while a delicious fresh wind rustled the trees and rippled
the grass; and unable to resist the temptation, bonnetless as I
was, I set off at the top of my speed, running along the terrace,
past the grotto, and down a path where the syringa pelted me with
showers of mock-orange blossoms, till I came under some magnificent
old cedars, through whose black, broad-spread wings the morning sun
shone, drawing their great shadows on the sweet-smelling earth
beneath them, strewed with their russet-colored shedding. I thought
it looked and smelt like a Russia-leather carpet. Then I came to
the brink of the water, to a little deserted fishing pavilion
surrounded by a wilderness of bloom that was once a garden, and
then I ran home to breakfast. After breakfast I went over the very
same ground with Lady Francis, extremely demure, with my bonnet on
my head and a parasol in my hand, and the utmost propriety of
decorous demeanor, and said never a word of my mad morning's
explorings. A girl's run and a young lady's walk are very different
things, and I hold both pleasant in their way. The carriage was
ordered to take my mother to Addlestone to see poor old Mrs.
Whitelock, and during her absence Lady Francis and I repaired to
her own private sitting-room, and we entertained each other with
extracts from our respective journals. I was struck with the high
esteem she expressed for Lord Carlisle; in one place in her journal
she said she wished she could hope her boys would grow up as
excellent men as he is, and this in spite of her party politics,
for she is a Tory and he a Whig, and she is really a partisan
politician.
In the afternoon, after a charming meandering ride, we determined
to go to Monks Grove, the place Lady Charlotte Greville has taken
on St. Anne's Hill.... In the evening we had terrifical ghost
stories, which held, us fascinated till _one o'clock in the
morning_.
"The stones done, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep."
_Sunday, June 12th._-- ... It's nearly five years since I said my
prayers in that dear old little Weybridge church....
On our return, as the horses are never used on Sunday, we went down
to the water and got into the boat. The day was lovely, and as we
glided along the bright water my mother and Lady Francis and I
murmured, half voice, all sorts of musical memories, which made a
nice accompaniment to Lord Francis's occasional oar-dip that just
kept the boat in motion. When we landed, my mother returned to the
house, and the rest of us set off for a long delightful stroll to
the farm, where I saw a monstrous and most beautiful dog whom I
should like to have hugged, but that he looked so grave and wise it
seemed like a liberty. We walked on through a part of the park
called America, because of the magnificent rhododendrons and
azaleas and the general wildness of the whole. The mass was so deep
one's feet sank into it; the sun, setting, threw low, slanting rays
along the earth and among the old tree trunks. It was a beautiful
bit of forest scenery; how like America I do not know. Upon the
racecourse we emerged into a full, still afternoon atmosphere of
brilliant and soft splendor; the whole park was flooded with
sunshine, and little creeks of light ran here and there into the
woods we had just left, touching with golden radiance a solitary
tree, and glancing into leafy nooks here and there, while the mass
of woodland was one deep shadow....
Much discussion as to the possibilities and probabilities of our
being able to stay here another day. When we came back from our
afternoon ride at near eight, found Mr. Greville and Lady Charlotte
here, and a letter from my father, saying that I could be spared
from my work at the theater a little longer, and promising to come
down to us.... In the evening Mr. C---- and I acted some of
Racine's "Andromaque" for them; my old school part of Hermione
which I have not forgotten, and then two scenes from Scribe's
pretty piece of "_les premières Amours_." He acts French capitally,
and, moreover, bestowed upon me the two following ridiculous
conundrum puns, for which I shall be forever grateful to him:
"Que font les Vaches à Paris?"
"Des Vaudevilles" (des Veaux de Ville).
"Quelle est la sainte qui n'a pas lesoin de Jarretières?"
"Ste. Sébastienne" (ses has se tiennent).
What absurd, funny stuff!
_Tuesday, June 14th._--Gardening on the lawn--hay-making in the
meadow--delightful ride in the afternoon, the beginning of which,
however, was rather spoiled by some very disagreeable accounts Mr.
C---- was giving us of Lord and Lady ----'s _mènage_. What might,
could, would, or _should_ a woman do in such a case? Endure and
endure till her heart broke, I suppose. Somehow I don't think a man
would have the heart to _break_ one's heart; but, to be sure, I
don't know....
We did not return home till near nine, and so, instead of dinner,
all sat down to high tea, at which everybody was very cheerful and
gay, and the talk very bright....
I wish I could have painted my host and hostess this morning as
they stood together on the lawn; she with her beautiful baby in her
arms, her bright, fair forehead and eyes contrasting so strikingly
with his fine, dark head. I never saw a more charming picture.
(Landseer has produced one version of it in his famous "Return from
Hawking.") Are not all such groups "Holy Families"? They looked to
me holy as well as handsome and happy.
_Wednesday, June 15th._-- ... The races in the park were to begin
at one, and we wished, of course, to keep clear of them and all the
gay company; so at twelve my mother and I got into the pony
carriage, and drove to Addlestone to my aunt Whitelock's pretty
cottage there. It rained spitefully all day, and the races and all
the fine racing folk were drenched. At about six o'clock my father
came from London, bringing me letters; the weather had brightened,
and I took a long stroll with him till time to dress for dinner....
In the evening music and pleasant talk till one o'clock.
_Thursday, June 16th._--At eight o'clock my mother and I walked
with my father to meet the coach, on the top of which he left us
for London. After breakfast took my mother down to my "Cedar Hall,"
and established her there with her fishing, and then walked up the
hill to the great trees and amused myself with bending down the big
branches, and, seating myself on them, let them spring up with me.
Climbing trees, as poor Combe would say, excites one's "wonder" and
one's "caution" very agreeably, and I like it. I took Lord
Francis's translation of "Henri Trois" back to the "Cedar Hall,"
where my mother was still watching her float. I was a good deal
struck with it. He has not finished the whole of the first act yet,
but there is one scene between the Duchess of Guise and St. Megrin
that I should think ought to be very effective on the stage; and I
can imagine how charming Mdlle. Mars must have been in her
sleep-walking gestures and intonations. The situation, which is
highly dramatic, is, I think, quite new; I cannot recollect any
similar one in any other play....
After lunch my mother, Lady Charlotte, and Mr. Greville drove off
to Monks Grove, and we followed them on horse-back; it is a little
paradise of a place, with its sunny, smooth sloping lawns and
bright, sparkling piece of water, the masses of flowers blossoming
in profuse beauty, and the high, overhanging, sheltering woods of
St. Anne's Hill rising behind it. On our way home much talk of
Naples. I might like to go there, no doubt; the question is how I
should like to come back to London after Naples, and I think not at
all. In the evening read the pretty French piece of "Michel et
Christine" which my father had sent me.
_Friday, June 17th._-- ... My mother, Mr. C----, and I drove
together back to town; so good-by, Oatlands.
_Monday, June 20th._--Went to rehearsal at half-past ten for John
Mason, who is to come out in Romeo to-night; he had caught a
dreadful cold and could hardly speak, which was terribly provoking,
poor fellow! After my theater rehearsal of "Romeo and Juliet" drove
to Bridgewater House to rehearse "Hernani." In the evening the
house was very good at Covent Garden; I played well. John Mason was
suffering dreadfully from cold and hoarseness; the audience were
very good-natured, however, and he got through uncommonly well. My
mother said I played "beautifully," which was saying much indeed
for her. I was delighted, especially as the Francis Levesons and
---- were all there.
_Tuesday, June 21st._--Went to Bridgewater House to rehearse.
Charles Young was among our morning audience; I was so glad to see
him, for dear old acquaintanceship. The king was going to the House
of Parliament, and Palace Yard was thronged with people, and we sat
round one of the Bridgewater House windows to see the show. At
about one the royal carriages set out--such lovely cream-colored
horses, with blue and silver trappings; such splendid, shining,
coal-black ones, with coral-colored trappings. The equipages looked
like some enchanted present in a fairy story. The king--God bless
him!--cannot, I should think, have been much annoyed by the
clamorous greetings of his people. I'm afraid that ominous, sullen
silence is a bad sign of the times. We rehearsed very steadily.
Lord Francis, who is taking the old duke's part because of Mr. St.
Aubin going abroad, is much improved by some teaching Young has
bestowed upon him; but still he is by no means so good as Mr. St.
Aubin was....
_Wednesday, 22d._--Read "La Chronique de Charles Neuf," which is
very clever, but the history of that period in France is so
revolting that works of fiction founded upon it are as disagreeable
as the history itself. Hogarth's pictures and Le Sage's novels are
masterpieces, and yet admirable only as excellent representations
of what in itself is odious. However, they are satirical works, and
so have their _raison d'être_, which I do not think a serious novel
about detestable times and people has. Drove to Bridgewater House,
feeling so unwell that I could scarcely stand, and was obliged to
lie down till I was called to go on the stage. We had a magnificent
audience--all the grandeurs in England except the King. The Queen,
the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of
Cumberland, Princess Elizabeth, Prince Leopold, the Duke of
Brunswick. And lesser magnificoes the room full. Such very superior
people make a dull audience, of course; the presence of royalty is
always understood to bar applause, which is not etiquette when a
Majesty is by. I played very ill; my voice was quite unmanageable,
and broke twice, to my extreme dismay. The fact is, I am fagged
_half_ to death; but as I cannot give up my work and cannot _bear_
to give up my play, the only wonder is that I am not fagged _whole_
to death. Mr. Craven acted really capitally, and I wondered how he
could. They put us out terribly in one scene by forgetting the
bench on which I have to sit down. Hernani managed with great
presence of mind and cleverness in its absence, but it spoilt our
prettiest picture. After the play Lady Francis came to fetch me to
be presented to the Queen; her Majesty was most gracious in her
reception of me, and so were the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of
Gloucester, who came and had quite a long chat with me. When I had
received my dismissal from her Majesty I ran to disrobe, and
returned to join the crowd in the drawing-room.... When they were
all gone we adjourned to Lady Gower's--a most magnificent supper,
which _we_ enjoyed in the perfection of comfort, in a small boudoir
opening into and commanding the whole length of the supper saloon.
Our snuggery just held my mother, Lady Francis, myself, Charles
Greville, and three of our _corps dramatique_, and we not only
enjoyed a full view of the royal table, but what was infinitely
amusing, poor Lord Francis's disconsolate countenance, which half
killed us with laughing. Supper done, we all proceeded downstairs
to see the Royalty depart, and looked at a fine picture of
Lawrence's of that handsome creature, Lord Clanwilliam. Took leave
of my friends for some months, I am sorry to say; took Mr. ----home
in our carriage and set him down just at day-dawn. It was past four
o'clock before I saw my bed; and the life I am leading is really
enough to kill any one.
_Thursday, June 23d._--Quite unwell, and in bed all day. Mrs.
Jameson came and sat with me some time. We talked of marriage, and
a woman's chance of happiness in giving her life into another's
keeping. I said I thought if one did not expect too much one might
secure a reasonably fair amount of happiness, though of course the
risk one ran was immense. I never shall forget the expression of
her face; it was momentary, and passed away almost immediately, but
it has haunted me ever since.
GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
DEAR LADY DACRE,
I am commissioned by my mother to request your kind permission to
bring my brother to your evening party on Saturday; she hopes you
will have no scruple in refusing this request, if for any reason
you would rather not comply with it.... I have been thinking much
about what you said to me both _viva voce_ and in your note upon
that "obnoxious word" in my play. Let me entreat you to put aside
conventional regards of age and sex, which have nothing to do with
works of art or literature, and view the subject without any of
those considerations, which have their own proper domain,
doubtless--although I think you have in this instance admitted
their jurisdiction out of it.... I hope as long as I live that I
shall never write anything offensive to decency or morality, or
their pure source, religion; and I hope in my own manners and
conversation always to preserve the decorum prescribed by society,
good taste, and good feeling; but as a dramatic writer, supposing I
am ever to be one, I shall have to depict men as well as women,
coarse and common men as well as refined and courtly ones, and all
and each, if I fulfill my task, must speak the language that their
nature under their several circumstances points out as individually
appropriate. But I forget that I am addressing one far better able
than I am to say what belongs to all questions of poetry and art.
Forgive me, my dear Lady Dacre, and allow me to add that, as when I
put my play into your hands I told you that should you find it too
intolerably dull and bad I would release you from your kind promise
of accepting its dedication to yourself, I can only repeat my
readiness to do so if upon any other ground whatever you feel
reluctant to grace my title-page with your name. Pray tell me so
without hesitation, as I had rather forego that honor than owe it
to your courtesy without your entire good-will.
In any event pray accept my best acknowledgments for your kindness,
and believe me always
Your very truly obliged
F. A. K.
This letter was written in answer to some strictures of Lady Dacre's on
what appeared to her coarseness of language in my play of "The Star of
Seville," which she thought unbecoming a "young lady." If I remember
rightly, too, she said that the introduction of a scene in a bedchamber
might be deemed objectionable. I had asked her permission to dedicate
the play to her, which she had granted; and though she failed to
convince me that a young-lady element had any business whatever in a
play, she very kindly allowed her name to adorn the title-page of my
_un_-young ladylike drama.
Soon after this my father and aunt and myself left London for our summer
tour in the provinces, which we began at Bristol.
_Monday, July 4th, Bristol._--The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and
the nurse was a perfect farce in herself; she really was worth any
money, and her soliloquy when she found me "up and dressed and down
again," very nearly made me scream with laughter in the middle of
my trance. Indeed, the whole play was probably considered an
"improved version" of Shakespeare's Veronese story, both in the
force and delicacy of the text. Sundry wicked words and coarse
appellations were decorously dispensed with; many fine passages
received judicious additions; not a few were equally judiciously
omitted altogether. What a shocking hash!