_Tuesday, July 5th._--After breakfast we sallied forth to the

market, to my infinite delight and amusement. It is most

beautifully clean; the fruit and vegetables look so pretty, and

smell so sweet, and give such an idea of plentiful abundance, that

it is delightful to walk about among them. Even the meat, which I

am generally exceedingly averse to go near, was so beautifully and

nicely arranged that it had none of its usual repulsiveness; and

the sight of the whole place, and the quaint-looking rustic people,

was so pleasantly envious. We stopped to gossip with a bewitching

old country dame, whose market stock might have sat, with her in

the middle of it, for its picture; the veal and poultry so white

and delicate-looking, the bacon like striped pink and white

ribbons, the butter so golden, fresh, and sweet, in a great basket

trimmed round with bunches of white jasmine, the green leaves and

starry blossoms and exquisite perfume making one believe that

butter ought always to be served, not in a "lordly dish," but in a

bower of jasmine. The good lady told us she had just come up from

"the farm," and that the next time she came she would bring us some

home-made bread, and that she was going back to brew and to bake.

She looked so tidy and _rural_, and her various avocations sounded

so pleasant as she spoke of them, that I felt greatly tempted to

beg her to let me go with her to "the farm," which I am sure must

be an enchanting place, neat and pretty, and flowery and

comfortable, and full of rustic picturesqueness; and _while the sun

shone_, I think I should like a female farmer's life amazingly.

Went to the theater and rehearsed "Venice Preserved," which is an

entirely different kind of thing. Charles Mason dined with us.

After dinner I finished reading Miss Ferrier's novel of "Destiny,"

which I like very much; besides being very clever, it leaves a

pleasant taste, in one's mind's mouth. Went to the theater at six;

the play was "Venice Preserved," and I certainly have seldom seen a

more shameful exhibition. In the first place C---- did not even

know his words, and that was bad enough; but when he was out,

instead of coming to a stop decently, and finishing at least with

his cue, he went on extemporizing line after line, and speech after

speech, of his own, by way of mending matters. I think I never saw

such a performance. He stamps and bellows low down in his throat

like an ill-suppressed bull; he rolls his eyes till I feel as if

they were flying out of their sockets at me, and I must try and

catch them. He quivers and quavers in his speech, and pulls and

_wrenches_ me so inhumanly, that what with inward laughter and

extreme rage and pain, I was really all but dead in earnest at the

end of the play. I acted very ill myself till the last scene, when

my Jaffier having been done justice to by the Venetian Government,

I was able to do justice to myself, and having gone mad, and no

wonder, died rather better than I had lived through the piece.

_July 6th, Bristol._--Walked out to order the horses, and

afterwards went on to look at the Abbey Church. We examined one or

two interesting old monuments; but were obliged to curtail our

explorings, as the doors were about to be closed. We have been

talking much lately of a remote possibility of going to America;

and as I left this old brown pile to-day, it seemed to me curious

to think of a country which has no cathedrals, no monuments of the

Old Faith. How venerable, in spite of its superstitions and abuses;

for its long undisputed sway over all civilized lands; for the

great and good men who honored it by their lives and works--the

religion of Augustine, of Bruno, Benedict, Francis d'Assisi,

Francis de Sales, Fénelon, and how many more--the Christianity of

Europe in its feudal, chivalrous times, those days of noble, good,

as well as fierce, evil deeds and lives, the faith that kings and

warriors bowed to when sovereignty was absolute and military power

supreme. America has no gray abbeys, no ruined cloisters, to tell

of monastic brotherhoods--the preserves of ancient historic

chronicles, the guardians of the early wells and springs of classic

learning and genius. In America there are no great, old,

time-stained, weather-beaten, ivy-mantled churches full of tombs,

such as we saw to-day, with curious carvings and quaint effigies,

and where the early rulers of the land embraced the faith and

received the baptism of Christ. That must be a very strange

country. But they have Plymouth Rock, on the shore where the

Protestant Pilgrims landed.

The horses having come to the door, we set off for our ride; our

steeds were but indifferent hacks, but the road was charming, and

the evening serene and pure, and I was with my father, a

circumstance of enjoyment to me always. The characteristic feature

of the scenery of this region is the vivid, deep-toned foliage of

the hanging woods, through whose dense tufts of green, masses of

gray rock and long scars of warm-colored red-brown earth appear

every now and then with the most striking effect. The deep-sunk

river wound itself drowsily to a silver thread at the base of steep

cliffs, to the summit of which we climbed, reaching a fine level

land of open downs carpeted with close, elastic turf. On we rode,

up hill and down dale, through shady lanes full of the smell of

lime-blossom, skirting meadows fragrant with the ripe mellow hay

and honey-sweet clover, and then between plantations of aromatic,

spicy fir and pine, all exhaling their perfumes under the influence

of the warm sunset. At last we made a halt where the road, winding

through Lord de Clifford's property, commanded an enchanting view.

On our right, rolling ground rising gradually into hills, clothed

to their summits with flourishing evergreens, firs, larches,

laurel, arbutus--a charming variety in the monotony of green. On

the farthest of these heights Blaise Castle, with two gray towers,

well defined against the sky, looked from its bosky eminence over

the whole domain, which spread on our left in sloping lawns, where

single oaks and elms of noble size threw their shadows on the

sunlit sward, which looked as if none but fairies' feet had ever

pressed it. Beyond this, through breaks and frames, and arches made

by the trees, the broad Severn glittered in the wavy light. It was

a beautiful landscape in every direction. We returned home by sea

wall and the shore of the Severn, which seemed rather bare and

bleak after the soft loveliness we had just left....

_Thursday, July 7th._--Went to the theater to rehearse "The

Gamester." In the afternoon strolled down to the river with my

father and Dall. We took boat and rowed toward the cliffs. Our

time, however, was limited; and just as we reached the loveliest

part of the river, we were obliged to turn home again.... At

dinner, as we were talking about America, and I was expressing my

disinclination ever to go thither, my father said: "If my cause

(our Chancery suit) goes ill before the Lords, I think the best

thing I can do will be to take ship from Liverpool and sail to the

United States." I choked a little at this, but presently found

voice to say, "Ebben son pronta;" but he replied, "No, that he

should go alone." That you never should, my own dear father!... But

I do hate the very thought of America.

_Saturday, July 9th._ ... In the afternoon drove out in an open

carriage with Dall to Shirehampton, by the same road my father and

I took in our ride the other day.

BRISTOL, July 10th, 1831.

MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

I can neither bid you confirm nor deny any "_reports_ you may

hear," for I am in utter ignorance, I am happy to say, of the

world's surmisings on my behalf, and had indeed supposed that my

time for being honored by its notice in any way was pretty well

past and over.

I am glad you are having rest, as you speak of it with the

enjoyment which those alone who work hard are entitled to. I trust,

too, that in the instance of your eyes no news is good news, for

you say nothing of them, and I therefore like to hope that they

have suffered you to forget them.

I'm disappointed about your Shakespeare book. I should like to have

had it by my next birthday, which is the 27th of November, and to

which I look forward with unusually mingled feelings. However, it

cannot be helped; and I have no doubt the booksellers are right in

point of fact, for we are embarked on board too troublous times to

carry mere _passe temps_ literature with us. "We must have bloody

noses and cracked crowns," I am afraid, and shall find small public

taste or leisure for _polite letters_.

I like this place very well; it is very quiet, and my life is

always a happy one with my father. He always spoils me, and that is

always pleasant, you know.

The Bristol people are rather in a bad state just now for our

purposes, for trade here is in a very unprosperous condition; and

the recent failure of many of their great mercantile houses does no

good to our theatrical ones. The audiences are very pleasant,

however, and the company by no means bad. We are here another week,

and then take ship for Ilfracombe, and thence by land to Exeter;

after that Plymouth and Southampton.... I wish I could be in London

for "Anna Bolena." I cannot adequately express my admiration for

Madame Pasta; I saw her in Desdemona the Saturday night on which I

scrawled those few lines to you. I think if you knew how every look

and tone and gesture of hers affects me, you would be satisfied.

She is almost equal to an imagination; more than that I cannot say.

If you rate "imagination" as I think you must, I need say nothing

more. We shall certainly be back in London by the end of September,

if not before. In the mean time believe me ever yours most truly,

F. A. K.

_Sunday, July 10th._--My father wickedly _dawdled_ about till we

were nearly late for church, and had to scamper along the quays and

up the steep street, to poor dear Dall's infinite discomfiture, who

grumbled and puffed, and shuffled and shambled along, while I

plunged on, breathlessly ejaculating, "It is so hateful to be late

for church!" The cathedral (which I believe it is not) was quite

full, but we obtained seats in the organ gallery, where we could

not hear very well, but had a very fine view of the _coup d'oeil_

presented by the choir and church below us. The numerous and

many-colored congregation, the white surpliced choristers, the

charity-school children in their uniforms surrounding the altar,

all framed in by the dark old oak screens with their quaint

readings, and partially vividly illuminated by occasional gleams of

strong sunlight which poured suddenly through the colored windows,

presented a beautiful picture. The service was very well performed:

the organ is a remarkably good one, and one or two of the boys'

voices were exquisitely soft and clear. It is a fine service, and

yet I do not like it by way of religious worship. It does not make

me devout, in the proper form of the term; it appeals too much to

my senses and my imagination; it is religion _set_ to music and

painting, and artistic religion does not suit me. The incessant

passing of people through the church, too, disturbs one, and gives

an unpleasant air of irreverence to the whole.... I think I might

like to go to a cathedral for afternoon service, much as I like to

spend my Sunday leisure in reading Milton, though I should not be

satisfied to make my whole devotional _exercises_ consist in

reading "Paradise Lost." A wretchedly weak, poor sermon; how

strange that such a theme should inspire nothing better than such a

discourse! However, I suppose this sort of ministering is the

inevitable result of a "ministry" embraced merely as a means of

subsistence. No one could paint pictures or compose music, _only_

because they wanted bread, so I do not see why any one should

preach sermons fit to be heard, only because they want bread. If I

was a despot, I would suppress hebdomadal writing of sermons, and

people should be _forbidden_ instead of _bidden_ to talk nonsense

upon sacred subjects.

_Monday, 11th._--At night the theater was very full, and the

audience pleasant. During supper my father, Charles Mason, and I

had a long discussion about Kean. I cannot help thinking my father

wrong about him. Kean _is_ a man of decided genius, no matter how

he neglects or abuses nature's good gift. He has it. He has the

first element of all greatness--power. No taste, perhaps, and no

industry, perhaps; but let his deficiencies be what they may, his

faults however obvious, his conceptions however erroneous, and his

characters, each considered as a whole, however imperfect, he has

the one atoning faculty that compensates for everything else, that

seizes, rivets, electrifies all who see and hear him, and stirs

down to their very springs the passionate elements of our nature.

Genius alone can do this.

As an actor, one whose efforts are the result of study, of mental

research, reflection, and combination; as an intellectual

anatomist, whose knowledge must dissect, and then re-form and

reproduce again in beauty and harmony the image he has taken to

pieces; as an artist, who is bound to conceal both the first and

last processes, the dismembering of the parts and the reuniting

them in a whole, and whose business is to make the most deliberate

mental labor and the most studied personal effects appear the

spontaneous result of unpremeditated passion and emotion (feigned

passion and emotion, which are to appear real)--in capacity for all

this Kean may be defective. He may not be an actor, he may not be

an artist, but he _is_ a man of genius, and instinctively with a

word, a look, a gesture, tears away the veil from the heart of our

common humanity, and lays it bare as it beats in every human heart,

and as it throbs in his own. Kean speaks with his whole living

frame to us, and every fiber of ours answers his appeal.

I do not know that I ever saw him in any character which impressed

me as a _whole work of art_; he never seems to me to intend to be

any one of his parts, but I think he intends that all his parts

should be _him_. So it is not Othello who is driven frantic by

doubt and jealousy, nor Shylock who is buying human flesh by its

weight in gold, nor Sir Giles Overreach who is selling his child to

hell for a few years of wealth and power; it is Kean, and in every

one of his characters there is an intense personality of his _own_

that, while one is under its influence, defies all

criticism--moments of such overpowering passion, accents of such

tremendous power, looks and gestures of such thrilling, piercing

meaning, that the excellence of those _parts_ of his performances

more than atones for the want of greater unity in conception and

smoothness in the entire execution of them.

The discussion about Kean led naturally to some talk about his most

famous parts, particularly Shylock. My father's conception of

Shylock seems to me less the right one than Kean's; but then, if my

father took what _I_ think the right view of the part, he would

have to give up acting it. The real Shylock--that is,

Shakespeare's--is a creature totally opposite in his whole

organization, physical and mental, to my father's; and as my father

cannot force his nature in any particular into uniformity with that

of Shylock, he endeavors to persuade himself that the theory by

which he tries to bring it into harmony with his individuality, and

within the compass of his powers, is the right one; but I think him

entirely mistaken about it. Kean did with the part exactly what my

father wants to do--adapted his conceptions to his means of

execution; but Kean's physical constitution was much better suited

to express Shylock as Shylock should be expressed than my father's.

My father attempts to make Shylock "poetical" (in the superficial

sense), because that is the bias of his own mind in matters of art.

Classical purity and refinement of taste are his specialties as an

actor, and neither power nor intensity.

Shylock's master passion is not revenge, which is a savage, but

avarice, which is a sordid motive. His hatred is inspired more by

defeated hope of gain and positive losses and threatened ventures,

than by the personal insults and contumely he has received.

Avarice is an absolutely base passion, and a grand poetical

character cannot consistently be raised upon such a foundation, nor

can a nature be at once groveling and majestic. Besides,

Shakespeare has not made Shylock "poetical." The concentrated venom

of his passion is prosaic in its vehement utterance--close,

concise, vigorous, logical, but not imaginative; and in the scenes

where his evil nature escapes the web of his cunning caution, and

he is stung to fury by his complicated losses, there is intense

passion but no elevation in his language.

There is a vein of humor in Shylock. A grim, bitter, sardonic

flavor pervades the part, that blends naturally with the sordid

thrift and shrewd, watchful, eager vigilance of the miser. It

infuses a terrible grotesqueness into his rage, and curdles one's

blood in the piercing, keen irony of his mocking humility to

Antonio, and adds poignancy to the ferocity of his hideous revenge.

This Kean rendered admirably, and in this my father entirely fails,

but it is an important element of the character.

My father is hard upon Kean's defects because they are especially

antagonistic to his artistic taste and tendency, but I think, too,

there is a slight infusion of the vexation of unappreciated labor

in my father's criticism of Kean. He forgets that power is

universally felt and understood, and refinement seldom the one or

the other, and for a thousand who applaud Kean's "What, wouldst

thou have a serpent sting thee twice?" probably not ten people are

aware of his exquisite "nevertheless" in the reading of Antonio's

letter. Most eyes can "see a church by daylight;" not many stop to

look at the lights and shadows that are forever varying and adding

to the beauty of its aspect. I wonder how, being as well aware as

my father is of all the fine work that escapes the eyes of the

public, he can care for this kind of thing as he does.

_Tuesday, 12th._--We are having events at the theater, and not of a

pleasant sort. Mr. Brunton, the manager, is in "difficulties"

(civilized plural for debt), and it seems that last night during

the play one of his creditors put an execution into the theater,

and laid violent hands upon the receipts, which, as it was my

father's benefit, rather dismayed us. So after breakfast this

morning, having put out my dresses for my favorite Portia for

to-night, I went to the theater to ascertain if there was to be a

rehearsal or not. My father had gone in search of Mr. Brunton to

see how matters could be arranged, and at all events to represent

that we could not go on acting unless our money was secured to us.

Charles Mason, Dall, and I in the mean time found the poor actors

in the theater very much at a loss how to proceed, as it seemed

extremely doubtful whether there would be any performance; so we

returned home, where we found my father, who said that at all

events there must be a rehearsal, for it was absolutely necessary

if we did act to-night, and could do us no harm if we did not; so

we repaired again to the theater, where the scattered and scared

_corps dramatique_ having been got together again, we proceeded to

business.

_Wednesday, 13th._--Mr. K---- called and told us that some

arrangement had been made with the truculent creditor of our poor

manager by which _we_ shall not lose any more in this unlucky

business. My father will be quit for about a hundred pounds. I am

very sorry for Mr. Brunton, but he should not have placed us in

such an uncomfortable position. My father has offered to act one

night beyond our engagement for the sake, if possible, of making up

to the actors the arrears of salary Mr. Brunton owes them. They are

all poor, hard-working people, earning no more than the means of

subsistence, and this withholding of their due falls very heavily

on them.

_Thursday, 14th._-- ... At the theater the house was very good, and

the audience very pleasant. The play was "The Provoked Husband,"

and I'm sure I play his provoking wife badly enough to provoke

anybody; but she's not a person to my mind, which is an artistic

view of the case.

[My modes of dealing with my professional duties at this very unripe

stage of my career irresistibly remind me of a not very highly educated

female painter who had taken it into her head to make an historical

picture of Cleopatra. Sending to a friend for a few "references" upon

the subject of that imperial gypsy's character and career, she sent them

hastily back, saying she had relinquished her purpose, "having really no

idea Cleopatra was that sort of person."]

_Friday, July 15th._--Miserrima! I have broken a looking-glass! and

on Friday, too! What do I think will happen to me! Had a long talk

this morning with dear Dall about my dislike to the stage. I do not

think it is the acting itself that is so disagreeable to me, but

the public personal exhibition, the violence done (as it seems to

me) to womanly dignity and decorum in thus becoming the gaze of

every eye and theme of every tongue. If my audience was reduced to

my intimates and associates I should not mind it so much, I think;

but I am not quite sure that I should like it then.

At the theater the house was very full, and the audience

particularly amiable. In the interval between the fourth and fifth

acts Charles Mason made a speech to them, informing them of Mr.

Brunton's distress, and our intention of acting for him on Monday.

They applauded very much, and I hope they will do more, and come.

My part of the charity is certainly not small; to be pulled and

pushed and dragged hither and thither, and generally "knocked

about," as the miserable Belvidera, for three mortal hours, is a

sacrifice of self which my conscience bears me witness is laudable.

I would much rather pay with my purse than my person in this case.

Unfortunately, je n'ai pas de quoi.

_Sunday, July 17th._--To Redcliffe Church with my father and Dall.

What a beautiful old building it is!... What a sermon! Has the

truth, as our Church holds it, no fitter expounders than such a

preacher? Are these its stays, props, and pillars--teachers to

guide, enlighten, and instruct people as cultivated and intelligent

as the people of this country on the most momentous of all

subjects? Are these the sort of adversaries to oppose to men like

Channing? As for not going to church because of bad or foolish

sermons, that is quite another matter, though I not unfrequently

hear that reason assigned for staying away. One goes to church to

say one's prayers, and not to hear more or less fine discourses;

one goes because it is one's duty, and a delight and comfort, and a

quite distinct duty and delight from that of private prayer. A good

sermon, Heaven knows, is a rare blessing to be thankful for, but if

one went to church only in the expectation of that blessing, one

might stay away most Sundays in the year.

[My youthful scorn of "poor preaching" reminds me of what I once heard

Edward Everett say, who, before becoming his country's "Minister," in

the diplomatic sense of the word, had been a powerful and eloquent

Unitarian preacher: "I hear a good deal of criticism upon sermons which

are supposed to be religious or moral exhortations, not intellectual

exercises. I dare say many sermons are not _first rate_, but moderate

good preaching is not a bad thing, and _pretty poor preaching_ is better

than most men's practice."]

_Monday, July 18th._--The theater was crowded to-night, which

delighted me. It is pleasant to see malicious and evil actions

produce such a result. I was very nervous and excited, and nearly

went into hysterics over one small incident of the evening. At the

close of the first separation scene--the play was "Venice

Preserved"--when Jaffier is carried out by the nape of the neck by

Pierre, and Belvidera _extracted_ on the other side in the arms

(and iron ones they were) of Bedamar, the audience of course were

affected, harrowed, overcome by the poignant pathos of the

situation. Charles looked woebegone. I called upon him in tones of

the most piercing anguish (an agony not entirely feigned, as my

bruises can bear witness). The curtain descended slowly amidst

sympathetic sobs and silence--the musicians themselves, deeply

moved, no doubt, with the sorrows of the scene, mournfully resumed

their fiddles, and struck up "ti _ti_ tum _tiddle_ un _ti_ tum

_ti_"--the jolliest jig you ever heard. The bathos was

irresistible; we behind the scenes, the principal sufferers

(perhaps) in the night's performance, were instantly comforted, and

all but shouted with laughter. I hope the audience were equally

revived by this grotesque sudden cheering of their spirits. After

the tragedy a Bristolian Paganini performed a concerto on one

string. Dall declares that the whole orchestra played the whole

time--but some sounds reached me in my dressing-room that were

decidedly _unique_ more ways than one, not at all unlike our

favorite French fantasia--"Complainte d'un cochon au lait qui

rêve." But the audience were transported; they clapped and the

fiddle squeaked, they shouted and the fiddle squealed, they

hurrahed and the fiddle uttered three terrific screams, and it was

over and Paganini is done for--here, at any rate. He need never

show face or fiddle here; he hasn't a string (even one) left to his

bow in Bristol. "So Orpheus fiddled," etc.

_Tuesday, July 19th._--Dinner-party at the ---- which ought to have

been chronicled by Jane Austen. I sat by a gentleman who talked to

me of the hanging gardens of Semiramis and what might have been

cultivated therein (hemp perhaps), then of the derivation of

languages--he still kept among roots--and finally of _tea_, which

he told me he was endeavoring to grow on the Welsh mountains. Some

of the table-talk deserved printing _verbatim_, only it was almost

too good to be true, or at any rate believed.

_Wednesday, July 20th._--Charles Mason came after breakfast, and

told us that there was some chance of poor Mr. Brunton's getting

out of prison (into which his creditor has thrust him), for that

the latter had been so universally scouted for his harsh proceeding

that he probably would be shamed into liberating him.

We shall not leave Bristol to-day. The wind is contrary and the

weather quite unfavorable for a party of pleasure, which our trip

by sea to Ilfracombe was to be. It's very disagreeable living half

in one's trunks and traveling-bags, as this sort of uncertainty

compels one to do. I studied Dante, wrote verses and sketched, and

tried to be busy; but a defeated departure leaves one's mind and

thoughts only half unpacked, and I felt idle and unsettled, though

I worked at "The Star of Seville" till dinner-time.

After dinner I studied politics in the Examiner and read an article

on Cobbett, which made me laugh, and the motto to which might have

been "Malvolio, thou art sick of self-conceit." ...

_Thursday, July 21st._--At dinner a discussion, suggested by Mr.

D----'s conduct to Mr. Brunton, on the subject of returning evil

for evil, and the difficulty of not doing so, if not deliberately

and in deed, upon impulse and by thought. Nothing is easier in such

matters than to say what one would do, and nothing, I suppose, more

difficult than to do what one should do. So God keep us all from

convenient opportunities of revenging ourselves....

[Occasionally one hears in the streets voices in which the making of a

fortune lies, and when one remembers what fortunes some voices have

commanded, it seems bitterly cruel to think of such a possession begging

its bread for want of the chance that might have made it available by

culture. A woman, some years ago, used to sing at night in the

neighborhood of St. James's Street, whose voice was so exquisite, so

powerful, sweet, and thrilling, a mezzo soprano of such pure tone and

vibrating quality, that Lady Essex, my sister, and myself, at different

times, struck by the woman's magnificent gift and miserable position,

had her into our houses, to hear her sing and see if nothing could be

done to give her the full use of her noble natural endowment. She was a

plain young woman of about thirty, tolerably decently dressed, and with

a quiet, simple manner. She said her husband was a house-paperer in a

small way, and when he was out of employment she used to go out in the

evening and see what her singing would bring her. Poor thing! it was

impossible to do anything for her; she was too old to learn or unlearn

anything. No training could have corrected the low cockney vulgarity and

coarse, ignorant indistinctness and incorrectness of her enunciation.

And so in after years, as I returned repeatedly to England, after longer

or shorter intervals of time, and always inhabited the same neighborhood

in London, I still continued to hear, on dark drizzly evenings (and

never without a thrill of poignant pain and pity) this angel's voice

wandering in the muddy streets, its perfect, round, smooth edge becoming

by degrees blunted and broken, its tones rough and coarse and harsh,

some of the notes fading into feeble indistinctness--the fine, bold,

true intonation hiding its tremulous uncertainty in trills and quavers,

alternating with pitiful husky coughing, while every now and then one or

two lovely, rich, pathetic notes, surviving ruin, recalled the early

sweetness and power of the original instrument. The idea of what that

woman's voice might have been to her used to haunt me.

It was hearing Rachel singing (barefoot) in the streets of Paris that

Jules Janin's attention was first excited by her. Her singing, as I

heard it on the stage in the drinking song of the extraordinary piece

called "Valeria," in which she played two parts, was really nothing more

than a chanting in the deep contralto of her speaking voice, and could

hardly pass for a musical performance at all, any more than her

wonderful uttering of the "Marseillaise," with which she made the

women's blood run cold, and the men's hair stand on end, and everybody's

flesh creep.

My sister and I used often to plan an expedition of street-singing for

the purpose of seeing how much we could collect in that way for some

charity. We were to put ourselves in "poor and mean attire"--I do not

know that we were to "smirch our faces" with brown paint; we thought

large battered poke-bonnets would answer the purpose, and, thus

disguised, we were to go the rounds of the club windows, my father

walking at a discreet distance for our protection on one side of the

street, and our formidable pirate friend Trelawney on the other. We

never carried out this project, though I have no doubt it would have

brought us a very pretty penny for any endowment we might have wished to

make.]

_Friday, July 22d._--Long and edifying talk with dear Dall upon my

prospects in marrying. "While you remain single," says she, "and

choose to work, your fortune is an independent and ample one; as

soon as you marry, there's no such thing. Your position in

society," says she, "is both a pleasanter and more distinguished

one than your birth or real station entitles you to; but that also

is the result of your professional exertions, and might, and

probably would, alter for the worse if you left the stage; for,

after all, it is mere frivolous fashionable popularity." I ought to

have got up and made her a courtesy for that. So that it seems I

have fortune and fame (such as it is)--positive real advantages,

which I cannot give with myself, and which I cease to own when I

give myself away, which certainly makes my marrying any one or any

one marrying me rather a solemn consideration; for I lose

everything, and my marryee gains nothing in a worldly point of

view--says she--and it's incontrovertible and not pleasant. So I

took up Dante, and read about devils boiled in pitch, which

refreshed my imagination and cheered my spirits very much.

[How far my ingenious mind was from foreseeing the days when men of high

rank and social station would marry singers, dancers, and actresses, and

be condescending enough to let their wives continue to earn their bread

by public exhibition, and even to appropriate the proceeds of their

theatrical labors! I have not yet made up my mind whether, in these

cases, the _gentleman_ ought not to take his wife's name in private, as

a compensation for her not taking his in public. Poor Miss Paton's noble

husband was the only Englishman, that I know of, who committed that act

of self-effacement. To go much further back in dramatic and social

history, the old, accomplished, mad Earl of Peterborough married the

famous singer Anastasia Robinson, and refused to acknowledge the fact

till her death. To be sure, this was a more cowardly, but a less dirty

meanness. He withheld his name from her, but did not take her money.]

It is settled now that we go to Exeter by coach, and now that we

have given up our pretty sea trip to Ilfracombe, the weather has

become lovely--perverse creature!--but I am glad we are going away

in every way.

_Saturday, Bristol, July 23d._ ... We started at eight, and taking

the whole coach to ourselves as we do, I think traveling by a

public conveyance the best mode of getting over the road. They run

so rapidly; there is so little time lost, and so much trouble with

one's luggage saved. The morning was gray and soft and promised a

fine day, but broke its promise at the end of our second stage, and

began to pelt with rain, which it continued to do the live-long

blessed day. We could see, however, that the country we were

passing through was charming. One or two of the cottages by the

roadside, half-smothered in vine and honeysuckle, reminded me of

Lady Juliana,[B] who, when she said she could live in a desert with

her lover, thought that it was a "sort of place full of roses." ...

These laborers' cottages were certainly the poor dwellings of very

poor people, but there was nothing unsightly, repulsive, or squalid

about them--on the contrary, a look of order, of tidy neatness

about the little houses, that added the peculiarly English element

of comfort and cleanliness to the picturesqueness of their fragrant

festoons of flowery drapery, hung over them by the sweet season.

The little plots of flower-garden one mass of rich color; the tiny

strip of kitchen-garden, well stocked and trimly kept, beside it;

the thriving fruitful orchard stretching round the whole; and

beyond, the rich cultivated land rolling its waving corn-fields,

already tawny and sunburnt, in mellow contrast with the smooth

green pasturages, with their deep-shadowed trees and bordering

lines of ivied hawthorn hedgerows, marking boundary-lines of

division without marring the general prospect--a lovely landscape

that sang aloud of plenty, industry, and thrift. I wonder if any

country is more blessed of God than this precious little England? I

think it is like one of its own fair, nobly blooming, vigorous

women; her temper--that's the climate--not perfection, to be sure

(but, after all, the old praise of it is true; it admits of more

constant and regular out-of-door exercise than any other); the

religion it professes, pure; the morality it practises, pure,

probably by comparison with that of other powerful and wealthy

nations. Oh, I trust that neither reform nor its extreme,

revolution, will have power to injure this healthily, heartily

constituted land....

[B] In Miss Ferrie's novel, "Marriage."

EXETER, July 24th, 1831.

DEAREST H----,

We arrived here last night, or rather evening, at half-past six

o'clock, and I found your letter, which, having waited for me,

shall not wait for my answer....

Thank you for John's translation of the German song, the original

of which I know and like very much. The thoughts it suggested to

you must constantly arise in all of us. I believe that in these

matters I feel all that you do, but not with the same intensity. To

adore is most natural to the mind contemplating beauty, might, and

majesty beyond its own powers; to implore is most natural to the

heart oppressed with suffering, or agitated with hopes that it

cannot accomplish, or fears from which it cannot escape. The

difference between natural and revealed religion is that the one

worships the loveliness and power it perceives, and the other the

goodness, mercy, and truth in which it believes. The one prays for

exemption from pain and enjoyment of happiness for body and mind in

this present existence; the other for deliverance from spiritual

evils, or the possession of spiritual graces, by which the soul is

fitted for that better life toward which it tends....

I do not think "Juliet" has written to you hitherto, and I am

rather affronted at your calling me so. I have little or no

sympathy with, though much compassion for, that Veronese young

person.... There is but one sentiment of hers that I can quote with

entire self-application, and that is--

"I have no joy of this contract to-night;

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden."

In spite of which the foolish child immediately secures her lover's

word, appoints the time for meeting, and makes every arrangement

for following up the declaration she thought too sudden by its as

sudden execution. Poor Juliet! I am very sorry for her, but do not

like to be called after her, and do not think I am like her. I have

been working very hard every day since you left Bristol (my belief

is that Juliet was very idle). I am sorry to say I find my playing

very hard work; but easy work, if there is such a thing, would not

be best for me just now.

Yours ever,

F. A. K.

_Sunday, Exeter._--To church with Dall and my father, a blessing

that I can never enjoy in London, where he is all but stared out of

countenance if he shows his countenance in a church, and it

requires more devotion to the deed than I fear he possesses to

encounter the annoyance attendant upon it. We heard an excellent

sermon, earnest, sober, simple, which I was especially grateful for

on my father's account. Women don't mind bad preaching; they have a

general taste for sermons, and, like children with sweeties, will

swallow bad ones if they cannot get good. "We have a natural turn

for religion," as A.F. said of me; but men, I think, get a not

unnatural turn against it when they hear it ill advocated....

The day has been lovely, and from my perch among the clouds here I

am looking down upon a lovely view. Following the irregular line of

buildings of the street, the eye suddenly becomes embowered in a

thick rich valley of foliage, beyond which a hill rises, whose

sides are covered with ripening corn-fields, meadows of vivid

green, and fields where the rich red color of the earth contrasts

beautifully with the fresh hedgerows and tall, dark elm trees,

whose shadows have stretched themselves for evening rest down in

the low rosy sunset. It is all still and bright, and the Sabbath

bells come up to me over it all with intermitting sweetness, like

snatches of an interrupted angels' chorus, floating hither and

thither about the earth.

_Monday._--We contrived to get some saddle-horses, and rode out

into the beautiful country round Exeter, but the preface to our

poem was rather dry prose. We rode for about an hour between

powdery hedges all smothered in dust, up the steepest of hills, and

under the hottest of suns; but we had our reward when we halted at

the top, and looked down upon a magnificent panorama of land and

water, hill and dale, broad smiling meadows, and dark shadowy

woodland--a vast expanse of various beauty, over which the eye

wandered and paused in slow contentment. As we came leisurely down

the opposite side of the hill, we met a gypsy woman, and I reined

up my horse and listened to my fortune: "I have a friend abroad who

is very fond of me." I hope so. "I have a relation far abroad who

is very fond of me too." I know so. "I shall live long." More is

the pity. "I shall marry and have three children." Quite enough. "I

shall take easily to love, but it will not break my heart." I am

glad to hear that. "I shall cross the sea before I see London

again." Ah! I am afraid not. "The end of my summer will be happier

than its beginning"--and that may very easily be. For that I gave

my prophetess a shilling. Oh, Zingarella! my blessing on your black

eyes and red-brown cheeks! May you have spoken true!...

Meantime, my companions, my father and Mr. Kean, were discussing

the fortunes of Poland. If I were a man, with a hundred thousand

pounds at my disposal, I would raise a regiment and join the Poles.

The Russians have been beaten again, which is good hearing. Is it

possible this cause should fall to the earth? On our way home, had

a nice smooth, long canter by the river-side. We turned off our

road to visit a pretty property of Mr. F----'s, the house half-way

up a hill, prettily seated among pleasant woods. We galloped up

some fields above it to the brow of the rise, and had three

mouthfuls of delicious fresh breeze, and a magnificent view of

Exeter and the surrounding country.... After dinner, off to the

theater; it was my benefit, "The Gamester." The house was very

full, and I played and looked well; but what a Stukely! I was

afraid my eyes would scarcely answer my purpose, but that I should

have been obliged to "employer l'effort de mon bras" to keep him at

a proper distance. What ruffianly wooing! and not one of the actors

knew their parts. Stukely said to me in his love-speech, "Time has

not gathered the roses from your cheeks, though often washed them."

I had heard of Time as the thinner of people's hair, but never as

the washer of their faces.

_Sunday, July 31st._--Went to church, to St. Sidwell's.... We had

another good sermon; that preacher must be a good man, and I should

like to know him....

Our dinner-party this evening was like nothing but a chapter out of

one of Miss Austen's novels. What wonderful books those are! She

must have written down the very conversations she heard _verbatim_,

to have made them so like, which is Irish.... How many things one

ought to die of and doesn't! That dinner did come to an end. In the

drawing-room afterward, in spite of the dreadful heat, two fair

female friends actually divided one chair between them; I expected

to see them run into one every minute, and kept speculating then

which they would be, till the idea fascinated me like a thing in a

nightmare. As we were taking our departure, and had got half way

down the stairs, a general rush was made at us, and an attempt,

upon some pretext, to get us back into that dreadful drawing-room.

I thought of Malebranche hooking the miserable souls that tried to

escape back again into the boiling pitch. But we got away and safe

home, and leave Exeter to-morrow.

EXETER, July 31, 1831.

DEAREST H----,

I am content to be whatever does not militate against your

affection for me.... I had a long letter from dear A----, a day

ago, from Weybridge. She is quite well, and says my mother is as

happy as the day is long, now she is once more in her beloved

haunts. I love Weybridge too very much.... It seems to me that

memory is the special organ of pain, for even when it recalls our

pleasures, it recalls only the past, and half their sweetness

becomes bitter in the process. I have a tenacious and acute memory,

and, as the phrenologists affirm, no hope, and feel disposed to

lament that, not having both, I have either. The one seems the

necessary counterpoise of the other; the one is the source of most

of the pain, as the other is of most of the pleasure, which we

derive from the things that are not; and I feel daily more and more

my deficiency in the more cheerful attribute....

You have been to the Opera, and seen what even one's imagination

does not shrug its shoulders at; I mean Madame Pasta. I admire her

perfectly, and she seems to me perfect. How I wish I had been with

you! And yet I cannot fancy you in the Opera House; it is a sort of

atmosphere that I find it difficult to think of your breathing....

I wish you had not asked me to write verses for you upon that

picture of Haydon's "Bonaparte at St. Helena." Of course, I know it

familiarly through the engraving, and, in spite of its sunshine,

what a shudder and chill it sends to one's heart! It is very

striking, but I have neither the strength nor concentrativeness

requisite for writing upon it. The simplicity of its effect is what

makes it so fine; and any poetry written upon it would probably

fail to be as simple, and therefore as powerful, as itself. I

cannot even promise you to attempt it, but if ever I fall in with a

suitable frame of mind for so bold an experiment, I will remember

you and the rocks of St. Helena. "My lady" (an Italian portrait on

which I had written some verses) "Mia Donna," or "Madonna," more

properly to speak, was a most beautiful Italian portrait that I

saw, not in Augustin's gallery, but in a small collection of

pictures belonging to Mr. Day, and exhibited at the Egyptian Hall.

Sir Thomas Lawrence told me when I described it to him, that he

thought it was a painting of Giordano's. It was a lovely face, not

youthful in its character of beauty; there is a calm seriousness

about the brow and forehead, a clear, intellectual severity about

the eye, and a sweet, still placidity round the mouth, that united,

to my fancy, all the elements of beauty, physical, mental, and

moral. What an incomparable friend that woman must have been! Why

is it that we rejoice that a soul fit for heaven is constrained to

tarry here, but that, in truth, the fittest for this is also the

fittest for that life? For it seems to me more natural not to wish

to detain the bright spirit from its brighter home, and not to

sorrow at the decree which calls it hence to perfect its excellence

in higher spheres of duty....

I think a blight of uncertainty must have pervaded the atmosphere

when I was born, and penetrated, not certainly my nature, but my

whole earthly destiny, with its influence; from my plans and

projects for to-morrow on to those of next year, all is mist and

indistinct indecision. I suppose it is the trial that suits my

temper least, and therefore fits it best. It surely is that which

"willfulness, conceit, and egotism" find hardest to endure.

Yesterday I determined so far to escape from, or cheat, my destiny

as to have a peep into futurity by the help of a gypsy. Riding with

my father, and the whole hour, time, day, and scene, were in

admirable harmony: the dark, sunburnt face, with its bright,

laughing eyes and coal-black curls and flashing teeth; the old

gateway against which she was leaning; the blue summer sky and

sunny road skirted with golden corn-fields--the whole picture in

which she was set was charming.

"I know it is a sin to be a mocker;"

and I am sure I need not tell you that I am sincerely grateful for

all the kindness and civility that is bestowed upon us wherever we

go.... What with riding, rehearsing, and acting, my days are

completely filled. We start for Plymouth to-morrow at eight, and

act "Romeo and Juliet" in the evening, which is rather laborious

work. We play there every night next week. When next I write I will

tell you of our further plans, which are at this moment still

uncertain....

Affectionately yours,

F. A. K.

[These were the days before railroads had run everything and everybody

up to London. There were still to be found then, in various parts of

England, life that was peculiar and provincial, and manners that had in

them a character of their own and a stamp of originality that had often

quite as much to attract as to repel. Men and women are, of course,

still the same that sat to that enchanting painter, Jane Austen, but the

whole form and color and outward framing and various countenance of

their lives have merged its distinctiveness in a commonplace conformity

to universal custom; and in regard to the more superficial subjects of

her fine and gentle satire, if she were to return among us she would

find half her occupation gone.]

_Monday, August 1st._--I got some books while waiting for the

coach, and we started at half-past eight. The heat was intolerable

and the dust suffocating, but the country through which we passed

was lovely. For a long time we drove along the brow of a steep

hill. The valley was all glorious with the harvest: corn-fields

with the red-gold billows yet untouched by the sickle; others full

of sunburnt reapers sweeping down the ripe ears; others, again,

silent and deserted, with the tawny sheaves standing, bound and

dry, upon the bristling stubble, on the ground over which they

rippled and nodded yesterday, a great rolling sea of burnished

grain. All over the sunny landscape peace and prosperity smiled,

and gray-steepled churches and red-roofed villages, embowered in

thick protecting shade, seemed to beckon the eye to rest as it

wandered over the charming prospect. The white-walled mansions of

the lords of the land glittered from the verdant shelter of their

surrounding plantations, and the thirsty cattle, beautiful in color

and in grouping, stood in pools in the deeper parts of the brooks,

where some giant tree threw its shadow over the water and the

smooth sheltered sward round its feet. In spite of this charming

prospect I was very sad, and the purple heather bordering the road,

with its thick tufts, kept suggesting Weybridge and the hours I had

lately spent there so happily.... To shake myself I took up "Adam

Blair;" and, good gracious! what a shaking it did give me! What a

horrible book! And how could D---- have recommended me to read it?

It is a very fine and powerful piece of work, no doubt; but I

turned from it with infinite relief to "Quentin Durward." Walter

Scott is quite exciting enough for wholesome pleasure; there is no

poison in anything that he has ever written: for how many hours of

harmless happiness the world may bless him!

At Totnes we got out of the coach to shake ourselves, for we were

absolute dust-heaps, and then resumed our powdery way, and reached

Plymouth at about four o'clock. As we walked up toward our

lodgings, we were met by Mr. Brunton, with the pleasing

intelligence that those we had bespoken had been let, by some

mistake, to another family. Dusty, dreary, and disconsolate, I sat

down on the stairs which were to have been ours, while Dall

upbraided the hostess of the house, and my father did what was more

to the purpose--posted off to find other apartments for us; no easy

matter, for the town is crammed to overflowing. In the mean time a

little blue-eyed fairy, of about two years old, came and made

friends with me, and I presently had her fast asleep in my lap.

After carrying my prize into an empty room, and sitting by it for

nearly half an hour while it slept the sleep of the blessed, I was

called away from this very new interest, for my father had

succeeded in finding house-room for us, and I had yet all my

preparations to make for the evening.

The theater is a beautiful building for its purpose, of a perfectly

discreet size, neither too large nor too small, of a very elegant

shape, and capitally constructed for the voice. The house was very

_full_; the play, "Romeo and Juliet." I played abominably ill, and

did not like my audience, who must have been very good-natured if

they liked me.

_Tuesday, August 2d._--Rose at seven, and went off down to the sea,

and that was delightful. In the evening the play was "Venice

Preserved." I acted very well, notwithstanding that I had to prompt

my Jaffier through every scene, not only as to words, but position

on the stage, and "business," as it is called. How unprincipled and

ungentlemanlike this is! The house was very fine, and a pleasanter

audience than the first night. Found a letter from Mrs. Jameson

after the play, with an account of Pasta's "Anna Bolena." How I

wish I could see it!

_Wednesday, August 3d._--Rose at seven, and went down to the sea to

bathe. The tide was out, and I had to wait till the nymphs had

filled my bath-tub.... At the theater in the evening, the play was

"The Stranger." The house not so good as last night, and the

audience were disagreeably noisy....

_Thursday, August 4th._--They will not let me take my sea-bath

every morning; they say it makes me too weak. Do they mean in the

head, I wonder?... "Let the sanguine then take warning, and the

disheartened take courage, for to every hope and every fear, to

every joy and every sorrow, there comes a last day," which is but a

didactic form of dear Mademoiselle Descuillier's conjuring of our

impatiences: "Cela viendra, ma chère, cela viendra, car tout vient

dans ce monde; cela passera, ma chère, cela passera, car tout passe

dans ce monde." ... I finished my drawing, and copied some of "The

Star of Seville." I wonder if it will ever be acted? I think I

should like to see a play of mine acted. In the evening at the

theater, the play was "Isabella." The house was very full, and I

played well. The wretched manager will not afford us a green baize

for our tragedies, and we faint and fall and die upon bare boards,

and my unhappy elbows are bruised black and blue with their

carpetless stage, barbarians that they be!

_Friday, August 5th._--Down to the sea at seven o'clock; the tide

was far out, the lead-colored strand, without its bright

foam-fringes, looked bleak and dreary; it was not expected to be

batheable till eleven, and as I had not breakfasted, I could not

wait till then. Lingered on the shore, as Tom Tug says, thinking of

nothing at all, but inhaling the fresh air and delicious sea-smell.

I stood and watched a party of pleasure put off from the shore,

consisting of a basket of fuel, two baskets of provisions, a

cross-looking, thin, withered, bony woman, wrapped in a large

shawl, and with boots thick enough to have kept her dry if she had

walked through the sea from Plymouth to Mount Edgecombe. Her

_tête-à-tête_ companion was a short, thick, squat, stumpy, dumpy,

dumpling of a man, in a round jacket, and very tight striped

trousers. "Sure such a pair were never seen." The sour she, stepped

into their small boat first, but as soon as her fat playfellow

seated himself by her, the poor little cockle-shell dipped so with

the increased weight that the tail of the cross-shawl hung deep in

the water. I called after them, and they rectified the accident

without sending me back a "Thank you." I love the manners of my

country-folk, they are so unsophisticated with civility.

At the theater the play was "The Gamester," for my benefit, and the

house was very fine. My father played magnificently; I "not even

excellent well, but only so-so." The actors none of them knew their

parts, abominable persons; and as for Stukely--well! Mdlle.

Dumesnil, in her great, furious scene in Hermione, ended her

imprecations against Orestes by spitting in her handkerchief and

throwing it in his face. The handkerchief spoils the frenzy. I

wonder if it ever occurred to Mrs. Siddons so to wind up her abuse

of Austria in "King John." By the by, it was when asked to give his

opinion of the comparative merits of Clairon and Dumesnil, that

Garrick said, "Mdlle. Clairon was the greatest actress of the age,

but that for Mdlle. Dumesnil he was not aware that he had seen her,

but only Phedre, Rodogund, and Hermione, when she did them." After

the play the audience clamored for my father. He thought that

"l'envie leur en passerait;" and not being in a very good humor, he

declined appearing. The uproar went on, the overture to the farce

was inaudible, and the curtain drew up amid the deafening shouts of

"Kemble! Kemble!"--they would not suffer the poor _farçeurs_ to go

on, even in dumb show. I was at the side scene, and thought it

really a pity not to put an end to all the fuss; so I went to my

father, who was standing at the stage door in the street, and

requested him to stop the disturbance by coming forward at once. He

turned round, and without saying anything but "Tu me le

conseilles," walked straight upon the stage, and addressed the

audience as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen, I had left the theater

when word was brought to me that you had done me the honor to call

for me; as I conclude you have done so merely in conformity to a

custom which is becoming the fashion of calling for certain

performers after the play, I can only say, ladies and gentlemen,

that I enter my protest against such a custom. It is a foreign

fashion, and we are Englishmen; therefore I protest against it. I

will take my leave of you by parodying Mercutio's words: Ladies and

gentlemen, _bon soir_; there's a French salutation for you." So

saying he walked off the stage, leaving the audience rather

surprised; and so was I. I think he is laboring under an incipient

bilious attack.

We had a long discussion to-day as to the possibility of women

being good dramatic writers. I think it so impossible that I

actually believe their physical organization is against it; and,

after all, it is great nonsense saying that intellect is of no sex.

The brain is, of course, of the same sex as the rest of the

creature; besides, the original feminine nature, the whole of our

training and education, our inevitable ignorance of common life and

general human nature, and the various experience of existence, from

which we are debarred with the most sedulous care, is insuperably

against it. Perhaps some of the manly, wicked Queens Semiramis,

Cleopatra, could have written plays; but they lived their tragedies

instead of writing them.

_Saturday, August 6th._--After breakfast our excellent architect

came to fetch us for our expedition to the breakwater. My father

complained of being dreadfully bilious, a bad preparation for the

purpose. I wanted to stay at home with him, or at all events to put

off the party for an hour or two; but he would not hear of either

plan. So as soon as I was ready we set off. We walked first to the

M----s', and then proceeded in a body to the shore, where a

Government boat was waiting for us; and what a cargo we were, to be

sure! My father, certainly no feather; our worthy friend, who must

weigh eighteen stone, if a pound; Mr. and Mrs. W----, thinnish

bodies; but her friend, Dall, and myself decidedly thickish ones;

then the pilot, a gaunt, square Scotchman; and four stout sailors.

The gallant little craft courtesied and courtesied as she received

us, one by one, and at length, when we were all fairly and pretty

closely packed, she put off, and breasted the water bravely, rising

and dancing on the back of the waves like a dolphin. I should have

enjoyed it but for my father's ghastly face of utter misery. The

day was dull, the sky and sea lead-colored, the brown coast by

degrees lost its distinctness, and became covered with a dark haze

that seemed to blend everything into a still, stony, threatening

iron-gray mass. The wind rose, the sea became inky black and

swelled into heavy ridges, which made our little vessel dip deep

and spring high, as she toiled forward; and then down came the

rain--such tremendous rain! Cloaks, shawls, and umbrellas were

speedily produced; but we were two miles from shore, between the

rising sea and the falling clouds, sick, wet, squeezed. Oh the

delights of that party of pleasure! My father looked cadaverous,

Dall was portentously silent, I shut my eyes and tried to sleep,

being in that state when to see, or hear, or speak, or be spoken

to, is equally fatal. At length we reached the foot of the

breakwater, and I sprang out of the boat, too happy to touch the

stable rock. The rain literally fell in sheets from the sky, and

the wind blew half a hurricane; but I was on firm ground, and

taking off my bonnet, which only served the purpose of a

water-spout down my back, I ran, while Mr. M----, holding my arm,

strode along the mighty water-based road, while the angry sea,

turning up black caldrons full of boiling foam, dashed them upon

the barrier man has raised against its fury in magnificent, solemn

wrath. This breakwater is a noble work; the daring of the

conception, its vast size and strength, and the utility of its

purpose, are alike admirable. We do these things and die; we ride

upon the air and water, we guide the lightning and we bridle the

sea, we borrow the swiftness of the wind and the fine subtlety of

the fire; we lord it in this universe of ours for a day, and then

our bodies are devoured by these material slaves we have

controlled, and helplessly mingle their dust with the elements that

have obeyed our will, who reabsorb the garment of our soul when

that has fled--whither?

The rain continuing to fall in torrents, and my father being

wretchedly unwell, we gave up our purpose of visiting Mount

Edgecombe, and returned to Plymouth. The sea was horribly rough,

even inside the breakwater; but I shut my eyes that I might not see

how we heaved, and sang that I might not think how sick I was: and

so we reached shore, and I ran up and down the steep beach while

the rest were disembarking, and the wind soon dried my light muslin

clothes. The other poor things continued drenched till we reached

home. After a good rest, we went to our dinner at Mr. W----'s; my

father was all right again, and our party, that had separated in

such dismal plight, met again very pleasantly in the evening. Mr.

W---- got quite tipsy with talking, an accident not uncommon with

eager, excitable men, and all but overwhelmed me with an argument

about dramatic writing, in which he was wrong from beginning to

end.... We leave Plymouth to-morrow.

_Sunday, August 7th._--Started for Exeter at seven, and slept

nearly the whole way by little bits; between each nap getting

glimpses of the pleasant land that blended for a moment with my

hazy, dream-like thoughts, and then faded away before my closing

eyes. One patch of moorland that I woke to see was lovely--all

purple heather and golden gorse; nature's royal mantle thrown, it

is true, over a barren soil, whose gray, cold, rifted ridges of

rock contrasted beautifully with its splendid clothing. We got to

Exeter at two o'clock, and I was thankful to rest the rest of the

day.

_Monday, August 8th._--I read old Biagio's preface to Dante, which,

from its amazing classicality, is almost as difficult as the

crabbed old Florentine's own writing. Worked at a rather elaborate

sketch tolerably successfully, and was charmingly interrupted by

having our landlady's pretty little child brought in to me. She is

a beautiful baby, but will be troublesome enough by and by.... At

the theater the house was very good; I played tolerably well upon

the whole, but felt so fagged and faint toward the end of the play

that I could hardly stand.

_Tuesday, August 9th._--I sometimes wish I was a stone, a tree,

some senseless, soulless, irresponsible thing; that ebbing sea

rolling before me, its restlessness is obedience to the law of its

nature, not striving against it, neither is it "the miserable life

in it" urging it to ceaseless turmoil and agitation. We dined

early, and then started for Dorchester, which we reached at

half-past ten, after a most fatiguing journey. It was a still, gray

day, an atmosphere and light I like; there is a clearness about it

that is pleasanter sometimes than the dazzle of sunshine. Some of

the country we drove through was charming, particularly the vale of

Honiton.... I have an immense bedroom here; a whole army of ghosts

might lodge in it. I hope, if there are any, they will be civil,

well-behaved, and, above all, invisible.

_Wednesday, August 10th._ ... At ten o'clock we started for

Weymouth, where we arrived in the course of an hour, and found it

basking on the edge of a lovely summer sea, with a dozen varying

zones of color streaking its rippling surface; from the deep, dark

purple heaving against the horizon to the delicate pearl-edged,

glassy golden-green that spreads its transparent sheets over the

sparkling sand of the beach. The bold chalky cliffs of the shore

send back the burning sunlight with blinding brightness, and

stretch away as far as eye can follow in hazy outlines, that

glimmer faintly through the shimmering mist. It is all very

beautiful.... I got ready my things for the theater, ... and when I

got there I was amused and amazed at its absurdly small

proportions; it is a perfect doll's playhouse, and until I saw that

my father really could stand upon the stage, I thought that I

should fill it entirely by myself. How well I remember all the

droll stories my mother used to tell about old King George III. and

Queen Charlotte, who had a passion for Weymouth, and used to come

to the funny little theater here constantly; and how the princesses

used to dress her out in their own finery for some of her parts. [I

long possessed a very perfect coral necklace of magnificent single

beads given to my mother on one of these occasions by the Princess

Amelia.] The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and our masquerade scene

was in the height of the modern fashion, for there was literally

not room to stir; and what between my nurse and my father I

suffered very nearly total eclipse, besides much danger of being

knocked down each time either of them moved. In the balcony,

besides me, there was a cloud, which occasionally interfered with

my hair, and I think must have made my face appear to the audience

like a chin and mouth speaking out of the sky. To be sure, this

inconvenient scenic decoration made rather more appropriate the

lines which Shakespeare wrote (only unfortunately Romeo never

speaks them), "Two of the stars," etc. I acted very well, but was

so dreadfully tired at the end of the play that they were obliged

to carry me up to my dressing-room, where I all but fainted away;

in spite of which, as I got out of the carriage at the door of our

lodging, hearing the dear voice of the sea calling me, I tried to

persuade Dall to come down to it with me; but she, thinking I had

had enough of emotion and exertion, made me go in and eat my supper

and go to bed, which was detestable on her part, and so I told her,

which she didn't mind in the least.

_Thursday, August 11th._--A kind and courteous and most courtly old

Mr. M---- called upon us, to entreat that we would dine with him

during our stay in Weymouth; but it is really impossible, with all

our hard work, to do society duty too, so I begged permission to

decline. After he was gone we walked down to the pier, and took

boat and rowed to Portland. The sky was cloudless, and the sea

without a wave, and through its dark-blue transparent roofing we

saw clearly the bottom, one forest of soft, undulating weeds,

which, catching the sunlight through the crystal-clear water,

looked like golden woods of some enchanted world within its depths;

and it looks just as weird and lovely when folks go drowning down

there, only they don't see it. I sang Mrs. Hemans's "What hid'st

thou in thy treasure-caves and cells?" and sang and sang till,

after rowing for an hour over the hardly heaving, smooth surface,

we reached the foot of the barren stone called Portland. We landed,

and Dall remained on the beach while my father and I toiled up the

steep ascent. The sun's rays fell perpendicularly on our heads, the

short, close grass which clothed the burning, stony soil was as

slippery as glass with the heat, and I have seldom had a harder

piece of exercise than climbing that rock, from the summit of which

one wide expanse of dazzling water and glaring white cliffs, that

scorched one's eyeballs, was all we had for our reward. To be sure,

exertion is a pleasure in itself, and when one's strength serves

one's courage, the greater the exertion the greater the pleasure.

We saw below us a railroad cut in the rock to convey the huge

masses of stone from the famous quarries down to the shore. The

descent looked almost vertical, and we watched two immense loads go

slowly down by means of a huge cylinder and chains, which looked as

if the world might hang upon them in safety. I lay down on the

summit of the rock while my father went off exploring further, and

the perfect stillness of the solitude was like a spell. There was

not a sound of life but the low, drowsy humming of the bees in the

stone-rooted tufts of fragrant thyme. On our return we had to run

down the steep, slippery slopes, striking our feet hard to the

earth to avoid falling; firm walking footing there was none. When

we joined Dall we found, to our utter dismay, that it was five

o'clock; we bundled ourselves _pêle-mêle_ into the boat and bade

the boatman row, row, for dear life; but while we were indulging in

the picturesque he had been indulging in fourpenny, which made him

very talkative, and his tongue went faster than his arms. I longed

for John to make our boat fly over the smooth, burnished sea; the

oars came out of the water like long bars of diamond dropping gold.

We touched shore just at six, swallowed three mouthfuls of dinner,

and off to the theater. The play was "Venice Preserved." I dressed

as quick as lightning, and was ready in time. The house was not

very good, and I am sure I should have wondered if it had been,

when the moon is just rising over the fresh tide that is filling

the basin, and a delicious salt breeze blows along the beach, and

the stars are lighting their lamps in heaven; and surely nobody but

those who cannot help it would be breathing the gas and smoke and

vile atmosphere of the playhouse. I played well, and when we came

home ran down and stood a few minutes by the sea; but the moon had

set, and the dark palpitating water only reflected the long line of

lights from the houses all along the curving shore.

_Friday, August 12th, Portsmouth._-- ... The hotel where we are

staying is quite a fine house, and the Assembly balls used to be

held here, and so there is a fine large "dancing-hall deserted" of

which I avail myself as a music-room, having entire and solitary

possession of it and a piano.... At the theater the house was good,

and I played well....

_Monday, August 15th, Southampton._--After breakfast practised till

eleven, and then went to rehearsal; after which Emily Fitzhugh came

for me, and we drove out to Bannisters. Poor Mrs. Fitzhugh was

quite overcome at seeing my father, whom she has not seen since

Mrs. Siddons's death; we left her with him to talk over Campbell's

application to her for my aunt's letters. He has behaved badly

about the whole business, and I hope Mrs. Fitzhugh will not let him

have them.... When we came in I went and looked at Lawrence's

picture of my aunt in the dining-room (now in the National Gallery;

it was painted for Mrs. Fitzhugh). It is a fine rich piece of

coloring, but there is a want of ease and grace in the figure, and

of life in the countenance, and altogether I thought it looked like

a handsome dark cow in a coral necklace. O ox-eyed Juno! forgive

the thought.... At the theater the house was good; the play was

"Romeo and Juliet," and I played well. While I was changing my

dress for the tomb scene--putting on my grave-clothes, in fact--I

had desired my door to be shut, for I hate that lugubrious

funeral-dirge. How I do hate, and have always hated, that stage

funeral business, which I never see without a cold shudder at its

awful unfitness. I can't conceive how that death's pageant was ever

tolerated in a theater. [I think Mrs. Bellamy, in her "Memoirs,"

mentions that it was first introduced as a piece of new sensation

when she and Garrick were dividing the town with the efforts of

their rival managership.] At present the pretext for it is to give

the necessary time for setting the churchyard scene and for Juliet

to change her dress, which she has no business to do according to

the text, for it expressly says that she shall be buried in all her

finest attire, according to her country's custom. In spite of which

I was always arrayed in long white muslin draperies and veils, with

my head bound up, corpse fashion, and lying, as my aunt had

stretched me, on the black bier in the vault, with all my white

folds drawn like carved stone robes along my figure and round my

feet, with my hands folded and my eyes shut. I have had some bad

nervous minutes, sometimes fancying, "Suppose I should really die

while I am lying here, making believe to be dead!" and imagining

the surprise and dismay of my Romeo when I didn't get up; and at

others fighting hard against heavy drowsiness of over-fatigue, lest

I should be fast asleep, if not dead, when it came to my turn to

speak--though I might have depended upon the furious bursting open

of the doors of the vault for my timely waking. Talking over this

with Mrs. Fitzhugh one day she told me a comical incident of the

stage life of her friend, the fascinating Miss Farren. The devotion

of the Earl of Derby to her, which preceded for a long time the

death of Lady Derby, from whom he was separated, and his marriage

to Miss Farren, made him a frequent visitor behind the scenes on

the nights of her performance. One evening, in the famous scene in

Joseph Surface's library in "The School for Scandal," when Lady

Teazle is imprisoned behind the screen, Miss Farren, fatigued with

standing, and chilled with the dreadful draughts of the stage, had

sent for an armchair and her furs, and when this critical moment

arrived, and the screen was overturned, she was revealed, in her

sable muff and tippet, entirely absorbed in an eager conversation

with Lord Derby, who was leaning over the back of her chair.

_Tuesday, 16th, Southampton._--After breakfast walked down to the

city wall, which has remnants of great antiquity they say, as old

as the Danes, one bit being still heroically called "Canute's

Castle."

_Wednesday, August 17th._--Went to the theater, and rehearsed "The

Stranger." On my return found Emily waiting for me, and drove with

her to Bannisters.... In the evening, at the theater, the house was

very good, but I played only so-so, and not at all excellent

well....

_Thursday, August 18th._--While I was practising I came across that

pretty piece of ballad pathos, "The Banks of Allan Water," and sang

myself into sobbing. Luckily I was interrupted by Dall and my

father, who came in with a little girl, poor unfortunate! whose

father had brought her to show how well she deserved an engagement

at Covent Garden. She sat down to the piano at his desire, and

panted through the great cavatina in the "Gazza Ladra." Poor little

thing! I never heard or saw anything that so thoroughly impressed

me with the brutal ignorance of our people; for there is scarcely

an Englishman of that man's condition, situated as he is, who would

not have done the same thing. A child of barely ten years old made

to sing her lungs away for four hours every day, when it is not

possible yet to know what the character and qualities of her voice

will be, or even if she will have any voice at all. Wasting her

health and strength in attempting "The Soldier Tired" and "Di

piacer," it really was pitiful. We gave her plenty of kind words

and compliments, and sundry pieces of advice to him, which he will

not take, and in a few months no doubt we shall hear of little Miss

H---- singing away as a prodigy, and in a few years the voice,

health, and strength will all be gone, and probably the poor little

life itself have been worn out of its fragile case. Stupid

barbarian! After rehearsal drove to Bannisters.... In the evening,

at the theater, the play was "The Provoked Husband." The house was

very full; I played fairly well. I was rather tired, and Lady

Townley's bones ached, for I had been taking a rowing lesson from

Emily, and supplied my want of skill, tyro fashion, with a deal of

unnecessary effort.

_Friday, August 19th._-- ... It sometimes occurs to me that our

spirits, when dwelling with the utmost intensity of longing upon

those who are distant from us, must create in them some perception,

some consciousness of our spiritual presence, so that not by the

absent whom I love thinking of me, but by my thinking of them, they

must receive some intimation of the vividness with which my soul

sees and feels them. It seems to me as if my earnest desire and

thought must not bring those they dwell on to me, but render me in

some way perceptible, if not absolutely visible, to them.

"Though thou see me not pass by,

Thou shalt feel me with thine eye."

I fancy I must create my own image to their senses by the clinging

passion with which my thoughts dwell on them. And yet it would be

rather fearful if one were thus subject, not only to the disordered

action of one's own imagination, but to the ungoverned imaginations

of others; and so, upon the whole, I don't believe people would be

allowed to pester other people with their presence only by dint of

thinking hard enough and long enough about them. It would be

intolerable, and yet I have sometimes fancied I was thinking myself

visible to some one.... In the evening, at the theater, the house

was very good; the play was "The Gamester," and I played very ill.

I felt fagged to death; my work tires me, and I am growing old.

_Saturday, 20th._--At Bannisters all the morning. Emily gave me two

charming Italian songlets, and then they drove us down to

Southampton. At the theater this evening the house was all but

empty, owing to some stupid blunder in the advertisement. The play

was "The School for Scandal," and I played well.... To-morrow I

shall be at home once more in smoky London.

SOUTHAMPTON, August 19, 1831.

MY DEAREST H----,

I do not like to defer answering you any longer, though I am not

very fit to write, for I am half blind with crying, and have a

torturing side-ache, the results of bodily fatigue and nervous

anxiety; but if I do not write to you to-night I know not when I

shall be able to do so, for I shall have to rehearse every morning

and to act every night, and I expect the intermediate hours will be

spent on the road to and from Bannisters, the Fitzhughs' place near

here. I have been traveling ever since half-past eight to-day, and,

have hardly been three hours out of the coach which brought us from

Weymouth, where we have been acting for the last week. Your letter

followed me from Plymouth, and right glad I was to get it.... I do

not know what I can write you of if not myself, and I dare say,

after all, my thoughts are more amusing to you, or rather, perhaps,

more useful, in your processes of observing and studying human

nature in general, through my individual case, than if I wrote you

word what plays we had been acting, etc., etc.... To meet pain, no

matter how severe, the mind girds up its loins, and finds a sort of

strength of resistance in its endurance, which is a species of

activity. To endure helplessly prolonged suspense is another matter

quite, and a far heavier demand upon all patient power than is in

one....

So you have seen the railroad; I am so glad you have seen that

magnificent invention. I wish I had been on it with you. I wish you

had seen Stephenson; you would have delighted in him, I am sure.

The hope of meeting him again is one of the greatest pleasures

Liverpool holds out to me.... With regard to what are called "fine

people," and liking their society better than that of "not fine

people," I suppose a good many tolerable reasons might be adduced

by persons who have that preference. They do not often say very

wise or very witty things, I dare say; but neither do they tread on

one's feet or poke their elbows into one's side (figuratively

speaking) in their conversation, or commit the numerous solecisms

of manner of less well-bred people. For myself, my social position

does not entitle me to mix with the superior class of human beings

generally designated as "fine people." My father's indolence

renders their society an irksome exertion to him, and my mother's

pride always induces her to hang back rather than to make advances

to anybody. We are none of us, therefore, inclined to be very keen

tuft-hunters. But for these very reasons, if "fine people" seek me,

it is a decided compliment, by which my vanity is flattered. A

person with less of that quality might be quite indifferent to

their notice, but I think their society, as far as I have had any

opportunity of observing it, has certain positive merits, which

attract me irrespectively of the gratification of my vanity. Genius

and pre-eminent power of intellect, of course, belong to no class,

and one would naturally prefer the society of any individual who

possessed these to that of the King of England (who, by the by, is

not, I believe, particularly brilliant). I would rather pass a day

with Stephenson than with Lord Alvanley, though the one is a

coal-digger by birth, who occasionally murders the king's English,

and the other is the keenest wit and one of the finest gentlemen

about town. But Stephenson's attributes of genius, industry, mental

power, and perseverance are his individually, while Lord Alvanley's

gifts and graces (his wit, indeed, excepted) are, in good measure,

those of his whole social set. Moreover, in the common superficial

intercourse of society, the minds and morals of those you meet are

really not what you come in contact with half the time, while from

their manners there is, of course, no escape; and therefore those

persons may well be preferred as temporary associates whose manners

are most refined, easy, and unconstrained, as I think those of

so-called "fine people" are. Originality and power of intellect

belong to no class, but with information, cultivation, and the

mental advantages derived from education, "fine people" are perhaps

rather better endowed, as a class, than others. Their lavish means

for obtaining instruction, and their facilities for traveling, if

they are but moderately endowed by nature and moderately inclined

to profit by them, certainly enable them to see, hear, and know

more of the surface of things than others. This is, no doubt, a

merely superficial superiority; but I suppose that there are not

many people, and certainly no class of people, high, low, or of any

degree, who go much below surfaces.... If you knew how, long after

I have passed it, the color of a tuft of heather, or the smell of a

branch of honeysuckle by the roadside, haunts my imagination, and

how many suggestions of beauty and sensations of pleasure flow from

this small spring of memory, even after the lapse of weeks and

months, you would understand what I am going to say, which perhaps

may appear rather absurd without such a knowledge of my

impressions. I think I like fine places better than "fine people;"

but then one accepts, as it were, the latter for the former, and

the effect of the one, to a certain degree, affects one's

impressions of the other. A great ball at Devonshire House, for

instance, with its splendor, its brilliancy, its beauty, and

magnificence of all sorts, remains in one's mind with the

enchantment of a live chapter of the "Arabian Nights;" and I think

one's imagination is still more impressed with the fine residences

of "fine people" in the country, where historical and poetical

associations combine with all the refinements of luxurious

civilization and all the most exquisitely cultivated beauties of

nature to produce an effect which, to a certain degree, frames

their possessors to great advantage, and invests them with a charm

which is really not theirs; and if they are only tolerably in

harmony with the places where they live, they appear charming too.

I believe the pleasure and delight I take in the music, the lights,

the wreaths, and mirrors of a splendid ball-room, and the love I

have for the smooth lawns, bright waters, and lordly oaks of a fine

domain, would disgracefully influence my impressions of the people

I met amongst them. Still, I humbly trust I do not like any of my

friends, fine or coarse, only for their belongings, though my

intercourse with the first gratifies my love of luxury and excites

what my Edinburgh friends call my ideality. I don't think, however.

I ever could like anybody, of any kind whatever, that I could not

heartily respect, let their intellectual gifts, elegance, or

refinement of manners be what they might. Good-by, dearest H----.

Ever your affectionate

F. A. K.

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, October 3, 1831.

MY DEAREST H----,

I received your last letter on Thursday morning, and as I read it

exclaimed, "We shall be able to go to her!" and passed it to Dall,

who seemed to think there was no reason why we should not, when my

father said he was afraid it could not be managed, as the theater,

upon second arrangements, would require me before this month was

over. It seems to me that, instead of one disappointment, I have

had twenty about coming to you, dear H----, and the last has fairly

broken the poor camel's back. My father promised to see what could

be done for me, and to get me spared as long as possible; but the

final arrangement is, that on the 24th I shall have to act Queen

Katharine, for which, certainly, a week of daily rehearsals will be

barely sufficient preparation. This, you see, will leave me hardly

time enough to stay at Ardgillan to warrant the fatigue and expense

of the journey. I am afraid it would be neither reasonable nor

right to spend nearly a week in traveling and the money it must

cost, to pass a fortnight with you.... Give my love to your sister,

and tell her how willingly I would have accepted her hospitality

had circumstances permitted it; but "circumstances," of which we

are so apt to complain, may, perhaps, at some future time, allow me

to be once more her guest. The course of events is, after all, far

more impartial than, in moments of disappointment, we are apt to

admit, and quite as often procures us unexpected and unthought-of

pleasures as defeats those we had proposed for ourselves. Pazienza!

Dear Dall, who, I see, has produced her invariable impression upon

your mind, bids me thank you for the kind things you say of her, at

the same time that she says, "though they are undeserved, she is

thankful for the affection that dictates them." She is excellent.

You bid me tell you of my father, and how his health and spirits

continue to struggle against his exertions and anxieties: tolerably

well, thank God! I sometimes think they have the properties of that

palm tree which is said to grow under the pressure of immense

weights. He looks very well, and, except the annoyances of his

position in the theater, has rather less cause for depression than

for some time past. Though we have not yet obtained our "decree,"

we understand that the Lord Chancellor says openly that we shall

get it, so that uncertainty of the issue no longer aggravates the

wearisome delays of this unlucky appeal.... I need not tell you

what my feeling about acting Queen Katharine is; you, who know how

conscious I am of my own deficiencies for such an undertaking, will

easily conceive my distress at having such a task assigned me.

Dall, who entirely agrees with me about it, wishes me to

remonstrate upon the subject, but that I will not do. I am in that

theater to earn my living by serving its interests, and if I was

desired to act Harlequin, for those two purposes, should feel bound

to do so. But I cannot help thinking the management short-sighted.

I think their real interest, as far as I am concerned, which they

overlook for some immediate tangible advantage, is not to destroy

my popularity by putting me into parts which I must play ill, and

not to take from my future career characters which require physical

as well as mental maturity, and which would be my natural resources

when I no longer become Juliet and her youthful sisters of the

drama. But of course they know their own affairs, and I am not the

manager of the theater. Those who have its direction, I suppose,

make the best use they can of their instruments.

[My performance of Queen Katharine was not condemned as an absolute

failure only because the public in general didn't care about it, and the

friends and well-wishers of the theater were determined not to consider

it one. But as I myself remember it, it deserved to be called nothing

else; it was a school-girl's performance, tame, feeble, and ineffective,

entirely wanting in the weight and dignity indispensable for the part,

and must sorely have tried the patience and forbearance of such of my

spectators as were fortunate and unfortunate enough to remember my aunt;

one of whom, her enthusiastic admirer, and my excellent friend, Mr.

Harness, said that seeing me in that dress was like looking at Mrs.

Siddons through the diminishing end of an opera-glass: I should think my

acting of the part must have borne much the same proportion to hers. I

was dressed for the trial scene in imitation of the famous picture by

Harlow, and of course must have recalled, in the most provoking and

absurd manner, the great actress whom I resembled so little and so much.

In truth, I could hardly sustain the weight of velvet and ermine in

which I was robed, and to which my small girlish figure was as little

adapted as my dramatic powers were to the matronly dignity of the

character. I cannot but think that if I might have dressed the part as

Queen Katharine really dressed herself, and been allowed to look as like

as I could to the little dark, hard-favored woman Holbein painted, it

would have been better than to challenge such a physical as well as

dramatic comparison by the imitation of my aunt's costume in the part.

Englishmen of her day will never believe that Katharine of Arragon could

have looked otherwise than Mrs. Siddons did in Shakespeare's play of

"Henry VIII.;" but nothing could in truth be more unlike the historical

woman than the tall, large, bare-armed, white-necked, Juno-eyed,

ermine-robed ideal of queenship of the English stage. That quintessence

of religious, conscientious bigotry and royal Spanish pride is given,

both in the portraits of contemporary painters and in Shakespeare's

delineation of her; the splendid magnificence of my aunt's person and

dress, as delineated in Harlow's picture, has no affinity whatever to

the real woman's figure, or costume, or character.]

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, October 12, 1831.

DEAREST H----,

I received my book and your letter very safely about a week ago,

and would have written to say so sooner, but have been much

occupied with one thing and another that has prevented me. So you

are beaten, _vieilles perukes_ that you are! not by one or two, but

by forty-one; and your bones are all the likelier to ache, and I am

not at all sorry. Think of Brougham going down on his marrow-bones

(there can be none in them, though), and adjuring the Lords, con

quella voce! e quel viso! to pass the Bill, like good boys, and

remember the schoolmaster, who surely, when he is at home, cannot

be said to be abroad. A good _coup de théâtre_ is not an easy

thing, and requires a good deal of tact and skill. I cannot help

thinking there must have been something grotesque in this

performance of Brougham's, as when Liston turned tragedian and

recited Collins's "Ode to the Passions" in a green coat and top

boots. The excitement, however, was tremendous; the House thronged

to suffocation; as many people crammed into impossible space as the

angels in the famous Needle-point controversy. Lady Glengall

declares that she sat for four hours on an iron bar. I think this

universal political effervescence has got into my head. And what

will you do now? You cannot create forty-one Peers; the whole Book

of Genesis affords no precedent. I suppose Parliament will be

prorogued, ministers will go out, a "cloth of gold" and "cloth of

frieze" Government, with Brougham and Wellington brought together

into it, will be cobbled, and a new Bill, which will set the teeth

of the Lords so badly on edge, will be concocted, which the people

will accept rather than nothing, if they are taken in the right

way. That, I suppose, is what you Whigs will do; for an adverse

majority of forty-one must be turned somehow or other, as it can

hardly be gone straight at by folks who mean to keep on the box, or

hold the reins, or carry the coach to the end of the journey....

I do not know at all how I should like to live in a palace; I am

furiously fond of magnificence and splendor, and not unreasonably,

seeing that I was born in a palace, with a sapphire ceiling hung

with golden lamps, and velvet floors all embroidered with

sweet-smelling, lovely-colored flowers, and walls of veined marble

and precious, sparkling stones. I almost doubt if any mere royal

palace would be good enough for me, or answer my turn. I should

like all the people in the world to be as beautiful as angels, and

go about crowned with glory and clothed with light (dear me, how

very different they are!); but failing all that I should like in

the way of enormously beautiful things, I pick up and treasure like

a baby all the little broken bits of splendor and sumptuousness,

and thank Heaven that their number and gradations are infinite,

from the rainbow that the sun spans the heavens with, to the fine,

small jewel drawn from the bowels of the earth to glitter on a

lady's neck....

My dearest H----, I wish I were with you with all my heart, but, as

if to diminish my regret by putting the thing still further beyond

the region of possibility, I act next Monday the 17th, instead of

the 24th. (They say "a miss is as good as a mile;" why does it

always seem so much worse, then?) I begin with Belvidera, and have

already begun my cares and woes and tribulations about lilac satins

and silver tissues, etc., etc. Young is engaged with us, and plays

Pierre, and my father Giaffir, which will be very dreadful for me;

I do not know how I shall be able to bear all his wretchedness as

well as my own. To be a good politician one ought to have, as it

were, only one eye for truth; I do not at all mean to be

single-eyed in the good sense of the word, but to be incapable of

seeing more than one side of every question: one sees a part so

much more strongly when one does not see the whole of a matter, and

though a statesman may need a hundred eyes, I maintain that a party

politician is the better for having only one. Restricted vision is

good for work, too; people who see far and wide can seldom be very

hopeful, I should think, and hope is the very essence of working

courage. The matter in hand should always, if possible, be the

great matter to those who have to carry it through, and though

broad brains may be the best for conceiving, narrow ones are,

perhaps, the best for working with.

Thank you for your quotation from Sir Humphry Davy; it did me good,

and even made me better for five minutes; and your Irish letter,

which interested me extremely. "Walking the world." What a sad and

touching expression; and how well it describes a broken and

desponding spirit! And yet what else are we all doing, in soul if

not in body? Is not that solitary, wandering feeling the very

essence of our existence here?

You ask if the interests of the theater and mine are not identical?

No, I think not. The management seems to me like our Governments

for some time past, to be actuated by mere considerations of

temporary expediency; that which serves a momentary purpose is all

they consider. But it stands to reason that if they make me play

parts in which I must fail, my London popularity must decrease, and

with it my provincial profits; and that, of course, is a serious

thing. In short, dear H----, where success means bread and butter,

failure means dry bread, or none; and I hate the last, I believe,

less than the first, though, as I never tried starvation, perhaps

dry bread is nicer....

The excitement about the Bill is rising instead of subsiding. The

shops are all shut, and the people meeting in every direction; the

windows of Apsley House have been smashed, and Wellington's statue

(the Achilles in the Park) pelted and threatened to be pulled down.

They say that Nottingham and Belvoir Castles are burnt down. All

this is bad, and bodes, I fear, worse. Good-by, dear.

Your affectionate

F. A. K.

_Thursday, August 22d._--I read some of "Cibber's Lives." I should

like to read a well-written French life of Alin Chartier, Louis

XI.'s ugly secretary, whose mouth Queen Margaret kissed while he

was sleeping, "parce qu'elle avait dit de si belles choses." In the

life, or rather the death, of Sackville, he notes his sitting up

till eleven at night as a manifest waste of human existence. It is

near two in the morning as I am now writing, but people's notions

change as to time as well as other things. We don't dine at twelve

any more. Macdonald, the sculptor, dined with us; I like him for

dear Scotland's sake, and the blessed time I passed there. After

the gentlemen came up into the drawing-room, Nourrit, the great

French tenor, sang delightfully for us; Adelaide sang and played,

and Nourrit made her try a charming duet from the "Dame Blanche,"

which I accompanied, and was frightened to death for self and

sister. Macdonald wants to make a statue of me in "The Grecian

Daughter," at the moment of veiling the face: he is right. An

interval of some time elapsed, in which I did not keep my journal

regularly. I had a long visit from my friend Miss S----. The

lawsuit about the theater continued, the affairs of the concern

becoming more and more involved in difficulties every day; and my

father, worried almost to death with anxiety, vexation, and hard

work, had a serious illness.

_Saturday, November 25th._--My father was not quite so well this

morning. I took Dr. Wilson home in the carriage; he talked a great

deal about this horrible burking business (a series of atrocious

murders committed by two wretches of the names of Burk and Bishop,

for the purpose of obtaining, for the corpses of their victims, the

price paid by the Edinburgh surgeons for subjects for dissection;

the mode of death inflicted by these men came to be designated by

the name of the more hardened murderer as burking).

I called at Fozzard's for the boys, and set them down at Angelo's

(a famous school for fencing, boxing, and single-stick, where my

brothers took lessons in those polite exercises). In the evening,

at the theater, dear Charles Young played "The Stranger" for the

last time; the house was very full, and I played very ill. After

the play Young was enthusiastically called for. I have finished

"Tennant's Tour in Greece," which I rather liked. I have been

reading "Bonaparte's Letters to Joséphine;" the vague and doubting

spirit which once or twice throws its wavering shadow across his

thoughts, startles one in contrast with the habitual tone of the

mind, which assuredly _ne doubtait de rien_, especially of what his

own power of will could accomplish. The affection he expresses for

his wife is sometimes almost poetical from its intensity, in spite

of the grossness of his language. He seems to have believed in

nothing but volition, and that volition is in itself, perhaps, a

mere form of faith. It's a dangerous worship, for the devil in that

shape does obey so long and so well before he claims his due; so

much is achieved precisely by that belief in what can be achieved;

the last round of the ladder, somehow or other, however, always

seems to break down at last, and then I doubt if the people who

fall from it can all declare, as Holcroft did when he fell from his

horse, and, as his surgeon assured him, broke his ribs, that he was

positive he had not, because in falling he had exerted the energy

of will, and could not therefore have broken his bones.

_Sunday, 29th._--The great good fortune of a good sermon at church.

After church Mrs. Jameson, John Mason, and Mr. Loudham called; the

latter said he had good news about that fatal theater of ours, for

that Mr. Harris seemed to be inclined to come into some

accommodation, and so perhaps this cancer of a Chancery suit may

stop eating our lives away. Oh dear! I am afraid this is too good

news to be true. I went to my father's room and sat by him for a

long time, and talked about the horse I had bought for him; and

there he lies in his bed, and God knows when he will even be able

to walk again.

_Monday, 30th._--I went to rehearsal. It seems that the managers

and proprietors (of course not my poor father) had summoned a

meeting of all the actors to try and induce them to accept for the

present a reduced rate of salary till the theater can be in some

measure relieved of its most pressing difficulties. I knew nothing

of this, and, finding them all very solemnly assembled in the

greenroom, asked them cheerfully why they were all there, which

must have struck them strangely enough. I dare say they do not know

how little I know, or wish to know, about this disastrous concern.

On my return home, I heard that Dr. Watson had seen my father, and

requested that Dr. Wilson might be sent for. They fear inflammation

of the lungs; he has gone to the very limit of his tether, for had

he continued fagging a night or two longer the effects might have

been fatal. Poor, poor father!...

Lady Francis and Mrs. Sullivan called in the afternoon; I was

feeling miserable, and exhausted with my rehearsal. In the evening

I helped my mother to move all the furniture, which I think is

nothing in the world but a restless indication of her anxiety about

my father; it is the fourth time since she same back from the

country.

_Tuesday, December 1st._-- ... It seems that in the arrangement,

whatever it may be, which has taken place between the actors and

the management, Mr. Harley and Mr. Egerton are the only ones who

have declined the proposed accommodation. Young has behaved like an

angel, offering to play for nothing till Christmas; how kind and

liberal he is! Mr. Abbott, Mr. Duraset, Mr. Ward, and all the

others, have been as considerate and generous as possible. But the

thing is doomed, and will go to the ground, in spite of every

effort that can be made to stave the ruin off.

I was greeted this morning, when I came down to breakfast, with a

question that surprised and amused we very much. "Pray, Fanny,"

said John, "did you ever thank Mr. Bacon (one of the editors of the

_Times_) for his book (the "Life of Francis I." which Mr. Bacon had

been kind enough to send me); for here is a very abusive critique

in to-day's _Times_ of the play last night." "Well," thought I,

"that's a comical _sequitur_, and a fine estimate of criticism;"

but the conclusion was droller still. I had not forgotten to thank

the friendly author for his book, nor had he written the article in

question; but it seems a young gentleman, much in love with Miss

Phillips (a promising and very handsome young actress at Drury

Lane), had found pulling me to pieces the easiest way of showing

his admiration for her. That is not a very exalted style of

criticism either, but it is just as well that one should

occasionally know what the praise and blame one receives may be

worth. It seems that when it was determined that Miss Sheriff

should come out, Mr. Welsh, whose pupil she was, made a great

feast, and invited two-and-twenty gentlemen connected with the

press to a private hearing of her.... In the evening, we all went

to hear her, being every way much interested in her success. John

and Henry went into the front of the house; my mother, Dr. Moore

(the Rev. Dr. Moore, a great friend of my father and mother's), and

myself, went up to our own box. The house was crammed, the pit one

black, crowded mass. Poor child! I turned as cold as ice as the

symphony of "Fair Aurora" (the opera was "Artaxerxes") began, and

she came forward with Mr. Wilson. The bravos, the clapping, the

noise, the great sound of popular excitement overpowering in all

its manifestations; and the contrast between the sense of power

conveyed by the acclamations of a great concourse of people, and

the weakness of the individual object of that demonstration, gave

me the strangest sensation when I remembered my own experience,

which I had not seen. When I saw the thousands of eyes of that

crowded pitful of men, and heard their stormy acclamations, and

then looked at the fragile, helpless, pretty young creature

standing before them trembling with terror, and all woman's fear

and shame in such an unnatural position, I more than ever marveled

how I, or any woman, could ever have ventured on so terrible a

trial, or survived the venture. It seemed to me as if the mere gaze

of all that multitude must melt the slight figure away like a

wreath of vapor in the sun, or shrivel it up like a scrap of silver

paper before a blazing fire. It made poor Dr. Moore and myself both

cry, but there was a deal more sympathy in my tears than in his;

for I had known the dizzy terror of that moment, had felt the

ground slide from under my feet and the whole air become a sea of

fiery rings before my swimming eyes. Besides my fellow-feeling for

her actual agony, I had one for what her after trials may be, and I

hoped for her that she might be able to see the truth of all things

in the midst of all things false; and then, if she takes pleasure

in her gilded toys, she will not have too bitter a heartache when

they are broken. She sang well, and soon recovered from her fright,

which, even from the first, did not affect her voice. She is rather

pretty, but does not walk or move gracefully; she was well dressed,

all but her hair, which was dressed in the present frizzy French

fashion, and looked ridiculous for Mandane. Her singing was good,

of a good style; I do not mean only that she sang "Fly, soft ideas,

fly," and "Monster away!" and "The Soldier Tired," brilliantly,

because they do not test the best singing, but the _soave

sostenuto_ of her "If e'er the cruel tyrant love," and "Let not

rage thy bosom firing," were specimens of the best and most

difficult school of singing. They were flowing, smooth, soft, and

sweet, without trick or device of mere florid ornamentation, and

were as intrinsically good in her execution as they are admirable

in that peculiar style of composition. Her shake is not genuine,

and some of her rapid descending scales want finish and accuracy;

her use of her arms and her gestures were very pretty and graceful,

and we were all greatly pleased with her. Braham was magnificently

great, in spite of his inches. What a noble artist he is! and with

what wonderful vigor he acts through his singing! being no actor at

all the moment he stops singing. Wilson sang out of tune; the music

is not in his voice, and he was frightened. Miss Cawse was rather a

dumpy Artaxerxes, which is an impertinent remark for me to make;

she has a beautiful contralto voice. The opera went off

brilliantly, and after it the audience called for "God Save the

King," which was performed. Paganini was in the box opposite to us;

what a cadaverous-looking creature he is! Came home and saw my

father, and gave him the report of Miss Sheriff's success....

_Friday, December 2d._-- ... I went to see Cecilia Siddons; I

thought her looking aged and thin, and Mrs. Wilkinson (Mrs.

Siddons's companion for many years previous to her death) looking

sad and ill too. They have both lost the one idea of their whole

lives.

_Saturday, 3d._-- ... It seems the doctors recommend my father's

going to Brighton. I was urging him to do so this morning.... After

tea I looked on the map for Rhodez, the scene of that horrible

Fualdes tragedy (a murder the commission of which involved some

singular and terribly dramatic incidents). I read Daru's "History

of Venice" till bedtime.

_Sunday, December 4th._-- ... My father, for the first time this

fortnight, was able to dine with us. After dinner I read the whole

trial of Bishop and Williams, and their confession. My mother is

reading aloud to us Lord Edward Fitzgerald's Life.

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, December 4, 1831.

DEAR H----,

It is at the sensible hour of a quarter-past twelve at night that I

begin this immense sheet of paper, and with the sensible purpose of

filling it before I go to bed.... What an unsatisfactory invention

letter-writing is, to be sure; and yet there is none better for the

purpose. When you asked me so affectionately in your letter whether

I was going to bed, I concluded naturally that you were writing to

me instead of doing so yourself; but I received the letter at

half-past nine in the morning, when I was getting ready to ride.

This sort of epistolary cross-questions and crooked answers is

sometimes droll, but oftener sad: we weep with those who did weep,

when they have dried their eyes; and rejoice with those who did

rejoice, but the corners of whose mouths are already drawn down for

crying, while we fancy we are smiling sympathetically with them....

You ask me how the world goes with me, and I can only say round, as

I suppose it does with everybody. All goes on precisely as usual

with me; my life is exceedingly uniform, and it is seldom that

anything occurs to disturb its monotonous routine. My dear father,

thank Heaven, is better, but still very weak, and I fear it will be

yet some time before he recovers his strength. He came down to

dinner to-day for the first time in this fortnight; indeed, it is

only since the day before yesterday that he has left his bed; but I

trust that this attack will serve him for a long time, and that

with rest and quiet he will regain his strength.

I am really glad my aunt Kemble is better, though I remember having

some not unpleasant ideas as to how, if she were not, you would go

to Leamington to nurse her, and so come on and stay with us in

London; but I cannot wish it at the price of her prolonged

indisposition, poor woman!... I am sorry to say my father is

pronounced worse to-day; he has a bad side-ache, and they are

applying mustard poultices to overcome it. There is some

apprehension of a return of fever. This is a real and terrible

anxiety, dear H----. The theater, too, is going on very ill, and he

is unable to give it any assistance; and for the same reason I can

do nothing for it, for all my plays require him, except Isabella

and Fazio, and these are worn threadbare. It is all very gloomy;

but, however, time doth not stand still, and will some day come to

the end of the journey with us.... You say Undine reminds you of

me.... The feeling of an existence more closely allied to the

elements of the material universe than even we acknowledge our

dust-formed bodies to be, possesses me sometimes almost like a

little bit of magnus; bright colors, fleeting lights and shadows,

flowers, and above all water, the pure, sparkling, harmonious,

powerful element, excite in me a feeling of intimate fellowship, of

love, almost greater than any human companionship does. Perhaps,

after all, I am only an animated morsel of my palace, this

wonderful, beautiful world. Do you not believe in numberless,

invisible existences, filling up the vast intermediate distance

between God and ourselves, in the lonely and lovely haunts of

nature and her more awful and gloomy recesses? It seems as if one

must be surrounded by them; I do not mean to the point of merely

suggesting the vague "suppose?" _that_, I should think, must visit

every mind; but rather like a consciousness, a conviction,

amounting almost to certainty, only short of seeing and hearing.

How well I remember in that cedar hall at Oatlands, the sort of

invisible presence I used to feel pervading the place. It was a

large circle of huge cedar trees in a remote part of the grounds;

the paths that led to it were wild and tangled; the fairest flower,

the foxglove, grew in tall clumps among the foliage of the thickets

and shrubberies that divided the lawn into undulating glades of

turf all round it; a sheet of water in which there was a rapid

current--I am not sure that it was not the river--ran close by, and

the whole place used to affect my imagination in the weirdest way,

as the habitation of invisible presences of some strange

supernatural order. As the evening came on, I used frequently to go

there by myself, leaving our gentlemen at table, and my mother and

Lady Francis in the drawing-room. How I flew along by the syringa

bushes, brushing their white fragrant blossoms down in showers as I

ran, till I came to that dark cedar hall, with its circle of giant

trees, whose wide-sweeping branches spread, at it were, a halo of

darkness all round it! Through the space at the top, like the open

dome of some great circular temple, such as the Pantheon of Rome,

the violet-colored sky and its starry worlds looked down. Sometimes

the pure radiant moon and one fair attendant star would seem to

pause above me in the dark framework of the great tree-tops. That

place seemed peopled with spirits to me; and while I was there I

had the intensest delight in the sort of all but conscious

certainty that it was so. Curiously enough, I never remember

feeling the slightest nervousness while I was there, but rather an

immense excitement in the idea of such invisible companionship; but

as soon as I had emerged from the magic circle of the huge black

cedar trees, all my fair visions vanished, and, as though under a

spell, I felt perfectly possessed with terror, and rushed home

again like the wind, fancying I heard following footsteps all the

way I went. The moon seemed to swing to and fro in the sky, and

every twisted tree and fantastic shadow that lay in my path made me

start aside like a shying horse. I could have fancied they made

grimaces and gestures at me, like the rocks and roots in Retsch's

etchings of the Brocken; and I used to reach the house with cheeks

flaming with nervous excitement, and my heart thumping a great deal

more with fear than with my wild run home; and then I walked with

the utmost external composure of demure propriety into the

drawing-room, as who should say, "Thy servant went no whither," to

any inquiry that might be made as to my absence....

It seems to me that you would be a poet but for your analyzing,

dissecting, inquiring, and doubting mental tendency. Your truth is

not a matter of intuition, but of demonstration; and when you get

beyond demonstrability, then nothing remains to you but doubt....

God bless you, dear!

I am yours ever affectionately,

F. A. K.

_Monday, December 5th._-- ... My father is worse again to-day.

Ohimé! His state is most precarious, and this relapse very

alarming. It is dreadful to see him drag himself about, and hear

his feeble voice. Oh, my dear, dear Father! Heaven preserve you to

us!

_Tuesday, 6th._--My father is much worse. How terrible this is!...

Dall met me on the stairs this morning, and gave me a miserable

account of him; he had just been bled, and that had somewhat

relieved him. I went and sat with him while my mother drove out in

the carriage. I stayed a long while with him, and he seemed a

little better.... My father's two doctors have returned again, and

paid him two visits daily. I read Daru all the evening.

_Wednesday, 7th._-- ... So I am to play Belvidera on Monday, and

Bianca on Wednesday. That will be hard work; Bianca is terrible.

_Thursday, 8th._-- ... My dear father is beginning to gain strength

once more, thank Heaven! I received a letter from Lady Francis

about the play (a translation of the French piece of "Henri Trois,"

by Lord Francis, the production of which at Covent Garden is being

postponed in consequence of my father's illness). Poor people! I am

sorry for their disappointment.... I devised and tried on a new

dress for Bianca; it will be very splendid, but I am afraid I shall

look like a metal woman, a golden image. [The dress in question was

entirely made of gold tissue; and one evening a man in the pit

exclaimed to a friend of mine sitting by him, "Oh! doesn't she look

like a splendid gold pheasant?" the possibility of which comparison

had not occurred to me, not being a sportsman.]

_Friday, 9th._-- ... I went with my mother to the theater to hear

"Fra Diavolo," with which, and Miss Sheriff's singing in it, we

were delighted.

_Saturday, 10th._-- ... We had a talk about the fashion of southern

countries of serenading, which I am very glad is not an English

fashion. Music, as long as I am awake, is a pure and perfect

delight to me, but to be wakened out of my sleep by music is to

wake in a spasm of nervous terror, shaking from head to foot, and

sick at my stomach, with indescribable fear and dismay; certainly

no less agreeable effect could possibly be contemplated by the

gallantry of a serenading admirer, so I am glad our admirers do not

serenade us English girls. This picturesque practice prevails all

through the United States, where the dry brilliancy of the climate

and skies is favorable to the paying and receiving this melodious

homage, and where musical bands, sometimes numbering fifty, are

marshaled by personal or political admirers, under the balconies of

reigning beauties or would-be-reigning public men. My total

ignorance of this prevailing practice in the United States led to a

very prosaic demonstration of gratitude on my part toward my first

serenaders; for I opened my window and rewarded them with a dollar,

which one of the recipients informed me he should always keep, to

my no small confusion, not knowing the nature of my gratuitous

indulgence, and that, like my Lady Greensleeves in the old English

ballad, "My music still to play and sing" would be, while I

remained in America, a disinterested demonstration of the devotion

of my friends.... My poor mother is in the deepest distress about

my father. Inflammation of the lungs is dreaded, and he is spitting

blood. I felt as if I were turning to stone as I heard it. I came

up to my own room and cried most bitterly for a long time. In the

afternoon I was allowed to go in and see my father; but I was so

overcome that, as I stooped to kiss his hand, I was almost

suffocated with suppressed sobs. I did control myself, however,

sufficiently to be able to sit by him for a while with tolerable

composure. Cecilia and Mrs. Wilkinson called, and were very kind

and affectionate to me. They brought news that Harry Siddons had

arrived in India and been sent off to Delhi. My brother Henry, poor

child, came and lay on the sofa in my room, and we cried together

almost through the whole afternoon, in spite of our efforts to

comfort each other. My heart dies away when I think of my dear

father.... I got a very kind and affectionate letter from Lady

Francis; she wants us very much to go again to Oatlands. After all,

perhaps it would not be so sad there as I think, though it must

appear changed enough in some respects, if not in all. Everything

is winter now, within and without me; and when I was last there it

was summer, in my heart and over all the earth. My cedar palace is

there still, and to that I should bring more change than I should

find. Poor Undine! how often I think of that true story. When I

went to the theater my heart really sickened at my work; my eyes

smarted, and my voice was broken, with my whole day's crying. The

house seemed good; I played ill, and felt very ill. Lord M---- was

in the stage-box, which annoyed me. I hate to have my society

acquaintance close to me while I am acting. The play was "Venice

Preserved." After I came home I saw my father, who is a little

better; but now Henry is quite unwell, and I am in a high fever--I

suppose with all this wretchedness and exertion.

_Thursday, 13th._--My father has passed a quieter night, thank God.

I went to Fozzard's riding-school with John, and tried a hot little

hunter that they want to persuade Lady Chesterfield to ride--a very

pretty creature, but quite too eager for the school. While I was

riding Lady Grey came in, very much frightened, upon her horse,

which was rather fresh. She took Gazelle, which I was riding, and I

rode her horse tame for her. It is very odd that, riding as well as

she does, she should be so miserably nervous on horseback.... I

drove to Mrs. Mayo's, who impressed and affected me very much.

Those magnificent eyes of hers are becoming dim; she is growing

blind, with eyes like dark suns. I could not help expressing the

deep concern I felt for such a calamity. She replied that doubtless

it was a trial, but that she saw many others afflicted with

dispensations so much heavier than her own, that she was content.

To grow blind contentedly is to be very brave and good, and I

admired and loved her even more than I did before. When I came

home, I went and sat with my father. He has decided that we shall

not go to Oatlands, and I am hardly sorry for it.

_Friday, 14th._--Went over my part for to-night.... Victoire came

with me to the theater instead of Dall, whose whole time is taken

up attending on my father. The house was bad, and I thought I acted

very ill, though Victoire and John, who was in the front, said I

did not. Henry Greville was in the boxes, and to my surprise went

from them to the pit, though I ought not to have been surprised,

for, for such a fine gentleman, he is a very sensible man. Colonel

and Lady C. Cavendish were in the orchestra, and how I did wish

them further. I do so wonder, in the middle of my stage despair,

what business my drawing-room acquaintances have sitting staring at

it. My dress was beautiful. As for the audience, I do not know what

ailed them, but they seemed to have agreed together only to applaud

at the end of the scenes, so that I got no resting interruptions,

and was half dead with fatigue at the end of the play. I read

Daru's "Venice" between the scenes, and saw my father for a few

minutes after I came home.

_Thursday, 15th._--Had a delightful long letter from H----, who is

a poet without the jingle.... Another physician is to be called in

for my father. Oh, my dear father! Mr. Bartley was with him about

this horrible theater business.... My mother went in the evening

with John to hear Miss Sheriff in Polly. It is her first night in

"The Beggar's Opera," and my father wished to know how it went. I

stayed at home with poor Henry, and after tea sat with my father

till bedtime.

_Friday, 16th._--Went to the theater at eleven, and rehearsed

Isabella in the saloon, the stage being occupied with a rehearsal

of the pantomime. When my rehearsal was over, the carriage not

being come, I went down to see what they were doing. There was poor

Farleigh, nose and all (a worthy, amiable man, and excellent comic

character, with a huge excrescence of a nose), _qui se déménait_

like one frantic; huge Mr. Stansbury, with a fiddle in his hand,

dancing, singing, prompting, and swearing; the whole _corps de

ballet_ attitudinizing in muddy shoes and poke-bonnets, and the

columbine, in dirty stockings and a mob-cap, ogling the harlequin

in a striped shirt and dusty trousers. What a wrong side to the

show the audience will see!

My father is better, thank God! After dinner sat with poor Henry

till time to go to the theater. Played Isabella. House bad. I

played well; I always do to an empty house (this was my invariable

experience both in my acting and reading performances, and I came

to the conclusion that as my spirits were not affected by a small

audience, they, on the contrary, were exhilarated by the effect

upon my lungs and voice of a comparatively cool and free

atmosphere). I read Daru between my scenes; I find it immensely

interesting.... I read Niccolini's "Giovanni di Procida," but did

not like it very much; I thought it dull and heavy, and not up to

the mark of such a very fine subject.

_Saturday, 17th._-- ... My father, thank God, appears much

better.... I have christened the pretty mare I have bought "Donna

Sol," in honor of my part in "Hernani." In the evening I read Daru,

and wrote a few lines of "The Star of Seville;" but I hate it, and

the whole thing is as dead as ditch-water.

_Sunday, 18th._--To church.... After I came home I went and sat

with my father. Poor fellow! he is really better; I thank God

inexpressibly!

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, December 18.

DEAR H----,

I have had time to write neither long nor short letters for the

last week; Mr. Young's engagement being at an end, I have been

called back to my work, and have had to rehearse, and to act, and

to be much too busy to write to you until to-day, when I have

caught up all my arrears.

My father, thank God, is once more recovering, but we have twice

been alarmed at such sudden relapses that we hardly dare venture to

hope he is really convalescent. Inflammation on the lungs has, it

seems, been going on for a considerable time, and though they think

now that it has entirely subsided, yet, as the least exertion or

exposure may bring it on again, we are watching him like the apples

of our eyes. He has not yet left his bed, to which he has now been

confined more than a month....

The exertion I have been obliged to make when leaving him to go and

act, was so full of misery and dread lest I should find him worse,

perhaps dead, on my return, that no words can describe what I have

suffered at that dreadful theater. Thank God, however, he is now

certainly better, out of present danger, and I trust and pray will

soon be beyond any danger of a relapse. Anything like Dall's

incessant and unwearied care and tenderness you cannot imagine.

Night and day she has watched and waited on him, and I think she

must have sunk under all the fatigue she has undergone but for the

untiring goodness and kindness of heart that has supported her

under it all. She is invaluable to us all, and every day adds to

her claims upon our love and gratitude....

In the passage you quote from Godwin, he seems to think a friend of

more use in reproving what is evil in us than I believe is really

the case. Do you think our faults and follies can ever be more

effectually sifted, analyzed, and condemned by another than by our

own conscience? I do not think if one could put one's heart into

one's friends' hand that they could detect one defect or evil

quality that had not been marked and acknowledged in the depths of

one's own consciousness. Do you suppose people shrink more from the

censure of others than from self-condemnation? I find it difficult

to think so.... You appear to me always to wish to submit your

faith to a process which invariably breaks your apparatus and

leaves you very much dissatisfied, with your faith still a simple

element in you, in spite of your endeavors to analyze or decompose

it. Are not, after all, our convictions our only steadfastly

grounded faith? I do not mean conviction wrought out in the loom of

logical argument, where one's understanding must have shuttled

backward and forward through every thread a thousand times before

the woof is completed, but the spiritual convictions, the

intuitions of our souls, that lie upon their surface like direct

reflections from heaven, distinct and beautiful enough for reverent

contemplation, but a curious search into whose nature would, at any

rate temporarily, blur and dissipate and destroy....

The sense of power which man cannot control is one thing that makes

the sea such a delightful object of contemplation; the huge white

main, and deep, tremendous voice of the vast creature over which

man's daring and his knowledge give him but such imperfect mastery,

suggest images of strength which are full of sublime fascination as

one stands on the shore, looking at the vasty deep, and remembers

how precarious and uncertain is man's dominion over it, and how God

alone rules and governs it. It is impossible not to rejoice in the

great sense of its huge power and freedom, even though their

manifestations toward men are so often terrible and destructive....

Oh yes, indeed, I, like Wallenstein, have faith in the "strong

hours," and hold their influence the more efficacious that we

seldom think of resisting it; or, if we do, are seldom successful

in the attempt....