MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
You will never believe I am alive, not sooner to have answered your kind
letter; yet I was grateful for your expressions of regard, and truly
sorry for all you have had to undergo. Certainly the chances of this
life are strange--that you should be in Toronto, and I in London now, is
what neither of us would have imagined a little while ago.
I wish I could think you were either as happy or as well amused as I am.
I hope, however, you have recovered your health, and that you will be
able to visit some of the beautiful scenery of the St. Lawrence this
summer; that, at least, you may have some compensation for your effort
in crossing the Atlantic.
I heard of you from my friend, Miss Sedgwick, whose sympathies were as
much excited by your personal acquaintance as her admiration had been by
your books. I heard of you, too, from Theodore Fay, whom I saw a short
time since, and who gave me a letter of yours to read, which you wrote
him from New York. [Mr. Theodore Fay was a graceful writer of prose and
poetry, and achieved some literary reputation in his own country; he was
for some time United States Minister at Berlin.]
Lady Hatherton, whom I met the other evening at old Lady Cork's, was
speaking of you with much affection; and all your friends regret your
absence from England; and none more sincerely than I, who shall, I fear,
have the ill fortune to miss you on both sides of the Atlantic.
I find London more beautiful, more rich and royal, than ever; the latter
epithet, by-the-bye, applies to external things alone, for I do not
think the spirit of the people as royal, _i.e._, loyal, as I used to
fancy it was.
Liberalism appears to me to have gained a much stronger and wider
influence than it had before I went away; liberal opinions have
certainly spread, and I suppose will spread indefinitely. Toryism, on
the other hand, seems as steadfast in its old strongholds as ever; the
Tories, I see, are quite as wedded as formerly to their political faith,
but at the same time more afraid of all that is not themselves, more on
the defensive, more socially exclusive; I think they mix less with "the
other side" than formerly, and are less tolerant of difference of
opinion.
I find a whole race of _prima donnas_ swept away; Pasta gone and
Malibran dead, and their successor, Grisi, does not charm and enchant me
as they did, especially when I hear her compared to the former noble
singer and actress. When I look at her, beautiful as she is, and think
of Pasta, and hear her extolled far above that great queen of song, by
the public who cannot yet have forgotten the latter, I am more than ever
impressed with the worthlessness of popularity and public applause, and
the mistake of those who would so much as stretch out their little
finger to obtain it. I came to England just in time to see my father
leave the stage, and close his laborious professional career. After a
long life of public exhibition, and the glare of excitement which
inevitably attends upon it, to withdraw into the sober twilight of
private life is a great trial, and I fear he finds it so. His health is
not as good as it was while he still exercised his profession, and I
think he misses the stimulus of the daily occupation and nightly
applause.
What a dangerous pursuit that is which weans one from all other
resources and interests, and leaves one dependent upon public exhibition
for the necessary stimulus of one's existence! This aspect of it alone
would make me deprecate that profession for any one I loved; it
interferes with every other study, and breaks the thread of every other
occupation, and produces mental habits which, even if distasteful at
first, gradually become paramount to all others, and, in due time,
inveterate; and besides perpetually stimulating one's personal vanity
and desire for admiration and applause, directs whatever ambition one
has to the least exalted of aims, the production of evanescent effects
and transitory emotions.
I am thankful that I was removed from the stage before its excitement
became necessary to me. That reminds me that, within the last two days,
Pasta has returned to England: they say she is to sing at Drury Lane,
Grisi having possession of the Opera House. Now, will it not be a pity
that she should come in the decline of her fine powers, and subject
herself to comparisons with this young woman, whose voice and beauty and
popularity are all in their full flower? If I knew Pasta, I think I
would go on my knees to beg her not to do it.
I find my sister's voice and singing very much improved, and exceedingly
charming. She speaks always with warm regard of you, and remembers
gratefully your kindness to her.
My dear Mrs. Jameson, it is a great disappointment to me that I cannot
welcome you to my American home, and be to you that pleasant thing, an
old friend in a foreign land. It appears to me that we shall have the
singular ill-luck of passing each other on the sea; at least, if it is
true that you return in the autumn.
Much as I had desired to see my own country again, my visit to it has
had one effect which I certainly had not anticipated, and for which I am
grateful: it has tended to reconcile me to my present situation in life,
comparatively remote as it is from the best refinements of civilization
and all the enjoyments of society.... The turmoil and dissipation of a
London life, amusing as they are for a time, soon pall upon one, and I
already feel, in my diminished relish for them, that I am growing old.
To live in the country in England!--that indeed would be happiness and
pleasure; but we shall never desert America and the duties that belong
to us there, and I should be the last person to desire that we should do
so; and so I think henceforth England and I are "Paradises Lost" to each
other,--and this is a very strange life; with which "wise saw," but not
"modern instance," I will conclude, begging you to believe me,
Ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.
[Madame Pasta did return then to the stage, and her brilliant young
rival, Grisi, was to her what the Giessbach would be to a great wave
of the Atlantic. But, alas! she returned once more after that to the
scene of her former triumphs in London; the power, majesty, and
grace of her face, figure, and deportment all gone, her voice
painfully impaired and untrue, her great art unable to remedy, in
any degree, the failure of her natural powers.
She came as an agent and emissary of the political party of Italian
liberty, to help the cause of their _Italia Unita_, and our people
received her with affectionate respect, for the sake of what she had
been; but she accepted their applause with melancholy gestures of
disclaimer, and sorrowful head-shaking over her own decline. Those
who had never heard or seen her before were inclined to laugh; those
who had, _did_ cry.
The latent expression of a face is a curious study for the
physiognomist, and is sometimes strikingly at variance with that
which is habitual, as well as with the general character of the
features. That fine and accurate observer of the symptoms of
humanity, George Eliot, gives her silly, commonplace, little
second-heroine in "Adam Bede," Hester, a pathetic and sentimental
expression, to which nothing in her mind or character corresponds,
and which must have been an inheritance from some ancestress in whom
such an expression had originated with a meaning.
Madame Pasta was not handsome, people of uneducated and unrefined
taste might have called her plain; but she had that indescribable
quality which painters value almost above all others--style, and a
power and sweetness of expression, and a grandeur and grace of
demeanor, that I have never seen surpassed. She was not handsome,
certainly; but she was _beautiful_, and never, by any chance, looked
common or vulgar.
Madame Grisi was almost perfectly handsome; the symmetry of her head
and bust, and the outline of her features resembled the ideal models
of classical art--it was the form and face of a Grecian goddess; and
her rare natural gifts of musical utterance and personal loveliness
won for her, very justly, the great admiration she excited, and the
popularity she so long enjoyed. In a woman of far other and higher
endowments, that wonderful actress, Rachel, whose face and figure,
under the transforming influence of her consummate dramatic art,
were the perfect interpreters of her perfect tragic conceptions, an
ignoble, low-lived expression occasionally startled and dismayed
one, on a countenance as much more noble and intellectual, as it was
less beautiful than Grisi's,--the outward and visible sign of the
inward and spiritual disgrace, which made it possible for one of her
literary countrymen and warmest admirers to say that she was
adorable, because she was so "_deliceusement canaille_." Emilie,
Camille, Esther, Pauline, such a "delightful blackguard"!
Grazia, the Juno of the Roman sculptors of her day, their model of
severe classical beauty, had a perfectly stolid absence of all
expression; she was like one of the oxen of her own Campagna, a
splendid, serious-looking animal. No animal is ever vulgar, except
some dogs, who live too much with men for the interest of their
dignity, and catch the infection of _the_ human vice.
With us coarse-featured English, and our heavy-faced Teutonic
kinsfolk, a thick outline and snub features are generally supposed
to be the vulgar attributes of our lower classes; but the
predominance of spirit over matter vindicates itself strikingly
across the Atlantic, where, in the lowest strata of society, the
native American rowdy, with a face as pure in outline as an ancient
Greek coin, and hands and feet as fine as those of a Norman noble,
strikes one dumb with the aspect of a countenance whose vile,
ignoble hardness can triumph over such refinement of line and
delicacy of proportion. A human soul has a wonderful supremacy over
the matter which it _informs_. The American is a whole nation with
well-made, regular noses; from which circumstance (and a few
others), I believe in their future superiority over all other
nations. But the _lowness_ their faces are capable of "flogs
Europe."]
BANNISTERS, August 1st, 1837.
MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
After a riotous London season, my family has broken itself into small
pieces and dispersed. My mother is at her cottage in Surrey, where she
intends passing the rest of the summer; my father and sister are gone to
Carlsbad--is not that spirited?--though indeed they journey in search of
health, rather than pleasure. My father has been far from well for some
time past, and has at length been literally packed off by Dr. Granville,
to try the Bohemian waters.
I am at present staying with my friends, the Fitz Hughs, at Bannisters.
I leave this place on Friday for Liverpool, where I shall await the
arrival of the American packet; after that, we have several visits to
pay, and I hope, when we have achieved them, to join my father and
Adelaide at Carlsbad. I am pretty sure that we shall winter in America;
for, indeed, I was to have written to you, to beg you to spend that
season with us in Philadelphia, but as I had already received your
intimation of your intended return to England in the autumn, I knew
that such an offer would not suit your plans.
How glad you will be to see England again! and how glad your friends
will be to see you again! Miss Martineau, who was speaking of you with
great kindness the other day, added that your publishers would rejoice
to see you too.
I do not know whether her book on America has yet reached you. It has
been universally read, and though by no means agreeable to the opinions
of the majority, I think its whole tone has impressed everybody with
respect for her moral character, her integrity, her benevolence, and her
courage.
She tells me she is going to publish another work upon America,
containing more of personal narrative and local description; after
which, I believe, she thinks of writing a novel. I shall be quite
curious to see how she succeeds in the latter undertaking. The stories
and descriptions of her political tales were charming; but whether she
can carry herself through a work of imagination of any length with the
same success, I do not feel sure.
I saw the Montagues, and Procters, and Chorley (who is, I believe, a
friend of yours), pretty often while I was in London, and they were my
chief informers as to your state of being, doing, and suffering. I am
sorry that the latter has formed so large a portion of your experience
in that strange and desolate land of your present sojourn. You do not
say in your last letter whether you intend visiting the United States
before your return, or shall merely pass through so much of them as will
bring you to the port from which you sail. As I am not there to see you,
I should hardly regret your not traveling through them; for, in spite of
your popularity, which is very great in all parts of the country that I
have visited, I do not think American tastes, manners, and modes of
being would be, upon the whole, congenial to you.
I believe I told you how I had met your friend, Lady Hatherton, at a
party at old Lady Cork's, and how kindly she inquired after you....
We are here in the midst of the elections, with which the whole country
is in an uproar just now. My friends are immovable Tories, and I had the
satisfaction of being personally hissed (which I never was before), in
honor of their principles, as I drove through the town of Southampton
to-day in their carriage.
The death of poor old King William, and the accession of the little
lady, his niece, must be stale news, even with you, now. She was the
last excitement of the public before the "dissolution of London," and
her position is certainly a most interesting one. Poor young creature!
at eighteen to bear such a burden of responsibility! I should think the
mere state and grandeur, and slow-paced solemnity of her degree, enough
to strike a girl of that age into a melancholy, without all the other
graver considerations and causes for care and anxiety which belong to
it. I dare say, whatever she may think now, before many years are over
she would be heartily glad to have a small pension of L30,000 a year,
and leave to "go and play," like common folk of fortune. But, to be
sure, if "_noblesse oblige_," royalty must do so still more, or, at any
rate, on a wider scale; and so I take up my burden again--poor young
Queen of England!...
Emily sends you her best remembrances.... We shall certainly remain in
England till October, so that I feel sure that I shall have the pleasure
of seeing you here before I return to my _other_ country--for I reckon
that I have two; though, as the old woman said, and you know, "between
two stools," etc.
I should have thought you and Sir Francis Head would have become
infinite cronies. I hear he is so very clever; and as you tell me he
says so many fine things of me, I believe it.
Ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.
[The admirable novel of "Deerbrook" sufficiently answered all who
had ever doubted Miss Martineau's capacity for that order of
composition; in spite of Sydney Smith's determination that no
village "poticary," as he called it, might, could, would, or ever
should, be a hero of romance, and the incessant ridicule with which
he assailed the choice of such a one. If, he contended, he takes his
mistress's hand with the utmost fervor of a lover, he will, by the
mere force of habit, end by feeling her pulse; if, under strong
emotion, she faints away, he will have no salts but Epsom about him,
wherewith to restore her suspended vitality; he will put cream of
tartar in her tea, and (a) flower of brimstone in her bosom. There
was no end to the fun he made of "the medicinal lover," as he called
him. Nevertheless, the public accepted the Deerbrook M. D., and all
the paraphernalia of gallipots, pill-boxes, vials, salves,
ointments, with which the facetious divine always represented him as
surrounded; and vindicated, by its approval, the authoress's choice
of a hero.
I do not know whether Mr. Gibson is not, to me, decidedly the hero
of Mrs. Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters." I like him infinitely
better than all the younger men of the story; and I think the
preponderating interest with which one closes George Eliot's
wonderful "Middlemarch" is decidedly in behalf of Lydgate, the
country surgeon and hospital doctor. To be sure, we have come a
long way since the Liberalism of Sydney Smith and 1837.
I was indebted to my kind friend, Lord Lansdowne, for the memorable
pleasure of being present at the first meeting between Queen
Victoria and her Houses of Parliament. The occasion, which is always
one of interest when a new sovereign performs the solemnity, was
rendered peculiarly so by the age and sex of the sovereign. Every
person who, by right or favor, could be present, was there; and no
one of that great assembly will ever forget the impression made upon
them. Lady Lansdowne, who was Mistress of the Robes, was herself an
important member of the group round the throne, and I went with her
niece, Lady Valletort, under Lord Lansdowne's escort, to places most
admirably situated for hearing and seeing the whole ceremony. The
queen was not handsome, but very pretty, and the singularity of her
great position lent a sentimental and poetical charm to her youthful
face and figure.
The serene, serious sweetness of her candid brow and clear soft eyes
gave dignity to the girlish countenance, while the want of height
only added to the effect of extreme youth of the round but slender
person, and gracefully moulded hands and arms. The queen's voice was
exquisite; nor have I ever heard any spoken words more musical in
their gentle distinctness, than the "My Lords and Gentlemen" which
broke the breathless silence of the illustrious assembly, whose gaze
was riveted upon that fair flower of royalty. The enunciation was as
perfect as the intonation was melodious, and I think it is
impossible to hear a more excellent utterance than that of the
queen's English, by the English queen.]
WEDNESDAY, July 26th, 1837.
_Bannisters!_
(Think of that, Master Brook!!)
DEAREST H----,
These overflowing spirits of mine all come of a gallop of fifteen miles
I have been taking with dear Emily, over breezy commons and through
ferny pine-woods, and then coming home and devouring luncheon as fast as
it could be swallowed; and so you get the result of all this physical
excitement in these very animal spirits; and if my letter is "all sound
and fury, signifying nothing," under the circumstances how can I help
it?
That rather ill-conducted person, Ninon de l'Enclos, I believe, said
her soup got into her head; and though "comparisons are odious,"
and I should be loth to suggest any between that wonderful
no-better-than-she-should-be and myself, beyond all doubt my luncheon
has got into my head, though I drank nothing but water with it; but I
rather think violent exercise in the cold air, followed immediately by
eating, will produce a certain amount of intoxication, just as easily as
stimulating drink would. I suppose it is only a question of accelerated
circulation, with a slight tendency of blood to the head.
However that may be, I wish you would speak to Emily (you needn't bawl,
though you are in Ireland), and tell her to hold her tongue and not
disturb me. She is profanely laughing at a sermon of Dr. South's, and
interrupting me in this serious letter to you with absurd questions
about such nonsense as Life, Death, and Immortality. I can't get on for
her a bit, so add her to the cold ride and the hot lunch in the list of
causes of this crazy epistle--I mean, the causes of its craziness.
Do you know old South? I don't believe you do even this much of him:--
"Old South, a witty Churchman reckoned,
Was preaching once to Charles the Second:
When lo! the King began to nod,
Deaf to the zealous man of God;
Who, leaning o'er his pulpit, cried
To Lauderdale by Charles's side:--
'My Lord, why, 'tis a shameful thing!
You snore so loud, you'll wake the King!'"
I quote by memory, through my luncheon, and I dare say all wrong; but it
doesn't matter, for I don't believe you know it a bit better than I
remember it. I and my baby came here on Monday, and shall stay until
to-morrow week; after that I go to Liverpool, to meet and be met; and
after that I know nothing, of course.... If, however, by that time you
are likely to be near London, we will come up thither forthwith, and you
must come and stay in Park Place with us. We shall be alone keeping
house there; for my mother is in the country, and my father and Adelaide
are going to Carlsbad, where we think to join them by-and-by; in the
mean time, we hope to enjoy ourselves much sight-seeing all over London,
which we shall then have entirely to ourselves; and you had better come
and help us.
Good-bye, dearest H----.
Yours ever,
F. A. B.
[This letter was written from Bannisters, the charming country home
of my dear friend, Miss Fitz Hugh. For years it had been a resort of
rest for Mrs. Siddons, who was always made welcome as one of her own
sisters, by Mrs. Fitz Hugh; and for years it was a resort of rest
for me, to whom my friend was as devoted as her mother had been to
my aunt.]
LIVERPOOL, Saturday, August 17th, 1837.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
I have but one instant in which to write. I hope this will meet you at
Emily's, in Orchard Street [No. 18 Orchard Street, Portman Square, Mr.
Fitz Hugh's town house]; it is to entreat you to remain there until I
come to town, which must be in less than a week....
I left Bannisters--most unnecessarily, as it has proved--a fortnight
ago, which time I have been spending in heart-eating suspense, waiting
in vain, and bolstering up my patience, which kept sinking every day
more and more, like an empty sack put to stand upright. I have, since I
arrived here, received a letter which has caused me considerable
distress, inasmuch as I find I must leave England without again seeing
my father and Adelaide, who are gone to Carlsbad in the full expectation
of our joining them there....
The political body upon whose movements ours are just now depending has
not dispersed, but is merely adjourned to the 17th October. This allows
its absent member but a few days in Europe, as we must sail on the 8th
September; and those few days are gradually becoming fewer in
consequence of this long prevalence of contrary winds, which is keeping
the vessel just at the entrance of the Channel, within one good day's
sail of me.
All this is a trial, and my heart has sunk, as hour after hour I have
watched that watery horizon, and seen the masts appear and disappear,
and yet no tidings of the ship I look for.
I have ridden, bathed, tried to write, tried to read, marked my
Shakespeare for you, and laid my hand--but, God knows, not with all my
heart--to whatsoever I found to do: still I have been ashamed and
displeased at the little command I have achieved over my impatience, and
the little use I have made of my time. It has been my great good fortune
to meet with old friends, and to make new ones, during this period of my
probation; and never was kindly intercourse more needed and more
appreciated. But, after all, is it not always thus? and are not
unexpected pleasures and enjoyments furnished us quite as often as the
trials which render them doubly welcome?
'Tis now the 14th of August, and yet no tidings of that ship. There is
no ground whatever for anxiety, for it is the prevalence of calm, and
light contrary winds, which alone delay its arrival.
Dearest Harriet, I shall soon see you again, and will not that be a
blessing to both of us? Farewell, my dear friend. How long it is since
we have been even thus near each other! how long since we have hoped so
soon to hear each other's voice!
Ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.
[This letter was written from Crosby, a little strip of sandy beach,
three miles from Liverpool, to which I betook myself with my child,
rather than remain in the noisy, smoky town, while waiting for the
arrival of the vessel from America which I was expecting.