F. A. B.
[The above mention of shipwreck, refers to the disastrous loss of
the _Pulaski_; an event, the horror of which was rendered more
memorable to me by an episode of noble courage, of which our
neighbor, Mr. James Cooper, of Georgia, was the hero, and of which I
have spoken in the journal I kept during my residence on our
plantation.]
ROCKAWAY, Friday, August 10th.
Where are you, my dearest Harriet; and what are you doing? Drinking of
queer-tasting waters, and soaking in queer-smelling ones? Are you
becoming saturated with sulphur, or penetrated with iron? Are you
chilling your inside with draughts from some unfathomable well, or
warming your outside with baths from some ready-boiled spring?
Oh! vainest quest of that torment, the love for the absent! Do you know,
Harriet, that I have more than once seriously thought of never writing
any more to any of my friends? the total cessation of intercourse would
soon cause the acutest vividness of feeling to subside, and become blunt
(for so are we made): the fruitless feeling after, the vain eager
pursuit in thought of those whose very existence may actually have
ceased, is such a wearisome pain! This being linked by invisible chains
to the remote ends of the earth, and constantly feeling the strain of
the distance upon one's heart,--this sort of death in life, for you are
all so far away that you are almost as _bad_ as dead to me,--is a
condition that I think makes intercourse (such intercourse as is
possible) less of a pleasure than of a pain; and the thought that so
many lives with which mine was mingled so closely are flowing away
yonder, in vain for me here (and of hereafter who can guess!), prevents
my contentedly embracing my own allotted existence, and keeps me still
with eyes and thoughts averted towards the past, from the path of life I
am appointed to tread. If I could believe it right or kind, or that
those who love me would not be grieved by it, I really feel sometimes as
if I could make up my mind to turn my thoughts once and for all away
from them, as from the very dead, and never more by this disjointed
communion revive, in all its acuteness, the bitter sense of loss and
separation....
You see I discourse of my child's looks; for at present, indeed, I know
of nothing else to discourse about in her. Of her experiences in her
former states of existence she says nothing, though I try her as Shelley
used to do the speechless babies that he met; and her observations upon
the present she also keeps religiously to herself, so that I get no
profit of either her wisdom or her knowledge....
The vast extent of this country offers every variety of climate which an
invalid can require, and its mineral waters afford the same remedies
which are sought after in the famous European baths. God has everywhere
been bountiful, and doubtless no country is without its own special
natural pharmacopaeia, its medicines, vegetable and mineral, and healing
influences for human disease and infirmity. The medicinal waters of this
country are very powerful, and of every variety, and I believe there are
some in Virginia which would precisely answer our purpose....
We are now staying for a short time on the Long Island shore, at a place
called Rockaway. As I sit writing at my window here, the broad, smooth,
blue expanse of the Atlantic stretches out before me, and ships go
sailing by that are coming from, or returning to, the lands where you
live.
You cannot conceive anything more strange, and to me more distasteful
than the life which one leads here. The whole watering-place consists of
a few detached cottages, the property of some individuals who are
singular enough to comprehend the pleasure of privacy; and one enormous
hotel, a huge wooden building, of which we are at present among the
inmates.
How many _can_ sleep under this mammoth roof, I know not; but upwards of
_four hundred_ have sat down at one time to feed in the boundless
dining-hall. The number of persons now in the house does not, I believe,
exceed eighty, and everybody is lamenting the smallness of the company,
and the consequent dullness of the place; and I am perpetually called
upon to sympathize with regrets which I am so far from sharing, that I
wish, instead of eighty, we had only eight fellow-lodgers.... The
general way of life is very disagreeable to me. I cannot, do what I
will, find anything but constraint and discomfort in the perpetual
presence of a crowd of strangers. The bedrooms are small, and furnished
barely as well as a common servant's room in England. They are certainly
not calculated for comfortable occupation or sitting alone in; but
sitting alone any part of the day is a proceeding contemplated by no one
here.
As for bathing, we are carried down to the beach, which is extremely
deep and sandy, in an omnibus, by batches of a dozen at a time. There
are two little stationary bathing-huts for the use of the whole
population; and you dress, undress, dry yourself, and do all you have to
do, in the closest proximity to persons you never saw in your life
before.... This admitting absolute strangers to the intimacy of one's
most private toilet operations is quite intolerable, and nothing but the
benefit which I believe the children, as well as myself, derive from the
bathing would induce me to endure it.
From this place we go up to Massachusetts--a delightful expedition to
me--to our friends the Sedgwicks, who are very dear to me, and almost
the only people among whom I have found mental companionship since I
have been in this country.
I have not had one line from my sister since her return from Germany,
whence she wrote me one letter. I feel anxious about her plans--yet not
very--I do not think her going into public life adds much to the anxiety
I feel about her.... God bless you, dear. What would I give to be once
more within reach of you, and to have one more of our old talks!
Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
ROCKAWAY, LONG ISLAND, August 23d, 1838.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
... I forget whether you visited any of the watering-places of this New
World; but if you did not, your estate was the more gracious. This is
the second that I have visited, and I dislike it rather more than I did
the first, inasmuch as the publicity here extends not only to one's
meals, but to those ceremonies of one's toilet which in all civilized
parts of the world human beings perform in the strictest seclusion.
The beach is magnificent--ten good miles of hard, sparkling sand, and
the broad, open Atlantic rolling its long waves and breaking in one
white thunderous cloud along the level expanse. The bathing would be
delightful but for the discomfort and positive indecency of the
non-accommodation.
There are two small stationary dressing-huts on the beach, and here one
is compelled to disrobe and attire one's self in the closest proximity
to any other women who may wish to come out of the water or go into it
at the same time that one does one's self. Moreover, the beach at
bathing time is daily thronged with spectators, before whose admiring
gaze one has to emerge all dripping, like Venus, from the waves, and
nearly as naked; for one's bathing-dress clings to one's figure, and
makes a perfect wet drapery study of one's various members, and so one
has to wade slowly and in much confusion of face, thus impeded, under
the public gaze, through heavy sand, about half a quarter of a mile, to
the above convenient dressing-rooms, where, if one find only three or
four persons, stripped or stripping, nude or semi-nude, one may consider
one's self fortunate....
I have wished, as heartily as I might for any such thing, that I could
have seen the glorification of our little Guelph Lady, the Queen,
particularly as the coronation of another English sovereign is scarcely
likely to occur during my life; but this unaccomplished desire of mine
must go and keep company with many others, which often tend to the other
side of the Atlantic. Thank you for your account of my sister....
Hereafter, the want of female sympathy and companionship may prove
irksome to her, but at present she will scarcely miss it; she and my
father are exceedingly good friends, and pleasant companions and
fellow-travelers, and are likely to remain so, unless she should fall in
love with, and insist upon marrying, a "fiddler."
Instead of being at Lenox, where I had hoped to be at this season, we
are sweltering here in New York, for whatever good we may obtain from
doctors, leeches, and medicine. I mean to send S---- up into Berkshire
to-morrow; she is well at present, but I fear may not continue so if
confined to the city during this dreadfully hot weather.... For myself,
I am keeping myself well as hard as I can by taking ice-cold baths, and
trudging round the Battery every evening, to the edification of the
exceedingly disreputable company who (beside myself) are the only
haunters of that one lovely lung of New York.... It is not thought
expedient that I should be stared at alone on horseback; being stared at
alone on foot, apparently, is not equally pernicious; and so I lose my
most necessary exercise; but I may comfort myself with the reflection
that should I ever become a sickly, feeble, physically good-for-nothing,
broken-down woman, I shall certainly not be singular in this free and
enlightened republic, where (even more than anywhere else in the world)
singularity appears to be dreaded and condemned above any or all other
sins, crimes, and vices....
Pray be kind enough to continue writing to me. Every letter from the
other side is to me what the drop of water would have been to the rich
man in Hades, whom I dare say you remember. What do you think I am
reading? "The Triumphs of God's revenge against the crying and execrable
_sinne_ of wilful and premeditated _murther_"--that's something new, is
it not?--published in 1635.
So believe me ever very truly yours,
F. A. B.
NEW YORK, Friday, August 24th, 1838.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
I wrote to you (I believe) a short time ago, ... but I have since then
received a letter from you, and will thank you at once for it, and
especially for the details concerning my sister.... I rejoice in the
change which must have taken place in her physical condition, which both
you and dear Emily describe; indeed, the improvement had begun before I
left England.... I believe I appreciate perfectly all the feelings which
are prompting her to the choice of the stage for her profession; but I
also think that she is unaware (which I am not) of the necessity for
excitement, which her mode of life and the influences that have
surrounded her from her childhood have created and fostered in her, and
for which she is no more answerable than for the color of her hair. I do
not even much regret her election, little as I admire the vocation of a
public performer. To struggle is allotted to all, let them walk in what
paths they will; and her peculiar gifts naturally incline her to the
career she is choosing, though I think also that she has much higher
intellectual capabilities than those which the vocation of a public
singer will ever call into play.... We are always so greatly in the dark
in our judgments of others, and so utterly incapable of rightly
estimating the motives of their actions and springs of their conduct,
that I think in the way of blame or praise, of vehement regret or
excessive satisfaction, we need not do much until we know more. I pray
God that she may endeavor to be true to herself, and to fulfill her own
perception of what is right. Whether she does so or not, neither I, nor
any one else, shall know; nor, indeed, is any one _really_ concerned in
the matter but herself. She possesses some of the intellectual qualities
from which the most exquisite pleasures are derived.... But she will not
be happy in this world; but, as nobody else is, she will not be
singular in that respect: and in the exercise of her uncommon gifts she
may find a profound pleasure, and an enjoyment of the highest kind apart
from happiness and its far deeper and higher springs.
Her voice haunts me like something precious that I have lost and go
vainly seeking for; other people play and sing her songs, and then,
though I seem to listen to them, I hear _her_ again, and seem to see
again that wonderful human soul which beamed from every part of her fine
face as she uttered those powerful sweet spells of love, and pity, and
terror. To me, her success seems almost a matter of certainty; for those
who can make such appeals to the sympathy of their fellow-beings are
pretty sure not to fail. Pasta is gone; Malibran is abroad; and
Schroeder-Devrient is the only great dramatic singer left, and she
remains but as the _remains_ of what she was; and I see no reason why
Adelaide should not be as eminent as the first, who certainly was a
glorious artist, though her acting surpassed her singing, and her voice
was not an exceptionally magnificent one....
This letter has suffered an interruption of several days, dear Harriet,
... and I and my baby have been sent after S----; and here I am on the
top of a hill in the village of Lenox, in what its inhabitants
tautologically call "Berk_shire county_," Massachusetts, with a view
before my window which would not disgrace the Jura itself.
Immediately sloping before me, the green hillside, on the summit of
which stands the house I am inhabiting, sinks softly down to a small
valley, filled with thick, rich wood, in the centre of which a little
jewel-like lake lies gleaming. Beyond this valley the hills rise one
above another to the horizon, where they scoop the sky with a broken,
irregular outline that the eye dwells on with ever new delight as its
colors glow and vary with the ascending or descending sunlight, and all
the shadowy procession of the clouds. In one direction this undulating
line of distance is overtopped by a considerable mountain with a fine
jagged crest, and ever since early morning, troops of clouds and
wandering showers of rain and the all-prevailing sunbeams have chased
each other over the wooded slopes, and down into the dark hollow where
the lake lies sleeping, making a pageant far finer than the one Prospero
raised for Ferdinand and Miranda on his desert island....
F. A. B.
LENOX, Monday, September 3d, 1838.
It is not very long since I wrote to you, my dear Mrs. Jameson, and I
have certainly nothing of very special interest to communicate to
warrant my doing so now; but I am in your debt by letters, besides many
other things; and having leisure to back my inclination just now, I will
indite.
I am sitting "on top," as the Americans say, of the hill of Lenox,
looking out at that prospect upon which your eyes have often rested, and
making common cause in the eating and living way with Mary and Fanny
A----, who have taken up their abode here for a week [Miss Mary and
Fanny Appleton; the one afterwards married Robert, son of Sir James
Mackintosh; the other, alas! the poet Longfellow]. Never was village
hostelry so graced before, surely! There is a pretty daughter of Mr.
Dewey's staying in the house besides, with a pretty cousin; and it
strikes me that the old Red Inn is having a sort of blossoming season,
with all these sweet, handsome young faces shining about it in every
direction.
You know the sort of life that is lived here: the absence of all form,
ceremony, or inconvenient conventionality whatever. We laugh, and we
talk, sing, play, dance, and discuss; we ride, drive, walk, run,
scramble, and saunter, and amuse ourselves extremely with little
materials (as the generality of people would suppose) wherewith to do
so....
The Sedgwicks are under a cloud of sorrow just now.... They are none of
them, however, people who suffer themselves to be absorbed by their own
personal interests, whether sad or gay; and as in their most prosperous
and happy hours they would have sympathy to spare to the sufferings of
others, so the sickness and sorrow of these members of their family
circle, and the consequent depression they all labor under (for where
was a family more united?), does not prevent our enjoying every day
delightful seasons of intercourse with them....
Pray write me whatever you hear about my people. Lady Dacre wrote me a
kind and very interesting account of my sister the other day. Poor
thing! her ordeal is now drawing near, if anybody's ordeal can properly
be said to be "drawing near," except before they are born; for surely
from beginning to end life is nothing but one long ordeal.
I am glad you like Lady M----; she is a person whom I regard very
dearly. It is many years since I first became acquainted with her, and
the renewal of our early intimacy took place under circumstances of
peculiar interest. Is not her face handsome; and her manner and
deportment fine?... I must stop. I see my young ladies coming home from
their afternoon drive, and am going with them to spend the hours between
this and bed-time at Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's. Pray continue to write to
me, and
Believe me ever yours very truly,
F. A. B.
Begun at LENOX, ended at PHILADELPHIA,
Sunday, October 29th, 1838.
DEAREST HARRIET,
... Since the receipt of your last letter, one from Emily has reached
me, bringing me the intelligence of my mother's death!... There is
something so deplorable in perceiving (what one only fully perceives as
they are ceasing forever) all the blessed uses of which these mysterious
human relations are capable, all their preciousness, all their
sweetness, all their holiness, alas! alas!...
Cecilia and Mr. Combe arrived in this country by the _Great Western_
about a fortnight ago. On their road from New York to Boston they passed
a night within six miles of Lenox, and neither came to see nor sent me
word that they were so near, which was being rather more phrenological
and philosophically phlegmatical than I should have expected of them.
For my heart had warmed to Cecilia in this pilgrimage of hers to a
foreign land, where I alone was of kin to her; and I felt as if I both
knew and loved her more than I really do....
I understand Mr. Combe has parceled out both his whereabouts and
whatabouts, to the very inch and minute, for every day in the next two
years to come, which he intends to devote to the phrenological
regeneration of this country. I am afraid that he may meet with some
disappointment in the result of his labors: not indeed in Boston, where
considerable curiosity exists upon that subject, and a general proneness
to intellectual exercises of every description....
Throughout New England, his book on the "Constitution of Man," and his
brother's, on the treatment of that constitution, are read and valued,
and their name is held in esteem by the whole reading community of the
North. But I doubt his doing more than exciting a mere temporary
curiosity in New York and Philadelphia; and further south I should think
he would not be listened to at all, unless he comes prepared to
demonstrate phrenologically that the colored population of the Southern
States is (or are), by the conformation of their skulls, the legitimate
slaves of the whites.
Can anything be stranger than to think of Cecilia trotting over the
length and breadth of North America at the heels of a lecturing
philosopher? When I think of her in her mother's drawing-room in
London, in the midst of surroundings and society so different, I find no
end to my wonderment. She must have extraordinary adaptability to
circumstances in her composition.
I have just finished the play of which you read the beginning in
England--my "English Tragedy"--and am, as usual, in high delight just
now with my own performance. I wish that agreeable sentiment could last;
it is so pleasant while it does! I think I will send it over to
Macready, to try if he will bring it out at Covent Garden. I think it
might succeed, perhaps; unless, indeed, the story is too objectionable
for anything--but _reality_.
Perhaps I have had my share of health. I am sure I have had enough to be
most grateful for, if I should lie on a sick-bed for the rest of my
days....
God bless you, dear.
I am ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, November 13th, 1838.
... The sad news of my poor mother's death, my dear Mrs. Jameson,
reached me while I was staying up at Lenox, among those whom my good
fortune has raised up in this strange country to fill for me the place
of the kindred and friends from whom I am so widely sundered....
That the winter in Georgia, whither we are going immediately, may be
beneficial to the invalid member of our party, is the only pleasant
anticipation with which I set my face towards a part of the country
where the whole manner of existence is repugnant to my feelings, and
where the common comforts of life are so little known, that we are
obliged to ship a freight of necessary articles of food, for our use
while we are on the plantation.
Wheaten bread is unknown, meal made of the Indian corn being alone used
there: and though the provision Nature has furnished, in the shape of
game, abounds, the only meat, properly so called, which can be procured
there, is shipped in barrels (salted, of course) from the North.
Society, or the shadow of it, is not to be dreamt of; and our residence,
as far as I can learn, is to be a half-furnished house in the midst of
rice-swamps, where our habitual company will be our slaves, and our
occasional visitors an alligator or two from the Altamaha.
Catharine Sedgwick is spending the winter in Lenox. She and Mr. and Mrs.
R---- and Kate are going to Europe in the spring; and if I should return
alive from Slavery, perhaps I may go with them. Pray do not fail to let
me know everything you may hear or see of my sister.... I was at Lenox
when your parcel for Catharine Sedgwick arrived. We were all enchanted
with the engraving from the German picture of the "Sick Counsellor."
F. A. B.
DEAREST HARRIET,
On Friday morning we started from Philadelphia, by railroad, for
Baltimore. It is a curious fact enough, that half the routes that are
traveled in America are either temporary or unfinished,--one reason,
among several, for the multitudinous accidents which befall wayfarers.
At the very outset of our journey, and within scarce a mile of
Philadelphia, we crossed the Schuylkill, over a bridge, one of the
principal piers of which is yet incomplete, and the whole building (a
covered wooden one, of handsome dimensions) filled with workmen, yet
occupied about its construction. But the Americans are impetuous in the
way of improvement, and have all the impatience of children about the
trying of a new thing, often greatly retarding their own progress by
hurrying unduly the completion of their works, or using them in a
perilous state of incompleteness. Our road lay for a considerable length
of time through flat, low meadows that skirt the Delaware, which at this
season of the year, covered with snow and bare of vegetation, presented
a most dreary aspect. We passed through Wilmington (Delaware), and
crossed a small stream called the Brandywine, the scenery along the
banks of which is very beautiful. For its historical associations I
refer you to the life of Washington. I cannot say that the aspect of the
town of Wilmington, as viewed from the railroad cars, presented any very
exquisite points of beauty; I shall therefore indulge in a few
observations upon these same railroad cars just here.