plantation, and that Indian meal holds the place of wheaten flour, bread
baked of the latter being utterly unknown?... Do not be surprised if I
dwell upon these small items of privation, even now that I am about to
go among those people the amelioration of whose condition I have
considered as one of my special duties. With regard to this, however, I
have, alas! no longer the faintest shadow of hope....
Yours most truly,
F. A. B.
PHILADELPHIA, January 15th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,
My last to you was dated the fourteenth of December, and it is now the
tenth of January, a whole month; and you and Dorothy are, I presume,
sundered, instead of together, and surrounded with ice and snow, and all
wintry influences, instead of those gentle southern ones in which you
had imagined you would pass the dismal season.
I can fancy Ardgillan comfortably poetical (if that is not a
contradiction in terms) at this time of year, with its warm, bright,
cheerful drawing-room looking out on the gloomy sea. But perhaps you are
none of you there?--perhaps you are in Dublin?--on Mr. Taylor's new
estate?--or where--where, dear Harriet--where are you? How sad it seems
to wander thus in thought after those we love, and conjecture of their
whereabouts almost as vaguely as of the dwelling of the dead!...
I am annoyed by the interruption which all this ice and snow causes in
my daily rides. My horse is rough-shod, and I persist in going out on
him two or three times a week, but not without some peril, and severe
inconvenience from the cold, which not only cuts my face to pieces, but
chaps my skin from head to foot, through my riding-dress and all my warm
under-clothing. I do not much regret our prolonged sojourn in the North,
on my children's account, who, being both hearty and active creatures,
thrive better in this bracing climate than in the relaxing temperature
of the South....
Dear Harriet, I have nothing to tell you; my life externally is
_nothing_; and who can tell the inward history of their bosom--that
internal life, which is often so strangely unlike the other? Suppose I
inform you that I have just come home from a ride of an hour and a half;
that I went out of the city by Broad Street, and returned by Islington
Lane and the Ridge Road--how much the wiser will you be? that the roads
were frozen as hard as iron, and here and there so sheeted with ice that
I had great difficulty in preventing my horse from slipping and falling
down with me, and, being quite alone, without even a servant, I wondered
what _I_ should do if _he_ did. I have a capital horse, whom I have
christened Forester, after the hero of my play, and who grins with
delight, like a dog, when I talk to him and pat him. He is a bright bay,
with black legs and mane, tall and large, and built like a hunter, with
high courage and good temper. I have had him four years, and do not like
to think what would become of me if anything were to happen to him. It
would be necessary that I should commit suicide, for his fellow is not
to be found in "these United States." Dearest Harriet, we hope to come
over to England next September; and if your sister will invite me, I
will come and see you some time before I re-cross the Atlantic. I am
very anxious about my father, and still more anxious about my sister,
and feel heart-weary for the sight of some of my own people, places, and
things; and so. Fate prospering, to speak heathen, I shall go _home_
once more in the autumn of this present 1840: till when, dearest
Harriet, God bless you! and after then, and always,
I am ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.
[My dear horse, having been sold to a livery-stable keeper, I
repurchased him by the publication of a small volume of poems, which
thus proved themselves to _me_ excellent verses. The gallant animal
broke his hip-joint by slipping in a striding gallop over some wet
planks, and I had to have him shot. His face--I mean the anguish in
it after the accident--is among the tragical visions in my memory.]
PHILADELPHIA, February 9th, 1840.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
... You ask me if I have read your book on Canada. With infinite
interest and pleasure, and great sympathy and admiration, and much
gratitude for the vindication of women's capabilities, both physical and
mental, which all your books (but this perhaps more than all the others)
furnish.
It has been, like all your previous works, extremely popular here; and
if you have received no remuneration for it, you are not justly dealt
by, as I am sure its sale has been very considerable, and very
profitable. [Mrs. Jameson was, undoubtedly, one of the greatest
sufferers by the want of an author's copyright in America: her works
were all republished there; and her laborious literary career, her
careful research and painstaking industry, together with her restricted
means and the many claims upon them, made it a peculiar hardship, in her
case, to be deprived of the just reward of the toil by which she gave
pleasure and instruction to so many readers in America, as well as in
her own country.] Your latest publication, "Social Life in Germany," I
have not seen, but have read numerous extracts from it, in the American
literary periodicals.
You ask me if you can "do anything" about my play? I thought I must have
told you of my offering it to Macready, who civilly declined having
anything to do with it. Circumstances induced me to destroy my own copy
of it: the one Macready had is in Harriet's custody, another copy I have
given to Elizabeth Sedgwick, and I now neither know nor care anything
more about it. Once upon a time I wrote it, and that is quite enough to
have had to do with it. Prescott, the historian of Ferdinand and
Isabella, is urgent with me to let him have it published in Boston;
perhaps hereafter, if I should want a penny, and be able to turn an
honest one by so doing, I may.
It is odd that I have not the remotest recollection of reading any of
that play to you. You have mentioned it several times to me, and I have
never been able to recall to my mind, either when I read it to you, or
what portion of it I inflicted upon you. You were lucky, and I wonder
that I let you off with a _portion_ of it; for, for nearly a year after
I finished it, I was in such ecstasies with my own performance, that I
martyrized every soul that had a grain of regard for me, with its
perusal....
J---- B---- and his brother have just started for Georgia, leaving his
wife and myself in forlorn widowhood, which, (the providence of
railroads and steamboats allowing) is not to last more than three
months. I have been staying nearly three months in their house in town,
expecting every day to depart for the plantation; but we have
procrastinated to such good effect that the Chesapeake Bay is now
unnavigable, being choked up with ice, and the other route involving
seventy miles of night traveling _on the worst road in the United
States_ (think what that means!), it has been judged expedient that the
children and myself should remain behind. I am about, therefore, to
return with them to the Farm, where I shall pass the remainder of the
winter,--how, think you? Why, reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," which
I have never read yet, and which I now intend to study with classical
atlas, Bayle's dictionary, the Encyclopaedia, and all sorts of "aids to
beginners." How quiet I shall be! I think perhaps I may die some day,
without so much as being aware of it; and if so, beg to record myself in
good season, before that imperceptible event,
Yours very truly,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, February 16th, 1840.
I have just been looking over a letter of yours, dearest Harriet, as old
as the 19th of last September, describing your passage over the Spluegen.
About four days ago I was looking over some engravings of the passes of
the Alps, in a work called "Switzerland Illustrated," by Bartlett, and
lingered over those attempts of human art with the longing I have for
those lands, which I always had, which has never died away entirely, but
seems now reviving again in some of its earliest strength: I can compare
it to nothing but the desire of thirst for water, and I must master it
as I may, for of those mountain-streams I fear I never shall drink, or
look upon their beauty, but in the study of my imagination.
In the hill-country of Berkshire, Massachusetts, where I generally spend
some part of the summer among my friends the Sedgwicks, there is a line
of scenery, forming part of the Green Mountain range, which runs up into
the State of Vermont, and there becomes a noble brotherhood of
mountains, though in the vicinity of Stockbridge and Lenox, where I
summer, but few of them deserve a more exalted title than hill. They are
clothed with a various forest of oak, beech, chestnut, maple, and fir;
and down their sides run wild streams, and in the valleys between them
lie exquisite lakes. Upon the whole, it is the most picturesque scenery
I have ever seen; particularly in the neighborhood of a small town
called Salisbury, thirty miles from Lenox. This is situated in a plain
surrounded by mountains, and upon the same level in its near
neighborhood lie four beautiful small lakes; close above this valley
rises Mount Washington, or, as some Swiss charcoal-burners, who have
emigrated thither, have christened it, Mount Rhigi.
In a recess of this mountain lies a deep ravine and waterfall; and a
precipice, where an arch of rock overhangs a basin, where, many hundred
feet below, the water boils in a mad cauldron, and then plunges away, by
leaps of forty, twenty, and twelve feet, with the intermediate runs
necessary for such jumps, through a deep chasm in the rocks, to a narrow
valley, the whole character of which, I suppose, may represent Swiss
scenery in _very small_.
A week ago J---- B---- and ---- left Philadelphia for the South; and
yesterday I received a letter giving a most deplorable account of their
progress, if progress it could be called, which consisted in going _nine
miles in four hours_, and then returning to Washington, whence they had
started, the road being found utterly impassable. Streams swollen with
the winter snows and spring rains, with their bridges all broken up by
the ice or swept away by the water, intersect these delightful ways; and
one of these, which could not admit of fording, turned them back, to try
their fate in a steamboat, through the ice with which the Chesapeake is
blocked up. This dismal account has in some measure reconciled me to
having been left behind with the children; they have neither of them
been as well as usual this winter, and the season is now so far
advanced, our intended departure being delayed from day to day for three
months, that, besides encountering a severe and perilous journey, we
should have arrived in Georgia to find the weather almost oppressively
hot, and, if we did wisely, to return again, at the end of a fortnight,
to the North.
I have come back to Butler Place with the bairns, and have resumed the
monotonous tenor of my life, which this temporary residence in town had
interrupted, not altogether agreeably; and here I shall pass the rest of
the winter, teaching S---- to read, and sliding through my days in a
state of external quietude, which is not always as nearly allied to
content as it might seem to (_ought_ to) be....
When the children's bed-time comes, and their little feet and voices are
still, the spirit of the house seems to have fallen asleep. I send my
servants to bed, for nobody here keeps late hours (ten o'clock being
considered late), and, in spite of assiduous practicing, reading, and
answering of letters, my evenings are sad in their absolute solitude,
and I am glad when ten o'clock comes, the hour for my retiring, which I
could often find in my heart to anticipate....
I have taken vehemently to worsted-work this winter, and, _instead of a
novel or two_, am going to read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire," which I have never read, and by means of Bayle, classical
atlas, and the Encyclopaedia, I mean to make a regular school-room
business of it.
Good-bye, dear. Events are so lacking in my present existence, that I am
longing for the spring as I never did before--for the sight of leaves
and flowers, and the song of birds, and the daily development of the
great natural pageant of the year. I am grateful to God for nothing more
than the abundant beauty with which He has adorned His creation. The
pleasure I derive from its contemplation has survived many others, and
should I live long, will, I think, outlive all that I am now capable
of....
Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, February 17th, 1840.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,
... I believe too implicitly in your interest in me and mine, ever to
have _nothing_ to say to you; but my sayings will be rather egotistical,
for the monotony of my life affords me few interests but those which
centre in my family, the head of which left me ten days ago, with his
brother, for their southern estate. I have since had a letter, which, as
it affords an accurate picture of winter traveling in this country,
would, I flatter myself, make your sympathetic hair stand on end.
Listen. On Sunday morning, before day, they set out, two post-coaches,
with four horses, each carrying eight passengers. They got to
Alexandria, which is close to Washington, whence they started without
difficulty, stopped a short time to gird up their loins and take breath,
and at seven o'clock set off. It rained hard; the road was deep with
mud, and very bad; several times the passengers were obliged to get out
of the coach and walk through the rain and mud, the horses being unable
to drag the load through such depths of mire. They floundered on, wading
through mud and fording streams, until eleven o'clock, when they stopped
to breakfast, having come but _eight miles_ in _four hours_. They
consulted whether to go on or turn back: the majority ruled to go on; so
after breakfast they again took the road, but had proceeded but one mile
when it became utterly impassable--the thaw and rain had so swelled a
stream that barred the way that it was too deep to ford; and when it
was quite apparent that they must either turn back or be drowned, they
reluctantly adopted the former course, and got back to Washington late
in the evening, having passed nearly all day in going _nine miles_. I
think you will agree with me, my dear Lady Dacre, that my children and
myself were well out of that party of pleasure; though the very day
before the party set off it was still uncertain whether we should not
accompany them.
The contrary having been determined, I am now very quietly spending the
winter with my chickens at the Farm.... An imaginative nature makes, it
is true, happiness as well as unhappiness for itself, but finds
inevitable ready made disappointment in the mere realities of life.... I
make no excuse for talking "nursery" to you, my dear Lady Dacre. These
are my dearest occupations; indeed, I might say, my only ones.
Have you looked into Marryatt's books on this country? They are full of
funny stories, some of them true stories enough, and some, little
imitation Yankee stories of the captain's own.
Do explain to me what Sydney Smith means by disclaiming Peter Plymley's
letters as he does? Surely he _did_ write them.
This very youthful nation of the United States is "carrying on," to use
their own favorite phrase, in a most unprecedented manner. Their
mercantile and financial experiments have been the dearest of their kind
certainly; and the confusion, embarrassment, and difficulty, in
consequence of these experiments, are universal. Money is scarce, credit
is scarcer, but, nevertheless, they will not lay the lesson to heart.
The natural resources of the country are so prodigious, its wealth so
enormous, so inexhaustible, that it will be presently up and on its feet
again running faster than ever to the next stumbling-post. _Moral_
bankruptcy is what they have to fear, much more than failure of material
riches. It is a strange country, and a strange people; and though I have
dear and good friends among them, I still feel a stranger here, and fear
I shall continue to do so until I die, which God grant I may do at home!
_i.e._, in England.
Give my kindest remembrance to Lord Dacre. We hope to be in England in
September, and I shall come and see you as soon as ever I can.
Believe me ever, my dear Lady Dacre,
Yours affectionately,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, March 1st, 1840.
Thank you, my dearest Harriet, for your extract from my sister's letter
to you.... The strongest of us are insufficient to ourselves in this
life, and if we will not stretch out our hands for help to our fellows,
who, for the most part, are indeed broken reeds and quite as often
pierce as support us, we needs must at last stretch them out to God; and
doubtless these occasions, bitter as they may seem, should be accounted
blest, which make the poor proud human soul discover its own weakness
and God's all-sufficiency....
My winter--or rather, what remains of it--is like to pass in
uninterrupted quiet and solitude; and you will probably have the
satisfaction of receiving many _short_ letters from me, for I know not
where I shall find the material for long ones. To be sure, S----'s
sayings and F----'s looks might furnish me with something to say, but I
have a dread of beginning to talk about my children, for fear I should
never leave off, for that is apt to be a "story without an end."
I hear they are going to bestow upon my father, on his return to
England, a silver vase, valued at several hundred pounds. I am
base-minded, dear Harriet, grovelling, and sordid; and were I he, would
rather have a shilling's worth of honor, and the rest of the vase in
hard cash: but he has lived his life upon this sort of thing, and I
think with great pleasure of the great pleasure it will give him. I am
very well, and always most affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, March 12th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,
It is only a few days since I received your letter with the news of Mr.
F----'s attack, from which it is but natural to apprehend that he may
not recover.... The combination of the loss of one's father, and of the
home of one's whole life, is indeed a severe trial; though in this case,
the one depending on the other, and Mr. F----'s age being so advanced,
Emily with her steadfast mind has probably contemplated the possibility
of this event, and prepared herself for it, as much as preparation may
be made against affliction, which, however long looked for, when it
comes always seems to bring with it some unforeseen element of harsh
surprise. We never can imagine what will happen to us, precisely as it
_does_ happen to us; and overlook in anticipation, not only minute
mitigations, but small stings of aggravation, quite incalculable till
they are experienced.... I could cry to think that I shall never again
see the flowerbeds and walks and shrubberies of Bannisters. I think
there is something predominantly material in my nature, for the sights
and sounds of outward things have always been my chiefest source of
pleasure; and as I grow older this in nowise alters; so little so, that
gathering the first violets of the spring the other morning, it seemed
to me that they were things to _love_ almost more than creatures of my
own human kind. I do not believe I am a normal human being; and at my
death, only _half a soul_ will pass into a spiritual existence, the
other half will go and mingle with the winds that blow, and the trees
that grow, and the waters that flow, in this world of material
elements....
Do I remember Widmore, you ask me. Yes, truly.... I remember the gay
colors of the flowerbeds, and the fine picturesque trees in the garden,
and the shady quietness of the ground-floor rooms....
You ask me how I have replaced Margery. Why, in many respects, if indeed
not in all, very indifferently; but I could not help myself. Her leaving
me was a matter of positive necessity, and some things tend to reconcile
me to her loss. I believe she would have made S---- a Catholic. The
child's imagination had certainly received a very strong impression from
her; and soon after her departure, as I was hearing S---- her prayers,
she begged me to let her repeat that prayer to "the blessed Virgin,"
which her nurse had taught her. I consider this a direct breach of faith
on the part of Margery, who had once before undertaken similar
instructions in spite of distinct directions to interfere in no way with
the child's religious training.
The proselytizing spirit of her religion was, I suppose, stronger than
her conscience, or rather, was the predominant element in it, as it is
in all very devout Catholics; and the opportunity of impressing my
little girl with what she considered vital truth, not to be neglected;
and upon this ground alone I am satisfied that it is better she should
have left me, for though it would not mortally grieve me if hereafter my
child were conscientiously to embrace Romanism, I have no desire that
she should be educated in what I consider erroneous views upon the most
momentous of all subjects.
I have been more than once assured, on good authority, that it is by no
means an infrequent practice of the Roman Catholic Irish women employed
as nurses in American families, to carry their employers' babies to
their own churches and have them baptized, of course without consent or
even knowledge of their parents. The secret baptism is duly registered,
and the child thus smuggled into the pope's fold, never, if possible,
entirely lost sight of by the priest who administered the regenerating
sacrament to it. The saving of souls is an irresistible motive,
especially when the saving of one's own is much facilitated by the
process.
The woman I have in Margery's place is an Irish Protestant, a very good
and conscientious girl, but most wofully ignorant, and one who murders
our luckless mother-tongue after a fashion that almost maddens me.
However, as with some cultivation, education, reading, reflection, and
that desire to do what is best that a mother alone can feel for her own
child, I cannot but be conscious of my own inability in all points to
discharge this great duty, the inability of my nursery-maid does not
astonish or dismay me. The remedy for the nurse's deficiencies must be
in _me_, and the remedy for mine in God, to whose guidance I commit
myself and my darlings.... Margery was very anxious to remain with me as
my maid; but we have reduced our establishment, and I have no longer any
maid of my own, therefore I could not keep her....
With regard to attempting to make "reason the guide of your child's
actions," that, of course, must be a very gradual process, and may, in
my opinion, be tried too early. Obedience is the first virtue of which a
young child is capable, the first duty it can perform; and the authority
of a parent is, I think, the first impression it should receive,--a
strictly reasonable and just claim, inasmuch as, furnishing my child
with all its means of existence, as well as all its amusements and
enjoyments, regard for my requests is the proper and only return it can
make in the absence of sufficient judgment, to decide upon their
propriety, and the motives by which they are dictated.
Good-bye, dearest Harriet.
I am ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, March 16th, 1840.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
It was with infinite pain that I received your last letter [a very
unfavorable report, almost a sentence of death, had been pronounced by
the physicians upon my friend's dearest friend, Miss Dorothy Wilson],
and yet I know not, except your sorrow, what there is so deplorable in
the fact that Dorothy, who is one of the living best prepared for death,
should have received a summons, which on first reading of it shocked me
so terribly.
We calculate most blindly, for the most part, in what form the call to
"change our life" may be least unwelcome; but to one whose eyes have
long been steadily fixed upon that event, I do not believe the manner of
their death signifies much.
Pain, our poor human bodies shrink from; and yet it has been endured,
almost as if unfelt, not only in the triumphant death of the mob-hunted
martyr, but in the still, lonely, and, by all but God, unseen agony of
the poor and humble Christian, in those numerous cases where persecution
indeed was not, but the sorrowful trial of the neglect and careless
indifference of their fellow-beings, the total absence of all
sympathy--a heavy desolation whether in life or death.