away for want of use; and as long as I am neither the worse woman, wife,
nor mother for its neglect, I take it it matters very little, and there
is no harm done. My serious interest in life is the care of my children,
and my principal recreation is my garden; and though I formerly
sometimes imagined I had faculties whose exercise might demand a wider
sphere, the consciousness that I discharge very imperfectly the
obligations of that which I occupy, ought to satisfy me that its homely
duties and modest tasks are more than sufficient for my abilities; and
though I am not satisfied with myself, I should be with my existence,
since, such as it is, it furnishes me with more work than I do as it
should be done.
From the interest you express in Fanny Ellsler, you will be glad to hear
that her success here has been triumphant. I believe the great mass of
people always recognize and acknowledge excellence when they see it,
though their stupid or ignorant toleration of what is mediocre, or even
bad, would seem to indicate the contrary.... The general mind of man is
capable of perceiving the most excellent in all things, and prompt to
seize it, too, when it meets with it. Even in morals it does so
theoretically, however the difficulty of adhering to high standards may
make the actions of most people conform but little to their best
conceptions of right. The idea of perfection is recognized by the spirit
of creatures capable of and destined for perfection in all things,
whether great or small; and so (since this is _a propos_ of opera
dancing) Fanny Ellsler's performances have been appreciated here to a
degree that would astonish those who forget that education, though it
develops, does not create our finer perceptions, and, moreover, that the
finest are commoner than is commonly believed. The possession is almost
universal: the cultivation in _any_ degree worth anything comparatively
rare, and in a _high_ degree very rare indeed everywhere; and
here--well! it does not exist.
I hope we shall see you in England in the autumn; I am using every
endeavor not to be sent over alone.... I cannot bear to go to England
again a "widow bewitched."
I am ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, June 8th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,
It is not to you that I apologize for talking over-much about my
children, but to myself.... For what said the witty Frenchman of a man's
love for wife and child? "_Ah! bien c'est de l'egoisme a trois._" ... I
hope you will see my children, both them and me, in a very few months;
for I think we are coming to England in September, and I shall surely
not leave it without borrowing some of your company from you, let you be
where you may....
I must go and dress for dinner, hence the brevity of this letter, which
pray accept for "the soul of wit."
Did you ever see a humming-bird? Have they them in Italy? We have a
honeysuckle hedge here, where the little jewels of creatures stuff
themselves incessantly, early and late, sabbaths and week-days,
flickering over the sweet bushes of fragrance, like the diamonds of
modern fashion set on elastic wires, to make them quiver and increase
their sparkle and brilliancy. I should like to have written some more to
you.
I am ever your affectionate
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, June 28th, 1840.
MY DEAR T----,
Your discoveries in the private character of Sir Samuel Romilly are none
to me. I have known those who knew him intimately. My brother was school
and college mate of his sons, one of whom I know very well; and their
father's character, in all its most endearing aspects, was familiar to
me. I think I was once told (not by them, however, of course) that the
melancholy induced by the loss of his wife had been the chief cause of
his destroying himself, for he was devotedly and passionately attached
to her.
We go every night to see Fanny Ellsler; only think what an extraordinary
effort of dissipation for me, who hardly ever stir abroad of an evening,
and who had almost as much forgotten the inside of a theatre as Falstaff
had the inside of a church! My admiration for her grows rather than
diminishes, though she is a better actress even than dancer, which I
think speaks in favor of her intellect. Did you ever see Taglioni? Who
invented and who suggested the expression the "poetry of motion"? It
should have been _made_ for her. Her dancing is like nothing but poetic
inspiration, and seems as if she was composing while she executed it. I
wonder if it is the ballet-master who devises all the steps of these
great dancers,--of course, not the national dances, but the
inconceivably lovely things that Taglioni does, or whether she orders
her own steps, and (given a certain dramatic situation and a certain
strain of music) floats or flies, or glides, or gyrates at her own will
and pleasure. Did you ever see her in the "Sylphide"? What an exquisite
pathetic dream of supernatural sentiment that was! Other dances are as
graceful as possible; that woman was grace itself.
I was saying once to my friend, Frederick Rackeman, that Chopin's music
made me think of Taglioni's dancing, to which he replied, to my great
surprise, that Chopin had said that he had more than once received his
inspiration from Taglioni's dancing; a curious instance of influence so
strong as to be recognized by one who was perfectly unaware of it. If I
remember rightly, Gibson, the sculptor, said that he owed many
suggestions to the vigorous and graceful dancing of Cerito; but those,
of course, were a suggestion of form to a creator of form, and not an
inspiration of exquisite sound gathered from exquisite motion, as in the
instance of Taglioni and Chopin.
Certain music suggests the waving of trees, as in the Notturno in
Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and Schubert's exquisite
_beckoning_ song of the linden tree.
Certainly dancers deserve to be well paid when one thinks of the
mechanical labor, the daily hours of _battements_ and _changements de
pieds_, and turning, and twisting, and torturing of the limbs before
this apparently spontaneous result of mere movement can be obtained.
Ellsler has great dramatic power. Her Tarentelle and Wylie are really
finely tragical in parts; but then she had a first-rate _head_ as well
as foot training.
She is a wonderful artist; but there is something unutterably sad to me
in the contemplation of such a career. The blending in most unnatural
union of the elements of degradation and moral misery with such
exquisite perceptions of beauty, grace, and refinement, produces the
impression of a sort of monstrosity, a deformity of the whole higher
nature, which fills one with poignant compassion and regret. Poor, fair,
admired, despised, flattered, forlorn souls!...
Pray come and see us when you can, and
Believe me very truly yours,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, June 26th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,
Mr. Combe and Cecilia spent the day with us on their way to New York,
and I did rejoice to think her pilgrimage was over. She has gone through
what her former habits of life must have made a severe experience in
travelling in this country. Her affection for her husband, and her
devotion to his views, are unbounded, and have helped her to submit to
her trial with a cheerfulness and good humor worthy of all praise; for
the luxurious comfort of her life in her mother's house was certainly a
bad preparation for roughing it, as she has been doing for some months
past, for the sake of the phrenologist and his phrenology.... I never
knew any one more improved by the blessed discipline of happiness than
she appears to be. I am afraid my incapacity to accept the whole of
their system would always prevent our being as good friends as we might
otherwise with opportunity become. Perhaps, however, as the opportunity
is not likely to offer often, it does not much matter....
Saunders, the miniature-painter, of London celebrity, has come out here
to look at the pretty faces on this side of the water.... He told me
that he had once executed to order a miniature of me, partly from seeing
me on the stage, and partly from memory. I knew nothing whatever of
this, and think it is one among the many nuisances of being a "public
character," or what the American Minister's wife said her position had
made her, "_Une femme publique_," that one's likeness may thus be
stolen, and sold or bought by anybody who chooses to traffic in such
gear.
I remember my mother telling me of a painful circumstance which had
occurred to her from the same cause. A young officer of some
distinction, who died in India, left among his effects a miniature of
her; and she was disagreeably surprised by receiving from his mother a
heartbroken appeal to her, saying that the fact of her son's being in
possession of this portrait led her to hope that perhaps my mother might
possess one of him, and entreating her, if such were the case, to permit
her (his mother) to have a copy of it, as she had no likeness of her
son. My mother was obliged to reply that she had no such portrait, and
had never known or even heard the name of the gentleman who was in
possession of hers....
How many things make one feel as if one's whole life was only a confused
dream! Wouldn't it be odd to wake at the end, and find one had not lived
at all? Many perhaps will wake at the end, and find it so indeed in one
sense,--which brings us back to the more serious aspect of things....
I had some time ago a joint-stock letter from my brother John and his
wife, informing me of the birth of their son. I do not think they
mentioned who was to be its godmother; but I quite agree with Mrs.
Kemble (my Uncle John's widow), as to the inexpediency of undertaking
such a sponsorship for any one's child. If it means anything, it means
something so serious that I should shrink from such a responsibility;
and if it means (as it generally does) nothing, I think it would be
better omitted altogether. When I was at home I dissuaded my sister from
standing godmother to their little girl; but I do not think any of them
understood my motive for doing so....
You ask me whether the specimens of Irish order, neatness, and
intelligence which came over here to fill our domestic ranks are beyond
training. Truly, training is, for the most part, so far beyond _them_,
that it is no easy matter to simplify even the first rudiments of the
science of civilization sufficiently to render them intelligible to
these fair countrywomen of yours. Patience is a fine thing, and might
accomplish something, perhaps; but there are insuperable bars to any
hope of their progress in the high wages which they can all command at
once, whether they ever saw the inside of a decent house before they
came to this country or not; the abundance of situations; and the
absence of everything like superior competition. The extraordinary
comparative prosperity to which these poor ignorant girls are suddenly
introduced on their arrival here, the high pay, the profusely plentiful
living, the _equality_ treatment, which must seem almost _quality_
treatment to them, presently make them impertinent and unsteady; and as
they can all command a new situation the instant that, for any cause,
they leave the one they are in (unfit for the commonest situation in a
decent household as they are), it is hardly worth their while, out of a
mere abstract love of perfection, to labor at any very great improvement
of their powers. A residence of some years in this country generally
develops their intelligence into a sort of sharp-sighted calculating
shrewdness, which they do not bring with them, but no way improves their
own quick native wit and natural national humor. Of course there are
exceptions; but the majority of them, after a short stay in America,
contrive to combine their own least desirable race qualities with the
independent tone of pert familiarity, the careless extravagance, and the
passion for dress of American girls of the lower class....
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, July 8th 1840.
Perhaps, dearest Harriet, it might be better for me not to come to
England, inasmuch as my roots are beginning to spread in my present
soil, and to transplant them, even for a short time, might check the
process materially.... But while my father still lives, I shall hope to
revisit England once in every few years: when he is gone, I will give up
all the rest that I own on the other side of the water, and remain here
until it might be thought desirable for us to visit, not England only,
but Europe; and should that never appear desirable, why, then, remain
here till I die.
My father's health received a beneficial stimulus from the excitement of
his temporary return to the stage; but before that, his condition was
by all accounts very unsatisfactory; and I am afraid that when the
effect of the impulse his physical powers received from the pleasurable
exertion of acting subsides, he may again relapse into feebleness,
dejection, and general disorder of the system, from which he appeared to
be suffering before he made this last professional effort. I _must_ see
him once more, and he has written to me to say that as soon as he knows
when we are coming to England, he will meet us there. He will, I am
pretty sure, bring my sister with him, and this is an additional reason
why I am very anxious to be in England this autumn.... I have no doubt
that they will both come to England in September, to meet me, and I
presume we should remain together until I am obliged to return to
America.
I have not expressed to you, my dearest Harriet, my delight at your
relief from immediate anxiety about Dorothy. Sorrow seems to me so
peculiarly severe in its administration--or discipline, should I call
it?--to your spirit, that I thank God that its heavy pressure is lifted
from your heart for the present. Dorothy is one of those with whom I
always feel sure that all is well, let their circumstances or situation
be what they will; but I rejoice that she is spared physical suffering,
and preserved to you, to whom she is so infinitely precious....
F. A. B.
LENOX, August 15th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,
... You bid me tell you when I shall leave America to pay my promised
visit to my father. I have been thrown into a state of complete
uncertainty by receiving a letter from my brother John, which informs me
of my sister's engagement at Naples and Palermo, and possible further
engagements at Malta and _Constantinople_! Think of her going to sing to
the Turks!... I am at present alone here, and of course cannot myself
determine the question of my going alone all over the Continent to join
my father and Adelaide.... It is possible that I may have to renounce my
visit to Europe altogether for the present, and, but for my father, I
could do so without a moment's hesitation, but I dread postponing seeing
him again, and, while I do so, shall live in a perpetual apprehension
that I shall _hear_ of his death as I did of that of my poor mother. I
consider the visit I contemplated making him our probable last season of
reunion, and cannot banish the thought that if it is indefinitely
postponed I may perhaps never see him again....
An intense interest is felt by all good Democrats in the coming
election, which determines whether Mr. Van Buren is to retain the
Presidency or not; and no zealous member of his party would leave the
country while that was undetermined. John writes me, too, that he
expects my father and sister both in London after Easter next year, and
I have no doubt it will be thought best that I should wait till then to
join them in England. However, all my plans must remain for the present
in utter uncertainty, and I shall surely not meet you and Emily at
Bannisters, which I could well have liked to do....
What lots of umbrellas you must wear out at Grasmere! [Miss S---- and
Miss W---- were passing the summer at the English lakes.] I am writing
pretty late at night, but if the Sedgwicks, whom you know, and those
who, through them, know you, were round me, I should have _showers_ of
love to send you from them: your rainy lake country suggested that
image, but that would be a _warm_ shower, which you don't get in
Westmoreland. I am growing very fat, but at the present there is no
fatty degeneracy of the heart, so that I still remain
Affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
LENOX, MASSACHUSETTS, August 28th, 1840.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,
I have always considered your writing to me a very unmerited kindness
towards one who had so little claim on your time and attention; and I
need not tell you how much this feeling is increased by your present
state of mind, and the effort I am sure it must be to you to remember
one so far off, in the midst of your great sorrow [for the death of her
daughter, Mrs. Sullivan].... I shall come alone to England; and this is
the more dismal, that I have it in prospect to go down to Naples to join
my father and sister, and stay with them till her engagements there and
at Palermo are ended. This journey (once my vision by day and dream by
night) will lose much of its delight by being a solitary pilgrimage to
the long-desired Italy. I think of pressing one of my brothers into my
service as escort; or if they are not able to go with me, shall write
to my father to come to England, as he lately sent me word he would do,
at any time that I would meet him there--of course, to return
immediately with him to my sister. They will both, I believe, be in
England after Easter next year; and then I shall hope to be allowed to
see you, my dear Lady Dacre, and express to you how much I have
sympathized with you in all you have suffered.
I am not aware of having spoken unjustly or disparagingly of the
dramatic profession. You say I am ungrateful to it: is it because I owe
many of my friends (yourself among the number) to it that you say so? or
do you think that I forget that circumstance? But to value it as an art,
simply for the personal advantages or pleasures that it was the means of
affording me, would be surely quite as absurd as to forget that it did
procure such for me. Then, upon reflection, few things have ever puzzled
me more than the fact of people liking _me_ because I pretended to be a
pack of Juliets and Belvideras, and creatures who were _not_ me. Perhaps
_I was jealous of my parts_; certainly, the good will my assumption of
them obtained for me, always seemed to me quite as curious as
flattering, or indeed rather more so. I did not think it an unbecoming
comment on my father's acting again at the Queen's request, when I said
that the excitement to which he had been habituated for so many years
had still charms for him; it would be very strange indeed if it had not.
It is chiefly from this point of view, and one or two others bearing on
the moral health, that I deprecate for those I love the exercise of that
profession; the claims of which to be considered as an art I cannot at
all determine satisfactorily in my own mind. That we have Shakespeare's
plays, written expressly for the interpretation of acting, is a strong
argument for the existence of a positive art of acting:
nevertheless----. But, if you please, we will settle that point when I
have the pleasure of seeing you. I suppose I shall steam for England in
October, when I shall endeavor to see you before I go abroad. Give my
kindest regards to Lord Dacre, and believe me always
Very affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
_Lenox_, September 4th, 1840.
_My dearest Harriet_,
... First of all, let me congratulate you, and dear Dorothy, upon her
improved health. Good as she is, I am sure she must value life; for
those who use it best, best know its infinite worth; and for you, my
dearest Harriet, this extension of the precious loan of her existence to
you, I am persuaded, must be full of the greatest blessings. Give my
affectionate love to her when you write to her or see her again; for,
indeed, I suppose you are now at Bannisters, where I should like well to
be with you, but I much fear that I shall not see you this winter,
though I expect to sail for England next month....
You ask me of the distance between the Virginia Springs and Lenox, and I
am ashamed to say I cannot answer; however, almost half the length of
the United States, I think. This, my northern place of summer sojourn,
is in the heart of the hill country of Massachusetts, in a district
inhabited chiefly by Sedgwicks, and their belongings....
Our friends the Sedgwicks reached their homes about a fortnight ago, and
the hills and valleys hereabouts rejoiced thereat.... Katharine's health
and spirits are much revived by the atmosphere of love by which she is
surrounded in her home. She bids me give her love to you. I wonder, with
your miserable self-distrust, whether you have any idea of the
affectionate regard all these people bear you. Katharine, a short time
before leaving Europe, saw in a shop a dark gray stuff which resembled a
dress you used to wear; she immediately bought it for herself, and
carrying it home asked her brother who it reminded him of. He instantly
kissed the stuff, exclaiming, "H---- S----!" Young Kate's journal
contains a most affectionate record of their short intimacy with you at
Wiesbaden; and you have left a deep impression on these hearts, where as
little that is bad or base abides as in any frail human hearts I ever
knew....
I have regained so much of my former appearance that I trust when I do
see you I shall not horrify you, as you seemed some time ago to
anticipate, by an apparition altogether unlike your, ever _essentially_
the same,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, October 7th, 1840.
... Dearest Harriet, whatever may be the evils which may spring from the
amazing facilities of intercourse daily developing between distant
countries (and with so great good, how should there not be some evil?),
think of those whose lots are cast far from their early homes and
friends; think of the deathlike separation that going to America has
been to thousands who left England, and friends there, but a few years
ago; the uncertainty of intercourse by letter, the interminable
intervals of suspense, the impossibility of making known or understood
by hearts that yearned for such information the new and strange
circumstances of the exile's existence; the gradual dying out of
friendships, and cooling of warm regard, from the impossibility of
sufficient intercourse to keep interest alive; and sympathy, after
endeavoring in vain to picture the distant home and surroundings and
daily occupations of the absent friend, dwindling and withering away for
want of necessary aliment, in spite of all the efforts which imagination
could make to satisfy the affectionate desire and longing loving
inquiries of the heart. Think of all that those two _existences_ as you
call them (existences no more--but mere ideas), Time and Space, have
caused of misery and suspense and heart-wearing anxiety, and rejoice
that so much has been done to make parting less bitter, and absence
endurable, through hope that now amounts almost to certainty.
My own plans, which I thought so thoroughly settled a short time ago,
have again become extremely indefinite. It is now considered inexpedient
that I should travel on the Continent, though there is no objection to
my remaining in England until my father's return, which I understand is
expected soon after Easter. As, however, my motive in leaving America is
to be with my father and sister, I have no idea of going to London to
remain there three months, without any expectation of seeing them. This
consideration would incline me to put off my visit to England till the
spring, but it is not yet determined who, or whether any of us, will go
to Georgia for the winter. My being taken thither is entirely uncertain;
but should the contrary be decided upon, I might perhaps come to England
immediately, as I would rather pass the winter in London, among my
friends, if I am to spend it alone, than here, where the severe weather
suspends all out-of-door exercise, interests, and occupations, and
where the absolute solitude is a terrible trial to my nerves and
spirits.
At present, however, I have not a notion what will be determined about
it, but as soon as I have any positive idea upon the subject I will let
you know.