flowers and almost summer heat here, though the golden showers that
every now and then flicker from the trees, and the rustling sound of
fallen leaves, and the autumnal smell of mignonette, and other "fall"
flowers, whisper of the coming winter; still all here at present is
bright and sweet, with that peculiar combination of softness and
brilliancy which belongs to the autumn in this part of America. It is
the pleasantest season of the year here, and indescribably beautiful....
Good-bye, dearest Harriet; I had hoped to have joined you and Emily at
Bannisters, but that pretty plan is all rubbed out now, and I do not
know when I shall see you; but, thanks to those blessed beings--the
steam-ships, those Atlantic angels of speed and certainty, it now seems
as if I could do so "at any moment." God bless you.
Yours ever,
F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, October 26th.
I beg you will not stop short, as in your last letter, received the day
before yesterday, dearest Harriet, with "but I will not overwhelm you
with questions:" it is particularly agreeable to me to have specific
questions to answer in the letters I receive from you, and I hope you
perceive that I do religiously reply to anything in the shape of a
query. It is pleasant to me to know upon what particular points of my
doing, being, and suffering you desire to be enlightened; because
although I know everything I write to you interests you, I like to be
able to satisfy even a few of those "I wonders" that are perpetually
rising up in our imaginations with respect to those we love and who are
absent from us.
You ask me if I ever write any journal, or anything else now. The time
that I passed in the South was so crowded with daily and hourly
occupations that, though I kept a regular journal, it was hastily
written, and received constant additional notes of things that
occurred, and that I wished to remember, inserted in a very irregular
fashion in it.... I think I should like to carry this journal down to
Georgia with me this winter; to revise, correct, and add whatever my
second experience might furnish to the chronicle. It has been suggested
to me that such an account of a Southern plantation might be worth
publishing; but I think such a publication would be a breach of
confidence, an advantage taken on my part of the situation of trust,
which I held on the estate. As my condemnation of the whole system is
unequivocal, and all my illustrations of its evils must be drawn from
our own plantation, I do not think I have a right to exhibit the
interior management and economy of that property to the world at large,
as a sample of Southern slavery, especially as I did not go thither with
any such purpose. This winter I think I shall mention my desire upon the
subject before going to the South, and of course any such publication
must then depend on the acquiescence of the owners of the estate. I am
sure that no book of mine on the subject could be of as much use to the
poor people on Butler's Island as my residence among them; and I should,
therefore, be very unwilling to do anything that was likely to interfere
with that: although I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it
was an imperative duty, knowing what I know, and having seen what I have
seen, to do all that lies in my power to show the dangers and evils of
this frightful institution. And the testimony of a planter's wife, whose
experience has all been gathered from estates where the slaves are
universally admitted to be well treated, should carry with it some
authority. So I am occupying myself, from time to time, as my leisure
allows, in making a fair copy of my Georgia Journal.
I occasionally make very copious extracts from what I read, and also
write critical analyses of the books that please or displease me, in the
language--French or Italian--in which they are written; but these are
fragmentary, and do not, I think, entitle me to say that I am writing
anything. No one here is interested in anything that I write, and I have
too little serious habit of study, too little application, and too much
vanity and desire for the encouragement of praise, to achieve much in my
condition of absolute intellectual solitude....
Here are two of your questions answered; the third is--whether I let
the slave question rest more than I did? Oh yes; for I have come to the
conclusion that no words of mine could be powerful enough to dispel the
clouds of prejudice which early habits of thought, and the general
opinion of society upon this subject have gathered round the minds of
the people I live among. I do not know whether they ever think or read
about it, and my arguments, though founded in this case on pretty sound
reason, are apt to degenerate into passionate appeals, the violence of
which is not calculated to do much good in the way of producing
convictions in the minds of others....
Even if the property were mine, I could exercise no power over it; nor
could our children, after our death, do anything for those wretched
slaves, under the present laws of Georgia. All that any one could do,
would be to refrain from using the income derived from the estates, and
return it to the rightful owners--that is, the earners of it. Had I such
a property, I think I would put my slaves at once quietly upon the
footing of free laborers, paying them wages, and making them pay me rent
and take care of themselves. Of course I should be shot by my next
neighbor (against whom no verdict would be found except "Serve her
right!") in the first week of my experiment; but _if I wasn't_, I think,
reckoning only the meanest profit to be derived from the measure, I
should double the income of the estate in less than three years.... I am
more than ever satisfied that God and Mammon would be equally
propitiated by emancipation.
You ask me whether I take any interest in the Presidential election.
Yes, though I have not room left for my reasons--and I have some,
besides that best woman's reason, sympathy with the politics of the man
I belong to. The party coming into power are, I believe, at heart less
democratic than the other; and while the natural advantages of this
wonderful country remain unexhausted (and they are apparently
inexhaustible), I am sure the Republican Government is by far the best
for the people themselves, besides thinking it the best in the abstract,
as you know I do.
God bless you, my dearest Harriet.
I am ever yours most affectionately,
F. A. B.
[The question of my spending the winter in Georgia was finally
determined by Mr. J---- B---- 's decided opposition to my doing so.
He was part proprietor of the plantation, and positively stipulated
that I should not again be taken thither, considering my presence
there as a mere source of distress to myself, annoyance to others,
and danger to the property.
I question the validity of the latter objection, but not at all that
of the two first; and am sure that, upon the whole, his opposition
to my residence among his slaves was not only justifiable but
perfectly reasonable.
My Georgia journal was not published until thirty years after it was
written, during the civil war in the United States. I was then
passing some time in England, and the people among whom I lived
were, like most well-educated members of the upper classes of
English society, Southern sympathizers. The ignorant and mischievous
nonsense I was continually compelled to hear upon the subject of
slavery in the seceding States determined me to publish my own
observation of it--not, certainly, that I had in those latter years
of my life any fallacious expectation of making converts on the
subject, but that I felt constrained at that juncture to bear my
testimony to the miserable nature and results of the system, of
which so many of my countrymen and women were becoming the
sentimental apologists.
It being now settled that I was not to return to the plantation, my
thoughts had hardly reverted to the prospect of a winter in England
when I received the news of my father's return from the Continent,
and dangerous illness in London; so that, I was told, unless I could
go to him immediately, there was but little probability of my ever
seeing him again. The misfortune I had so often anticipated now
seemed to have overtaken me, and instant preparation for my leaving
America being made, and an elderly lady, with whom I had become
connected by my marriage, having exerted her influence in my behalf,
I was not allowed, under such painful circumstances, again to cross
the Atlantic alone, but returned with a very heavy heart to my own
country, but with the comfort of being accompanied by my whole
family.
The news that met me on my arrival was that my father was at the
point of death, that he would not probably survive twenty-four
hours, and that it was altogether inexpedient that he should see
me, as, if he recognized me, which was doubtful, my unexpected
appearance, it having been impossible to prepare him for it, might
only be the means of causing him a violent and perhaps painful shock
of nervous agitation. This terrible verdict, pronounced by three of
the most eminent medical men of the day, Bright, Liston, and Wilson,
was a dreadful close to all the anxious days and hours of the sea
voyage, during which I had hoped and prayed to be again permitted to
embrace my father. But in my deep distress, I could not help
remembering that, after all, his physicians, able as they were, had
not the keys of life and death. And so it proved: my father made an
almost miraculous rally, recovered, and survived the sentence
pronounced against him for many years.
Not many days after our arrival, his improved condition admitted of
his being told of my return, and allowed to see me. Cadaverous is
the only word that describes the appearance to which acute suffering
and subsequent prostration had reduced him; he looked, indeed, like
one returned from the dead, and, in his joy at seeing me again,
declared that I had restored him to life, and that my arrival,
though he had not known of it, had called him back to existence--a
sympathetic theory of convalescence, to which I do not think his
doctors gave in their adhesion.
We now took up our abode in London; first at the Clarendon Hotel,
and afterwards in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, where my father, as
soon as he could be moved, came to reside with us, and where my
sister joined us on her return from Italy. My friend Miss S----,
coming from Ireland to stay with me soon after my arrival in
England, added to my happiness in finding myself once more with my
own family, and in my own country.]
CLARGES STREET, March 21st.
You will, ere this, dearest H----, have received my answer to your first
letter. You ask me, in your second, what we think about the chances of a
war with America. Our wishes prompt us to the belief that a war between
the two countries is _impossible_, though the tone of the newspapers,
within the last few days, has been horribly pugnacious. A letter was
received the day before yesterday, from our Liverpool factor, asking us
what is to be done about some cotton which had just come to them from
the plantation, in the event of war breaking out: a supposition which he
had treated as an utter impossibility when he was last in London, but
which he confessed in this letter did not seem to him quite so
impossible now. I do not, for my own part, see very well how either
party is to get out of its present attitude towards the other peaceably
and, at the same time, without some compromise of dignity. But I pray
God that the hearts of the two nations may be inclined to peace, and
then, doubtless, some cunning device will be found to save their
_honor_. The virtuous "_if_" of Touchstone is, I am afraid, not as valid
in national as individual quarrels.
Tell Mr. H---- W----, with my love, that it is all a hoax about Niagara
Falls having _fallen_ down; and that they are still _falling_ down,
according to their custom; but if you should find this intelligence
affect him with too painful a disappointment, you may comfort him by
assuring him that they inevitably must and will fall down one of these
days, and, what is more, stay fallen, and precisely in the manner they
are now said to have begun their career--by the gradual wearing away of
the rock between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
We were at the opera the Saturday after you left us; but it was a
mediocre performance, both music and dancing, and gave me but little
pleasure. I went last night again with my father, and was enchanted with
the opera, which was an old favorite, "Tancredi," in which I heard
Persiani, an admirable artist, with a mere golden wire of voice, of
which she made most capital use, and Pauline Garcia, who possesses all
the genius of her family; and between them it was a perfect performance.
The latter is a sister of Malibran's, and will certainly be one of the
finest dramatic singers of these times. But the proximity of people to
me in the stalls is so intolerable that I think I shall give mine up;
for I am in a state of nervous _crawling_ the whole time, with being
pushed and pressed and squeezed and leaned on and breathed on by my
fellow-creatures. You remember my old theory, that we are all of us
surrounded by an atmosphere proper to ourselves, emanating from each of
us,--a separate, sensitive envelope, extending some little distance from
our visible persons. I am persuaded that this is the case, and that when
my _individual atmosphere_ is invaded by any one, it affects my whole
nervous system. The proximity of any _bodies_ but those I love best is
unendurable to my body.
My father is much in the same condition as when you went away, suffering
a great deal, and complaining frequently; but by his desire we have a
dinner-party here on Tuesday, and he has accepted two invitations to
dine out himself. My chicks are pretty well....
May God bless you, dear.
I am ever your own
F. A. B.
CLARGES STREET.
This letter was begun three days ago, and it is now Thursday, March the
25th. Do not, I beseech you, ever make any appeals to my imagination, or
my feelings. I have lost all I ever had of the first, and I never had
any at all of the second....
You ask me if I have been riding. Only once or twice, for I may not do
what I so fain would, give all the visiting to utter neglect, and ride
every day. Yesterday I was on horseback for two hours with Henry, who,
having sold his pretty mare, for L65, to the author of the new comedy at
Covent Garden, was obliged to bestride one of Mr. Allen's screws, as he
calls them. The day was dusty and windy, and very disagreeable, but I
was all the better for my shaking, as I always am. I am never in health,
looks, or spirits without daily hard exercise on horseback.
My first meeting with Mrs. Grote (I am answering your questions, dearest
H----, though you have probably forgotten them) took place after all at
Sydney Smith's, at a dinner the very next day after you left us. We did
not say a great deal to each other, but upon my saying incidentally (I
forget about what) "I, who have always preserved my liberty, at least
the small crumb of it that a woman can own anywhere," she faced about,
in a most emphatical manner, and said, "Then you've struggled for it."
"No, I have not been obliged to do so." "Ah, then you must, or you'll
lose it, you'll lose it, depend upon it." I smiled, but did not reply,
because I saw that she was not taking into consideration the fact of my
living in America; and this was the only truly _Grotesque_ (as Sydney
Smith says) passage between us. Since then we have again ineffectually
exchanged cards, and yesterday I received an invitation to her house, so
that I suppose we shall finally become acquainted with each other.
[Mrs. Grote, wife of George Grote, the banker, member of
Parliament, and historian of Greece, was one of the cleverest and
most eccentric women in the London society of my time. No worse a
judge than De Tocqueville pronounced her the cleverest woman of his
acquaintance; and she was certainly a very remarkable member of the
circle of remarkable men among whom she was living when I first knew
her. At that time she was the female centre of the Radical party in
politics--a sort of not-young-or-handsome feminine oracle among a
set of very clever half-heathenish men, in whose drawing-room,
Sydney Smith used to say, he always expected to find an altar to
Zeus. At this time Mr. Grote was in the House of Commons, and as it
was before the publication of his admirable history, his speeches,
which were as remarkable for their sound sense and enlightened
liberality as for their clear and forcible style, were not
unfrequently attributed to his wife, whose considerable
conversational powers, joined to a rather dictatorial style of
exercising them, sometimes threw her refined and modest husband a
little into the shade in general society. When first I made Mrs.
Grote's acquaintance, the persons one most frequently met at her
house in Eccleston Street were Roebuck, Leader, Byron's quondam
associate Trelawney, and Sir William Molesworth; both the first and
last mentioned gentlemen were then of an infinitely deeper shade of
radicalism in their politics than they subsequently became. The
other principal element of Mrs. Grote's society, at this time,
consisted of musical composers and performers, who found in her a
cordial and hospitable friend and hostess, and an amateur of unusual
knowledge and discrimination, as well as much taste and feeling for
their beautiful art. Her love of music, and courteous reception of
all foreign artists, caused her to be generally sought by eminent
professors coming to England; and Liszt, Madame Viardot, Dessauer,
Thalberg, Mademoiselle Lind, and Mendelssohn were among the
celebrated musicians one frequently met at her house. With the two
latter she was very intimate, and it was in her drawing-room that my
sister gave her first public concert in London. Mendelssohn used
often to visit her at a small country-place she had in the
neighborhood of Burnham Beeches.
It was a very small and modest residence, situated on the verge of
the magnificent tract of woodland scenery known by that name; a
dependence, I believe, of the Dropmore estate, which it adjoined. It
was an unenclosed space of considerable extent, of wild, heathy
moorland; short turfy strips of common; dingles full of foxglove,
harebell, and gnarled old stunted hawthorn bushes; and knolls,
covered with waving crests of powerful feathery fern. It was
intersected with gravelly paths and roads, whose warm color
contrasted and harmonized with the woodland hues of everything about
them; and roofed in by dark green vaults of the most magnificent
beech foliage I have ever seen anywhere. The trees were of great age
and enormous size; and from some accidental influence affecting
their growth, the huge trunks were many of them contorted so as to
resemble absolutely the twisted Saxon pillars of some old cathedral.
In many of them the powerful branches (as large themselves as trunks
of common trees) spread out from the main tree, at a height of about
six feet from the ground, into a sort of capacious leafy chamber,
where eight or ten people could have sat embowered. A more perfectly
English woodland scene it would be impossible to imagine, and here,
as Mrs. Grote told me, Mendelssohn found the inspiration of much of
the music of his "Midsummer Night's Dream." (The overture he had
composed, and played to us one evening at my father's house, when
first he came to England, before he was one-and-twenty.) At one time
Mrs. Grote contemplated erecting some monument in the beautiful wood
to his memory, and showed me a copy of verses, not devoid of merit,
which she thought of inscribing on it to his honor; but she never
carried out the suggestion of her affectionate admiration; and to
those who knew and loved Mendelssohn (alas! the expressions are
synonymous), the glorious wood itself, where he walked and mused and
held converse with the spirit of Shakespeare, forms a solemn sylvan
temple, forever consecrated to tender memories of his bright genius
and lovely character.
When first I knew Mrs. Grote, however, her artistic sympathies were
keenly excited in a very different direction; for she had
undertaken, under some singular impulse of mistaken enthusiasm, to
make what she called "an honest woman" of the celebrated dancer,
Fanny Ellsler, and to introduce her into London society,--neither of
them very attainable results, even for as valiant and enterprising
a person as Mrs. Grote. When first I heard of this strange
undertaking I was, in common with most of her friends, much
surprised at it; nor was it until some years after the entire
failure of this quixotic experiment, that I became aware that she
had been actuated by any motive but the kindliest and most mistaken
enthusiasm.
Mademoiselle Ellsler was at this time at the height of her great and
deserved popularity as a dancer, and whatever I may have thought of
the expediency or possibility of making what Mrs. Grote called "an
honest woman" of her, I was among the most enthusiastic admirers of
her great excellence in her elegant art. She was the only
intellectual dancer I have ever seen. Inferior to Taglioni (that
embodied genius of rhythmical motion) in lightness, grace, and
sentiment; to Carlotta Grisi in the two latter qualities; and with
less mere vigor and elasticity than Cerito, she excelled them all in
dramatic expression; and parts of her performance in the ballets of
the "Tarantella" and the wild legend of "Gisele, the Willye,"
exhibited tragic power of a very high order, while the same strongly
dramatic element was the cause of her pre-eminence in all national
and characteristic dances, such as El Jaleo de Xeres, the
Cracovienne, et cetera. This predominance of the intellectual
element in her dancing may have been the result of original
organization, or it may have been owing to the mental training which
Ellsler received from Frederic von Genz, Gensius, the German writer
and diplomatist, who educated her, and whose mistress she became
while still quite a young girl. However that may be, Mrs. Grote
always maintained that her genius lay full as much in her head as in
her heels. I am not sure that the finest performance of hers that I
ever witnessed was not a minuet in which she danced the man's part,
in full court-suit of the time of Louis XVI., with most admirable
grace and nobility of demeanor.
Mrs. Grote labored hard to procure her acceptance in society; her
personal kindness to her was of the most generous description: but
her great object of making "an honest woman" of her, I believe
failed signally in every way.
On one occasion I paid Mrs. Grote a visit at Burnham Beeches. Our
party consisted only of my sister and myself; the Viennese composer,
Dessauer; and Chorley, the musical critic of the _Athenaeum_, who
was very intimately acquainted with us all. The eccentricities of
our hostess, with which some of us were already tolerably familiar,
were a source of unfeigned amazement and awe to Dessauer, who,
himself the most curious, quaint, and withal nervously excitable and
irritable humorist, was thrown into alternate convulsions of
laughter and spasms of terror at the portentous female figure, who,
with a stick in her hand, a man's hat on her head, and a coachman's
box-coat of drab cloth with manifold capes over her petticoats
(English women had not yet then adopted a costume undistinguishable
from that of the other sex), stalked about the house and grounds,
alternately superintending various matters of the domestic economy,
and discussing, with equal knowledge and discrimination, questions
of musical criticism and taste.