row at the pianoforte, and, luckily, there is no more space in this
paper for my addled brains to testify to the effect of this musical
tempest. God bless you.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
CLARGES STREET, Wednesday, June 23rd, 1841.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
You asked me some time ago some questions about Rachel, which I never
answered, in the first place because I had not seen her then, and since
I have seen her I have had other things I wanted to say. Everybody here
is now raving about her. I have only seen her once on the stage, and
heard her declaim at Stafford House, the morning of the concert for the
Poles. Her appearance is very striking: she is of a very good height;
too thin for beauty, but not for dignity or grace; her want of chest and
breadth indeed almost suggest a tendency to pulmonary disease, coupled
with her pallor and her youth (she is only just twenty). Her voice is
the most remarkable of her natural qualifications for her vocation,
being the deepest and most sonorous voice I ever heard from a woman's
lips: it wants brilliancy, variety, and tenderness; but it is like a
fine, deep-toned bell, and expresses admirably the passions in the
delineation of which she excels--scorn, hatred, revenge, vitriolic
irony, concentrated rage, seething jealousy, and a fierce love which
seems in its excess allied to all the evil which sometimes springs from
that bittersweet root. [I shall never forget the first time I ever heard
Mademoiselle Rachel speak. I was acting my old part of Julia, in "The
Hunchback," at Lady Ellesmere's, where the play was got up for an
audience of her friends, and for her especial gratification. The room
was darkened, with the exception of our stage, and I had no means of
discriminating anybody among my audience, which was, as became an
assembly of such distinguished persons, decorously quiet and
undemonstrative. But in one of the scenes, where the foolish heroine, in
the midst of her vulgar triumph at the Earl of Rochdale's proposal, is
suddenly overcome by the remorseful recollection of her love for
Clifford, and almost lets the earl's letter fall from her trembling
hands, I heard a voice out of the darkness, and it appeared to me almost
close to my feet, exclaiming, in a tone the vibrating depth of which I
shall never forget, "_Ah, bien, bien, tres bien!_"] Mademoiselle
Rachel's face is very expressive and dramatically fine, though not
absolutely beautiful. It is a long oval, with a head of classical and
very graceful contour; the forehead rather narrow and not very high; the
eyes small, dark, deep-set, and terribly powerful; the brow straight,
noble, and fine in form, though not very flexible.
I was immensely struck and carried away with her performance of
"Hermione," though I am not sure that some of the parts did not seem to
me finer than the whole, as a whole conception. That in which she is
unrivalled by any actor or actress I ever saw is the expression of a
certain combined and concentrated hatred and scorn. Her reply to
Andromaque's appeal to her, in that play, was one of the most perfect
things I have ever seen on the stage: the cold, cruel, acrid enjoyment
of her rival's humiliation,--the quiet, bitter, unmerciful exercise of
the power of torture, was certainly, in its keen incisiveness, quite
incomparable. It is singular that so young a woman should so especially
excel in delineations and expressions of this order of emotion, while in
the utterance of tenderness, whether in love or sorrow, she appears
comparatively less successful; I am not, however, perhaps competent to
pronounce upon this point, for Hermione and Emilie, in Corneille's
"Cinna," are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M---- saw her
the other day in "Marie Stuart," and cried her eyes almost out, so she
must have some pathetic power. ---- was so enchanted with her, both on
and off the stage, that he took me to call upon her, on her arrival in
London, and I was very much pleased with the quiet grace and dignity,
the excellent _bon ton_ of her manners and deportment. The other morning
too, at Stafford House, I was extremely overcome at my sister's first
public exhibition in England, and was endeavoring, while I screened
myself behind a pillar, to hide my emotion and talk with some composure
to Rachel; she saw, however, how it was with me, and with great kindness
allowed me to go into a room that had been appropriated to her use
between her declamations, and was very amiable and courteous to me.
She is completely the rage in London now; all the fine ladies and
gentlemen crazy after her, the Queen throwing her roses on the stage out
of her own bouquet, and viscountesses and marchionesses driving her
about, _a l'envie l'une de l'autre_, to show her all the lions of the
town. She is miserably supported on the stage, poor thing, the _corps
dramatique_ engaged to act with her being not only bad, but some of them
(the principal hero, principally) irresistibly ludicrous.
By-the-by, I was assured, by a man who went to see the "Marie Stuart,"
that this worthy, who enacted the part of Leicester, carried his public
familiarity with Queen Elizabeth to such lengths as to nudge her with
his elbow on some particular occasion. Don't you think that was nice?
Mrs. Grote and I have had sundry small encounters, and I think I
perceive that, had I leisure to cultivate her acquaintance more
thoroughly, I should like her very much. The other evening, at her own
house, she nearly killed me with laughing, by assuring me that she had
always had a perfect passion for dancing, and that she had entirely
missed her vocation, which ought to have been that of an opera-dancer;
(now, Harriet, she looks like nothing but Trelawney in petticoats.) I
suppose this is the secret of her great delight in Ellsler.
I find, in an old letter of yours that I was reading over this morning,
this short question: "Does imagination make a fair balance, in
heightening our pains and our pleasures?" That would depend, I suppose,
upon whether we had as many pleasures as pains (real ones, I mean) to be
colored by it; but as the mere possession of an imaginative temperament
is in itself a more fertile source of unreal pains than pleasures, the
answer may be short too; an imaginative mind has almost always a
tendency to be a melancholy one. Shakespeare is the glorious exception
to this, but then he is an exception to everything. I must bid you
good-bye now....
God bless you, dear.
Ever your affectionate,
FANNY.
[After seeing Mademoiselle Rachel, as I subsequently did, in all her
great parts, and as often as I had an opportunity of doing so, the
impression she has left upon my mind is that of the greatest
dramatic genius, except Kean, who was not greater, and the most
incomparable dramatic artist I ever saw. The qualities I have
mentioned as predominating in her performances still appear to me to
have been their most striking ones; but her expressions of
tenderness, though rare, were perfect--one instance of which was the
profound pathos of the short exclamation, "_Oh, mon cher, Curiace!_"
that precedes her fainting fit of agony in "Camille," and the whole
of the last scene of "Marie Stuart," in which she excelled Madame
Ristori as much in pathetic tenderness as she surpassed her in
power, in the famous scene of defiance to Elizabeth. As for any
comparison between her and that beautiful woman and charming
actress, or her successor on the French stage of the present day,
Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, I do not admit any such for a moment.]
Bannisters, July 28th, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,
You certainly have not thought that I was never going to write to you
again, but I dare say you have wondered when I should ever write to you
again. This seems a very fitting place whence to address you, who are so
affectionately associated with the recollection of the last happy days I
spent here.
How vain is the impatience of despondency! How wise, as well as how
pleasant, it is to hope! Not that all can who would; but I verily
believe that the hopeful are the wisest as well as the happiest of this
mortal congregation; for, in spite of the credulous distrust of the
desponding, the accomplishment of our wishes awaits us in the future
quite as often as their defeat, and the cheerful faithful spirit of
those who can hope has the promise of this life as well as of that which
is to come.
At the end of four years, here I am again with my dear friend Emily,
even in this lovely home of hers, from which a doom, ever at hand, has
threatened to expel her every day of these four years.... In spite of
separation, distance, time, and the event which stands night and day at
her door, threatening to drive her forth from this beloved home, here we
are again together, enjoying each other's fellowship in these familiar
beautiful scenes: walking, driving, riding, and living together, as we
have twice been permitted to do before, as we are now allowed to do
again, to the confusion of all the depressing doubts which have
prevented this fair prospect from ever rising before my eyes with the
light of hope upon it--so little chance did there seem of its ever being
realized.
Emily and I rode to Netley Abbey yesterday, and looked at the pillar on
which your name and ours were engraved with so many tears before my last
return to America. If I had had a knife, I would have rewritten the
record, at least deepened it; but, indeed, it seems of little use to do
so while the soft, damp breath of the air suffices to efface it from the
stone, and while every stone of the beautiful ruin is a memento to each
one of us of the other two, and the place will be to all time haunted by
our images, and by thoughts as vivid as bodily presences to the eyes of
whichever of us may be there without the others....
Our plans are assuming very definite shape, and you will probably be
glad to hear that there is every prospect of our spending another year
in England, inasmuch as we are at this moment in treaty for a house
which we think of taking with my father for that time. My sister has
concluded an extremely agreeable and advantageous engagement with Covent
Garden, for a certain number of nights, at a very handsome salary. This
is every way delightful to me; it keeps her in England, among her
friends, and in the exercise of her profession; it places her where she
will meet with respect and kindness, both from the public and the
members of the profession with whom she will associate. Covent Garden is
in some measure our vantage-ground, and I am glad that she should thence
make her first appeal to an English audience.
Our new house (if we get it) is in Harley Street, close to Cavendish
Square, and has a room for you, of course, dearest Harriet; and you will
come and see my sister's first appearance, and stay with me next winter,
as you did last. Our more immediate plans stand thus: we leave this
sweet and dear place, to our great regret, to-morrow; to-morrow night
and part of Thursday we spend at Addleston with my brother; then we
remain in town till Monday, when we go to the Hoo (Lord Dacre's); then
we return to town, and afterwards proceed to Mrs. Arkwright's at Sutton,
and then to the Francis Egertons', at Worsley; and after that we set off
for Germany, where we think of remaining till the end of September.
Adelaide's engagement at Covent Garden begins in November, when you must
come and assist in bringing her out properly. God bless you, dear. Give
my love to Dorothy, and believe me
Ever affectionately yours,
FANNY.
THE HOO, Wednesday, July 28th, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,
I wrote you a long letter yesterday, which was no sooner finished than I
tore it up.... We came down to this place yesterday. I obtained Lady
Dacre's leave to bring my sister, and of course I have my children with
me, so we are here in great force. Independently of my long regard for
and gratitude to Lord and Lady Dacre, which made me glad to visit them,
I like this old place, and find it pleasant, though it has no
pretensions to be a fine one. Some part of the offices is Saxon, of an
early date, old enough to be interesting. The house itself, however, is
comparatively modern: it is a square building, and formerly enclosed a
large courtyard, but in later days the open space has been filled up
with a fine oak staircase (roofed in with a skylight), the carving of
which is old and curious and picturesque. The park is not large, but has
some noble trees, which you would delight in; the flower-garden, stolen
from a charming old wood (some of the large trees of which are coaxed
into its boundaries), is a lovely little strip of velvet lawn, dotted
all over with flower-beds, like large nosegays dropped on the turf; and
the rough, whitey-brown, weather-beaten stone of the house is covered
nearly to the top windows with honeysuckle and jasmine. It is not at all
like what is called a fine place; it is not even as pretty and cheerful
as Bannisters: but it has an air of ancient stability and dignity,
without pretension or ostentation, that is very agreeable....
We left my father tolerably well in health, but a good deal shaken in
spirits.... I am expected downstairs, to read to them in the
drawing-room something from Shakespeare; and our afternoon is promised
to a cricket-match, for the edification of one of our party, who never
saw one. I must therefore conclude.... Good-bye, dearest Harriet. As for
me, to be once more in pure air, among flowers and under trees, is
all-sufficient happiness. I do cordially hate all towns.
Give my dear love to Mrs. Harry Siddons, if she is near you, and tell
her I shall surely not leave Europe without seeing her again, let her be
where she will. Remember me affectionately to Dorothy, and believe me.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
THE HOO, Thursday, July 29th, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,
I wrote to you yesterday, but an unanswered letter of yours lies on the
top of my budget of "letters to answer," and I take it up to reply to
it. The life I am leading does not afford much to say; yet that is not
quite true, for to loving hearts or thinking minds the common events of
every day, in the commonest of lives, have a meaning.... After breakfast
yesterday we took up Lady Dacre's translations from Petrarch--a very
admirable performance, in which she has contrived to bend our northern
utterance into a most harmonious and yet conscientious interpretation
of those perfect Italian compositions. My sister read the Italian,
which, with her pure pronunciation and clear ringing voice, sounded
enchanting; after which I echoed it with the English translation; all
which went on very prosperously, till I came to that touching invocation
written on Good Friday, when the poet, no longer offering incense to his
mortal idol, but penitential supplications to his God, implores pardon
for the waste of life and power his passion had betrayed him into, and
seeks for help to follow higher aims and holier purposes; a pathetic and
solemn composition, which vibrated so deeply upon kindred chords in my
heart that my voice became choked, and I could not read any more. After
this, Adelaide read us some Wordsworth, for which she has a special
admiration; after which, having recovered my voice, I took up "Romeo and
Juliet," for which we all have a special admiration; and so the morning
passed. After lunch, we went, B----, Lord Dacre, and I on horseback,
Lady Dacre, Adelaide, and G---- S---- in the open carriage, to a pretty
village seven miles off, where a cricket-match was being played, into
the mysteries of which some of us particularly wished to be initiated.
The village of Hitchin is full of Quakers, and I rather think the game
was being played by them, for such a silent meeting I never saw, out of
a Friends' place of worship. But the ride was beautiful, and the day
exquisite; and I learned for the first time that clematis is called, in
this part of England, "traveller's joy," which name returned upon my
lips, like a strain of music, at every moment, so full of poetry and
sweet and touching association does it seem to me. Do you know it by
that name in Ireland? I never heard it before in England, though I have
been familiar with another pretty nickname for it, which you probably
know--virgin's-bower. This is all very well for its flowering season; I
wish somebody would find a pretty name for it when it is all covered
with blown glass or soap-bubbles, and looks at a little distance like
smoke.
Returning home, after entering the park, Lord Dacre had left us to go
and look at a turnip-field, and B---- and I started for a gallop; when
my horse, a powerful old hunter, not very well curbed, and extremely
hard-mouthed, receiving some lively suggestion from the rhythmical
sound of his own hoofs on the turf, put his head down between his legs
and tore off with me at the top of his speed. I knew there was a tallish
hedge in the direction in which we were going, and, as it is full seven
years since I sat a leap, I also knew that there was a fair chance of my
being chucked off, if he took it, which I thought I knew he would; so I
lay back in my saddle and sawed at his mouth and pulled _de corps et
a'ane_, but in vain. I lost my breath, I lost my hat, and shouted at the
top of my voice to B---- to stop, which I thought if she did, my steed,
whose spirit had been roused by emulation, would probably do too. She
did not hear me, but fortunately stopped her horse before we reached the
hedge, when my quadruped halted of his own sweet will, with a bound on
all fours, or off all fours, that sent me half up to the sky; but I came
back into my saddle without leap, without tumble, and with only my
ignoble fright for my pains.
We dine at half-past seven, after which we generally have music and
purse-making and discussions, poetical and political, and wine and water
and biscuits, and go to bed betimes, like wise folk....
This morning a bloodhound was brought me from the dog-kennel, the
largest dog of his kind, and the handsomest of any kind, that I ever
saw; his face and ears were exquisite, his form and color magnificent,
his voice appalling, and the expression of his countenance the
tenderest, sweetest, and saddest you can conceive; I cannot imagine a
more beautiful brute. After admiring him we went to the stables, to see
a new horse Lord Dacre has just bought, and I left him being put through
his paces, to come and indite this letter to you....
We leave this place on Monday for London, at the thought of which I feel
half choked with smoke already. The Friday after, however, we go into
the country again, to the Arkwrights' and the Francis Egertons', and
then to Germany; so that our lungs and nostrils will be tolerably free
passages for vital air for some little time.
God bless you, dearest Harriet. I have filled my letter with such matter
as I had--too much with myself, perhaps, for any one but you; but unless
I write you an epic poem about King Charlemagne, I know not well what
else to write about here.
Ever affectionately yours,
FANNY.
THE HOO, Sunday, August 1st, 1841.
DEAREST HARRIET,
I wrote you the day before yesterday, and gave you a sort of journal of
that day's proceedings. I have nothing of any different interest to tell
you, inasmuch as our daily proceedings here are much of a muchness.
We return to town to-morrow afternoon, to my great regret; and I must,
immediately upon our doing so, remove the family to our new abode. I am
rather anxious to see how my father is; we left him in very low spirits,
... and I am anxious to see whether he has recovered them at all. I
think our visit to Sutton, where we go on Friday, will be of use to him;
for though he cordially dislikes the country and everything belonging to
its unexciting existence, he has always had a very great attachment for
Mrs. Arkwright, and perhaps, for so short a time as a week, he may be
able to resist the ennui of _l'innocence des champs_....
I am well, and have been enjoying myself extremely. I love the country
for itself; and the species of life which combines, as these people lead
it, the pleasures of the highest civilization with the wholesome
enjoyments which nature abounds in seems to me the perfection of
existence, and is always beneficial as well as delightful to me. I rode
yesterday a fine new horse Lord Dacre has just bought, and who is to be
christened Forester, in honor of my beloved American steed, whom he
somewhat resembles....
Considering our weather down here in Hertfordshire, I am afraid you must
have most dismal skies at Ambleside, where you are generally so misty
and damp; I am sure I recollect no English summer like this. As for poor
Adelaide, she is all but frozen to death, and creeps about, lamenting
for the sun, in a most piteous fashion imaginable.
I have had a letter from Cecilia Combe within the last two days,
anticipating meeting us on the Rhine, either at Godesberg, where she now
is, or at Bonn, where she expects to pass some time soon. She complains
of dulness, but accuses the weather, which she says is horrible.
By-the-by, of Cecy and Mr. Combe I have now got the report containing
the account of Laura Bridgman (the deaf, dumb, and blind girl of whom he
speaks), and when you come to me you shall see it; it is marvellous--a
perfect miracle of Christian love.
Catherine Sedgwick's book (some notes of her visit to Europe) has just
come out, and I am reading it again, having read the manuscript journal
when first she returned home; a record, of course, of far more interest
than the pruned and pared version of it which she gives to the public. I
am also reading an excellent article in the last _Edinburgh_, on the
society of Port Royal, which I find immensely interesting. I must now
run out for a walk. It is Sunday, and the horses are not used, and I
must acquire some exercise, through the agency of my own legs, before
dinner. I have walked two miles this morning, to be sure; but that was
to and from church, and should not count. God bless you, dearest
Harriet.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
LIEGE, Thursday, August 26th, 1841.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
We have just returned from a lionizing drive about Liege, a city of
which my liveliest impressions, before I saw it, were derived from
Scott's novel of "Quentin Durward," and in which the part now remaining
of what existed in his time is all that much interests me.
I do not know whether in your peregrinations you ever visited this
place; if you did, I hope you duly admired the palace of the prince
bishop (formerly), now the Palais de Justice, which is one of the most
picturesque remnants of ancient architecture I have seen in this land of
them.
Except this, and one fine old church, I have found nothing in the town
to please or interest me much. I have seen one or two old dog-holes of
houses, blackened and falling in with age, which seem as if they might
be some of the cinders of Charles the Bold's burnings hereabouts. We
left Brussels this morning, after spending a day and a half there. I was
much pleased with the gay and cheerful appearance of that small
imitation Paris, even to the degree of fancying that I should like to
live there, in spite of the supercilious sentence of vulgarity,
stupidity, and pretension which some of our friends, diplomatic
residents there, passed upon the inhabitants.... We went to call upon
the ----s, and, with something of a shock on my part, found one of the
ornaments of his sitting-room a large crucifix with the Saviour in his
death-agony--a horrible image, which I would banish, if I could, from
every artist's imagination; for the physical suffering is a revolting
spectacle which art should not portray, and the spiritual triumph is a
thing which the kindred soul of man may indeed conceive, but which art
cannot delineate, for it is God, and not to be translated into matter,
save indeed where it once was made manifest in that Face and Person
every imaginary representation of which is to me more or less
intolerable.
The face of Christ is never painted or sculptured without being
painfully offensive to me; yet I have seen looks--who has not?--that
were His, momentarily, on mortal faces; but they were looks that could
not have been copied, even there....