having invited them both to her house on one occasion, thought
proper to address the latter with some impertinent questions about a
professional visit he had just been paying to Paris, winding up
with, "Enfin, avez-vous fait de bonnes affaires la-bas?" To which he
replied, "Pardon, Madame la Princesse, j'ai fait un peu de musique;
je laisse les affaires aux banquiers et aux diplomates." Later in
the evening, the lady, probably not well pleased with this rebuff,
accosted him again, as he stood talking to Thalberg, with a sneering
compliment on his apparent freedom from all jealousy of his musical
rival; to which Liszt, who was very sallow, replied, "Mais, Madame
la Princesse, au contraire, je suis furieusement jaloux de
Thalberg; regardez donc les jolies couleurs qu'il a!" After which
Madame la Princesse _le laissa en paix_.
Between Thalberg and Liszt I do not think there could be any
comparison. The exquisite perfection of delicate accuracy, combined
with extraordinary lightness and velocity of execution, of Thalberg
was his one unapproachable excellence, and as near the unerring
precision of mere mechanism as possible: it was absolutely
faultless; but it paid the penalty for being what things human may
not be--it wanted the human element of passion and pathos. His
performance was a miracle of art, and left his admiring auditors
pleasingly amazed, but untouched in any of the deeper chords of
sympathetic emotion. He had not a spark of the original genius or
fire of Liszt. Moscheles, whom I have only named with the other two
because he was a highly popular performer at the same time, was a
more solid musician than either of them, and infinitely inferior as
an executant to both. He was the most excellent of teachers, for
which valuable office Thalberg would have wanted some and Liszt all
the necessary qualifications. Of Chopin it is useless to speak:
exceptional in his artistic nature and in his circumstances, he
played his own most poetical music as no one else could; though his
friend Dessauer, who was not a professional player at all, gave a
most curious and satisfactory imitation of his mode of rendering his
own compositions. But between Chopin and any other musical composer
or performer there was never anything in common; he was original and
unique in both characters.
As for Mendelssohn, the organ was his real instrument, though he
played very finely on the piano. He was not, however, a pre-eminent
performer, but a composer of music; and I should no more think of
comparing the quality of his genius with that of Liszt, than I
should compare the Roman girandola with its sky-scaring fusees and
myriads of sudden scintillations and dazzling coruscations, with the
element that lights our homes and warms our hearths, or to the
steadfast shining of the everlasting stars themselves.
Of all the pianoforte players by whom I have heard Beethoven's music
more or less successfully rendered, Charles Halle has always
appeared to me the one who most perfectly communicated the mind and
soul of the pre-eminent composer.
Our temporary fellowship with Liszt procured for us a delightful
participation in a tribute of admiration from the citizen workmen of
Coblentz, that was what the French call _saissant_. We were sitting
all in our hotel drawing-room together, the _maestro_ as usual
smoking his long pipe, when a sudden burst of music made us throw
open the window and go out on the balcony, when Liszt was greeted by
a magnificent chorus of nearly two hundred men's voices; they sang
to perfection, each with his small sheet of music and his sheltered
light in his hand, and the performance, which was the only one of
the sort I ever heard, gave a wonderful impression of the musical
capacity of the only really musical nation in the world.]
WIESBADEN, Sunday, September.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
I have already written to you from this place: one letter I wrote almost
immediately after taking a walk which you had taken with Catherine
Sedgwick, the year that you were here together, towards the Sonnenberg.
You wrote me letters from here too, which I received up at Lenox, and
read at a window looking out over a landscape very much resembling the
neighborhood of this place. I remember your epistolary accounts of
Wiesbaden were not very favorable: you did not like its watering-place
aspect and fashions; and neither should I, if I was in any way mixed up
with them. But we have hitherto none of us taken the waters; we have
pretty and comfortable rooms, with the slight drawback of hearing our
neighbors washing their hands and brushing their teeth, and drawing the
natural conclusion as to the reciprocity of communications we make to
them. We are at the Quatre Saisons, and with nothing but the Kursaal and
its arcades between us and the gardens; so I am not oppressed with the
feeling of a town, streets, houses, shops, etc., all which lie at my
back and are never by any accident approached by me....
I have gone into the baths merely by way of what the French call
_proprete_, being too lazy to go and fetch a wash under the arcade, in
_de l'eau naturelle_. The water which supplies the baths in the Quatre
Saisons is not by any means as strong as the _Kochbrunnen_, yet I
fancied that it affected me unpleasantly, causing me a sensation of
fullness in the head, and nausea, which was very disagreeable, as well
as making me stupidly sleepy through the day....
Last Thursday I went to Frankfort to hear Adelaide sing; she was to
perform, _en costume_, an act from three different operas, a sort of
hotchpotch which, as she cares for her profession, I am surprised at her
condescending to. We were not in time for the first, which was the last
scene of the "Lucia di Lammermoor," but heard her in the last scene of
"Beatrice di Tenda," and in the first scene of the "Norma." ... What she
does is very perfect, but I think she occasionally falls short of the
amount of power that I expected.... And all the time, I cannot help
wishing that she would leave the singing part of the business, and take
to acting not set to music. I think the singing cramps her acting, and I
cannot help having some misgiving as to the effect she will produce in
so large a theatre as Covent Garden; although, as she has sung
successfully in the two largest theatres in Europe, the Scala at Milan
and the San Carlo at Naples, I suppose my nervousness about Covent
Garden is unnecessary.... Her movements and gesture are all remarkably
graceful and easy; she is perfectly self-possessed, and impresses me
even more as an artist than a genius, which I did not expect.
I believe she will not sing to-morrow night, and, in that case, they
will all come over and spend the day here, when Henry, Mary Anne
Thackeray, and I purpose ascending Wiesbaden horses and riding to the
duke's hunting-seat, which perhaps you drove to when you were here....
I confess to you, I cannot help sometimes feeling a little anxious about
my sister's success in England, especially when I remember how
formidable a predecessor she is to succeed--that wonderful Malibran, who
added to such original genius and great dramatic power a voice of such
uncommon force and brilliancy.
Good-bye. This is the third long letter I have written to you since we
came abroad.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, Monday, October 11th.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
I begin to sniff the well-beloved fogs and coal-smoke of that best
beloved little island to which I have the honor and glory of belonging,
and my spirits are much revived thereby; for, to tell you the truth,
England, bad as it is, is good enough for me, and I am grown old and
stupid and sleepy and don't-carish, and think more about bugs and greasy
food in the way of woe than of vine-clad hills and ruined castles in the
way of bliss. Not that I have been by any means dissatisfied with my
_tower_, though rather disappointed in the one fact of the Rhine: but I
am incurious and always was, and I do not think that fault mends with
age; and knights, squires, and dames too, alas! are no longer to me the
interesting folk that they once were.
"But it is past, the glory is congealing,
The fervor of the heart grows dead and dim;
I gaze all night upon a whitewashed ceiling,
And catch no glimpses of the Seraphim."
I think the ruins of the German hills especially excellent in that they
are ruins, and can by no possibility ever again be made strongholds of
debauchery, ferocity, and filth; and finally and to conclude, my dear
Harriet, lights and shadows, the colors of the earth and sky, the beauty
of God's creation, in short, alone now moves me very deeply, and this, I
am thankful to say, is as powerful to do so as ever.
I must tell you something pretty and poetical, and which I think has
made more impression upon me than anything else in the course of my
travels. The other evening at Cologne, by the sloping light of a watery
autumnal sunset, the wind blowing loud and strong, the river rolling
fast and free, and the great, violet-colored clouds drooping heavily
down the sky, we suddenly heard the guns along each bank fire
repeatedly, saluting the approach of some greatness or other down the
stream. Whether it was king or kaiser, or only one of the
merchant-princes to whom the navigation of this stream now belongs, and
who receive these honors whenever they go up or down the river, nobody
could tell; and still peal after peal was fired, and one echo rolled
into another from shore to shore. At length a long low boat came in
sight, sweeping down with the wide current towards the city walls. She
was covered from stem to stern with bright flags and pennons, and was
freighted with stone, which the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt was sending down
from his quarries, to help the people of Cologne to finish their
beautiful cathedral; and as this cargo came along their shores they were
saluting it with royal honors. The crane which was to lift the blocks
from the boat had its great iron arm all wreathed with flowers, and
flags and streamers floating from its top, which peaceful half-religious
jubilee pleased me greatly, and affected me too.
At Cologne, six weeks before, we had seen the King of Hanover, Ernest
Augustus, the wicked Duke of Cumberland, received just in the same way,
except that the cannonading was closed on that occasion, in an
exceedingly appropriate manner to my mind, by a sudden fierce peal of
derisive thunder.
We went, while at Cologne, to the Museum, and there saw another
beautiful thing of another sort, Bendermann's picture of the Jews
weeping by the waters of Babylon--a very striking picture, sad and
harmonious in its coloring, and full of feeling and expression; I was
greatly impressed by it. And thus, you see, from only one of the places
I have visited, I have brought away two living recollections, perpetual
sources of pleasant mental contemplation. Two such treasures in one's
storehouse of memory would have been worth the whole journey; but I have
had many more such, and I incline to think that it is very often in
retrospect that travel is most agreeable--the little annoyances and
hindrances, which often qualify one's pleasure a good deal at the time
one receives it, seldom mix themselves with the recollection of it in
the same vivid manner; and so, as the American widow said she thought it
was a charming thing "to have been married _and be done with it_," I
think it is a charming thing to have been up the Rhine and be back
again.
I forget whether I wrote you word of my father's joining us for a single
day at Frankfort, and then returning immediately to England.... He was
not at all well, and the hurried journey was, I fear, a most imprudent
one. My sister is at present at Liege with Henry, Liszt, and our friend
Chorley....
Good-bye, my dearest H----.
I am ever yours,
FANNY.
[My friend Miss S---- came to us in London, and witnessed with me
my sister's coming out at Covent Garden, which took place on
Tuesday, the 2nd of November, 1842, in Bellini's opera of "Norma,"
which she sang in English, retaining the whole of the recitative. My
sister's success was triumphant, and the fortunes of the unfortunate
theatre, which again were at the lowest ebb, revived under the
influence of her great and immediate popularity, and the overflowing
houses that, night after night, crowded to hear her. Her
performances, which I seldom missed, were among my most delightful
pleasures, during a season in which I enjoyed the companionship of
my dear friend, and a great deal of pleasant social intercourse with
the most interesting and agreeable people of the great gay London
world.]
BOWOOD, Sunday, December 19th.
_To Theodore Sedgwick, Esq._
MY DEAR THEODORE,
I cannot conceive how it happens that a letter of yours, dated the 8th
September, should have reached me only a fortnight ago in London. Either
it must have been forgotten after written, and not sent for some time,
or Messrs. Harnden and Co.'s _Express_ is the slowest known conveyance
in the world. However that may be, the letter and the Philadelphia Bank
statement did arrive safe at last, and my father desires me to thank you
particularly for your kindness in sending it to him. Not, indeed, that
it is peculiarly consolatory in itself, inasmuch as it confirms our
worst apprehensions about the fate of all moneys lodged in that
disastrous institution. But perhaps it is better to have a term put to
one's uncertainty, even by the positive conviction of misfortune not to
be averted. My father's property in that bank--"The United States
Bank"--was considerable for him, and had been hardly earned money. I
understand from him that my share of our American earnings are in the
New Orleans banks, which, though they pay no dividends, and have not
done so for some time past, are still, I believe, supposed to be safe
and solvent....
We are staying just now with Lord and Lady Lansdowne, in this pleasant
home of theirs--a home of terrestrial delights. Inside the house, all is
tasteful and intellectual magnificence--such pictures! such statues!
And outside, a charming English landscape, educated with consummate
taste into the very perfection of apparently natural beauty.... They are
amiable, good, pleasant, and every way distinguished people, and I like
them very much. He, as you know, is one of our leading Whig statesmen, a
munificent patron of the arts and literature, a man of the finest taste
and cultivation, at whose house eminences of all sorts are cordially
received. Lady Lansdowne is a specimen Englishwoman of her class,
refined, intelligent, well-bred, and most charming. I believe Lord
Lansdowne was kindly civil to your aunt Catherine when she was in
London; I wish she could have see this enchanting place of his.
Rogers, Moore, and a parcel of choice _beaux esprits_ are staying here;
but, to tell you a fact which probably accuses me of stupidity, they are
so incessantly clever, witty, and brilliant that they every now and then
give me a brain-ache.
I do not know the exact depth of your patience, but I have an idea that
it has a bottom, therefore I think it expedient not to pursue _crossing_
any further with you.
Give my kindest love to Sarah, and
Believe me ever, my dear Theodore,
Yours very truly,
FANNY BUTLER.
Please remember me very kindly to your mother. I sat by a man at dinner
yesterday, a Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who was talking to me of having
known her friends Mrs. Jay and Mrs. Banian, when they were in England;
and their names were pleasant to me on account of their association with
her.
BOWOOD, Tuesday, December 21st, 1841.
Did you expect an immediate answer from me, dear Harriet, or did you
think your letters would be put at the bottom of the budget, to wait
their appointed time? You say your thought in parting from me was
chiefly to preserve your tranquillity; and so was mine to preserve my
own and yours.... There are many occasions on which I both feel much
more than I show, and perceive in others much more feeling than I
believe they think I am aware of. There are times when, for one's own
sake, as well as for that of others, to be--or, if that is not
possible, to seem--absorbed in outward things of the most indifferent
description is highly desirable; and I am even conscious sometimes of a
sort of hardness, which seems to come involuntarily to my aid, in
seasons when I know myself or fear that others are about to be carried
away by their feelings, or to break down under them....
I was glad enough to get your second letter, and to know you were safe
in Dublin. It was calm the night you crossed, but it has blown once or
twice fearfully since.
Our visit to the Francis Egertons, at Worsley, was prosperous and
pleasant in the highest degree; and we are now paying our promised one
at Bowood. I must tell you a trait of Anne [my children's American
nurse], who, it is my belief, is nothing less than the Princess
Pocahontas, who, having returned to earth, has condescended to take
charge of my children.
You know that this place is celebrated; the house is not only fine in
point of size, architecture, and costly furnishing, but is filled with
precious works of art, painting and sculpture, modern and ancient,
beautiful, rare, and costly. The first day that we arrived, ushered up
the great staircase to our rooms, I followed the servant with wide-open
eyes, gazing in delighted admiration at everything I saw. "Well," said I
to Anne, "is not this a fine house, Anne?" "The staircase is well
enough," was her imperturbable reply. Wouldn't one think she had had the
Vatican for her second-best house, and St. Peter's for her private
chapel, all the days of her life? She certainly must have, some Indian
blood in her veins.
This morning I took a brisk walk along the sunny terrace, where, from
under the shining shelter of holly, laurel, cedar, and all other
evergreen shrubs and trees, one looks over a garden--that even now, with
its graceful vases, its terraces, its ivy winter dressing, is gay and
beautiful--to a lawn that slopes gently to a sheet of water, losing
itself like a lake among irregular wooded banks, whose brown feathery
outline borrows from the winter's sun a golden tinge of soft sad
splendor. Upon this water swans and wild-fowl sail and sport about; and
the whole scene this morning, tipped with sparkling frost, and shining
under a brilliant sky, seemed very charming to me, and to S---- too,
who, running by my side, exclaimed, "Well, this is my idea of heaven! I
do think this might be called Paradise, or that garden--I forget its
name--that Adam and Eve were put into!" (Eden had escaped her memory,
as, let us hope, in time it did theirs.) I was pleased to find that my
Biblical teachings had suggested positive images, and that she had
caught none of her nurse's stolid insensibility to beauty....
We have a choice society here just now, and fortunately among them
persons that we know and feel at our ease with: Rogers, Moore, Macaulay,
Babbage, Westmacott, Charles Greville, and two or three charming,
agreeable, unaffected women....
You ask if Lady Holland is at Bowood. No, she had returned home _by
land_, as they say [at the beginning of railroad travelling, persons who
still preferred the former method of posting on the high-road were said
to go by land], not choosing to risk her precious body on the railway
without Brunel's personal escort to keep it in order and prevent it from
doing her any accident. He having had the happiness of travelling down
to Bowood with her, which she insisted upon, naturally enough declined
coming all the way down again from London to see her safe home; so not
being able to accomplish his fetching her back to town, she contrived to
extort from him a letter stating that, owing to the late heavy rains,
her journey back to London upon the railroad would probably be both
tedious and uncomfortable, and advising her by all means to go home "by
land," which, considering that the Great Western is his own road--his
iron child, so to speak,--by which he is bound to swear under all
circumstances, is, I think, a pretty good specimen of her omnipotence.
She did post home accordingly, but not without dismal misgivings as to
what might befall her while crossing a wood of Lord Salisbury's, where
she was to be, for a short space of time, seven miles off from any
village or town. I never knew such a terrified, terrible, foolish old
woman in my life.
After all, she is right: life is worth more to very good and to very
good-for-nothing people than to others. My father dined with her in town
while we were away, and in her note of invitation she included us, if we
had returned, saying all manner of civil fine things about me; but, as
far as I am concerned, it won't do, and she cannot put salt upon my
tail....
We returned to town on Friday. Charles Greville saw my father on
Saturday, and says he is, and is looking, very well. Adelaide was gone
down to Addlestone, to see John and his wife. My children--bless
them!--are making such a riot here at my table that I scarcely know what
I am writing.
Good-bye, dearest Harriet. I will write to you again to-morrow.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
_Bowood_, Wednesday, December 22nd, 1841.
_Dearest Harriet_,
I was a "happy woman" at Worsley [a "happy woman" was the term used by
me from my childhood to describe a woman on horseback], and, as
sometimes happens, had even too much of my happiness. My friend Lady
Francis is made of whalebone and india-rubber in equal proportions, very
neatly and elegantly fastened together with the finest steel springs,
and is incapable of fatigue from exertion, or injury from exposure.
Having an exalted idea of my capabilities in the way of horse exercise
(which, indeed, when I am in my usual condition, are pretty good), she
started off with me to H----, a distance of about eight miles, and we
did the whole way there and back (besides an episodical gallop, three
times full tear round a field, to tame our horses, which were wild)
either at a hard gallop or a harder trot. I, who have grown fat and
soft, and have hardly ridden since I left America, came home bruised and
beaten, and aching in every limb to that degree that I was glad to lie
down--conceive the humiliation!--and was much put to it to get up again
to dress for dinner; having, moreover, the consolation of being assured
by Lady Francis that she had ridden thus hard out of pure consideration
for me; supposing that the faster I went, the better I should be
pleased. I was, besides, mounted upon a fiery little fiend of a pony,
who pulled my arms out of their sockets and would not walk. However, by
repeating the dose every day, I suffered less and less, and am now once
more in excellent riding condition.
I remember a ludicrous circumstance of the same kind happening to me in
America, on the occasion of the first ride I ever took with my
brother-in-law, who was then comparatively a stranger to me. He was a
cavalry officer, a capital horseman, and hard rider; which qualities he
exhibited the first time I ever went out with him, by riding at such a
pace and for such a length of time that, perceiving he did not kill
himself, I asked if he was in the habit of killing his horse every time
he rode out; when he burst out laughing, and assured me that he thought
he was only conforming to my habitual pace.
Yesterday I varied my exercise, for I went out on horseback with Lord
Lansdowne, and finding the roads dangerously slippery for our horses,
which were not sharped, when we were at some distance from Bowood we
dismounted, and gave them to the groom, and came home on foot, a
distance of three miles, which, carrying one's habit [riding-skirts in
those days were very long], I think was as good as four.
You cannot conceive anything more melancholy than the aspect of
H----.... It was a miserable day, dark, dismal, and foggy; the
Manchester smoke came down, together with a penetrating cold drizzle,
like the defilement and weeping of irretrievable shame, and sin, and
sorrow; and the whole aspect of the place struck me with dismay. The
house was shut up, and looked absolutely deserted, not a soul stirring
about it; the garden dismantled and out of order. Altogether, the
contrast of the whole scene to that which I remembered so bright,
cheerful, gay, and lovely, combined with the cause of its present
condition, struck me as beyond measure mournful....