are certainly my warmest friends in America. I have some friends in my
own country who have known and loved me longer than your family; but I
do not think, with one or two exceptions, that they love me better, nor
do I reckon upon the faith and affection of my American friends less
than upon that of my English ones. But the number of people whom I
entirely love and trust is very small anywhere, and yet large enough to
make me thank God every day for the share He has given me of worthy
friendships--treasures sufficient for me to account myself very rich in
their possession; living springs of goodness and affection, in which my
spirit finds never-failing refreshment. But I have in my own country a
vast number of very kind and cordial acquaintances, and, to tell you the
truth, am better understood (naturally) and better liked in society, I
think, here than on your side of the water. I fancy I am more popular,
upon the whole, among my own people than among yours; which is not to
be wondered at, as difference is almost always an element of dislike,
and, of course, I am more different from American than English people.
Indeed, I have come to consider the difference of nationality a broader,
stronger, and deeper difference than that produced by any mere
dissimilarity of individual character. It is tantamount to looking at
everything from another point of view; to having, from birth and through
education, other standards; to having, in short, another intellectual
and moral horizon. No personal unlikeness between two individuals of the
same nation, however strong it may be in certain points, is equal to the
entire unlikeness, fundamental, superficial, and thorough, of two people
of different nations.
I am anxious to close this letter before I go out, and shall only add,
in replying to your next question of whether I ever feel any desire to
return to the stage, _Never_.... My very nature seems to me dramatic. I
cannot speak without gesticulating and making faces, any more than an
Italian can; I am fond, moreover, of the excitement of _acting_,
personating interesting characters in interesting situations, giving
vivid expression to vivid emotion, realizing in my own person noble and
beautiful imaginary beings, and _uttering the poetry of Shakespeare_.
But the stage is not only this, but much more that is not this; and that
much more is not only by no means equally agreeable, but positively
odious to me, and always was.
Good-by. God bless you and yours.
Believe me always yours most truly,
FANNY BUTLER.
HARLEY STREET, May 1st, 1842.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
I have just despatched a letter to Emily, from whom I I have had two
already since she reached Bannisters. She writes chiefly of her mother,
whose efforts to bear her trial are very painful to poor Emily, whose
fewer years and excellent mental habits render such exertions easier to
her. To no one can self-control under such sorrow ever be easy.
You ask about my going to the Drawing-room, which happened thus: The
Duke of Rutland dined some little time ago at the Palace, and, speaking
of the late party at Belvoir, mentioned me, when the Queen asked why I
didn't have myself presented. The duke called the next day at our house,
but we did not see him, and he being obliged to go out of town, left a
message for me with Lady Londonderry, to the effect that her Majesty's
interest about me (curiosity would have been the more exact word, I
suspect) rendered it imperative that I should go to the Drawing-room;
and, indeed, Lady Londonderry's authoritative "Of course you'll go,"
given in her most _gracious_ manner, left me no doubt whatever as to my
duty in that respect, especially as the message duly delivered by her
was followed up by a letter from the duke, from Newmarket, who, from the
midst of his bets, handicaps, sweepstakes, and cups, wrote me over again
all that he had bid the marchioness tell me. Wherefore, having no
objection whatever to go to Court (except, indeed, the expense of my
dress, the idea of which caused me no slight trepidation, as I had
already exceeded my year's allowance), I referred the matter to my
supreme authority, and it being settled that I was to go, I ordered my
tail, and my top, train, and feathers, and went. And this is the whole
story, with this postscript, that, not owning a single diamond, I hired
a handsome set for the occasion from Abud and Collingwood, every single
stone of which darted a sharp point of nervous anxiety into my brain and
bosom the whole time I wore them.
As you know that I would not go to the end of the street to see a
drawing-room full of full moons, you will easily believe that there was
nothing particularly delightful to me in the occasion. But after all, it
was very little more of an exertion than I make five nights of the week,
in going to one place or another; and under the circumstances it was
certainly fitting and proper that I should go.
I suffered agonies of nervousness, and, I rather think, did all sorts of
awkward things; but so, I dare say, do other people in the same
predicament, and I did not trouble my head much about my various
_mis_-performances. One thing, however, I can tell you: if her Majesty
has seen me, I have not seen her; and should be quite excusable in
cutting her wherever I met her. "A cat may look at _a_ king," it is
said; but how about looking at _the_ Queen? In great uncertainty of mind
on this point, I did not look at my sovereign lady. I kissed a soft
white hand, which I believe was hers; I saw a pair of very handsome
legs, in very fine silk stockings, which I am convinced were not hers,
but am inclined to attribute to Prince Albert; and this is all I
perceived of the whole royal family of England, for I made a sweeping
courtesy to the "good remainders of the Court," and came away with no
impression but that of a crowded mass of full-dressed confusion, and
neither know how I got in nor out of it....
You ask about Liszt. He does not take the management of the German
Opera, as was expected; indeed, I wonder he ever accepted such an
employment. I should think him most unfit to manage such an undertaking,
with his excitable temper and temperament. I do not know whether he will
come to London at all this season. Adelaide has been bitterly
disappointed about it, and said that she had reckoned upon him in great
measure for the happiness of her whole summer....
You ask next in your category of questions after Adelaide's dog, and
whether it is led in a string successfully yet; and thereby hangs a
tale. T'other morning she was awakened by a vehement knocking at her
door, and S---- exclaiming, in a loud and solemn voice, "Adelaide, thy
maid and thy dog are in a fit together!" which announcement she
continued to repeat, with more and more emphasis, till my sister, quite
frightened, jumped out of bed, and came upon the stairs, where she
beheld the two women and children just come in from their walk; Anne,
looking over the banisters with her usual peculiar air of immovable
dignity, slowly ejaculating, "What a fool the girl is!" Caroline
followed in her wake, wringing her hands, and alternately shrieking and
howling, like all the Despairs in the universe. It was long before
anything could be distinguished of articulate speech, among the
fraeulein's howls and shrieks; but at length it appeared that she had
taken "die Tine" out in the Regent's Park with Anne and the children,
who now go out directly after their breakfast. Tiny, it seems, enjoyed
the trip amazingly, and became so excited and so very much transported
with what we call animal spirits in human beings that it began to run,
as the fraeulein thought, away. Whereupon the fraeulein began to run after
it; whereupon Tiny, when it heard this Dutch nymph heavy in hot pursuit,
ran till it knocked its head against a keeper's lodge, and here, because
it shook and trembled and stared, probably at its own unwonted
performance, a sympathizing crowd collected, who instantly proclaimed it
at first in a _conwulsion_ fit, and then decidedly mad. Water was
offered it, which it only stared at and shook its head, evidently
dreading the cleansing element. A policeman coming by immediately
proposed to kill it. This, however, the fraeulein objected to; and
catching the bewildered quadruped in her arms, she set off home,
escorted by a running mob of sympathetic curiosity. But about half-way
the struggle between herself and "die Tine" became so terrific that it
ended by the luckless little brute escaping from her, and precipitating
itself down an area, where it remained, invoking heaven with howls,
while Caroline ran howling down the street. The man-servant was then
sent (twice with a wrong direction) to fetch the poor little creature
up, and bring it home. At length Caroline accompanied the footman to the
scene of the dog-astrophe (you wouldn't call it _cat_-astrophe, would
you?), and "die Tine" was safely lodged in the back-yard here, where,
being left alone and not bothered with human solicitude, it presently
recovered as many small wits as it ever had, drank voluntarily plenty of
water, and gave satisfactory signs of being quite as rational as any
lady's little dog need be; but the fraeulein protests she will never take
"die Tine" out walking again.
Good-bye dear. God bless you. I am pretty well, if that comports with
low spirits and terrible nervous irritability.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
My father desires his love to you.
HARLEY STREET, Friday, May 6th, 1842.
I did ask Emily my botanical questions, but she could tell me no more
than you have done, and knew nothing special about the primroses.
You ask me a great deal in your letter about my father again taking the
management of Covent Garden, and on what terms he has done so; all which
I have told you in the letter I have just despatched to you....
Adelaide has repeatedly said that, as soon as she has realized three
hundred a year, she will give up the whole business; and I comfort
myself with that purpose of hers; for if at the conclusion of next
season she will go to America for a year, she will more than realize the
result she proposes to herself.... I cannot, however, help fearing that
obstacles may arise to prevent her eventually fulfilling her purpose
when the time comes for her retiring, according to her present
expectation and wish....
I have not been out a great deal lately, We seem a little less inclined
to fly at all quarry than last season; and as I never decide whether we
shall accept the invitations that come or not, I am very well pleased
that some of them are declined. I believe I told you that Lady
Londonderry had asked us to a magnificent ball. This I was rather sorry
to refuse, as a ball is quite as great a treat to me as to any "young
miss" just coming out. Indeed, I think my capacity of enjoyment and
excitement is greater than that of most "young misses" I see, who not
only talk of being _bored_, but actually contrive, poor creatures! to
look so in the middle of their first season.
I spent two hours with poor Lady Dacre yesterday evening.... After
sitting with her, we went to a large party at Sydney Smith's, where I
was very much amused and pleased, and saw numbers of people that I know
and like--rather.
You ask about my walks.... They are now chiefly confined to my
peregrinations in the Square, measuring the enclosed gravel walks of
which I have already, since your departure, finished the "Memoires de
l'Enfant du Peuple," and brought myself, _mirabile dictu!_ to within
twenty pages of the end of Mrs. Jameson's book upon Prussian school
statistics....
I do not think Mr. W---- any authority upon any subject. I consider him
a perfect specimen of a charlatan, and his opinions with regard to
slavery and the abolitionists are particularly little worthy of credit
in my mind, because he _used_ America precisely as an actor would, to
make money wherever he could by his lectures, which he puffed himself,
till he was absolutely laughed at all over the country, and which were,
by the accounts of those who heard them, perfectly shallow and often
quite erroneous as far as regarded the information they pretended to
impart. The Southern States were a lucrative field for his lecturing
speculation; the Northern abolitionists were far from being sufficiently
numerous or influential for it to be worth his while to conciliate them;
and for these reasons I attach little value to his statement upon that
or indeed any other subject.
You ask me what was my impression altogether of the Drawing-room. I
have told you about my own performances there, of which, however, I dare
say I exaggerated the awkwardness to myself. The whole thing wearied me,
just as any other large, overcrowded assembly where I could not sit down
would; and that is the chief impression it has left upon me. I believe I
was flattered by the Queen's expressing any curiosity about me, but I
went simply because I was told it was right that I should do so. I am
always horribly shy, or nervous, or whatever that foolish sensation
ought to be called, at even having to walk across a room full of people;
and therefore the fuss and to-do and ceremonial of the presentation
(particularly not having been very well drilled beforehand by Lady
Francis, who presented me) were disagreeable to me; but I have retained
no impression of the whole thing other than of a very large and
fatiguing rout. We are advised to go again on the birthday, but that I
am sure we shall not do; and now that the Queen--God bless her!--has
perceived that I do not go upon all-fours, but am indeed, as Bottom
says, "a woman like any other woman," I have no doubt her gracious
Majesty is abundantly satisfied with what she saw of me.
Good-bye, dearest Harriet.
Ever yours,
F. A. B.
[The enthusiastic abolitionist, Mrs. Lydia Child, had written to me,
requesting me to give her for publication some portions of the
journal I had kept during my residence in Georgia; and I had
corresponded with my friend Mrs. Charles Sedgwick upon the subject,
deciding to refuse her request. My Georgia journal never saw the
light till the War of Secession was raging in America, and almost
all the members of the society in which I was then living in England
were strongly sympathizing with the Southern cause, when I thought
it right to state what, according to my own observation and
experience, that cause involved.]
HARLEY STREET, May 6th, 1842.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
The carriage is waiting to take ---- to the _Levee_, and I am waiting
till it comes back to go upon my thousand and one daily errands.
Adelaide, it being her last day at home, appears anxious to enjoy as
much as she can of my society, and has therefore gone fast asleep in the
arm-chair by the table at which I am writing, and has expressed her
intention of coming out and paying visits with me this morning. She
starts at eight o'clock this evening, and will reach Birmingham, I
believe, about one. This arrangement, which I should think detestable,
pleases her very much....
Mr. Everett, our friend, presents ----, and I thought Anne would have
fallen down in a fit when she heard that the ceremony consisted in going
down on one knee and kissing the Queen's hand. She did not mind my doing
it the least in the world, but her indignation has been unbounded at the
idea of a free-born American citizen submitting to such degradation.
Poor thing! "Lucifer, son of the morning," was meek and humble to her.
We dined to-day with the Francis Egertons, to meet the young Guardsmen
who are to form our _corps dramatique_ for "The Hunchback," which, you
know, we are going to act in private. To-morrow evening we go to Sydney
Smith's, and on Monday down to Oatlands for a few days. I am always
delighted in that place and the lovely wild country round it. Lady
Francis will mount me, and I expect my old enjoyment in riding about
those beautiful and well-remembered haunts with her....
There has been a grand row at the Italian Opera-House, among the
managers, singers, and singeresses. Mario (Mons. Di Candia; I suppose
you know who I mean) has, it seems, for some reason or other, been
_discharged_. Madame Grisi, who sympathizes with him, refuses to uplift
her voice, that being the case; the new singeress, Frezzolini, does not
please at all; and the new singer, Rouconi, isn't allowed by his wife to
sing with any woman but herself, and she is a perfect _dose_ to the poor
audience. Lumley, the solicitor, manager of these he and she divinities,
declares that if they don't behave better he'll shut the theatre at the
end of the week. In the mean time, underhand proposals have been made to
Adelaide to stop the gap, and sing for a few nights for them--a sort of
proposal which does not suit her, which she has scornfully rejected, and
departed with her tail over her shoulder, leaving the behind scenes of
Her Majesty's Theatre with their tails between their legs....
My dearest Harriet, you ask me if I do not think the spirit of
martyrdom is often alloyed with self-esteem and wilfulness. God alone
knows the measure in which human infirmity and human virtue unite in
inducing the sacrifice of life and all that life loves for a point of
opinion. I confess, for my own part, self-esteeming and wilful as I am,
that to suffer bodily torture for the sake of an abstract question of
what one believes to be right is an effort of courage so much above any
that I am capable of that I do not feel as if I had a right to
undervalue it by the smallest doubt cast upon the merit of those who
have shown themselves capable of it. It may be that, without such
admixture of imperfection as human nature's highest virtues are still
tinged with, the confessors of every good and noble cause would have
left unfulfilled their heroic task of witnessing to the truth by their
death; but if indeed base alloy did mingle with their great and
conscientious sacrifice, let us hope that the pangs of physical torture,
the anguish of injustice and ignominy, and the rending asunder of all
the ties of earthly affection, may have been some expiation for the
imperfection of their most perfect deed....
Will you, my dear, be so good as to remember what a hang-nail is like?
or a grain of dust in your eye? or a blister on your heel? or a corn on
your toe? and then reflect what the word "torture" implies, when it
meant all that the most devilish cruelty could invent. Savonarola! good
gracious me! I would have _canted_ and _re_canted, and called black
white, and white black, and confessed, and denied! Please don't think of
it! God be praised, those days are over! Not but what I edified Mr.
Combe greatly once, when I was a girl, by declaring that if, by behaving
well under torture, I could have vexed my tormentors very much, and if I
might have had plenty of people to see how well I behaved, I thought I
could have managed it; to which he replied, "Oh, weel now, Fanny, ye've
just got the very spirit of a martyr in you." See if that theory of the
matter answers your notion....
You ask me how I managed about diamonds to go to Court in. I hired a
set, which I also wore at the _fete_ at Apsley House; they were only a
necklace and earrings, which I wore as a bandeau, stitched on scarlet
velvet, and as drops in the middle of scarlet velvet bows in my hair,
and my dress being white satin and point lace, trimmed with white Roman
pearls, it all looked nice enough. The value of the jewels was only
L700, but I am sure they gave me L7000 worth of misery; and if her
Majesty had but known the anguish I endured in showing my respect for
her by false appearances, the very least she could have done would have
been to have bought the jewels and given them to me. Madame Devy made my
Court dress, which was of such material as, you see, I can use when I
play "The Hunchback" at Lady Francis's. I am ruining myself, in spite of
my best endeavors to be economical; but if it is any comfort for you to
know it, my conscience torments me horribly for it....
God bless you. Good-bye, dear.
Ever yours affectionately,
F. A. B.
HARLEY STREET, Saturday, May 7th, 1842.
... What an immense long talk I am having with you this morning, my dear
Hal! I do not believe you are wearied, however; but you will surely
wonder why I did not put all these letters under one cover with the
three sovereign heads on the one packet; and I am sure I don't know why
I have not. But it doesn't matter much my appearing a little more or a
little less absurd to you.
You ask who I shall associate with while ---- and Adelaide are away....
I presume with my own writing-table and the carriage cushions, just as I
do now, just as I did before, and just as I am likely to do
hereafter....
It was not the presence of the Queen that affected my nerves at the
Drawing-room, but _my own_ presence, _i.e._, as the French say, I was
"tres embarrassee de ma personne." The uncertainty of what I was to do
(for Lady Francis had been exceedingly succinct in her instructions),
and the certainty of a crowd of people staring all round me,--this, I
think, and not the overpowering sense of a royal human being before me,
was what made me nervous. Were I to go again to a Drawing-room, now that
I know my lesson, I do not think I should suffer at all from any
embarrassment. We are not asked to the fancy ball at the Palace, I am
told, because of our omission in not attending at the Birthday
Drawing-room, which, it seems, is a usual thing after a first
presentation. I should like to have seen it; it will be a fine sight. In
the mean time, as many of our acquaintances are going, we come in for a
full share of the insanity which has taken possession of men's and
women's minds about velvets, satins, brocades, etc. You enter no room
that is not literally _strewed_ with queer-looking prints of costumes;
and before you can say, "How d'ye do?" you are asked which looks best
together, blue and green, or pink and yellow; for, indeed, their
selections are often as outrageous as these would be. I never conceived
people could be so stupid at combining ideas, even upon this least
abstruse of subjects; and you would think, to hear these fine ladies
talk the inanity they do about their own clothes, now they are compelled
to think about them for themselves, that they have no natural
perceptions of even color, form, or proportion. The fact is that even
their _dressing_-brains are turned over to their French milliners and
lady's-maids. I understand Lady A---- says she will make her dress alone
(exclusive of jewels) cost L1000.
Some people say this sort of mad extravagance does good; I cannot think
it. It surely matters comparatively little that the insane luxury of the
self-indulgent feeds the bodies of so many hundred people if at the same
time the mischievous example of their folly and extravagance is
demoralizing their hearts and minds and injuring a great many more.
Touching Lady A----, she gave the address of one of her milliners to
Lady W----, who, complaining to her of the exorbitant prices of this
superlative _faiseuse_, and plaintively stating that she had charged her
fifty guineas for a simple morning dress, Lady A---- replied, "Ah, very
likely, I dare say; I don't know anything about _cheap clothes_."
I do not know where Adelaide is likely to lodge in Dublin, nor do I
believe she knows herself; but before this letter reaches you, you will
have found out. I had almost a mind to ask her to write to me, but then
I knew both how she hates it and how little time she was likely to have,
so I forbore. She has left me with the pleasing expectation that any of
these days her eccentric musical friend Dessauer may walk in, to be by
me received, lodged, entertained, comforted, and consoled, in her
absence (in which case, by-the-by, you know, I should associate with him
while she is away). From parts of his letters which she has read to me,
I feel very much inclined to like him, ... and I imagine I shall find
him very amusing....