but little of the worthy captain, being only able to come on deck the
last four days of our passage; but he was most kind to us all, and after
romping with the children and walking Miss Hall off her legs, he used to
come and sit down by me, and sing, and hum, and whistle every imaginable
tune that ever lodged between lines and spaces, and some so original
that I think they never were imprisoned within any musical bars
whatever. I gave him at parting the fellow of your squeeze of the hand,
and told him that as yours was on my account, mine was on yours. He left
us at Boston to go on to Niagara.
Our ship was extremely full, and there being only one stewardess on
board, the help she could afford any of us was very little.... While in
Boston I made a pilgrimage to dear Dall's grave: a bitter and a sad few
minutes I spent, lying upon that ground beneath which she lay, and from
which her example seemed to me to rise in all the brightness of its
perfect lovingness and self-denial. The oftener I think of her, the more
admirable her life appears to me. She was undoubtedly gifted by nature
with a temperament of rare healthfulness and vigor, which, combined with
the absence of imagination and nervous excitability, contributed much to
her uniform cheerfulness, courage, and placidity of temper; but her
self-forgetfulness was most uncommon, her inexhaustible kindliness and
devotedness to every creature that came within her comfortable and
consolatory influence was "twice-blessed," and from her grave her lovely
virtues seemed to call to me to get up and be of good cheer, and strive
to forget myself, even as perfectly as she had done.... How bitter and
dark a thing life is to some of God's poor creatures!
I have told you now all I have to tell of myself, and being weary in
spirit and in body, will bid you farewell, and go and try to get some
sleep. God bless you, my beloved friend; I am very sad, but far from out
of courage. Give dear Dorothy my affectionate love.
I am ever yours,
FANNY.
PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, 30th, 1843.
MY DEAR F----,
We are all established in a boarding-house here, where my acquaintances
assure me that I am very comfortable; and so I endeavor to persuade
myself that my acquaintances are better judges of that than I am myself.
It is the first time in my life that I have ever lived in any such
manner or establishment; so I have no means of trying it by comparison;
it is simply detestable to me, but compared with _more_ detestable
places of the same sort it is probably _less_ so. "There are
differences, look you!" ...
I am sure your family deserve to have a temple erected to them by all
foreigners in America; for it seems to me that you and your people are
home, country, and friends to all such unfortunates as happen to have
left those small items of satisfaction behind them. The stranger's
blessing should rest on your dwellings, and one stranger's grateful
blessing does rest there....
Believe me, yours most truly,
F. A. B.
_Please to observe_ that the charge of 13_s._ 8_d._ is for personal
advice, conferences, and tiresome morning visits; and if you make any
such charge, I shall expect you to earn it. 6_s._ 4_d._ is all you are
entitled to for anything but personal communication.
[This postscript, and the beginning of the letter, were jesting
references to a lawyer's bill, amounting to nearly L50, presented to
me by a young legal gentleman with whom we had been upon terms of
friendly acquaintance, and whom we had employed, as he was just
beginning business, to execute the papers for the deed of gift I
have mentioned, by which my father left me at his death my earnings,
the use of which I had given up to him on my marriage for his
lifetime.
Our young legal gentleman used to pay us the most inconceivably
tedious visits, during which his principal object appeared to be to
obtain from us every sort of information upon the subject of all and
sundry American investments and securities. Over and over again I
was on the point of saying "Not at home" to these interminably
wearisome visitations, but refrained, out of sheer good nature and
unwillingness to mortify my _visitant_. Great, therefore, was our
surprise, on receiving a _bill of costs_, to find every one of these
intolerable intrusions upon our time and patience charged, as
personal business consultations, at 13_s._ 8_d._ The thing was so
ludicrous that I laughed till I cried over the price of our friend's
civilities. On paying the amount, though of course I made no comment
upon the price of my social and legal privileges, I suppose the
young gentleman's own conscience (he was only just starting in his
profession, and may have had one) pricked him slightly, for with a
faint hysterical giggle, he said, "I dare say you think it rather
sharp practice, but, you see, getting married and furnishing the
house is rather expensive,"--an explanation of the reiterated
thirteens and sixpences of the bill, which was candid, at any rate,
and put them in the more affable light of an extorted wedding
present, which was rather pleasant.]
PHILADELPHIA, June 4th, 1843.
DEAREST GRANNY,
You will long ere this have received my grateful acknowledgments of your
pretty present and most kind letter, received, with many tears and
heart-yearnings, in the middle of that horrible ocean. I will not renew
my thanks, though I never can thank you enough for that affectionate
inspiration of following me on that watery waste, with tokens of your
remembrance, and cheering that most dismal of all conditions with such
an unlooked-for visitation of love.
I wrote to you from Halifax, where, on the deck of our steamer, your
name was invoked with heartfelt commendations by myself and Major S----.
That was a curious conversation of his and mine, if such it could be
called; scarcely more than a breathless enumeration of the names of all
of you, coupled indeed with loving and admiring additions, and
ejaculations full of regret and affection. Poor man, how I did pity him!
and how I did pity myself!
I have just written to our B----, and feel sad at the meagre and
unsatisfactory account which my letter contains of me and mine; to you,
my excellent friend, I will add this much more.... But I shall forbear
saying anything about my conditions until they become better in
themselves, or I become better able to bear them. God bless you and
those you love, my dear Lady Dacre. Give my affectionate "duty" to my
lord, and believe me ever your gratefully attached
F. A. B.
PHILADELPHIA, June 26th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,
Your sad account of Ireland is only more shocking than that of the
newspapers because it is yours, and because you are in the midst of all
this wild confusion and dismay. How much you must feel for your people!
However much one's sympathy may be enlisted in any public cause, the
private instances of suffering and injustice, which inevitably attend
all political changes wrought by popular commotion, are most afflicting.
I hardly know what it is reasonable to expect from, or hope for,
Ireland. A separation from England seems the wildest project
conceivable; and yet, Heaven knows, no great benefit appears hitherto to
have accrued to the poor "earthen pot" from its fellowship with the
"iron" one. As for hoping that quiet may be restored through the
intervention of military force, at the bayonet's point,--I cannot hope
any such thing. Peace so procured is but an earnest of future war, and
the victims of such enforced tranquillity bequeath to those who are only
temporarily _quelled_, not permanently _quieted_, a legacy of revenge,
which only accumulates, and never goes long unclaimed and unpaid.
England seems to me invariably to deal unwisely with her dependencies;
she performs in the Christian world very much the office that Rome did
in the days of her great heathen supremacy--carry to the ends of the
earth by process of conquest the seeds of civilization, of legislation,
and progress; and then, as though her mission was fulfilled, by gradual
mismanagement, abuse of power, and insolent contempt of those she has
subjugated, is ejected by the very people to whom she had brought, at
the sword's point, the knowledge of freedom and of law. It is a singular
office for a great nation, but I am not sure that it is not our
Heaven-appointed one, to conquer, to improve, to oppress, to be
rebelled against, to coerce, and finally to be kicked out, _videlicet_,
these United States.
But now to matters personal.... The intense heat affects me extremely;
and not having a horse, or any riding exercise, the long walks which I
compel myself to take over these burning brick pavements, and under this
broiling sun, are not, I suppose, altogether beneficial to me....
I went to church yesterday, and Mr. F---- preached an Abolition sermon.
This subject seems to press more and more upon his mind, and he speaks
more and more boldly upon it, in spite of having seen various members of
his congregation get up and leave the church in the middle of one of his
sermons in which he adverted to the forbidden theme of slavery. Some of
these, who had been members of the church from its earliest
establishment, and were very much attached to him, expressed their
regret at the course they felt compelled to adopt, and said if he would
only _give them notice_ when he intended to preach upon that subject
they would content themselves with absenting themselves on those
occasions only, to which his reply not unnaturally was, "Why, those who
would leave the church on those occasions are precisely the persons who
are in need of such exhortations!"--and of course he persevered.
I think it will end by his being expelled by his congregation. It will
be well with him wherever he goes; but alas for those he leaves! I
expect to be forbidden to take S---- to church, as soon as the report of
yesterday's sermon gets noised abroad....
God bless you, dear. Good-bye. I am heavy-hearted, and it is a great
effort to me to write. What would I not give to see you! Love to dear
Dorothy, when you see or write to her.
I am ever yours,
FANNY.
YELLOW SPRINGS, PENNSYLVANIA, July 6th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,
Here I am sitting (not indeed "on a rail"), but next thing to it, on the
very hardest of wooden benches; my feet on the very hardest bar of the
very hardest wooden chair; and my _cork_ inkstand, of the most primitive
formation, placed on a rough wooden table about a foot square, which is
not large enough to hold my paper (so my knees are my desk), and is
covered with a coarse piece of rag carpeting;--the whole, a sort of
prison-cell furnishing. Before me stretches as far as it can about a
quarter of an acre of degraded uneven ground, enclosed in a dilapidated
whitewashed wooden paling, and clothed, except in several mangy bare
patches, with rank weedy grass, untended unwholesome shrubs, and untidy
neglected trees.... Behind me is a whitewashed room about fifteen feet
by twelve, containing a rickety, black horse-hair sofa, all worn and
torn into prickly ridges; six rheumatic wooden chairs; a lame table
covered with a plaid shawl of my own, being otherwise without cloth to
hide its nakedness or the indefinite variety of dirt-spots and stains
which defile its dirty skin. In this room Miss Hall and S---- are busily
engaged at "lessons." Briefly, I am sitting on the piazza (so-called) of
one of a group of tumble-down lodging-houses and hotels, which,
embosomed in a beautiful valley in Pennsylvania, and having in the midst
of them an exquisite spring of mineral water, rejoice in the title of
the "Yellow Springs."
Some years ago this place was a fashionable resort for the
Philadelphians, but other watering-places have carried off its fashion,
and it has been almost deserted for some time past; and except invalids
unable to go far from the city (which is within a three hours' drive
from here), and people who wish to get fresh air for their children
without being at a distance from their business, very few visitors come
here, and those of an entirely different sort from the usual summer
haunters of watering-places in the country.
The heat in the city has been perfectly frightful.... On Sunday last a
thermometer, rested on the ground, rose to 130 deg., that being the heat of
the earth; and when it was hung up in the shade the mercury fell, but
remained at 119 deg.. Imagine what an air to breathe!... Late in the
afternoon last Sunday, a storm came on like a West Indian tornado; the
sky came down almost to the earth, the dust was suddenly blown up into
the air in red-hot clouds that rushed in at the open windows like thick
volumes of smoke, and then the rain poured from the clouds, steadily,
heavily, and continuously, for several hours.
In the night the whole atmosphere changed, and as I sat in my
children's nursery after putting them to bed in the dark, that they
might sleep, I felt gradually the spirit of life come over the earth, in
cool breezes between the heavy showers of rain. The next morning the
thermometer was below 70 deg., 30 deg. lower than the day before.... This
morning the children took me up a hill which rises immediately at the
back of the house, on the summit of which is a fine crest of beautiful
forest-trees, from which place there is a charming prospect of hill and
dale, a rich rolling country in fine cultivation--the yellow crops of
grain, running like golden bays into the green woodland that clothes the
sides and tops of all the hills, the wheat, the grass, the oats, and the
maize, all making different checkers in the pretty variegated patchwork
covering of the prosperous summer earth.
The scattered farmhouses glimmered white from among the round-headed
verdure of their neighboring orchards. Nowhere in the bright panorama
did the eye encounter the village, the manor-house, and the church
spire,--that picturesque poetical group of feudal significance; but
everywhere, the small lonely farmhouse, with its accompaniments of huge
barns and outhouses, ugly the one and ungainly the others, but standing
in the midst of their own smiling well-cultivated territory, a type of
independent republicanism, perhaps the pleasantest type of its
pleasantest features.
In the whole scene there was nothing picturesque or poetical (except,
indeed, the blue glorious expanse of the unclouded sky, and the noble
trees, from the protection of whose broad shade we looked forth upon the
sunny world). But the wide landscape had a peaceful, plenteous,
prosperous aspect, that was comfortable to one's spirit and exceedingly
pleasant to the eye.
After our walk we came down into the valley, and I went with the
children to the cold bath--a beautiful deep spring of water, as clear as
crystal and almost as cold as ice, surrounded by whitewashed walls,
which, rising above it to a discreet height, screen it only from earthly
observers. No roof covers the watery chamber but the green spreading
branches of tall trees and the blue summer sky, into which you seem to
be stepping as you disturb the surface of the water. Into this lucid
liquid gem I gave my chickens and myself, overhead, three breathless
dips--it is too cold to do more,--and since that I have done nothing
but write to you.
You ask what is said to Sydney Smith's "petition." Why, the honest men
of the country say, "'Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true." It is
thought that Pennsylvania will _ultimately_ pay, and not repudiate, but
it will be _some time_ first. God bless you, my dear Hal. I have not
been well and am miserably depressed, but the country always agrees
excellently with me.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, 9th, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,
After last Sunday's awful heat, it became positively impossible to keep
the children any longer in Philadelphia; and they were accordingly
removed to the Yellow Springs, a healthy and pleasant bathing-place at
three hours' distance from the city. On Saturday morning their nurse,
the only servant we have, thought proper to disapprove of my deportment
towards her, and left me to the maternal delights of dressing, washing,
and looking after my children during that insufferable heat. Miss H----
was entirely incapacitated, and I feared was going to be ill, and I have
reason to thank Heaven that I am provided with the constitution that I
have, for it is certain that I need it. On Sunday night a violent storm
cooled the atmosphere, and on Monday morning the nurse was good enough
to forgive me, and came back: so that the acme of my trial did not last
too long. On Tuesday the children were removed to the country, and
though the physician and my own observation assured me that F----
required sea-bathing, it is an unspeakable relief to me to see her out
of the city, and to find this place healthy and pleasant for them. The
country is pretty, the air pure, the baths delightful; and my chicks,
thank God, already beginning to improve in health and spirits.
As for the accommodations, the less said about them the better. We
inhabit a sort of very large barn, or barrack, divided into sundry
apartments, large and small; and having gleaned the whole house to
furnish our _drawing-room_, that chamber now contains one rickety table,
one horse-hair sofa that has three feet, and six wooden chairs, of
which it may be said that they have several legs among them; but I must
add that we have the whole house to ourselves, and our meals are brought
to us from the "Great Hotel" across the street,--privileges for which it
behoves me to be humbly thankful, and so I am. If the children thrive I
shall be satisfied; and as for accommodation, or even common comfort, my
habitation and mode of life in our Philadelphia boarding-house have been
so far removed from any ideas of comfort or even decency that I ever
entertained, that the whitewashed walls, bare rooms, and tumble-down
verandas of my present residence are but little more so.... I suppose
there was something to like in Mr. Webster's speech, since you are
surprised at my not liking it; but what was there to like? The one he
delivered on the laying of the foundation-stone of the monument (on
Bunker's Hill, near Boston) pleased me very much indeed; I thought some
parts of it very fine. But the last one displeased me utterly.... Pray
send me word all about that place by the sea-side, with the wonderful
name of "Quoge." My own belief is that the final "e" you tack on to it
is an affected abbreviation for the sake of refinement, and that it is,
by name and nature, really "Quagmire."
Believe me always
Yours truly,
F. A. B.
YELLOW SPRINGS, July 12th, 1843.
DEAR GRANNY,
The intelligence contained in your letter [of the second marriage of the
Rev. Frederick Sullivan, whose first wife was Lady Dacre's only child]
gave me for an instant a painful shock, but before I had ended it that
feeling had given place to the conviction that the contemplated change
at the vicarage was probably for the happiness and advantage of all
concerned. The tone of B----'s letter satisfied me, and for her and her
sister's feeling upon the subject I was chiefly anxious. About you, my
dearest Granny, I was not so solicitous; however deep your sentiment
about the circumstance may be, you have lived long and suffered much,
and have learned to accept sorrow wisely, let it come in what shape it
will. The impatience of youth renders suffering very terrible to it; and
the eager desire for happiness which belongs to the beginning of life
makes sorrow appear like some unnatural accident (almost a personal
injury), a sort of horrid surprise, instead of the all but daily
business, and part of the daily bread of existence, as one grows by
degrees to find that it is.
His daughter's feeling about Mr. Sullivan's marriage being what it is,
the marriage itself appears to me wise and well; and I have no doubt
that it will bring a blessing to the home at the vicarage and its dear
inmates. Pray remember me most kindly to Mr. Sullivan, and beg him to
accept my best wishes for his happiness, and that of all who belong to
him; the latter part of my wish I know he is mainly instrumental in
fulfilling himself. May he find his reward accordingly!
Of myself, my dear friend, what shall I tell you? I am in good health,
thank God! and as much good spirits as inevitably belong to good health
and a sound constitution in middle life....
The intense heat of the last month had made both my children ill, and a
week ago they were removed to this place, called the Yellow Springs,
from a fine mineral source, the waters of which people bathe in and
drink. Round it is gathered a small congregation of rambling
farm-houses, built for the accommodation of visitors. The country is
pretty and well cultivated, and the air remarkable for its purity and
healthiness; and here we have taken lodgings, and shall probably remain
during all the heat of the next six weeks, after which I suppose we
shall return to town.
I wish you could see my present _locale_. The house we are in is the
furthest from the "Hotel" (as it is magnificently called), and is a
large, rambling, whitewashed edifice, with tumble-down wooden piazzas
(verandas, as we should call them) surrounding its ground-floor. This
consists of one very large room, intended for a public dining-room, with
innumerable little cells round it, all about twelve feet by thirteen,
which are the bedrooms. One of these spacious sleeping-apartments,
opening on one side to the common piazza and on the other to the common
eating-room, is appropriated to me as a "private parlor," as it is
called; and being at present, most fortunately, the only inmates of this
huge barrack, we have collected into this "extra exclusive" saloon all
the furniture that we could glean out of all the other rooms in the
house; and what do you think we have got? Two tiny wooden tables,
neither of them large enough to write upon; a lame horse-hair sofa, and
six lame wooden chairs. As the latter, however, are not all lame of the
same leg, it is quite a pretty gymnastic exercise to balance one's self
as one sits by turns upon each of them, bringing dexterously into play
all the different muscles necessary to maintain one's seat on any of
them. It makes sitting quite a different process from what I have ever
known it to be, and separates it entirely from the idea usually
connected with it, of rest. But this we call luxury, and, compared with
the condition of the other rooms (before we had stripped them of their
contents), so it undoubtedly is. The walls of this boudoir of mine are
roughly whitewashed, the floor roughly boarded, and here I abide with my
chicks. The decided improvement in their health and looks and spirits,
since we left that horrible city, is a great deal better than sofas and
armchairs to me, or anything that would be considered elsewhere the mere
decencies of life; and having the means of privacy and cleanliness, my
only two absolute indispensables, I take this rather primitive existence
pleasantly enough. This house is built at the foot of a low hill, the
sides of which are cultivated; while the immediate summit retains its
beautiful crest of noble trees, from beneath which to look out over the
wide landscape is a very agreeable occupation towards sunset.
Chester County, as this is called, is the richest, agriculturally
speaking, in Pennsylvania; and the face of the country is certainly one
of the comeliest, well-to-do, smiling, pleasant earth's faces that can
be seen on a summer's day; the variety of the different tinted crops
(among them the rich green of the maize, or Indian corn, which we have
not in England), clothing the hill-sides and running like golden bays
into the green forest that once covered them from base to summit, and
still crowns every highest point, forms the gayest coat of many colors
for the whole rural region.