glad you do not withdraw yourself from the field of action where your
like are so much wanted. I cannot give up my hope and confidence in the
institutions of your country; they are the expectation of the world; and
if the Americans themselves, by word or deed, proclaim their scheme of
free government a failure, it seems to me that the future condition of
the human race is ominously darkened, and that all endeavor after
progress or improvement is a fruitless struggle towards an unattainable
end. But this is not so. Your people will yet prove it, and it will and
must be through the influence and agency of worthy men like yourself,
to whom fitly belongs the task of rallying this faithless people, flying
from their standards in the great world-conflict. Call them back, such
of you as have voices that can be heard; for your nation is the vanguard
of the race, and if they desert their trust its degradation will be
protracted for long years to come.
The despondency of some of your best men is deplorable, and the selfish
discouragement in which they withdraw from the fight, giving place to
public evil for the sake of their personal quiet, a fatal omen to the
country. It is curiously unlike the spirit of Englishmen. Never,
certainly, were good men and true so needed anywhere as here at this
moment, when the noblest principles that men are capable of recognizing
in the form of a government seem about to be cast down from the rightful
supremacy your fathers gave them, and the light of freedom which they
kindled to lighten the world extinguished in distrust and dismay.
God bless you and prosper you in every good work. Remember me most
kindly to S----, and believe me always
Yours very truly,
F. A. B.
PHILADELPHIA, September 9th, 1843.
Your English is undoubtedly better than Cicero's Latin to me, my dear
T----, inasmuch as I understand the one and not the other. I shall not
stop on my way through New York, on Monday, nor my way back, except to
spend a Sunday in your city, when I shall be very glad to see S---- and
you.
I am disappointed at the uncertainty you express about being in Lenox
while I am there.
Can you ascertain for me whether the Harpers, the New York publishers,
would be willing to publish a volume of Fugitive Poems for me, and would
give me _anything_ for them? If it is not too much trouble to ascertain
this, it would be doing me a great service....
I write in haste, but remain ever yours,
F. A. B.
DEAR T----,
I shall not dine with you to-day for various, all good, reasons, and
send you word to that effect, simply because it would not be so civil,
either to S---- or you, to leave my excuse till the time when I should
present myself.
I had hoped to have returned to Philadelphia with Mr. F---- this
morning, but I am to remain till after Thursday, when we were to have
given a dinner to Macready. He called this morning, however, and said he
had another engagement for Thursday, so what will be done in the matter
of our proposed entertainment to him I know not.
I hope your eyes are not the worse for that hateful theatre last night.
You cannot imagine how that sort of thing, to which I was once so used,
now excites and irritates my nerves. The music, the lights, the noise,
the applause, the acting, the grand play itself, "Macbeth,"--it was all
violent doses of stimulant; and I begin to think my mental constitution
is like gunpowder, only unignitable when in the water: I suppose that
accounts for my affection for water, apart from fishing.
I have got the greatest quantity of letters to write, and must begin
upon Tennyson, so I shall not want for occupation while I am kept here.
Yours ever truly,
F. A. B.
NEW YORK, September 26th, 1843.
DEAREST HAL,
I was up till past two o'clock last night, and up at 5.30 this morning:
I have travelled half the day, from Philadelphia to New York, and
shopped the rest of the day, and am now steaming up the Hudson to
Albany, on my way to Lenox, where I am going to spend a few days with my
friends the Sedgwicks. Although I am very weary, and my eyes ache for
want of sleep, I must write to you before I go to bed; for once up in
Berkshire, I shall have but little time to myself, and I would not for a
great deal that the steamer should go to England without some word from
me to you.... So here I am wandering up forlornly enough, with poor
Margery for my attendant, who appears to me to be in the last stage of a
consumption, and to whom this little excursion may perhaps be slightly
beneficial, and will certainly be very pleasurable.... I shall in all
probability see none of the Sedgwicks again for a year....
I suppose, dear Hal, we are crossing the Tappan Zee (the broadest part
of the Hudson River, where its rapid current spreads from shore to shore
into the dimensions of a wide lake), and the boat rocks so much that I
feel sick, and must leave off writing and go to bed, after all. God
bless you, dear. Good-night.
Dearest Hal, this letter, which I had hoped to finish on board the
Hudson night-boat, was cut short by my fatigue and the rocking of the
vessel; and, as I expected, during my stay at Lenox no interval of
leisure was left me to do so....
I sprained my ankle slightly, jumping from off a fence; and though I
have carefully abstained from using my foot since I did so, it is still
so weak that I am afraid of standing upon it much, and must consequently
abide the results (invariable with me) of want of exercise, headache,
sideache, and nervous depression and irritability. When I get to
Philadelphia, if I am no better, I will hire a horse for a little while,
and shake myself to rights.
God bless you, dear Hal. Good-bye.
I am ever yours,
FANNY.
PHILADELPHIA, October 10th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,
How much I thank you for your generosity to me! for the watch you are
sending me, which I have not yet received. I cannot value it more than I
did that precious chain, the loss of which, happening at a time when I
was every way most unhappy, really afflicted me deeply.
I hope nothing will happen to this new remembrance of yours and token of
your love. I shall feel most anxious till it arrives, and then I think I
shall sleep with it round my neck, so great will be my horror of having
it stolen from me in this wretched and disorderly lodging-house, where,
as it is, I am in perpetual misery lest I should have left any closet or
drawer in my bed-room unfastened, and where we are obliged to lock our
sitting-room if we leave it for a quarter of an hour, lest our property
should be stolen out of it,--a state of anxious and suspicious caution
which is as odious as it is troublesome....
When I arrived in New York last Sunday morning on my return from
Berkshire, and was preparing to start for Philadelphia the next day, I
found I was to stay in New York to meet and greet Mr. Macready, who had
just landed in America, and to whom we are to give an entertainment at
the Astor House, as we have no house in Philadelphia to which we can
invite him....
My next errand, while I was out to-day, was to go and see a person who
has thought proper to go out of her mind about me. She is poor and
obscure, the sister of a tailor in this town; she had a little
independence of her own, but lent it to the State of Pennsylvania, after
the fashion of Sydney Smith, and has lost it, or at any rate the income
of it, which, after all, is all that signifies to her, as she is no
longer young and will probably not live to see the State grow honest,
which its friends and well-wishers confidently predict that it will.
This poor woman is really and positively mad about me, as I think you
will allow when I tell you that she is never happy when she sees me
unless she has hold of my hand _or my gown_; that she has bought a
portrait of me by Sully, over which she has put a ducal coronet, as she
says I am the _Duchess of Ormond_! It is really a serious effort of good
nature in me to go and see her, for her crazy adoration of me is at once
ludicrous and painful. But my visits are a most lively pleasure to
her--she thanks me for coming with the tears in her eyes, poor thing;
and it would be brutal in me to withhold from her a gratification
apparently so intense, because to afford it her is irksome and
disagreeable to me. Her name is N----, and she told me to-day (but that
may have been only another demonstration of her craziness) that there
was a large disputed inheritance in Ireland left to heirs unknown of
that name; that the true heirs could not be found, and that she really
believed she might be entitled to it if she only knew how to set about
establishing her right. She is the daughter of an English or Irish man,
and her family were well connected in England (I couldn't help thinking,
while she was talking, of your and my uncle John's dear Guilford). What
a curious thing it would be if this poor, obscure, old, ugly,
half-insane woman were really entitled to such a property! She is
tolerably well educated too, a good French and Italian scholar, and a
reader of obsolete books. She is a very strange creature.
I forget whether I told you that I had taken Margery up to Lenox with
me, in the hope that the change of air and scene might be of benefit to
her; but ever since her return she has been ill in her bed, poor thing!
and though the only servant-girl she had has left her, and she is in the
most forlorn and wretched condition possible, neither her mother nor her
sisters have been near her to help or comfort her--such is the Roman
Catholic horror of a divorced woman (for she has at length sued for and
obtained her divorce from her worthless husband). And so, I suppose,
they will let her die, such being, it seems, their notion of what is
right.... Poor woman! her life has been one entire and perfect
misery....
God bless you, dear. Good-bye.
Ever yours,
F. A. B.
PHILADELPHIA, October 3rd, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,
I have just received, by Harnden's Express, my Tennyson, which I had
left at Lenox, and with it your old note, written to me while I was yet
there, which the conscientious folk sent me down. It seems odd to read
all your directions about my departure from the dear hill-country and my
arrival in New York. How far swept down the current of time already seem
the pleasant hours spent up there! You do not know how earnestly I
desire to live up there. I do believe mountains and hills are kindred of
mine--larger and smaller relations, taller and shorter cousins; for my
heart expands and rejoices and beats more freely among them, and
doubtless, in the days which "I can hardly remember" (as Rosalind says
of her Irish Rat-ship), I was a bear or a wolf, or what your people call
a "panter" (_i.e._ a panther), or at the very least a wild-cat, with
unlimited range of forest and mountain. [The forests and hill-tops of
that part of Massachusetts had, when this letter was written, harbored,
within memory of man, bears, panthers, and wild-cats.] That cottage by
the lake-side haunts me; and to be able to realize that day-dream is now
certainly as near an approach to happiness as I can ever contemplate.
I am working at the Tennyson, and shall soon have it ready. Tell me, if
you can, where and how I am to send it to John O'Sullivan.
Thank you, my dear T----, for your and S----'s civility to C---- H----.
His people are excellent friends of mine, and you cannot conceive
anything more disagreeable--painful to me, I might say--than the
mortification I felt in receiving him in my present uncomfortable abode,
and being literally unable to offer him a decent cup of tea.
It is an age since I saw Mr. G----, so can give you no intelligence of
him. J---- C---- and the O----s form my _societe intime_. They come and
sit with me sometimes of an evening, otherwise _mon chez moi_ is
undisturbed and lonely enough. I walk a great deal every day, for the
weather is lovely, and the blessed blue sky an inexhaustible source of
delight and enjoyment to me.
To-morrow I am obliged to go out to the farm upon business. I shall go
on horseback (upon the legs of my Tennyson article), and expect not only
pleasure but profit from my old habitual exercise; but I would a little
rather not be going _there_ at all.
I went all over our town house yesterday. It is a fine house, and has an
excellent garden, with quite large trees in it. It is let unfurnished
for about half the price which such a house in London would command. I
confess it was rather a trial to return from looking at this large house
of--_mine?_ to the "Maison Vauquier" (see Balzac's "Pere Goriot") which
we inhabit.
Thank you for your offer of helping me with my review. I could not
possibly think of using your eyes, precious and perilled as they are,
instead of my own. I dare say I shall manage with my own translated
acquaintance with AEschylus and Homer. However, and at any rate, if I
find it necessary to _cram_, I will not do so by proxy.
Good-bye. Give my kindest love to S----.... How is Master C----? How is
his voice? Has he worked out that problem yet about that vexed question
on which he threw so much light at your house, and about which you were
so tiresome? Seriously, that lad is a clever fellow; and I assure you we
perpetrated some pretty profound metaphysics between your house and the
Astor Hotel that wet Sunday evening.
Believe me yours truly,
F. A. B.
[The young gentleman alluded to in the above letter, who was
visiting the United States, and had brought letters of introduction
to my friends in New York, was the son of an old Yorkshire family,
among whom had existed for several generations a passionate desire
to _fly_, and a firm conviction that they could invent a machine
which would enable them to do so. The last I heard of that young
Icarus above mentioned was from two of his friends and companions,
the sons of Mrs. Norton, who, standing with me above the tremendous
precipice called the Salto di Tiberio, which plunges from the edge
of the rocks of Capri straight down into the Mediterranean, told me
they had had all the difficulty in the world in preventing C----
from launching forth upon his flying machine from that stupendous
pier into mid air, and quite as infallibly mid ocean. With infinite
entreaties they finally persuaded him to send forth his machine,
unfreighted with human life, on its experimental trip. He did so,
and his bird, turning ignominious somersaults on its way, at length
found a perch, and folded its wings on a hoary rock-anchored tree
that stretched out an arm of succor to it above the abyss, and
there, perhaps, it still roosts; and elsewhere, perhaps, its author
is pursuing other flights.]
PHILADELPHIA, Wednesday, May 15th, 1844.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
My last letter to you was pretty nearly filled with dismal private
affairs, and now, Heaven knows, all residents in Philadelphia have a
gloomy story to tell of public ones. We have had fearful riots here last
week between the low American population and the imported population
from Ireland, who have also taken the opportunity of the present anarchy
and confusion to indulge in violent exhibitions of their own special
home-brewed feud of Protestant against Catholic. A few nights ago there
was a general mob-crusade against the Roman Catholic churches, several
of which, as well as various private dwellings, were burnt to the
ground. The city was lighted from river to river with the glare of these
conflagrations--this city of "brotherly love;" whole streets looking
like pandemonium avenues of brass and copper in the lurid reflected
light. Your people have lost little of their agreeable combined
facetiousness and ferocity, as I think you will allow when I tell you
that, while a large Catholic church was burning, the Orange party caused
a band of music to play "Boyne Water;" and when the cross fell from
above the porch of the building, these same Christian folk gave three
cheers. "Where," I suppose you exclaim, "were the civil authorities and
military force?" All on the ground of action, compelled to be idle
spectators of these outrages, because they had no warrant to act, and
could not shoot down the Sovereign People, even while committing them,
without the Sovereign People's leave.
The popular jealousy of power, which always exists more or less under
republican institutions, interferes not a little with the efficiency of
an organized police or other abiding check upon public effervescence.
Rioters, therefore, in times of excitement have generally a fair start
of the law, and are able to accomplish plenty of mischief before they
can be prevented, because a powerful force of preventive police and
municipal officers, invested with permanent authority, are abominations
in the eyes of a free and independent American citizen.
As, however, by a very wholesome law, the city pays for all damages
committed by public violence upon property, the whole population of the
town will be taxed for the _spree_ of these lively gentry; and under the
pressure of this salutary arrangement the whole militia turned out, all
the decent citizens organized themselves into patrols and policemen, and
by the time the riot had raged three days, and the city had incurred a
heavy debt for burnt and pillaged property, a stop was put to the
disorder. Cannon were planted round all the remaining Catholic churches
to protect them; the streets were lined with soldiers; every householder
was out on guard in his particular district during the night, and by
dint of effectual but, unfortunately, rather tardy measures order has
been restored.
My own affairs are far from flourishing, and I am heartily glad to have
anything else to speak of, little cheerful as the anything else may
be....
I hope all is well with you. Geraldine is almost a woman now, I suppose.
I think of you much oftener than I write to you, and am
Ever yours,
FANNY.
May 20th, 1844.
No, my dearest Hal, the day is never long, but always short, even when I
rise before six.... I have a vivid consciousness of an increased
perception of the minor _goods_ of existence, in the midst of its
greatest evils, and things that till now have been mere enjoyments to me
now appear to me in the light of positive blessings.
My delight in everything beautiful increases daily, and I now count and
appreciate the innumerable alleviations that life has in every
twenty-four hours, even in its seasons of severest trial.
A spirit of greater thankfulness is often engendered by suffering
itself; it is one of the "sweet uses of adversity," and mitigates it
immensely.
A beautiful flower was brought to me to-day; and while I remained
absorbed in contemplating it, it seemed to me a very angel of
consolatory admonition.
God bless you, dearest friend. How full of sources of comfort He has
made this lovely woe-world!
Ever yours,
FANNY.
PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, June 9th, 1844.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,
I am sure you will be sorry to hear of the accident which has befallen
my poor little F----. She fell last week over the bannisters of the
stairs, and broke her arm. The fracture was fortunately a simple one of
the smaller bone of the arm, which, I suppose, in a little body of that
sort, can hardly be much more than gristle. She is doing well, and, as
she appears to have escaped all injury to the head, which was my first
horrible apprehension, I have every reason to be thankful that the
visitation has not been more severe. The accident occasioned me a
violent nervous shock. I am now far from well myself, and I am pursued
with debilitating feverish tendencies, which I vainly endeavor to get
rid of....
I am much puzzled, my dear Lady Dacre, what to say to you beyond this
bulletin. My circumstances do not afford any great variety of cheerful
topics for correspondence, and the past and the future are either
painful or utterly uncertain.
I am studying German, in the midst of the small facilities for mental
culture which my present not very easy or happy position affords, and
have serious thoughts of beginning to work at Euclid, and trying to make
myself something of a mathematician. Possibly some knowledge of the
positive sciences might be of use to me in my further dealings with the
world; for the proper comprehension and appreciation of and judicious
commerce with which some element, either natural or acquired, is
undoubtedly wanting in me.
I have always wished very much that I had been made to study mathematics
as a young person, and considering that Alfieri betook himself to Greek
at forty-eight, I see no very good reason why I should not get at least
as far as the _pons asinorum_ at thirty-four.
I believe this latent hankering after mathematics has been a little
fanned in me by reading De Quincey's letters to a young man upon the
subject of a late education, which have fallen into my hands just now,
and which so earnestly recommend the zealous cultivation of this species
of knowledge.
I hope Lord Dacre is well. Pray remember me to him very affectionately,
and tell him that I am afraid, in answer to his question, I must reply
that the Americans in this part of the United States do not at present
appear over-scrupulous about paying their debts. Their demonstrations
towards England just now seem to me rather absurd. The "sensible" of the
community (alas! nowhere the majority, but here at this moment a most
pitiful minority) are of course ashamed of, and sorry for, what is going
on; and, moreover, of course do not believe in a war. But I am afraid,
if the good sense of England does not keep this country out of a scrape,
its own good sense will hardly do it that good turn.
An American wrote to me the other day: "As for our calling ourselves a
great people, I think we are a people who, with the greatest possible
advantages, have made the least possible use of them; and if anything
can teach these people what greatness is, it must be adversity."
Farewell, and God bless you, my dear Lady Dacre.
Believe me ever yours,
FANNY.
PHILADELPHIA, July 14th, 1844.
MY DEAREST HAL,
I am told that the newspapers in England have been filled with the
severest comments upon the late outbreaks of popular disorder in this
city of "brotherly love."
About a month ago the town was lighted from one end to the other with
the burning of Catholic churches; and now, within the last week, the
outrages have recommenced with more fury than ever, because, for a
wonder, the militia actually did fire upon the mob, who, unused to any
such demonstration of being in earnest on their part, had possessed
themselves of cannon and fire-arms, and would have exterminated the
small body of militia which could be gathered together at the first
outbreak of the riot, but which is now backed by a very considerable
force of regular troops.
The disturbance is not in the city proper, but in a sort of suburb not
subject to the municipal jurisdiction of Philadelphia, but having a
mayor and civil officers of its own.
The cause assigned for all these outrages is fear and hatred of the
Roman Catholic Irish; and there is no doubt an intensely bitter feeling
between them and the low native population of the cities; added to
which, the Irish themselves do not fail to bring over their home feud,
and the old Orange spirit of bloody persecution joins itself to the
dread of Popery, which is becoming quite a strong feeling among the
American lower classes.
It is absurd, and yet sad enough, that not six months ago "Repeal
Unions"--Irish Repeal Unions--were being formed all over this country in
favor of, and sympathy with, the poor, oppressed Roman Catholics in
Ireland; "professional" politicians made their cause and England's
oppression of them regular popularity capital; writing and speechifying
in the most violent manner, and with the most crass ignorance, upon the
subject of their wrongs and the tyranny they endured from our
government; and now Philadelphia _flares_ from river to river with the
burning of Roman Catholic churches, and the Catholics are shot down in
the streets and their houses pillaged in broad daylight.