large numbers of regular troops, have produced a temporary lull in the
city; but the spirit of lawless violence has been permitted to grow and
strengthen itself in these people for some time past now; and of course,
as they were allowed, unchecked and unpunished, to set fire to the
property of the negroes, and to murder them without anybody caring what
befell the persons or property of "damned niggers," the same turbulent
spirit is now breaking out in other directions, where it is rather less
agreeable to the _respectable_ portion of the community, but where they
will now find considerable difficulty in checking it; and, of course, if
it is to choose its own objects of outrage and abuse, the _respectable_
portion of the community may some day be disagreeably surprised by
having to take their turn with the poor Roman Catholic Irish and the
poor American negroes. The whole is a lamentable chapter of human
weakness and wickedness, that would cast shame and scorn upon republican
institutions, if it were not that Christianity itself is liable to the
same condemnation, judged by some of its apparent results.
You ask me if I apportion my time among my various occupations with the
same systematic regularity as formerly. I endeavor to do so, but find it
almost impossible.... I read but very little. My leisure is principally
given to my German, in which I am making some progress. I walk with the
children morning and evening; I still play and sing a little at some
time or other of the day, and write interminable letters to people afar
off, who I wish were nearer. I walk before breakfast with the children,
_i.e._ from seven till eight. Three times a week I take them to the
market to buy fruit and flowers, an errand that I like as well as they
do. The other three mornings we walk in the square opposite this house.
After breakfast they leave me for the morning, which they now pass with
their governess or nurse. For the last two months I have ridden every
day, but have unhappily disabled my horse for the present, poor fellow!
by galloping him during a sudden heavy rain-shower over a slippery road,
in which process he injured one of his hip-joints, not incurably, I
trust, but so as to deprive me of him for at least three months. [My
dear and noble horse never recovered from this injury, but was obliged
to be shot. He had been sold, and I had ransomed him back by the
publication of a small volume of poems, which gave me the price demanded
for him by the livery-stable keeper who had bought him; but the
accident I mention in this letter deprived me of him. He was beautiful
and powerful, high-spirited and good-tempered, almost a perfect
creature, and I loved him very much.]
I shall now walk after breakfast, as, my rides being suppressed, my
walks with the chicks are not exercise enough for me. After that, I
prepare for my German lesson (which I take three times a week) and write
letters. I take the children out again at half-past six, and at
half-past seven come in to my dinner; after dinner I go to my piano, and
generally sit at it or read until I go to bed, which I do early,--_et
voila!_
Almost all the people I know are out of town now, and I do not see a
human creature; the heat is intense and the air foul and stifling, and
we are gasping for breath and withering away in this city atmosphere....
God bless you, dear Hal.
I am ever yours,
FANNY.
[In the autumn of 1845 I returned to England, and resided with my
father in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, until I went to Italy
and joined my sister at Rome; a plan for my returning with my father
to America having been entertained and abandoned in the mean time.]
MORTIMER STREET, October 3d, 1845.
Heaven be praised, my American letters are finished!--eleven long ones,
eleven shillings' worth. I am sure somebody (but at this moment I don't
rightly know who) ought to pay me eleven shillings for such a batch of
work. So now I have nothing to do but answer your daily calls, my
dearest Hal, which "nothing," as I write it, looks like a bad joke. If
you expect me, however, to write you a long letter on the heels of that
heavy American budget, you deceive yourself, my dear friend, and the
truth is not in you.
In the first place, I have nothing to say except that I am well and
intensely interested by everything about me. I am very sorry to have
neglected sending you "Arnold" [his Life, just published at that time],
but it shall be done this day.
London, with its distracting quantity of _things to do_, is already
laying hold of me; and the species of vertigo which I experience after
my lonely American existence, at finding myself once more overwhelmed
with visits, messages, engagements, and endless notes to read and
answer, is pitiable. I feel as if I had been growing idiotic out there,
my life here is such an amazing contrast.
I had a visit yesterday from dear old Lady Charlotte Lindsay, who was
exceedingly kind and cordial indeed to me. We said many good words about
you. After she was gone, the old Berry sisters (who still hang on the
bush) tottered in, and I felt touched to the heart by the affectionate
sympathy and kind goodwill exhibited towards me by these three very old
and charming ladies.
I had a delightful dinner yesterday at Milman's, where I met Lady
Charlotte again, Harness, Lockhart, Empson, and several other clever
pleasant people.
To-day I carried my last six American despatches myself to the post, and
then trotted all the way up to Horace Wilson's, to see him and my cousin
Fanny, by way of exercise....
I am going to dine to-day with Sir Edward Codrington--the admiral, you
know. He and his family are old friends of mine; he has been here twice
this week, sitting two hours at a time with me, spinning long yarns
about the battle of Navarino and all the to-do there was about it. He
actually brought me a heap of manuscript papers on the subject to look
over, which, quite contrary to my expectation, have interested me very
much.
To-morrow, at three o'clock, my maid and I depart for the Hoo; as we go
per coach, and the distance is only twenty-five miles, I hope that
journey won't ruin me.
My father has just come home from Brighton, instead of remaining there
till Monday, as he had intended; he said he felt himself getting
fatigued, and therefore thought it expedient to come away. He has caught
a slight rheumatic pain in one of his shoulders, but otherwise seems
well. To-morrow I will send you another bulletin.
Your affectionate,
FANNY.
MORTIMER STREET, October, 1845.
Since beginning this letter, my beloved Hal, I have been reading
Channing's sermon upon Dr. Follen's death. It is, in fact, a sermon upon
human suffering, in a paroxysm of which I was when I began to write to
you; and for a remedy took up this sermon, which has comforted me much.
Chorley was expressing to me, two days ago, his unbounded veneration for
the character of Dr. Follen, as it is faintly and imperfectly
represented in the memoir which his wife published of him. I knew that I
had with me Channing's sketch of him in that sermon on human suffering,
and told Chorley that I would look for it for him. I found it yesterday,
and merely read that part of it towards the end which referred to Dr.
Follen's character; and it is to that circumstance that I attribute a
dream I had last night, in which I sat devoutly at _Arnold's_ feet,
expressing to him how earnestly I had desired the privilege of knowing
him: he was surrounded by Channing, Follen, and others whom I could not
remember. In reading to-day the whole of that fine discourse of
Channing's, I was led to compare the great similarity of the expressions
he uses, in speaking of sceptics and scepticism, to those Arnold makes
use of on the same subjects in his letters to Lady Francis Egerton. For
instance, "Scepticism is a moral disease, the growth of some open or
latent depravity; deliberate, habitual questionings of God's benevolence
argue great moral deficiency." Another thing that struck me was the
resemblance between Dr. Arnold and Dr. Follen in the matter of
independent self-reliance. Channing says of the latter, "He was
singularly independent in his judgments. He was not only uninfluenced by
authority, and numbers, and interest, and popularity; but by friendship,
and the opinions of those he most loved and honored. He seemed almost
too tenacious of his convictions."
Do you remember what Sydney Smith says of Francis Horner? This great
firmness of opinion in Arnold and Follen reminds me of it by contrast:
"Francis Horner was a very modest person, which men of great
understanding seldom are. It was his habit to confirm his opinion by the
opinions of others, and often to form them from the same source."
MORTIMER STREET, November, 1845.
DEAR EMILY,
During that hour that we spent at Netley, the last few moments of which
were made full of hopeful thoughts by the passing away of the visible
clouds from the visible sky, I could not but reflect upon the glorious
stability of things spiritual, contrasted with the mutability and
evanescence of things temporal. Our hearts, which are united by _real_
bonds--the love of truth, the fear of God, and the desire of duty--have
remained so united through all these years of absence and distance from
each other; and when I thought of our former visit to Netley, I
remembered that nothing had failed me but that which could not be
abiding and steadfast, for it was not good.
To tell you how thence my soul wandered to the eventual reclaiming of
all who have strayed from righteousness, and the possible reunion, in
the immeasurable future, of souls which have been sundered here because
of sin, and the final redemption of all God's poor erring children,
would be to attempt to utter one of those rapid, deep, and ineffable
actions of our spirits which are too full of hope, of faith, and the
holiest peace, for words to be meant to express them.
MORTIMER STREET, Thursday, 6th, 1845.
DEAREST HAL,
My father came home yesterday afternoon from Brighton. He said he was
getting a little tired of his work, and complained of a touch of
rheumatism in his shoulder.... He is making arrangements to read at
Highgate next week. Harry Chester, some cousin or connection of Emily's,
and a quondam kind friend of mine, is at the head of some institution at
Highgate, and has been in negotiations with him for three readings at
some public hall or lecture-room there. My father is to read there three
times, and is to dine each time at some friend's house. Mr. Chester very
kindly begged me to accompany him, and dine with them....
I dined at Sir Edward Codrington's yesterday, and was there introduced
to a charmingly pretty Mrs. Bruce, formerly Miss Pitt, one of the
queen's maids-of-honor; and I assure you my edification was considerable
at some of her courtly experiences....
I believe Solomon says that "in the multitude of counsellors is safety;"
it does not seem so with me just now, for in my multitude of counsels
and counsellors I find only utter bewilderment.
Until Monday I shall be at the Hoo, where you can address me, "To the
care of Lord Dacre, the Hoo, Welwyn, Herts."
God bless you, dearest Hal. Give my kind love to Dorothy.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
[The days were not yet, either in England or America, when a married
woman could claim or hold, independently, money which she either
earned or inherited. How infinite a relief from bitter injustice and
hardship has been the legislation that has enabled women to hold and
own independently property left to them by kindred or friends, or
earned by their own industry and exertions. I think, however, the
excellent law-makers of the United States must have been intent upon
atoning for all the injustice of the previous centuries of English
legislation with regard to women's property, when they framed the
laws which, I am told, obtain in some of the States, by which women
may not only hold bequests left to them, and earnings gained by
them, entirely independent of their husbands; but being thus
generously secured in their own rights, are still allowed to demand
their maintenance, and the payment of their debts, by the men they
are married to. This seems to me beyond all right and reason--the
compensation of one gross injustice by another, a process almost
_womanly_ in its enthusiastic unfairness. It must be retrospective
amends for incalculable former wrongs, I suppose.]
MORTIMER STREET, November 17th, 1845.
When I consider that this is the third letter I write to you this
blessed day, dear Hal, I cannot help thinking myself a funny woman; and
that if you are as fond of me as you pretend to be, you ought to be much
obliged to the "streak of madness" which compels me to such preposterous
epistolary exertions.
And so because the sea rages and roars against the coast at St.
Leonard's, and appals your eyes and ears there, my dearest Hal, you
think we had better not cross the Atlantic now. But the storms on that
tremendous ocean are so _local_, so to speak, that vessels steering the
same course and within comparatively small distance of each other have
often different weather and do not experience the same tempests.
Moreover, Mrs. Macready has just been here, who tells me that her
husband crossed last year rather earlier than I did, in October, and had
a horrible passage; and the last time I came to England we sailed on the
1st of December, and had a long but by no means bad voyage. There is no
certainty about it, though, to be sure, strong probability of
unfavorable weather at this season of the year....
I told you that I had got off dining at the L----s' to-day by pleading
indisposition, which is quite true, for I am very unwell. I shall remain
dinnerless at home, which is no great hardship, and one for which I dare
say I shall be none the worse. My father talks of going to Brighton this
week, and then I shall scatter myself abroad in every direction....
My father leaves town on Wednesday, and as he is to be absent two or
three weeks, I suppose he will only return in time to sail.
I have written to Mrs. Grote to say I will come to Burnham on Thursday,
and my present plan is to remain there until Monday next, and probably
then go to the Hoo. The Grevilles, Charles and Henry, have been here
repeatedly; they are both of them now gone out of town. I called to-day
on Mrs. O'Sullivan, and there I found Dr. Holland, with whom I had one
more laugh upon the subject of his never reaching Lenox after all dear
Charles Sumner's efforts to get him there. [Dr. Holland, while in
America, had made various unsuccessful attempts to visit the Sedgwick
family in Berkshire, winding up with a failure more ludicrous than all
the others, under the guidance of his, their, and my friend, Charles
Sumner....]
I have had a most affectionate note of welcome from Mrs. Jameson, and am
rather in terror of her advent, as I feel considerable awkwardness about
her various late passages-at-arms with my sister. Mrs. Macready came to
see me this afternoon, and told me that she heard I was about to return
forthwith to America....
Now, dear, I think I have really done my duty by you to-day. God bless
you. Give my affectionate love to the "good angel" [Miss Wilson]. As for
your "roaring sea," I only wish I was in it just where you are (nowhere
else, though). I am not well, and very much out of spirits; disgusted,
and, I have no doubt, disgusting; but, nevertheless,
Ever yours,
FANNY.
Arnold's Christianity puzzles me a little. He justifies litigation
between men and war between nations. Whenever I set about carrying out
my own Christianity I shall do neither; for I do not believe either are
according to Christ's law.
I called on the Miss Hamiltons to-day, and we talked "some" of you. I
have had another most affectionate note from Lizzie Mair, entreating me
to go to Edinburgh. But oh! my dear Hal, the money? _Che vita!_
MORTIMER STREET, Thursday, 20th, 1845.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,
There is another thing that makes me pause about coming to Hastings--the
time for my departure for America will be drawing very near when I
return to town on Monday from Mrs. Grote's, which is the only visit that
I shall have it in my power to pay....
Tuesday is the 25th. I must see my brother John again before I go. This
will take two days and one night, and my father talks of going down to
Liverpool on the 2nd or 3rd, so that I could only run down to Hastings
for a few miserable hours, again to renew all the pain of bidding you
another farewell....
I left off here to get my breakfast. We have lowered the price and the
quality of our tea, in consequence of which, you see, my virtue and
courage are also deteriorated [Miss S---- used to say that a cup of good
tea was _virtue_ and _courage_ to her], and this is why I feel I had
perhaps better not come to Hastings.
Thus far, my dearest Harriet, when your letter of the 19th--yesterday
(you see I did look at the date)--was brought to me. It is certainly
most miserable to consider what horrible things men contrive to make of
the mutual relations which might be so blest. I do not know if I am
misled by the position from which I take my observations, but it seems
to me that one of the sins most rife in the world is the _mis_use, or
_dis_use, of the potent and tender ties of relationship and kindred.
With regard to coming to you, my dear Hal, I am much perplexed. I have
made Mrs. Grote enter into arrangements to suit me, which I do not think
I ought now to ask her to alter. Old Rogers is going down to Burnham, to
be with me there, going and coming with me; and with what I feel I ought
and must do to see my brother, I know not what I can and may do to see
you, my dear friends. I am full of care and trouble and anxiety, and
feel so weary with all the processes of thinking and feeling,
deliberating and deciding, that I am going through, that I must beg you
to determine for me. If you, upon due consideration, say "Come," I will
come. And forgive me that I put it thus to you, but I have a sense of
mental incapacity, amounting almost to imbecility; and I feel, every now
and then, as if my brain machinery was running down, and would presently
stop altogether. Seriously, what with the greater and the less, the
unrest of body and the disquiet of mind, I feel occasionally all but
distracted....
I will write you more when I answer your letter of this morning.
God bless you, my dearest friend....
I have so much to say to you about Arnold, but shall perhaps forget it.
Is it not curious that reading his thoughts and words should have tended
to strengthen in me a conviction of duty upon a point where he appears
to take an absolutely different view from mine?--that of seeking and
obtaining redress from wrong by an appeal to processes of litigation and
legal tribunals; but the earnestness of his exhortations to the
conscientious pursuit of one's individual convictions of duty was
powerful in making me cleave to my own perception and sense of right,
though it brought me to a conclusion diametrically opposite to his own.
This, however, is often the case. The whole character of a good man has
vital power over one even where his special opinions are different from
one's own, and may even appear to one mistaken.
The abiding spirit of a man's life, more than his special actions and
peculiar theories, is that by which other men are moved and admonished.
I have extreme faith in the potency of this species of influence, and
comparatively less in the effect of example, in special cases and
particular details of conduct. Christ's teaching was always aimed at
the spirit which should govern us, not at its mere application to
isolated instances; and to those who sought advice from Him for
application to some special circumstance He invariably answered with a
deep and broad rule of conduct, leaving the conscience of the individual
to apply it to the individual case; and it seems to me the only way in
which we can exhort each other is by the love of truth, the desire of
right, the endeavor after holiness, which may still be ours, and to
which we may still effectually point our fellow-pilgrims, even when we
ourselves have fallen by the wayside under the weight of our own
infirmities, failures, and sins.
See! I intended to have broken off when I wrote "God bless you." How I
have preached on! But I have much more to say yet. Dear love to Dorothy.
Ever your affectionate
FANNY.
Friday, November 21st, 1845.
The _Hibernia_ is in, the _Great Britain_ is in, and I have had my
letters, ... not a few of them from various indifferent people, who want
me to do business and attend to their affairs for them here. Truly I am
in a plight to do so every way. One man wants me to exert the influence
which he is sure _my intimacy with Mr. Bunn_ (!) must give me to have an
opera of his brought out at Drury Lane; another writes to me that "my
family's well-known interest in the _theatres_" (a large view of the
subject) "must certainly enable me to have a play of his produced at one
of them;" and so forth, and so on.
All these people will think me a wretch, of course, because I cannot do
any of the things they want me to do; moreover, no power of human
explanation will suffice hereafter to make them aware that I am not upon
terms of affectionate intimacy with Mr. Bunn, that no member of my
family has now any interest whatever in any theatre whatever, and that I
have been so overwhelmed with anxieties and troubles of my own as to
make my attention to the production of operas and plays and such like
things quite impossible just now.
The strangest part of all this is that these men write to me, desiring
me to commend that which I think bad, and that which, moreover, they
know that I think bad; but they seem to imagine that some effort of
sincere friendship and kindness on my part is all that is necessary to
induce me, in spite of this, to recommend and heartily to praise what I
hold to be worthless.
Friendship with eyes and ears and a conscience is, I believe indeed, for
the most part, and for the purposes of most people, tantamount to no
friendship at all, or perhaps rather to a mild form of enmity.
Do you not think it is rather farcical on your part to request me to
answer your letters, when you know 'tis as much as my place (in
creation) is worth not to do so, and that, moreover, every day's post
brings me that which impresses the sufficiency of each day's
_allotments_ devoutly to my mind? Did I ever _not_ answer your letters,
you horrid Harriet? My dear Hal, in spite of the last which I received
from you, after I had just concluded a very long one to you, bearing
date November 20th (there now! you see I remember the date even of my
yesterday's letter!), I still wish for another deliberate expression of
your opinion about my coming down to Hastings. That you desire it, in
spite of all considerations, I know. What your judgment is, now that I
have laid all considerations before you, I should like to know....
To-day was appointed for my visit to Mrs. Grote, and Rogers was to have
come for me at one o'clock, to go to the Paddington railroad, near the
Ten-Mile Station, on which she lives; but lo and behold, just as I was
completing my preparations comes an express to say that Mrs. Grote had
been seized with one of her neuralgic headaches, and could not possibly
receive us till to-morrow! so there ended the proposed business of the
day.
I had a visit from John O'Sullivan, a call from Rogers to readjust our
plans for to-morrow, and a very kind long visit from Milman.... I
receive infinite advice on all hands about my perplexed affairs, all of
it most kindly meant, but little of it, alas! available to me. Some of
it, indeed, appears to me so worldly, so false, and so full of
compromise between right and wrong for the mere sake of expediency;
sometimes for cowardice, sometimes for peace, sometimes for pleasure,
sometimes for profit, sometimes for mere social consideration,--the
whole system (for such it is) accepted and acknowledged as a rule of
life--that, as I sit listening to these friendly suggestions, I am half
the time shocked at those who utter them, and the other half shocked at
myself for being shocked at people so much my betters.... My abiding
feeling is that I had better go back to my beloved Lenox, to the side of
the "Bowl" (the Indian name of a beautiful small lake between Lenox and
Stockbridge), among the Berkshire hills, where selfishness and moral
cowardice and worldly expediency exist in each man's practice no doubt
quite sufficiently; but where they are not yet universally recognized as
a social system, by the laws of which civilized existence should be
governed. You know, "a bad action is a thousand times preferable to a
bad principle."
Among the other things which the American mail brought me was a charming
sketch by my friend W---- of the very site upon which we settled that I
should build my house. The drawing is quite rough and unfinished, but
full of suggestion to one who knows the place.