was much overcome at the sight of me. Her deep mourning for her young
grandchild, and her pathetic exclamations of almost self-reproach at her
own iron strength and protracted old age, touched me most deeply. She
seemed somewhat comforted at finding that I had not grown quite old and
haggard, and talked to me for an hour of her own griefs and my trials.
She and Lord Dacre pressed me with infinite kindness to go down to them
at the Hoo; and though I felt that if we sail on the 4th I ought to be
satisfied with having had this glimpse of them, if my stay were
prolonged I should like very much to go there for a short time.
Lord Dacre told me that the _Great Western_ had arrived yesterday, and
brought most threatening news of the hostile spirit of America about the
Oregon question; he fears there will certainly be a war. Good God, how
horrible! The two foremost nations of Christendom to disgrace themselves
and humanity by giving such a spectacle to the world!
After my visit to the Dacres, I came back to my solitary dinner in
Mortimer Street; and, reflecting upon many things during this lonely
evening, have wished myself between you and dear Dorothy, who neither of
you tell falsehoods or pretend to like things and people that you
dislike. Wouldn't it be a nice world if one could live all one's time
with none but the best good people? I have spent the whole evening in
reading my friend Charles Sumner's Peace Oration, which I only began in
America; and to listening to the lady playing on the piano next door,
and envying her. Our landlord has a piano in his room downstairs, I
find, and he is not at home: now, that is a real temptation of the very
devil. How I should like to pay half an hour's visit to it!
My dear Hal, Mrs. Jameson is coming to see me to-morrow morning! What
shall I do--what shall I say about her _tiff_ with Adelaide? Wasn't it a
pity that Mrs. Grote was taken ill this morning?
God bless you. I want to say one or two words to dear Dorothy, according
to right, for she has written to me in your two last letters.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
Oh, I do wish I was with you! for you are not in the least base, mean,
cowardly, or worldly.
DEAREST GOOD ANGEL,
Do not fancy, from the vehemence of my style to Harriet, that I am in a
worse mental or material condition than I am. I only do hope that before
I have lived much longer it will please God to give me grace to love and
admire the great bulk of my fellow-creatures more than I do at present.
_Certainly_, dear Dorothy, if I should remain in England, I will come
down to Hastings for a fortnight; and owe my subsistence for that time
to you and Hal. Perhaps these rumors of wars may make some difference in
my father's plans. I should be very happy with you both. I have a notion
that you would spoil me as well as Hal, and, used to that as I used to
be "long time ago," it would be quite an agreeable novelty now.
Ever yours affectionately,
FANNY.
Friday, November 21st, 1845.
This letter was begun yesterday evening, my beloved Hal. My nerves are
rather in a quieter state than when I wrote last, thanks to a warm bath
and cold head-douche, which, taken together, I recommend to you as
beneficial for the brain and general nervous system....
I am going to dine _tete-a-tete_ with Rogers; I have persuaded him to
come down with me to Burnham. Poor old man! he is very much broken and
altered, very deaf, very sad. This last year has taken from him Sydney
and Bobus Smith; and now, the day before yesterday, his old friend Lady
Holland died, and he literally stands as though his "turn" were next--it
may be mine.
Do you know, that in reading that striking account or Arnold's death, I
got such a pain in my heart that I felt as if I was going to die so.
_So!_ So, indeed, God grant I might die! but none can die so who has not
so lived.
Two things surprise me in Arnold's opinions--three,--his detailed
account of wars between nations without any expression of condemnation
of war, but rather a soldierly satisfaction in strife and strategy.
This, by-the-by, my friend Charles Sumner notices with regret in his
"Peace Oration." Then Arnold's apparent approbation of men, even
clergymen, going to law for their rights, while at the same time
speaking with detestation of the legal profession, which surely involves
some inconsistency. Clergymen, according to the vulgar theory, are
imagined to be, if not less resentful in spirit, at any rate more
pacific in action than the laity, and ought, to my thinking, no more to
go to law than to war. The third thing that puzzles me is his constant
reference to what he calls a Church, or "_the_ Church," which, with his
views about Christianity, is a term that I do not comprehend.
It is curious to me to see Emily's marks along the margin. They are the
straight ones, and are applied zealously everywhere to passages of
dogmatical discussion about doctrines. Mine you will find the crooked
ones, and my pencil, of course, invariably flew to the side of what
expressed moral excellence and a perception of material beauty. Those
passages that Emily has marked I do not understand--does she? I ask this
in all simplicity, and not at all in arrogance; for I cannot make head
or tail of them. Perhaps she can make both, for I think she has a taste
and talent for theological controversy. I was surprised to find she had
not marked his diary and journals at all; I hardly knew how to leave
them _un_marked at all. Those Italian journals of his made me almost
sick with longing. It is odd that this southern mania should return upon
me so strongly after so many years of freedom from it, merely because
there seemed to arise just now a possibility of this long-relinquished
hope being fulfilled. I know that I could not live in Italy, and I
suppose that I should be dreadfully offended and grieved by the actual
state of the people, in the midst of all the past and present glory and
beauty, which remains a radiant halo round their social and political
degradation. But I did once so long to live in Italy, and I have lately
so longed to see it, that these journals of Arnold's have made me cry
like a child with yearning and disappointment.
My brother John told me that, in his opinion, Arnold was not entirely
successful as a trainer of young men: that the power and peculiarity of
his own character was such that, in spite of his desire that his pupils
should be free, independent, and individual, they involuntarily became
more or less mental and moral imitations of him: that he turned out
nothing but young Arnolds--copies, on a reduced scale, of himself; few
of them, if any, as good as the original. This involuntary conformity to
any powerful nature is all but inevitable, where veneration would
consciously and deliberately lead to imitation, and thus those minds
which would most willingly leave freedom to others, both as a blessing
and a duty, become unintentionally compelling influences to beget and
perpetuate, in those around them, a tendency to subservience and
dependency.
Charles Greville seems very much amused at my enthusiasm for Arnold, and
still more when I told him that, for Arnold's sake, I wished to know
Bunsen. He said he was sure I should not like him. Rogers told me the
same thing; ... that Arnold was a man easily to be taken in by any one
who would devote themselves to him, which he--Rogers--said Bunsen did
when they met abroad.... How much of this is true, God only knows:
Rogers is often very cynical and ill-natured (alas, he has lived so
long, and known so much and so many!) It may not be true; though, again,
Arnold "was but a man as other men are," and went but upon two legs,
like the best of them; nevertheless, if I were to remain in England, I
would make some effort to know his chosen friend. Rogers, with whom I
dined yesterday, told me that if he had known this wish of mine, he
would have asked Bunsen to meet me. I then questioned him about Whately,
and he said I should be delighted with him--perhaps, dear H., because he
is a little mad, you know, and I appear to some of my friends here to
have that mental accomplishment in common with other more illustrious
folk.
And now I have finished that book, Arnold's Life, by his spiritual son.
It has been to me, in the midst of all that at present harasses and
disgusts me, a source of peace and strength, and I have taken it up hour
after hour, like the antidote to the petty poisons of daily life.
I have had two notes from Lady Dacre about arranging hours to meet; but,
unfortunately, the little time I have is so taken up that it will be
impossible for me to see her, as she begs me, this morning. They leave
town again on Saturday, and I do not suppose that it will be in my power
to get down again to the Hoo, which she urges me very much to do, ... so
that I fear I shall not see her before I go, which is a grief to me.
John O'Sullivan does not sail till the 4th, and if we go then, I shall
feel that my father will have somebody who will humanely look after him
on board ship when I am disabled.... I think he has now some intention
of making the expedition for the sake of giving readings, and perhaps of
acting again, in the principal cities of the United States, and, apart
from my interest and affairs, this may be a sufficient motive for his
undertaking the voyage.
I am going to write a word to the dear good angel, and therefore, my
beloved Hal, farewell....
[I have not endorsed my brother's opinion about Arnold's influence
on his pupils. Long after this letter was written, I had the honor
and advantage of making the acquaintance of Baron Bunsen, and was
able to judge for myself of the value of the opinions I had heard of
him.]
MY DEAREST DOROTHY,
... I shall hold my mind and body in readiness to come down on
Wednesday, if up till Monday you still wish for me. I have told Hal all
I have to tell of myself, and she may tell you as much of it as she
pleases....
Just after my father's departure, I received a very kind invitation from
my friend Lady M----, who is staying in Brighton, to come and remain
with her while my father was there....
God bless you, dear Dorothy. I love you more than I seem to know you,
but I know that you are good, and most good to my dear Harriet, and that
I am
Yours very affectionately,
FANNY.
MORTIMER STREET, Tuesday, November 25th, 1845.
DEAREST HAL,
I had a letter yesterday from my father, from Brighton.... He has
renounced the project of crossing the Atlantic at present....
Of course, dear Hal, we are none of us half patient enough. Suffering
and injustice are so intolerable to us that we _will_ not endure them,
and forget all the time that God allows and endures them.
You ask me if I recollect my discussion with you going down to
Southampton. Very well, my dear Hal, and your appearance especially,
which, in that witch's travelling-cap of yours, is so extremely
agreeable to me that you recur to me in it constantly, and as often I
execrate your bonnet. How much I do love beauty! How I delight in the
beauty of any one that I love! How thankful I am that I am not
beautiful! my self-love would have known no bounds.
I am writing with a very bad pen. I told you of that pen Rogers mended
for me, and sitting down to try it, wrote the two following lines, which
he gave me, of Cowper's:
"The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."
You will understand that this touched me much. You hope that my nerves
will have leisure to become tranquillized in the country; but the
intellectual life by which I am surrounded in England is such a contrast
to my American existence that it acts like a species of perpetual
intoxication. The subjects of critical, literary, and social interest
that I constantly hear so ably and brilliantly discussed excite my mind
to a degree of activity that seems almost feverish, after the stagnant
inertia to which it has been latterly condemned; and this long-withheld
mental enjoyment produces very high nervous excitement in me too. The
antagonism I often feel at the low moral level upon which these fine
intellectual feats are performed afterwards causes a reaction from my
sense of satisfaction, and sometimes makes that appear comparatively
worthless, the power, skill, and dexterity of which concealed the
sophistry and seduced me while the debate was going on.
My dearest H----, I wrote all this at Burnham. You will see by this
that we do not leave England by the next steamer, and I think there is
every probability of my remaining here for some time to come, and,
therefore, spending a full fortnight with you at Hastings....
I have a quantity to say to you about everything, but neither time nor
room. We had much talk about Arnold at the Beeches, and the justice
dealt him by a cynical poet, a hard-headed political economist, a
steeled man of the world, and two most dissimilar unbelievers was
various and curious.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
MORTIMER STREET, November 26th, 1845.
MY DEAREST HAL,
I expect my father home to-day; but, as I have written to you, his note
from Brighton expressed no annoyance at my determination....
I must see if I cannot possibly write something for a few pence, so as
not to stretch out a beggar's hand even to him.... I enjoyed my visit to
Burnham extremely: the admirable clever talk, the capital charming
music, the delight of being in the country, and the ecstasy of a fifteen
miles' ride through beautiful parks and lanes, filled my time most
pleasurably. I know no one who has such a capacity (that looks as if I
had written _ra_pacity--either will do) for enjoyment, or has so much of
it in mere life--when I am not being tortured--as I have. I ought to be
infinitely thankful for my elastic temperament; there never was anything
like it but the lady heroine of Andersen's story "The Ball," who had
"cork in her body."
We had much talk about Arnold and Bunsen, much about Sydney Smith,
several of whose letters Mrs. Grote gave us to read. Rogers read them
aloud, and his comments were very entertaining, especially with the
additional fun of Mrs. Grote holding one of the letters up to me in a
corner alone, when I read, "I never think of death in London but when I
meet Rogers," etc.
I have written a very long letter to my sister to-day, and one to E----.
I am going to dine with Mrs. Procter, to meet Milnes, whose poetry you
know I read to you here one evening, and you liked it, as I do, some of
it, very much.... As for L----, I think one should be a great deal
cleverer than he is to be so amazingly conceited, _and of course, if
one was, one wouldn't be_; and if that sentence is not lovely, neither
is "Beaver hats." ("Beaver hats is the best that _is_, for a shower
don't hurt 'em, the least that _are_," quoth an old countrywoman to Mrs.
FitzHugh, comparing the respective merits of beaver and straw.)
Only think, Hal, what an enchanting man this landlord of ours must be!
He has had his pianoforte tuned, and actually proposes sending it up
into one of these rooms for my use. I incline to think the difficulty
with him is not so much having a woman in the house, as a natural desire
to receive a larger compensation if he takes this woman--me--in.
God bless you, dear. I feel happy in the almost certain prospect of
being with you before very long, and you cannot imagine how much my
heart is lightened by the more hopeful circumstances in which I think I
am placed....
Good-bye, dear Hal. Give my love to Dorothy, and believe me
Ever yours,
FANNY.
November 29th, 1845.
I have just returned home from a dinner at Mrs. Procter's. It is a
quarter to twelve o'clock, and until twelve I will write to you, my dear
Hal. I found your ink-bottle on my table. Thank you. This is my
birthday. Did you give it me on that account?--a compliment to the
anniversary. I have not written so much as usual to you these last few
days; my time is very much taken up; for, even at this dead season of
the year, as it is called in London, I have many morning visitors, who
come and sit with me a long while, during which time no letters get
written. I wrote to you last on Wednesday, the day on which my father
was to come to town. At one o'clock, accordingly, he marched in, looking
extremely well, kissed me, opened his letters, wrote me a check for L10,
and at five o'clock went off to Brighton again, telling me he should
remain there until next Monday week, and, in the mean time, bidding me
"_amuse myself_, and make myself as comfortable as I could." ...
It is past twelve now, and I am getting tired; the late hours and good
dinners and wine and coffee are a wonderful change in my American
habits of life, and seem to me more pleasant than wholesome, after the
much simpler mode of existence to which I have become accustomed
latterly. I took a good long walk on Friday, across the Green Park and
St. James's Park to Spring Gardens, and up the Strand to Coutts', and
home again....
I had a pleasant dinner yesterday at Lady Essex's. Rogers took me there,
and brought me home in his carriage; he is exceedingly kind to me. Henry
Greville dined with us, sat by me, and talked to me the whole time about
my sister, which was very pleasant and did me good. Sir Edward
Codrington and his daughter, who are old friends of mine, were there,
and met me with great cordiality; and though the evening was not very
brilliant, I enjoyed myself very much.
Kinglake, the author of "Eothen," paid me a long visit to-day, and was
very agreeable....
Mrs. Procter asked me to-day to take their family dinner with them,
because she knew I should else dine all alone. Mr. Procter was not at
home, so that we had a _tete-a-tete_ gossip about everybody....
I know very well that nobody likes to be bored, but I think it would be
better to be bored to extinction than to mortify and pain people by
rejecting their society because they are not intensely amusing or
distinguished, or even because they are intensely tiresome and
commonplace....
Good-night, dear. My eyes smart and ache; I must go to bed. I have seen
to-day some verses written by an American friend of mine on my
departure. I think they are good, but cannot be quite sure, as they are
about myself. I will send them to you, if you care to see them.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
MORTIMER STREET, November 30th, 1845.
I wrote to you until 12.30 last night, and it is now 12.30 this morning,
and it must be very obvious to you that, not being Dorothy, I can have
nothing under the heavens to say to you. Let me see for the _events_ of
these hours. After I went to bed I read, according to a practice which I
have steadily followed for the past year, in the hope of substituting
some other _last thoughts_ and visions for those which have haunted me,
waking or sleeping, during that time. So last night, having, alas! long
ago finished Arnold, and despatched two historical plays, long enough,
but nothing else, to have been written by Schiller, which my brother
gave me, I betook myself to certain agricultural reports, written by a
Mr. Coleman, an American, who came over here to collect information upon
these subjects for an agricultural society. These reports he gave me the
other day, and you know I read implicitly whatever is put into my hands,
holding every species of book worth reading for something. So I read
about fencing, enclosing, draining, ditching, and ploughing, till I fell
asleep, fancying myself Ceres.
This morning, after some debate with myself about staying away from
church, I deliberately came to the conclusion that I would do so,
because I had a bad headache. (Doesn't that sound like a child who
doesn't want to go to church, and says it has got a stomach-ache? It's
true, nevertheless.) But--_and_ because I have such a number of letters
to write to America, that I thought I would say my prayers at home, and
then do that.
And now, before beginning my American budget, I have written one to Lady
Dacre, one to Emily, one to my brother, and this one to you; and shall
now start off to the other side of the Atlantic, by an epistle to J----
C----, the son of the afore-mentioned agriculturist, a friend of mine,
who when I last left America held me by the arm till the bell rang for
the friends of those departing by the steamer to abandon them and regain
the shore, and whose verses about me, which I mentioned to you in my
last night's letter, please me more than his father's account of
top-dressing, subsoiling, and all the details of agriculture, which,
however, I believe is the main fundamental interest of civilization.
Before this, however, I must go and take a walk, because the sun shines
beautifully, and
"I must breathe some vital air,
If any's to be found in Cavendish Square."
I'm sorry to say we are going to leave this comfortable lodging and our
courteous landlord, whose civilities to me are most touching. I do not
know what my father intends doing, but he talked of taking a house at
_Brompton_. What a distance from everything, for him and for me!
I have just had a kind note from the M----s, again earnestly bidding me
down to Hampshire; another affectionate invitation from Lord and Lady
Dacre to the Hoo, and a warm and sympathizing letter from Amelia Twiss,
for whom, as you know, I entertain even a greater regard and esteem than
for her sisters....
My dear Hal, when my father told me that he was going to Brighton for
three weeks, it seemed quite impossible that we should sail for America
on December 4th. Now that that question is settled, at any rate
temporarily, I feel restored to something like calm, and think I shall
probably go and see the M----s, and perhaps run down to Hastings to
visit--Dorothy Wilson, of course.
God bless you, dear. Does Dorothy write better about nothing than I do?
Ever yours,
FANNY.
THE HOO, WELWYN, HERTS, December, 1845.
MY DEAREST HAL,
... God knows I am admonished to patience, both by my own helplessness
and the inefficiency of those who, it seems to me, ought to be able to
help me....
Doubtless, my father reasonably regrets the independence which I might
by this time have earned for myself in my profession, and feels anxious
about my unprovided future. I have written to Chorley, the only person I
know to whom I can apply on the subject, to get me some means of
publishing the few manuscript verses I have left in some magazine or
other.... If I cannot succeed in this, I shall try if I can publish my
"English Tragedy," and make a few pounds by it. It is a wretchedly
uncomfortable position, but compared with all that has gone before it is
_only_ uncomfortable.
I came down here yesterday, and found, though the night was rainy and
extremely cold, dear Lord Dacre and B---- standing out on the door-step
to receive me. She has grown tall, and stout, and very handsome.... Is
it not wonderful that the spirit of life should be potent enough ever to
make us forget the death perpetually hovering over and ready to pounce
upon us? and yet how little dread, habitually, disturbs us, either for
ourselves or others, lying all the time, as we do, within the very grasp
of doom! Lord Dacre is looking well; my friend Lady Dacre is grown more
deaf and much broken. Poor thing! she has had a severe trial, in the
premature loss of those dearest to her....
God bless you, dear Hal. Good-by. Love to dear Dorothy.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
THE HOO, WELWYN, December 6th, 1845.
MY DEAREST HAL,
I have been spending the greater part of the morning in sitting for my
likeness to a young girl here, a Miss E----, daughter of some old
friends of the Dacres, whose talent for drawing, and especially for
taking likenesses, is uncommon.
That which Lawrence pronounced the most difficult task he ever undertook
could hardly prove an easy one to a young lady artist, who has, however,
succeeded in giving a very sufficient likeness of one of my faces; and I
think it so pretty that I am charmed with it, as indeed I always have
been with every likeness almost that has ever been taken of me, but the
only true ones--the daguerreotypes. However, even daguerreotypes are not
absolutely accurate; the process is imperfect, except for plane (not
_plain_, you know) surfaces. Besides, after all, it takes a human hand
to copy a human face, because of the human soul in both; and the great
sun in heaven wants fire, light, and power, to reproduce that spark of
divinity in us, before which his material glory grows pale.