the sexes have almost all been unmarried, for while the father disposes
of the children whom he maintains, and which thus endows him with the
power of supreme torture, what mother's heart is proof against the
tightening of that screw? At any rate, what number of women is ever
likely to be found so organized or so principled as to resist the
pressure of this tremendous power? My sister, in speaking to me the
other day of what she would or would not give up to her husband of
conscientious conviction of right, wound up by saying, "But sooner than
lose my children, there is _nothing_ that I would not do;" and in so
speaking she undoubtedly uttered the feeling of the great majority of
women....
We suppose my father has gone to Germany, with some intention of giving
readings there. He has been on the Continent now upwards of three
months, but we never hear anything definite or precise about his
engagements from himself; and in his letters he never mentions place,
person, or purpose, where he is going, or where likely to be; so that I
can form no idea how long I may be deprived of my letters, which are
directed to London, to his care.
My dearest Hal, I have kept no journal since I have been abroad but such
as could be published verbatim. I have kept no record of my own life; I
have long felt that to chronicle it would not assist me in enduring
it.... Indeed, since I came to Italy, I should have kept no diary at
all, but that my doing so was suggested to me as a possible means of
earning something towards my present support, and with that view I have
noted what I have seen, much to my own disgust and dissatisfaction; for
I feel very strongly my own inability to give any fresh interest to a
mere superficial description of things and places seen and known by
everybody, and written about by all the world and his wife, for the last
hundred years. Nevertheless, I have done it; because I could not
possibly neglect any means whatever that were pointed out to me of
helping myself, and relieving others from helping me.... I have given up
my walk and my dip in the fountain before breakfast. We ride for three
or four hours every afternoon, and a walk of two hours in the morning
besides seemed to me, upon reflection, a disproportionate allowance of
mere physical exercise for a creature endowed with brains as well as
arms and legs.... Upon the whole, we have reason to be grateful for the
health we have all of us enjoyed. There has been a great deal of violent
and dangerous illness among the English residents passing the summer at
Frascati and Albano; quite enough indeed, I think, to justify the ill
repute of unhealthiness with which the whole of this beautiful region is
branded. Our whole family has escaped all serious inconvenience, either
from the malaria usual to the place or the unusual heat of the summer;
the children especially have been in admirable health and lovely looks,
the whole time we have been here....
God bless you, my dearest Hal! I am afraid that it is true that I often
appear wanting in charity towards the vices and follies of my
fellow-creatures; and yet I really have a great deal more than my
outbreaks of vehement denunciation would seem to indicate; and of one
thing I am sure, that with regard to any wrong or injury committed
against myself, a very short time enables me not only to forgive it, but
to perceive all the rational excuses and attenuations that it admits of.
I certainly am not conscious of any bitterness of heart towards any
one.... I believe it is only in the first perception of evil or sense of
injury that I am unmeasured or unreasonable in my expression of
condemnation--but you know, my dear, _suddenness_ is the curse of my
nature.... But my self-love always springs up against the shadow of
blame, and so you need pay no heed to what I say in self-justification.
If I am censured justly, I shall accept the reproof inwardly, whatever
outward show I may make of defending myself against it; for the grace of
humility is even more deficient in me than that of charity, and to
submit graciously to what seems to me unjust blame is hitherto a virtue
I do not possess at all.
[After my return to England, I resumed the exercise of my theatrical
profession; the less distasteful occupation of giving public
readings, which I adopted subsequently, was not then open to me. My
father was giving readings from Shakespeare, and it was impossible
for me to thrust my sickle into a field he was reaping so
successfully. I therefore returned to the stage; under what
disadvantageously altered circumstances it is needless to say.
A stout, middle-aged, not particularly good-looking woman, such as I
then was, is not a very attractive representative of Juliet or
Julia; nor had I, in the retirement of nine years of private life,
improved by study or experience my talent for acting, such as it
was. I had hardly entered the theatre during all those years, and my
thoughts had as seldom reverted to anything connected with my former
occupation. While losing, therefore, the few personal qualifications
(of which the principal one was youth) I ever possessed for the
younger heroines of the drama, I had gained none but age as a
representative of its weightier female personages--Lady Macbeth,
Queen Katherine, etc.
Thus, even less well fitted than when first I came out for the work
I was again undertaking, I had the additional disadvantage of being
an extremely incompetent woman of business; and having now to make
my own bargains in the market of public exhibition, I did so with
total want of knowledge and experience to guide me in my dealings
with the persons from whom I had to seek employment.
I found it difficult to obtain an engagement in London; but Mr.
Knowles, of the Manchester Theatre, very liberally offered me such
terms as I was thankful to accept; and I there made my first
appearance on my return to the stage.
Among the various changes which I had to encounter in doing so, one
that might appear trivial enough occasioned me no little annoyance.
The inevitable rouge, rendered really indispensable by the ghastly
effect of the gaslight illumination of the stage, had always been
one of its minor disagreeables to me; but I now found that, in
addition to rouged cheeks, my fair theatrical contemporaries--fair
though they might be--literally whitewashed their necks, shoulders,
arms, and hands; a practice which I found it impossible to adopt;
and in spite of my zealous friend Henry Greville's rather indignant
expostulation, to the effect that what so beautiful a woman as
Madame Grisi condescended to do, for the improvement of her natural
charms, was not to be disdained by a person so comparatively ugly, I
steadily refused to make a whited sepulchre of _that_ description of
myself, and continued to confront the public with my own skin,
looking, probably, like a gypsy, or, when in proximity with any
feminine coadjutor, like a bronze figure arm-in-arm with a
plaster-of-Paris cast.
Before, however, beginning my new existence of professional toil, I
stayed a few days at Bannisters, with Mrs. FitzHugh and my dear
friend, her daughter Emily.]
BANNISTERS, Tuesday, 13th, 1846.
You say, my dear Hal, that you see Emily and me perpetually, in various
positions, holding various conversations. Had you a vision of us this
morning, by the comfortable fire in my room, I reading, and she
listening to, your letter?...
Thank you, my dear friend, for your _flagellatory_ recipe, which I beg
to decline. The sponging with vinegar and water I do practise every
morning, and as I persevere in it until my fingers can hardly hold the
sponge for cold, and my throat is as crimson as if it were flayed, I
hope it will answer the same purpose as lashing myself, which I object
to, partly, I suppose, for Sancho Panza's reasons, and partly because of
its great resemblance to, not to say identity with, the superstitious
practices of the idolatrous and benighted Roman Catholic Church.
The amount of medical advice and assistance which I have received since
I have been restored to the affectionate society of my dear Emily and
her kind mother is hardly to be told....
I shall not answer your letter seriously: I am convinced it is bad for
you. I believe Dorothy never laughs (you know the Devil in "Faust" says
the Almighty never does), and I am satisfied that what you are
languishing for is a little _absurdity_, which she cannot by any
possibility afford you.
How I wish I was with you! because, though I am no more absurd than that
sublime woman Dorothy, I at least know how to take the best advantage,
both for you and myself, of the great gifts you possess in that line;
and the mutual sweetness and utility of our intercourse is, I am
persuaded, principally owing to the judicious use I make of the
extraordinary amount of absurdity it has pleased Heaven to vouchsafe
you, my most precious friend.
And so you think I shall have plenty of "admiring friends" for my "gay
hours" (!!!!), but shall be glad to fall back, in my less delightful
ones, upon the devoted affection of--you? (Oh, Harriet, oughtn't you to
be ashamed of yourself?)
I have more friends, I humbly and devoutly thank God for them, than
almost any one I know; those I depend upon I can count upon the fingers
of one hand, and you are the _thumb_.
In the useless struggle you persist in making to be reasonable (why
don't you give it up? I've known you hopelessly at it now forty years or
thereabouts), you really make use of very singular and, permit me to
say, inappropriate language. After detailing, in a manner that nearly
made me cry and laugh with distress for you and disapprobation of you,
all your unnecessary agonies of anxiety about me, you suddenly rein
yourself up with an extra-reasonable jerk, and say that "the foolish
importance you attach to _trifles_ is as great as ever."
Now, my dearest friend, for such you undoubtedly are, allow me to
observe that this mode of speaking of me does not appear to me either
reasonable or appropriate. From what point of view I can appear a
_trifle_ to the most partial and rational of my friends, I am at a loss
to conjecture. The parallel seems to me to halt on all its feet. A
_white_, _light_, _sweet_, and _agreeable_ article of human consumption
bears, I apprehend, extremely small affinity to a _dark_, _heavy_,
_tart_, and _uneatable_ female. However, if you find that this, to me,
singularly distorted mode of viewing facts assists your hitherto
unsuccessful efforts at mental and moral equipoise, I am perfectly
willing to be a trifle in your estimation, or indeed anywhere but on
your table.
The pretty, pretty plan you devise for our meeting here during Passion
week, dear Hal, is a baseless vision. Our friends go up to London the
week after next, and I do not know when I shall be able again to stay so
far from it.
I have written to Moxon about the publication of my journal, and I
received a note from him this morning, intimating his purpose of
visiting me here, in the course of to-day, at which I feel rather
nervously dismayed.... There is a great quantity of it, and I suppose my
return to the stage may perhaps have some effect in increasing its sale.
Emily and I walk every day together, up and down the shrubbery and round
the gardens; and innumerable are the ejaculations of "Oh, how I wish
dear Hal was with us!" You are our proper complement, the missing side
of the triangle, and it is unnatural for us two to be together here
without you.
Mrs. FitzHugh is certainly a wonderful old woman, especially in her
kindliness and happy, easy cheerfulness....
We drive every day for about an hour in the pony-carriage, and walk
again for about half an hour afterwards....
And now, God bless you, my dearest Hal. I long to see you, and am most
thankful for all the tender, devoted, anxious affection you bestow on
me; I am unspeakably _grateful_ to you. Kiss dear Dorothy for me, and
tell her for goodness' sake to exert herself, and either be, or allow
you to be, slightly ridiculous, or she will die of perfection, and you
of a plethora of absurdity, or ridiculousness _rentre_--struck in, as
the French say.
I forgot to tell you that ---- has declined my terms, but offered me
others, which I have declined. I have still two other managers, with one
of whom I think I may perhaps be able to come to some agreement.
Since writing thus far, I have seen Moxon, who has offered me far more
than I expected for my journal before reading it; begging me to let him
pay me a portion of it at once, and adding that if, upon perusal of the
manuscript, he thinks his profits likely to warrant his giving me more
than the sum now named, he should not consider himself justified in not
doing so by the fact of his having offered me less.
Good-bye, dearest.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
[It is impossible to have been more generous than Mr. Moxon was in
this whole transaction. While talking about the dealings of
booksellers with authors, he said that he always bore in mind the
liberality he had benefited by when, starting in business a poor and
obscure publisher, he had been munificently assisted by Rogers,
whose timely aid had laid the foundation of his prosperity. "As I
was dealt by," he said, "I endeavor to deal by others, and should be
glad to inspire them with the grateful regard towards me which I
shall always retain for him." Rogers surely did himself more
injustice by his tongue than all his enemies put together could have
done him; his acts of kindly generosity were almost as frequent as
his bitter, biting, cruel words.]
BANNISTERS, Saturday, 16th.
Yes, my dear Hal, I do intend to correct my own proofs (I thought my
proofs corrected me)....
I have just returned from a delightful visit of two hours, which our
dear friend Emily contrived for me, to ----, the dentist! Not content
with cheering and soothing my sadder hours with the number and variety
of her medical resources (pills, draughts, doses, potions, lotions,
lozenges, etc.), her ever active and considerate affection hit upon this
agreeable method of relieving my stay at Bannisters of any possible
tedium, and two hours of the darkest, dampest, dreariest winter weather
have thus been charmed away through her tender and ingenious solicitude
for my enjoyment.
My dear Hal, what you say about laughing _with_ people, as an _instead_
for laughing _at_ them, is, like most things you say, frightful
nonsense. And what sort of a laugh, moreover, is it that you offer that
unfortunate Dorothy for her feeble participation? Nothing of a healthy,
wholesome, vigorous, vital, individual, personal kind; but some pitiful
pretence of wit or humor, having for its vague or indefinite object
ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible
intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that
belongs to real individual absurdity, and the direct ridicule of it,
judiciously and dexterously applied; the only efficient--I had almost
said legitimate--object of a rational creature's amusement. If Dorothy
depends upon you for her entertainment (otherwise than as you
involuntarily, unconsciously, naturally, and simply furnish it to me), I
pity her; and if you depend upon her for yours, I pity you still
more--for I doubt if even I, according to my own system, could extract
any from her, she is so _painfully_ _un_ridiculous. You must be
deplorably dull together, I am--certain, I was going to say--satisfied;
but that's neither kind nor civil, and I heartily wish for both _your_
sakes that I was with you.
I am not sure that that visit may not be accomplished yet; for my
reappearance on the stage does not seem likely to take place so very
immediately but that I might perhaps contrive to run down to you for a
short time. But, indeed, all my concerns are like so many pennies tossed
up in the air for "heads or tails," and I cannot tell how they will
fall, or what results I may arrive at.
I have been asked to go down to Manchester, to act, and if I have any
great difficulty or delay to encounter in finding an engagement in
London, I shall probably do so.... The step I am about to take is so
painful to me that all petty annoyances and minor vexations lose their
poignancy in the contemplation of it (_a quelque chose--a bien des
choses malheur est bon_), and having at length made up my mind to it,
smaller _repugnancies_ connected with it have ceased to affect me with
any acuteness....
Moxon cannot publish my Italian journal immediately, because the whole
of the American edition must be ready to go to press before he brings it
out here. I suppose it will come out some time after Easter. Emily told
you of his first offer for it, and of his gallant mode of making it. He
is surely a pearl and a pattern of publishers.
Kiss that facetious "Virgin Martyr" for me. Such a laugh as you two are
likely to get up together! I declare it brings the tears to my eyes to
think of it.
I rejoice in your account of H---- W----. It must be a blessing to
every one belonging to him to see him do well such a duty as that of an
Irish proprietor, in these most miserable times.
I have at present nothing further to impart to you but the newest news,
that I am
Ever yours,
FANNY.
[The last sentence of this letter refers to the failure of the
potato-crop, and the consequent terrible famine that desolated
Ireland.]
10, PARK PLACE, ST. JAMES'S, February 1st, 1847.
I feel almost certain, my dear Hal, that it will be better for me to be
_alone_ when I come out at Manchester than to have you with me, even if
in all other respects it were expedient you should be there. My strength
is much impaired, my nerves terribly shattered, and to see reflected in
eyes that I love that pity for me which I shall feel only too keenly for
myself, on the first night of my return to the stage, might, I fear,
completely break down my courage. I am glad for this reason that I am to
come out at Manchester, where I know nobody, and not in London, where,
although I might not distinguish them, I should know that not a few who
cared for me, and were sorry for me, were among my spectators. I am now
so little able to resist the slightest appeal to my feelings that, at
the play (to which I have been twice lately), the mere sound of human
voices simulating distress has shaken and affected me to a strange
degree, and this in pieces of a common and uninteresting description. A
mere exclamation of pain or sorrow makes me shudder from head to foot.
Judge how ill prepared I am to fulfil the task I am about to
undertake....
This, however, is one of the most painful aspects of my work. It has a
more encouraging one. It is an immense thing for me to be still able to
work at all, and keep myself from helpless dependence upon any one....
The occupation, the mere _business_ of the business, will, I am
persuaded, be good rather than bad for me; for though one may be strong
against sorrow, sorrow and inactivity combined are too much for any
strength. Such a burden might not kill one, but destroy one's vitality
to a degree just short of, and therefore worse than, death--crush,
instead of killing and releasing one....
I was reading over "The Hunchback" last night, and could not go through
the scenes between Julia and Clifford, when he assumes the character of
Lord Rochdale's secretary, without an agony of crying. I do not see how
I am ever to act it again intelligibly, but I suppose when I _must_ do
it I _shall_. Things that have to be done are done, somehow or other.
God bless you, my dear Hal.
I am ever yours,
FANNY.
One word to Dorothy.
Now, my beloved and best Dorothy, haven't you enough to do with that
most troublesome soul, Harriet, without being my "good angel" too? [Miss
W---- often went by the name of Harriet's "good angel."] I have never
seen mine; but if I have one, I should think he or she must be a sort of
spiritual heavenly steam-engine, _a three-hundred angel-power_, in order
effectually to take care of me.
My dearest Hal, I have missed the dear nuisance of your letters so
dreadfully these few days past, that I began seriously to meditate
writing to you to know if I had offended you in any way. As for how I
fare in this cold weather, the weather is nothing to me, and I used not
to mind cold at all, but rather to like it; but my flesh is forsaking my
bones at such a rate that I am beginning to shiver for want of covering,
and I think to be reduced to a skeleton--a live one, I mean--while the
thermometer is as low as it is will be very uncomfortable.
The satisfaction I had in my visit to my brother was that of seeing a
person for whom I have a very warm affection, and, in some respects, a
very sincere admiration. I believe, too, it was a comfort to poor John
to see me and receive the expressions of my love and sympathy.... For
his warm heart, his truthfulness and great simplicity of character, his
worldly poverty, his great intellectual wealth, but, above all, for that
he is my brother, I love him. He and his children are living in a poor
small cottage, on a wild corner of common near Cassiobury. How I thought
of our old--no, our young days, driving along past "The Grove" and the
Cassiobury Park paling. My brother's present home is certainly not an
extravagant residence, and though, of course, sufficient for absolute
necessary comfort (how much comfort is _necessary_?), is nothing
more.... John has advertised in the _Times_ for a pupil to prepare for
college, and should he be able to obtain one, it would, of course,
materially assist him. In the mean time he is working with infinite
ardor and industry upon an important work, the "History of the English
Law." A friend of his, whom I met there, who is, I think, a competent
judge, which, of course, I am not, of any such matter, assured me that
the work was one of great erudition and research, but at the same time
so dry and difficult, and therefore little likely to be popular, that it
would not be easy to persuade any publisher to undertake it. He, Mr.
B----, carried the first volume, which is complete, to town with him, to
show it to persons capable of appreciating it, and endeavor to get it a
little known, so as to procure an offer for its publication. Poor John!
his perseverance in the studies he loves is very great, his devotion to
them very deep, and if he could only live upon his means with his
beloved mistress, Learning, I should think he had made a noble and
honorable choice, however bitterly disappointed my father may feel at
his not choosing to follow more lucrative pursuits.
I am going to act in _Dublin_. I have neither time nor space for more.
God bless you.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
10, PARK PLACE, Friday, 12th, 1847.
Direct to me at Manchester, "Theatre Royal," my dear Hal, that is all;
or, indeed, I should prefer your directing to the Albion Hotel, that
same house where you and I were so charmed by the sunlight on the
carpet.
You say I do not know the value of letters. I think I do, for if I had
not the very highest value for them I should long ago have given way to
my detestation of writing, and put an end to my innumerable
correspondences. Your letters have more than once been snatched up by
me, and pressed to my lips; so have my sister's.... I hate writing, it
is true, but am content to pay that price for the intercourse of my
friends; and though I may not love letters as you do, I do think I have
a reasonable appreciation of their value.
I share in your feeling, dearest Harriet, about my being in Dublin
while you are absent from it. I do not know that it seems to me "wrong,"
but it certainly does seem as unnatural as that there should be a
theatre open in Dublin at all at this time, when famine and such dire
distress are prevailing in parts of the country.
I am troubled, too, at the uncertainty of how and when we are to meet;
and the reason why these various considerations do not, perhaps, engross
so much of my thoughts as they do of yours is because I have so many
immediate and necessarily absorbing claims upon my attention.
I incline with you, however, to think that I shall not go to Dublin. I
have not heard again from the manager, and I begin to hope that he has
thought better of his invitation to me. As my work is a matter of
necessity, I could not, of course, refuse an engagement in Dublin; but
it does seem monstrous that there should be people willing to pay for
theatrical entertainments there at this time.
If I do not go I shall lose an opportunity of seeing my brother Henry,
which I am looking forward to with great pleasure--the only pleasure in
the whole expedition, since you will not be there, which will indeed
seem most strange and very _inappropriate_.