Lenox, to Catherine Sedgwick, who is a martyr to dyspepsia and bad
baking, and who, being herself an expert cook, will know how to have the
staff of life prepared from these directions, so as to support instead
of piercing her, as it mostly does, up among those country operators.
They never have good bread there, and are all miserable in consequence,
especially herself and her brother Charles, who have delicate stomachs
and cannot endure the heavy sour concoction which they are nevertheless
obliged to swallow by way of daily bread. (I almost wonder how they
manage to say the Lord's Prayer petition for it.)
The note you forwarded me from Liverpool was another scream from that
mad manageress about Macbeth. I wonder if her whole life is passed in
such agonies; I think it must be worse than the greatest bodily pain.
Only think, my dear, on arriving here, and inquiring for Hayes, I
recollected that I had sent her to Bath and not to Bristol! "Consekens
is," as Mr. Sam Weller says (but alas for you! you don't know Pickwick),
that I have had to send off a porter from this house to Bath, per
railway, to reclaim my erring maid, and fetch her hither; and, being
Sunday, fewer trains go between the two places than usual, and she
cannot get here till near four o'clock this afternoon, until which time
I dare not trust myself to think of the state of mind of the abandoned
(in the perfectly honest sense of the word) Bridget or Biddy Hayes;
indeed, I shall not get her here till six this evening, and I only hope
that I may then.
What a moon there was last night! and how it made me think of you, as it
shone into the dark lofty room at Birmingham, where I sat playing and
singing very sadly all by myself! The sea must have been as smooth as
glass, and you cannot have been sick, even with your best endeavor.
The road from Birmingham here is quite pretty; the country in a most
exquisite state of leaf and blossom; the crops look extremely well along
this route; and the little cottage gardens, which delight my heart with
their tidy cheerfulness, are so many nosegays of laburnum, honeysuckle,
and lilac.
The stokers on all the engines that I saw or met this morning had
adorned their huge iron dragons with great bunches of hawthorn and
laburnum, which hung their poor blossoms close to the hissing hot breath
of the boilers, and looked wretched enough. But this dressing up the
engines, as formerly the stage-coach horses used to be decked with
bunches of flowers at their ears on Mayday, was touching.
I suppose the railroad men get fond of their particular engine, though
they can't pat and stroke it, as sailors do of their ship. Speculate
upon that form of human love. I take it there is nothing which, being
the object of a man's occupation, may not be made also that of his
affection, pride, and solicitude, too. Were we--people in general, I
mean--_Christians_, forms of government would be matters of quite
secondary importance; in fact, of mere expediency. A republic, such as
the American, being the slightest possible form of government, seems to
me the best adapted to an enlightened, civilized _Christian_ community,
a community who deserve that name; and, you know, the theory of making
people what they should be is to treat them better than they deserve--an
axiom that holds good in all moral questions, of which political
government should be one.
This hotel is charming, clean, comfortable, cheerful, very nice.
Farewell. Give my kind regards to your people, and believe me
Ever yours,
FANNY.
MY DEAR HAL,
_Go to Atkinson's and Co., 31, College Green, Dublin, and Pay L8 13s.
for my sister, and get a receipt for it, and send it to me, and do this
just as fast as ever you love me--that is, this very minute._ I will
repay you when we meet, or as much sooner as you may wish.
I have this morning received a note of eleven lines from Rome from
Adelaide, without one single word of anything in it but a desire that I
will immediately pay this debt for her; not a syllable about her
husband, her children, herself, or any created thing, but Messrs.
Atkinson and Co., and L8 13s. Therefore do what she bids me, and I ask
you "right away," as the Americans say, that I may send this afflicted
soul her receipt, and bid her be at rest.
That they are still in Rome I know only by the address, which she does
put, though not the date; as a compensation for which, however, she
heads her letter with the sum she wishes me to pay, thus--
_Rome, Trinita dei Monti._
L8 13_s._
--a new way of dating a letter, it strikes me. She must have had poplin
on the brain.
I wrote to you yesterday, my dear, and therefore have little to say to
you. After all, _I_ had directed my poor maid perfectly _write_! (look
how I've spelt this, in the tumult of my feelings and confusion of my
thoughts!), and she arrived, but not till three o'clock in the
afternoon, paper in hand, with the direction I had myself written as
large as life--"The Great Western Hotel, Bristol." The fact is that I
had made so sure that she would be here before I was, that, not finding
her on my arrival, I made equally sure that I had misdirected her to
Bath, and despatched one of the hotel porters thither to hunt for her,
which he did, sans intermission, for two hours, and on his return had
the pleasure of finding her here. What a capital thing a clear head is,
to be sure! At least, I imagine so....
I have just come back from rehearsal at the theatre, where I found a
letter from Emily, containing a bad account of her mother, and a most
affectionate, cordial, illegible scrawl from poor dear old Mrs. Fitzhugh
herself.
I also received a letter from Henry Greville, full of strictures upon my
carriage and deportment on the stage, and earnestly entreating me to
suffer his _coiffeur_ ("a clean, tidy foreigner") to whitewash me after
the approved French method, _i.e._, to anoint my skin with cold cream,
and then cover it with pearl powder; and this, not only my face, but my
arms, neck, and shoulders. Don't you see me undergoing such a process,
and submitting to such "manipulation"?
I have read more than half through Liebig, and am always tempted to
glance at the paragraphs _ahead_ to see what wonders they contain. I
have not yet consulted the last chapter for the "winding-up of the
story." The marvels in the midst of which we exist are a "story without
an end."
I find some of his details of "quantity" a little puzzling sometimes,
but nothing else, and the book is delightful.
Charles Mason drank tea with me last night, and talked well, and with a
good deal of information, about chemistry. He has read somewhat, and has
some superficial knowledge of various subjects; moreover, is a judge of
physiognomy, for he said he never saw a countenance with a more
beautiful expression of goodness than yours. Evidently, like Beatrice,
he can "see a church by daylight." Isn't it a pity that he can no longer
be my agent? Were you not struck with his great resemblance to your
idol, John Kemble? My mother used to say he was more like his son than
his nephew; and never having seen his uncle even, the curious collateral
likeness showed itself in all sorts of queer tricks in his delivery and
deportment on the stage, where, in spite of his resemblance to his
celebrated kinsman, he is a most lamentable actor. Of course, being an
educated man, he speaks with "good discretion;" of the "emphasis" the
less said the better.
I go to Bath to-morrow morning, and remain there until Thursday, when I
return here to act Lady Macbeth and then go back again to represent that
same lady at Bath either Friday or Saturday.
Farewell, my dear. God bless you.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
BATH, Wednesday, June 2d.
I have just had a long visit from Mr. C----, who is here, and who came
to see me this morning with a young niece of his--a fair, sweet-looking
girl of about eighteen, who, strangely enough, asked me a good many
questions about my affairs.... At the end of their visit, I found that
the young lady, while talking and listening to me, had torn up a
visiting-card and, with the fragments of it, put together on the table
the outline of a tiny Calvary, the cross upon a heap of rocks. I suppose
she is a Catholic, like her uncle, and I wonder why so many religious
people of all sorts and denominations take it for granted that others
stand in need of "Hints to Religion." ...
I was reminded (unnecessarily) of you at the theatre yesterday evening
when, immediately after the hateful stage-warning at my dressing-room
door of "Overture on, ma'am!" (the summons to the actors who are to
begin a piece), I heard the orchestra break forth into your favorite
strain of "Sad and fearful was the story." ...
The instinctive horror of suffering of our poor human bodies is pitiful.
What a sorry martyr I should have made! though I think I should not so
much object to others inflicting pain upon me as to inflicting it upon
myself,--that seems to me such an absurd and disagreeable work of
supererogation, I should never have been a self-body-torturer for the
salvation of my soul....
You would have been amused yesterday evening if you had been at the
theatre with me. The weather was so beautifully bright that I could not
bear to shut the shutters and light the gas, so I dressed by the blessed
light of heaven, and was sitting all rouged and arrayed for my part,
working, with my back to the window, when a small mob of poor little
ragged urchins, who had climbed over a railing that separated the
theatre from a mean-looking street behind it, collected round it, and,
clambering on each other's shoulders, clustered and hung like a swarm of
begrimed bees at the window, which was near the ground, to enjoy the
sight of me and my finery. Bridget, who is kind-hearted and fond of
children, turned the dresses that were hanging up right side out for the
edification of the poor little ragamuffins, and their comments were
exceedingly funny and touching. We could hear all that they said through
the window--how they wondered if I put _them_ beautiful dresses on one
by one, or over each other; the rose in my hair, which you gave me, and
the roses in my shoes, made them scream with delight; and if you could
have heard the pathetic earnestness with which one of them exclaimed,
"Oh my! don't you wish _them ere windies was cleaner_!" for the
dirt-dimmed glass obstructed the full glory of the vision not a little.
Poor little creatures! my heart ached with compassion for them and their
hard conditions, while they hung and clung in ecstatic amazement at my
frippery.
The house at Bristol the first night was wretched, my share of it only
L14; here last night it was much better, but I do not yet know the
proceeds of it. Charles Mason has latterly dropped a hint or two about
intending shortly to go to America, so that I dare say he will be quite
prepared to terminate his present arrangement with me.
In the railroad, coming from Bristol to Bath, I met Edward Romilly, a
kind and pleasant acquaintance of mine. I had Liebig's book in my hand,
which he said was rather severe railroad reading, and proceeded to
enlighten me as to the unsoundness of some of the author's positions and
deductions. Now, you know, Edward Romilly married Mrs. Marcet's
daughter, and, I take it for granted, in virtue of such a mother-in-law,
is wise upon natural philosophy; but still, when one's ignorance is as
huge and one's faith as implicit as mine,--when one's one endless,
supreme question about everything is Pilate's bewildered, "What is
Truth?"--when from history, science, literature, art, nature, one
receives every impression with the child's yearning query, "But is it
true?" it makes one feel desperate and deplorable thus to have one
teacher contradict and discredit another. After all, all knowledge by
degrees turns to ignorance, as it were, by dint of more knowledge; and
human progress, passing from stage to stage in its incessant onward
flight, leaves deserted, from day to day and hour to hour, its temporary
abiding-places. There is no rest for those who learn, and ignorance is a
great deal more complete and perfect a thing, _here_, at any rate, than
knowledge; with which paradox let me hug my ignorance, only regretting
that I ever spoiled it by learning even so much as my alphabet.
In spite of Mrs. Marcet's son-in-law, I have finished Liebig, and now
have only "Wilhelm Meister" to read, which is one of the most wonderful
books that ever was written. I have read it often, and each time I do so
I think it more wonderful than before. Do you remember poor Mignon's
last song?--"Sorrow hath made me early old, make me again for ever
young!" No wonder you love youth, my dear; in heaven there are no old
people.
The gardens in which this house stands are exquisite, and full of lovely
children, who are a perpetual delight to me.
Good-bye, my dear.
BATH, Friday, June 4th.
DEAR HAL,
... I have just spent a delightful hour with three charming little
creatures, children of the master of this hotel, for whom I have been
buying toys, and who have been amusing themselves with them and allowing
me a time of enchanting participation.
I drove this morning, because you told me to do so, through the piece of
ground they call the park here. It is extremely pretty, and I never grow
weary of admiring the orderly love of beauty of our people.
I have had another long visit from Mr. C---- this morning.... Certainly
novelists invent nothing more improbable than life.
I had an explanation with Charles Mason yesterday afternoon, and he did
not appear at all annoyed at my intention of discontinuing our present
arrangement. I shall give up to him the entire receipts for one night,
as else I am afraid he will hardly do more than cover his expenses.
Then--the money that worthy man at Liverpool _borrowed_ from me, which I
shall assuredly never see again, and my travelling and living expenses
deducted--my clear gains for this fortnight will be L68. It is not much,
but all that much better than nothing. I shall be in town next week, and
had intended, at the end of it, to go down to Bannisters; but Emily
writes me that they cannot have me then, so I shall probably go to
Plymouth, where they want me to act, and after that return to town
again, and organize some more country engagements for myself; for I
can't afford to be doing nothing. I go to town to-morrow morning, and
shall be glad to be _at home_ again. I am writing with a vile iron pen,
that has neither mind, soul, nor body.
God bless you, dear. Good-bye.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
ROYAL HOTEL, PLYMOUTH, June 16th.
MY DEAR HAL,
Do not again put that sponge, saturated with that _stuff_, in your
letters. The whiff of it I got accidentally in one I received some days
ago was very pleasant, but the quantity you send me to-day is too much,
and has given me a headache, and made me sick. Such virtue is there in
proportion! Such immense difference in only _more_ or _less_!
You bid me _lump_ my answers to you, but I hate to do that. I cannot
bear to defraud you in quantity, though inevitable necessity condemns me
to the disparity of quality in our communications; but to give you poor
measure in both seems to me too bad....
I shall act here on Friday, and leave for Exeter on Saturday, and I
shall act there one or two nights, but I do not yet know precisely how
often. I expect to be in London by the end of next week, and to remain
there for a week, after which I shall probably go for some nights to
Southampton, so that, in a sort of way, I shall see Emily, and she will
see me; further than this I have not at present decided. I have yet to
visit the Midland Counties, where I have had engagements offered me, and
York, Sheffield, and Leeds; after which I shall probably go on to
Scotland. But all this is at present without fixed date.
Some time in the summer, I have promised to visit the C----s (Roman
acquaintances of ours) at Brighton; and I shall stay some time in
Scotland at a place called Carolside, with that very nice Mrs. Mitchell,
with whom I am fast growing into a fast friendship. We shall be a
strange company of widows at her house--herself, T---- M----, poor Emily
de Viry, and poorer myself.
These are my floating plans for the summer. Of course you will hear into
what specific arrangements they consolidate themselves by degrees.
_All_ the theatres where I act--indeed, as far as I can see, all the
theatres throughout the country--are Theatres Royal; and with very good
reason, for they are certainly all equally patronized by royalty.
I forgot to tell you that before leaving London, I carried your bag,
_i.e._ my worsted-work, to your nephew's lodging, beseeching him, in a
civil note, to take charge of it for you. I have received a civil note
from him in reply, professing his readiness to do so, but adding that he
will not be in Dublin till the dissolution of Parliament, which will not
take place till the middle of July; in reply to which, I wrote him
another civil note, telling him I would apprise you of this, and then
you could either leave the bag in his custody, till he went to
Ardgillan, or inform him of any method by which you might choose to have
it forwarded to you more immediately.
I am not satisfied with the way in which it is made up; my own work was
thick and clumsy enough, and I think they have finished the bag with a
view to matching, rather than counteracting, these defects in the
original composition. However, its value to you I know will be none the
less for this; though, as I also know you are very _particular_, I wish
it had been more neatly and lightly finished. I have put the strip of
worsted-work you wished preserved inside the bag, and would humbly
advise you to cut it up for kettle-holders, for which purpose it appears
to me infinitely better adapted than for the housewife you proposed to
make of it. However, you know I am shy about giving advice, so never
mind what I say....
The weather is cold, rainy, windy, in short, odiously tempestuous; in
spite of which I went into the sea yesterday, and shall do so every day
while I am here; the freshness of the salt water is delicious.
Now, at this present moment, when I was about to close this letter,
comes another from you, and I shall lump that in this answer; for 'tis
absurd merely to wait till to-morrow that I may take up another sheet
of paper to write to you upon, when in all human probability I shall
have nothing new whatever to tell you.
I find that Charles Mason has made arrangements for me with the Exeter
manager, and that I shall act there four nights, and therefore be there
all next week, and only return to London next Saturday week. This was in
contemplation when I came here, but had not been determined on until
to-day.
I have had a very affectionate letter from Lady Dacre, asking me to go
down to the Hoo and stay some time with them, which I will do between
some of my coming engagements.... No, my dear Harriet, you cannot
imagine, and I cannot say, how I shrink from demonstrating a great deal
of the affection that I feel; there are no words or sign adequate to it
that I should not be reluctant to use, and I think this is at variance
with the unhesitating and vehement expression of thought and opinion,
and mere impression that is natural to me: but we are all more or less
compounded of contradictions, and I _more_ than _less_.
At the Exeter Station, coming down to this place, an obliging omnibus or
coach driver offered to carry me to Torquay if I was bound thither.
Wouldn't it have been nice if I had said _Yes_, and you and Dorothy had
still been there? but you weren't, so I said _No_.... Both the Grevilles
are friends of ours. Henry has been very intimate with Adelaide for a
long time. He has a great many good qualities, and, though essentially a
society man, has a good deal of principle; he is not very clever, but
bright and pleasant, and very amiable and charming. His brother Charles
has better brains, and is altogether a cleverer person. He is a man of
the world, and more selfishly worldly, I think, than Henry, whose
standard of right is considerably the higher of the two; indeed, Charles
Greville's _right_ always appears to me a mere synonym for _expedient_,
and when I tell him so, he invariably says "they are the same thing,"
which I do not believe. He is, unfortunately, deaf, but excellent
company in spite of that. I met him the day before I left London, at
dinner at Lady Essex's, and he told me he and Lord de Maulay were going
to start next week on a riding tour through England, beginning with
Devonshire. I think it very probable that I shall see him in Exeter next
week, as he is to be at the Duke of Bedford's in that neighborhood. He
talked eloquently of the beauty of the scenery they were going through,
and very seriously urged me to join their party, and ride over England
with them, saying it would be a delightfully pleasant expedition--of
which I have no doubt, or of the entire propriety of my joining it, and
"cavalcading" through Great Britain in his and Lord de Maulay's company.
Now I'll tell you what I've done to-day--my holiday. In the first place
it poured with rain all the morning, so I sent for a pair of battledores
and a shuttlecock, and when Charles Mason came to render up last night's
account, I made him come into a beautiful large ball-room I had
discovered in this house, and took a good breathing; and he, being like
Hamlet, "fat and scant of breath," took it hard.
NEW LONDON INN, EXETER, Monday, June 21st.
DEAR HAL,
Thanks for the purse, which I received this morning. I think you must
imagine these country managers pay me as the monks did Correggio, in
copper; perhaps, too, you have visions of me carrying my pay home on my
back, as he did. (I forget whether that sad story is among the
traditions exploded by modern _truth_.)
You have not received my last letter from Plymouth, or you would not
have sent me again this tremendous "smell." I beseech you, dear Hal, not
to saturate your paper any more with Neroli, or whatever you call it; it
gives me a headache, and turns me sick.
My present address is as above, and I shall remain here until Saturday
morning, when I return to town.
I only like the leather purse because you have given it to me, and
though that makes me _love_ it, it does not make me _like_ it--my
preference is for the pretty, colored, delicately woven purses, through
whose meshes the gold and silver smiles and glances, that you see me
use, or abuse, as you think, and as their use is to be worn out, I am
not much afflicted at their dropping into holes, and in due process of
time fulfilling their destiny.
This inn is in the middle of the town, and an old, dingy, dull house;
and I have an old, dingy, dark sitting-room, and the only trees I see
are two fine _felled_ elm trunks, which I have been industriously
sketching.
The cathedral here is a grand old church, and I went yesterday afternoon
to service there; but the choir was full, so I sat on a sort of
pauper's wooden bench, just outside the choir, and under the beautiful
porch that forms the entrance to it; and heard the chanting, but nothing
else. I had Hayes with me, and she earnestly entreated me to sit with my
feet upon hers, to protect myself from the cold stone pavement; was not
that touching and nice of her? I am sure I ought to be grateful for such
a comfort as she is to me. Poor thing! she has been in great trouble
about her mother. When she was in Ireland she took a small sum of about
ten pounds, which belonged to her mother, and placed it in the hands of
an aunt of hers, in whom she had implicit trust, wishing to withdraw the
money from the possible risk of its being got from her mother by her
brother, who lives with her,--he being selfish and unprincipled and
likely to take it, and her mother affectionate and self-denying and
likely to give it to him. And now poor Hayes gets word from her mother
that her aunt says she can neither give her money nor money's worth,
owing to the badness of the times; which of course troubles my poor maid
very much, for she says her aunt is a woman of substance. However, she
does not seem to think the money will ultimately be lost to her mother,
but only inconveniently withheld for a time.