Edinburgh, and shall go and see Cecilia and Mr. Combe. I am sorry you
didn't see Mrs. Mitchell, for, though forty years old, she might be
fallen in love with any day for her good looks only. She is my notion of
what Mary Stuart must have looked like, but she is a marvellous wise and
discreet body--mentally and morally, I should think, very unlike the
bonnie Queen of Scots.
Did I tell you that one place where we dined was Cowdenknowes? and I
felt like singing "The Bonnie Broom" all the time, which would have been
an awful accompaniment to the gastronomic enjoyments of the "liveliness
of the county." Good-bye, my dear.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
GLASGOW, Wednesday, September 15th.
I do not know what my friend's religious opinions are. She was brought
up in the midst of strict Presbyterians, but I suspect, from some things
I have heard her say, that she is by no means an orthodox sample of that
faith. But, you know, I am never curious about people's beliefs, nor
anxious that my friends should think as I do upon any subject. The
resemblance between Mrs. Mitchell's notions and mine was one that she
was led to express quite accidentally on a matter on which few women
would agree with me....
I have not heard from Adelaide for a long time--a month at least. The
Comte de Revel, the Sardinian Ambassador, was at Carolside while I was
there, and spoke of the condition of the whole of Italy as full of
insecurity, and liable at any moment to sudden outbreaks of violent and
momentous change.
I cannot think that Rome will be a desirable residence for foreigners
this winter; but E---- is so indolent that, unless people are massacred
in the streets, and, moreover, in the identical street in which he
lives, I should much doubt his being willing to move, or thinking it at
all necessary to do so. I saw the old Countess Grey and Lady G---- just
before they left London about three weeks ago. They were intending to
winter in Rome, and told me they were much dissuaded by their friends
from doing so.
If you leave Ireland, as you say, on the 1st of October, I am afraid I
shall not see you in London, for I expect to pass the whole of that
month in Edinburgh; but I hope I shall find leisure to come to St.
Leonard's, and see you and Dorothy while you are there.
My plans are at present a little unsettled. I think of going back to
Carolside with Mrs. Mitchell and Lady M---- until next Monday, when I
shall return to Edinburgh, and from thence proceed to act four nights at
Dundee; after that I shall be stationary in Edinburgh for, I hope, at
least three weeks. I think I shall not act there, but have some thoughts
of giving readings.... Good-bye, my dear.
I am ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
DUNDEE, Thursday, 2d.
MY DEAR HAL,
Your letter directed to me to Greenock never reached me. I did not go
there; and having left Glasgow without doing so, shall not visit that
place at all now.
I arrived yesterday in Dundee, having left Edinburgh in the morning. I
act here two nights, and two in Perth, and return to Edinburgh on
Wednesday week to remain with Elizabeth Mair (youngest daughter of Mrs.
Harry Siddons) till the last week in October. After that I go southward
to visit B---- G---- at Hawick, and the Ellesmeres at Worsley.
Your letter about sleeping in Orchard Street, on your way through
London, is so very undecided--I mean upon that particular point--that I
shall write to Mrs. Mulliner (my housekeeper) to desire her to receive
you, if you should apply for a lodging, so that you can do as you
like--either go there or to Euston Square.
I am delighted at the prospect of my three weeks' stay in Edinburgh.
Nothing could exceed the affectionate kindness with which Lizzie and her
husband received me.
After all that I have seen at home and abroad, Edinburgh still seems to
me the most beautiful city I ever saw, and all my associations with it
(except those of my last stay there) are peaceful and happy, and carry
me back to that year of my life spent with Mrs. Harry Siddons, which has
been the happiest of my existence hitherto.... Elizabeth's children are
like a troop of angels, one prettier than another; I never saw more
lovely little creatures. The companionship of children is charming to
me. I delight in them, and am happy to think that I shall live among
Lizzie's angels for three weeks. I was living with children at
Carolside. Emily de Viry had her little boy and girl with her, the
latter a little blossom of only a year old, born, poor thing! after her
father's death. Mrs. Mitchell's eldest son was at home from Eton for the
holidays, a very fine lad of sixteen, devoted to his mother, who seems
to me only to exist through and for him and his brother.... I am to act
while I am in Edinburgh, which, of course, is a good thing for me.
E---- has written to Henry Greville to take the house in Eaton Place
which they looked at together when he was in London, so I feel sure they
will be home in the spring. Adelaide has written a letter to Henry
Greville, which he has sent on to me, assuring him of that fact.... She
is enchanted at the idea of coming home. Good-bye, my dear. I will write
this minute to Mrs. Mulliner to put you in my room, if you go to Orchard
Street.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
PERTH, Monday, September 27th.
MY DEAR HAL,
I do not understand your note of the 15th, which has only just reached
me here on the 27th. You ask me if I "have not written to Lizzie Mair to
ascertain her whereabouts." Lizzie is in Edinburgh. I spent the Monday
and Tuesday of last week with her, and return there the day after
to-morrow, after acting two nights in this lovely place, whither I came
on from Dundee yesterday. I shall remain three weeks with Lizzie, and
shall see Cecilia and Mr. Combe during some part of that time; for,
though they did not return to Edinburgh, as I supposed they would on Dr.
Combe's death, they are expected home daily now, and will certainly be
there in the first days of October. I wrote from Dundee to Mulliner to
make up my bed and do everything in the world for you that you required;
and I wrote to you from Dundee, telling you that I had done so. I have
now again this minute written to the worthy woman, reiterating my orders
to that effect; so sincerely hope you will be properly attended to in my
house. Jeffreys, I am sorry to say (sorry for my sake, glad for his),
has found an opportunity of placing himself permanently with a gentleman
with whom he lived formerly, and has written to tell me of this; so that
you will not have his services while you are in Orchard Street. He was
an excellent, quiet, orderly servant, and I am sorry I shall not have
the advantage of his service during the remainder of my time here.
I am engaged to act with Mr. Murray in Edinburgh for ten nights, from
the 16th to the 25th of October. Before that I shall return for three
nights to Glasgow, where my last three nights were very profitable, and
the manager wishes to have me again. This will probably be next week,
the 5th, 6th, and 7th of October. Perhaps I may go for a night or two to
Greenock from Glasgow before I return to Edinburgh, but this is
uncertain.
From the 12th to the 15th I am going with Mrs. Mitchell, who will take
me up in Edinburgh to visit the H---- D----s at Ardoch, and after that
shall be stationary for ten days.
PERTH, Tuesday, 28th.
In spite of my innate English horror of untidiness, and my maid's innate
Irish tendency to it, I should be very sorry if she were to leave me.
She has lived with me many years, and I really love as well as esteem
her. She has been more than a servant--she has been a friend to me; and
I cried some tears at Carolside at the thought of parting with her....
I will tell you another point of agreement between Mrs. Mitchell and
myself, which I also discovered accidentally. Emily de Viry was laughing
at her for a peculiar mode of dress she has adopted, always wearing a
cap upon her pretty head, and never uncovering her arms and neck, though
both are beautiful, in evening dress. I was appealed to for my opinion
about the costume of middle-aged gentlewomen, and could, of course, only
state that it had been my own determination for some years past never to
uncover either my arms or neck, or wear any but sober colors as soon as
I was forty years old. This is one of those trivial points of agreement
which sometimes indicate more resemblance between people's natures than
a similarity of opinions on important matters, which may co exist with
considerable difference in matters of taste and feeling. Mrs. Mitchell,
like myself, does not think that stark nakedness would be indecent among
decent savage people, but does object to full-dress semi-nudity among
indecent civilized ones.
Lady M---- did not come with me to Dundee. I would not let her, though
her proposal to do so was certainly dictated partly by her affection for
me.... But I would not let her come with me _strolling_, though I should
only have been too glad of her company. She paints beautifully.... Alas!
an empty heart is a spur and goad to drive one to the world's end,
unless the soul be full of God, and the mind and time of wholesome
occupation.
The Mairs are excellently kind to me, and I look forward to my stay with
them with great pleasure. Cecilia and Mr. Combe are expected daily in
Edinburgh, so I shall lose little or nothing of them.
I am just disappointed of a charming opportunity of seeing the lovely
country round Perth. Lady Ruthven has sent me a very pressing invitation
to spend some days at Freeland, seven miles from here; but I am obliged
to return to Edinburgh to-morrow, for which I am very sorry, as I
should have liked to go to Freeland, the whole neighborhood of which is
beautiful. Good-bye. God bless you.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
29, ABERCROMBIE PLACE, EDINBURGH, Saturday, October 2d.
DEAR HAL,
I received a note from Mrs. Mulliner yesterday morning, expressing her
readiness to receive you, and her full intention to devote herself to
you to the very utmost of her ability. I am sorry Jeffreys will not be
there to help you in getting cabs, etc.; but he has found a chance of
placing himself permanently with a former master, and, of course, is
glad of the opportunity to do so.
I have not yet seen any of the Coxes. Cecilia and Mr. Combe only arrived
last night from Hull, having come by Antwerp. They have both got the
influenza, and are very much knocked up, and I have seen neither of them
yet....
The railroad running through the Castle Gardens has cruelly spoiled
them, of course, though from the depth of the ravine, at the bottom of
which it lies, it is not seen from Prince's Street; but its silver wake
floats up above the highest trees of the banks, and the Gardens
themselves are ruined by it. I have a sadly affectionate feeling for
every inch of that ground.... I do not admire Scott's monument very
much. It is an exact copy in stone of the Episcopal Throne in Exeter
Cathedral, a beautiful piece of wood carving. The difference between the
white color of the statue and the gray shrine by which it is canopied is
not agreeable to me. I should have liked it better if the figure had
been of the same stone as the monument, and so of the same color.
In Edinburgh it is never so much the detail of its various parts that
arrests my attention and enchants me especially, as the picturesque and
grand effect of its several parts in juxtaposition with each other--the
beautiful result of all its features together, the striking and romantic
whole. The Carlton Hill seems to me more covered with buildings than I
thought it was; but I believe you have seen it since I have, so that I
do not know how to answer your question about it.
In determining to act in Edinburgh I followed the advice of the Mairs,
who were, of course, more likely to be able to judge of the probable
relative success of reading or acting here, and who counselled the
latter.... Good-bye, dear.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
[My cousin Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Mrs. Harry Siddons,
married Major Mair, son of that fine old officer, Colonel Mair,
Governor of Fort George. During several protracted seasons of
foreign service, one of the banishments to which his military duty
condemned Arthur Mair was a remote and lonely outpost on the
furthest border of our then hardly peopled Canadian territory--a
literal wilderness, without human inhabitants. Here, alone, with the
small body of men under his command, he led a life of absolute
mental and intellectual solitude, the effect of which upon his
nervous system was such that, on his return to civilized existence,
the society of his fellow-creatures, and all the intercourse of busy
city life, affected him with such extreme shyness and embarrassment
that in his own native town of Edinburgh, for some time after his
return to it, he used to avoid all the more frequented
thoroughfares, from mere nervous dread of encountering and being
spoken to by persons of his acquaintance--an unfavorable result of
"solitary confinement," even in a cell as wide as a wilderness.]
STAR HOTEL, GLASGOW, GEORGE SQUARE, October 4th.
DEAR HARRIET,
My acquaintance with the H---- D----s dates only from my last visit to
Glasgow, when they joined our party at this hotel, and returned to
Carolside with us. The lady is a daughter of a family who are intimate
friends of T---- M----, and was presented to me when a girl in London
some years ago. She has since married, and I met her again, with her
husband, here a little while ago.... They both show a very kind desire
to be civil and amiable to me, and I like them both, and her especially.
They have spent the last five years of their lives wandering together
about Europe and Asia. They have no children, and have travelled without
any of the servants that generally attend wealthy English people abroad
(courier, lady's-maid, valet); and have come home so in love with their
wild untrammelled life, that the possession of their estate at Ardoch,
and their prospect of an income of many thousands a year, seem equally
to oppress them as undesirable incumbrances, requiring them to sacrifice
all their freedom, and submit to all sorts of civilized conventional
constraints from which they have lived in blessed exemption abroad, and
to adopt a style of existence utterly repugnant to their nomadic
_no_-habits. G---- D----, on their return to Ardoch, proposed to his
wife to take up their abode in two of the rooms of their fine large
house, and let the rest to some pleasant and amusing people; for, he
said, they never could think of living in that house by themselves....
Your distress about my readings I answered with a slight feeling that it
was a pity you should begin to be anxious and troubled about the details
of a project that may possibly never be carried out after any fashion. I
paid heed, nevertheless, to your observations, of which I admit the
force, and am so far from having determined to abide by any theoretical
convictions of my own upon the subject that I shall be guided entirely
by Mr. Mitchell's opinion about the best manner of giving my readings;
for, as I do it for money, I shall do it in the way most likely to be
profitable. At the same time, I shall certainly use my best endeavor to
have the business so arranged as to desecrate as little as possible the
great works of the master, in the exposition and illustration of which I
look for infinite pleasure and profit of the highest order, whatever my
meaner gain by it may be....
[I am afraid my excellent and zealous manager, Mr. Mitchell, was
often far from satisfied with the views I took of the duty imposed
upon me by reading Shakespeare. My entire unwillingness to exhaust
myself and make my work laborious instead of pleasant to me, by
reading more than three, or at the utmost four, times a week, when
very often we could have commanded very full rooms for the six; my
pertinacious determination to read as many of the plays (and I read
twenty-five) as could be so given to an audience in regular
rotation, so as to avoid becoming hackneyed, in my feeling or
delivery of them, appeared to him vexatious particularities highly
inimical to my own best interests, which he thought would have been
better served by reading "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and the
"Merchant of Venice," three times as often as I did, and "Richard
II.," "Measure for Measure," and one or two others, three times as
seldom, or not at all. But though Mr. Mitchell could calculate the
money value of my readings to me, their inestimable value he knew
nothing of.]
Pray now, my dearest friend, consider that you too often challenge with
affectionate anxiety for me that future which I may never live to see;
and yet do not imagine that I consider your apprehensions and
suggestions, were they a thousand times more numerous and more
ridiculous, if that were possible, as in any way unsatisfactory; but
highly the contrary, as testifying to that most comfortable fact that
you, my beloved Hal, are the very same you ever have been to me, an
excellent, precious, devoted, wise, most absurd, and every way
invaluable friend. God bless you.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
GREENOCK, October 9th.
I am very glad I did the duty of a hostess, dear Hal, though only in
your dreams, and received you hospitably in my own house, though I was
not conscious of it. As for that fool Mulliner and that brute Jeffreys,
I will hang them up together on one rope when I return, for allowing you
to be so horribly disturbed....
If we are in Orchard Street together again, you shall put the Psyche [a
fine cast of the Neapolitan truncated statue given to Mr. Hamilton, Mrs.
Fitzhugh's brother, by the King of Naples] in whatever light you please;
but, as I am certain not to return to London till the third week in
November, if then, I feel as if, when I get back to Orchard Street, I
should have nothing to do but pack up my things preparatory to removing
to King Street, where I hope to get Mrs. Humphreys to receive me until I
leave England.
I shall certainly not be six weeks in Orchard Street when I return, and
the Psyche will desert the drawing-room when I do, and resume her post
on the staircase, where she always seemed to me to look down on dear
Mrs. Fitzhugh's morning visitors, as they came up the stairs, with a
divinely mild severity of expression, as if she felt the bore about to
be inflicted by their presence on the inmates of her house, the mortals
under her heavenly care.
You ought to find two letters from me at Bannisters, for I have
directed two to you there. How I wish I could be with you and dear
Emily! Give my love to her, and believe me
Ever yours,
FANNY.
[I was at this time occupying my friend Mrs. Fitzhugh's house in
Orchard Street, Portman Square, which I rented for a twelvemonth
from her. It was a convenient small house in an excellent situation,
and one whole side of the drawing-room was covered with a clever
painting, by Mr. Fitzhugh, of the bay and city of Naples--a pleasant
object of contemplation in London winter days.]
GLASGOW, October 12th.
MY DEAREST HAL,
I should very much wish that you would give me one of Loyal's children
[a fine Irish retriever of my friend's]; but do not again end any letter
to me so abruptly, without even signing your name, because it gives me a
most uncomfortable notion that I have not got all you have written, that
you have, by mistake, put only a part of your letter in your envelope,
and so sent it off unfinished to me.
I left Carolside, to my great regret, yesterday. I came in Mrs.
Mitchell's carriage to within fourteen miles of Edinburgh, where I
joined the railroad. She accompanied me thus far, and then returned
home. At Edinburgh I transferred myself immediately to the Glasgow
train, and so came on, without being able to ascertain whether Cecilia
Combe and Lizzie Mair are at home or not.
Mrs. Mitchell and Lady M----, and a party of their friends, are coming
to Glasgow to-morrow. They will stay at the same inn where I am, and go
to the theatre every night that I play, so that I do not feel yet as if
I had taken leave of them; and Lady M---- intends going on with me to
Dundee, where I am going to act when I have finished my engagement here
and at Greenock.
Is it not too provoking that the York manager has at length found out
that he can afford to give me my terms, and now writes to me to beg that
I will go and act in York at the beginning of next month? which, of
course, I cannot, as I am to be three weeks in Edinburgh before I return
to England.
Neither you nor Dorothy mention your winter plans. Have you none made
yet?...
I do not think, dear Hal, that you have ever heard me express a positive
rejection of phrenology, for the simple reason that, never having taken
the pains thoroughly to study it, it would ill become me to do so. At
the same time, you know, I have at various times lived much in the
society of the principal professors of the science in this country, and
they have occasionally taken pains to explain a good deal of their
system to me. I have also read a good many of their books, and have had
a great personal affection and esteem both for Mr. Combe and his
excellent brother. But, in spite of all this, and my entire agreement
with almost all their physiological doctrines, phrenology, as I have
hitherto seen and heard it, has a positive element of inconclusiveness
to me, and I doubt if by studying it I should arrive at any other
opinion, since all the opportunities I have enjoyed of hearing it
discussed and seeing it acted upon have left my mind in this frame
regarding it. I believe myself to have no prejudice on this subject, for
I have longed all my life to know something positive and certain about
this wonderful machine which we carry about with us, or which carries us
about with it, and incline to agree with the views which the
phrenological physiologists entertain on the subjects of temperament and
general organization. But, in spite of all this, phrenology, as I hear
it perpetually referred to and mixed up by them with their habitual
speech (it forms indeed so completely the staple of their phraseology
that one had need be familiar with the terms to follow their usual
conversation), produces no conviction on my mind beyond the recognized
fact that a nobly and beautifully proportioned head indicates certain
qualities in the human individual, and _vice versa_.
It appears to me merely a new nomenclature for long-known and admitted
phenomena; and beyond those, they seem to me to involve themselves in
contradictions, divisions, and subdivisions of the brain, so minute and
various, and requiring so much allowance for so many conditions, as
considerably to neutralize each other, and render the result of their
observations, which to them seems positive and conclusive, to me
uncertain and unsatisfactory.
There are many things which my intellectual laziness prevents my
examining, which I feel sure, if I did examine, would produce positive
results on my mind; but phrenology does not seem to me one of these. If
it had been, I should have adopted it, or felt the same sort of belief
in it that I do in mesmerism, about which, understanding nothing, I
still cannot resist an impression that it is a real and powerful
physical agency.... Now you must draw your own conclusions as to the
causes of this state of mind of mine with regard to phrenology. The
phrenologists, you know, say I am deficient in "causality"--and
undoubtedly it is not my predominant mental quality; but I incline to
think that I _could_ think, as well as the average number of professing
phrenologists, if I would take the trouble, for I have known some
amongst them who certainly were anything but logical in their general
use of their brains.