lost. Mrs. Mulliner left him in the area this morning, and as for nearly
four hours now we have seen and heard nothing of him, there is no doubt
that he has made his escape into the wide world of London, and I fear
there is no chance of his finding his way back again. I should not have
liked his being at Jenny Wade's [a cottager at Ardgillan, whom Miss
S---- pensioned]. In the present condition of Ireland, I should scruple
to quarter a dog in a poor person's cabin, giving them for his support
what they must needs feel might go some way towards the support of some
starving human being. In the stable or kennel of a rich house there is
sure to be that much spent, if not wasted, which may warrant the
addition of such another member to the establishment; and in your
sister's stables and offices there can be no wretch who would look with
envy upon the meal eaten by my dog. I would rather a great deal have
carried him to America, if I could have managed it, than left him with
any one but yourself. At Lenox everything, as well as everybody, has
plenty to eat; and he would have been cared for, for his own sake by the
young folks, and for mine by the old. But I fear he is so far provided
for that I shall never see him again, for his uneducated senses will
surely never suffice to guide him back to Orchard Street....
You will be glad, because I am very glad, that poor Hero has come back;
and I think his doing so exhibits considerable _nous_ in a brute so
brutally brought up as he has been. He returned with a bit of broken
string round his neck; so somebody had already appropriated him, and
tied him up, and he had effected his escape, and come home--much, I
think, to his credit. I was delighted to see him, and poor Mulliner
almost did a fit.
Good-bye, dearest Hal. Give Dorothy my best love. You shall have your
boots before I come, if Mr. W---- should call for them.
Ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
BRADFORD, YORKSHIRE, Thursday, 10th.
It is my opinion, my dear Hal, that you will see me again and again, and
several times again, before I leave England. I have just come to this
place from Manchester, and have to-day received offers of three new
engagements, and have every prospect therefore of being detained until
the beginning of next month, and so beholding your well-beloved visage
before I set off on my travels; though, whenever I do go, it will
certainly be from Folkestone, and not Dover.
I left the Scotts this morning with deep regret. Mr. Scott has not been
well during this last visit I have paid them, and I was much shocked to
hear that he is threatened with disease of the heart, sudden death at
any moment. His wife and her sisters are excellently kind to me; she has
but two faults, an excessive _humility_ and an excessive
_conscientiousness_; they wouldn't be bad for virtues, would they?
Mr. Scott's intercourse is delightful to me; his mind is deep and high,
logical and practical, humorous and tender, and he is as nearly _good_
as a man can be. He has a still, calm manner and slow, quiet speech,
very composing to me. I wish it might be my good fortune to see more of
him.
Farewell, my dear. I begin to feel as if I never should get off; and
instead of the pathetic uncertainty as to when we might meet again,
which was beginning to affect me with melancholy, have fallen into a
sort of reckless indifference about you: so sure am I that we shall see
each other, maybe, _ad nauseam_ mutually, before I go. Give my love to
Dorothy.
Ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
[The remarkable man of whom I have spoken in this letter, John
Alexander Scott, was one of the most _influential_ persons I have
ever known, in the strongest sense of the word. I think the term,
"an important human being," by which Sydney Smith described Francis
Horner, might justly have been applied to Mr. Scott. The intimate
friend of Edward Irving, Carlyle, and Maurice, he affected, to an
extraordinary degree, the minds and characters of all those who were
familiar with him; and his influence, like all the deepest and most
powerful human influence, was personal.
He delivered various courses of lectures, principally, I think, in
Edinburgh--Dante being one of his favorite themes; and "Three
Discourses" upon religious and moral subjects are, I think, all that
remain in printed form of many that he delivered at various times
and at various places. They are, as is always the case in the
instance of his order of mind and character, though striking and
powerful, very inadequate samples of his spirit and intellect.
A very just tribute to his uncommon qualities and extraordinary
power of influence appeared, after his death, in the _Spectator_. It
was undoubtedly written by one who knew Mr. Scott well, and bore
testimony, as all who ever had that privilege have done, to the
singular force and virtue of his nature, and its penetrating and
vivifying power over others.
My last intercourse with _him_ was a letter from _her_, hailing in
his name the hope of seeing me at Montreux, in Switzerland, whither
I was going in the expectation of finding them. The letter broke off
in the middle, and ended with the news, calamitous to me, as to all
who knew him, of his death. At the time when I visited them at
Manchester, he had accepted some Professorship in the then newly
established Owen's College.]
WOODSLEY HOUSE, Leeds.
I think, my dear Hal, your wish that I might see more of Mr. Scott and
his family is likely to be realized. To my great pleasure, I received a
note from him the other day, telling me that there was a general desire
in Manchester to have the "Midsummer Night's Dream" given with
Mendelssohn's music. He wrote of this to me, expressing his hope that it
might be done, and that so I might be brought to them again; adding the
kind and cordial words, "All here love you"--which expression touched
and gratified me deeply; and I hope that the reading may take place, and
that I shall have the privilege of a few days' more intercourse with
that man.
The name of the noble woman whose impulse of humanity so overcame all
self-considerations, of whom he told me, was Miss Coutts-Trotter.
[Nursing a person who was in a state of collapse in the last stage of
cholera, she had sought to bring back the dying woman's vitality by
embracing her closely, and breathing on her mouth her own breath of life
and love.] ...
I can tell you of no other publications of Mr. Scott. It is the despair
of his wife, sisters, friends, and admirers that so few of his good
words have been preserved. But in these days of printing and publishing,
proclaiming and producing, I am beginning to have rather a sympathy with
those who withhold, than with those who utter, all their convictions....
I have always held that what people could put forth from them in any
kind was less valuable than what they could not--what they were
compelled to retain--the reserve force of their mind and nature; and
thinking this, as I do, more and more, I regret less and less such
instances as this of Mr. Scott's apparently circumscribed sphere, by the
non-publication of his lectures and discourses. He is daily teaching a
body of young men; and to such of them as are able to receive his
teaching, he will bequeath some measure of his spirit. It is doubtless a
pleasure, and a help too, to read the good books of good men; but there
are many good men who write good books, and he is among the few who
cannot. He has suffered from ill health, particularly difficulties in
the head; and though his gift of extemporaneous speech is remarkable, he
cannot compose for printing without labor of the brain which is
injurious to him. In this he also resembles Dr. Follen, of whom he
reminds me, who wrote little, and published less.
I do not know anything of Miss Muloch--that, I think, is the name of the
writer whose book you mention as having notices of my uncle and aunt
introduced into it....
Publicity is the safest of all protections, as in some sense freedom is
also. Women, I suppose, will find this out, as the people are finding it
out; but in the beginning of their working out their newly discovered
theories into rational practice, people in general, and women in
particular, will do some wonderful things. The women especially, having
for the most part had hitherto little positive or practical knowledge of
life, will be apt "to make all earth amazed" with the first performances
of various kinds of their new experience; but it is all in the day's
work of the good old world, which is ordained to see reasonable and good
men and women upon its ancient, ever-blooming surface, in greater
numbers henceforward than hitherto: but the beginnings are strange....
Yours ever,
FANNY.
2, PARK PLACE, HALIWELL LANE, MANCHESTER.
MY DEAREST HAL,
At the conclusion of my reading yesterday evening, letters were put into
my hands containing no fewer than six offers of new engagements; and,
situated as I am, I cannot reject this money. I have endeavored, in
answering these invitations, to get the readings all as close to each
other as possible, and I now think that I may get off about the 22d; but
the same sort of interruption to my plans may occur again, and thus I
may be delayed, though I have got my passport and have even written to
bespeak rooms at an hotel....
My dearest Hal, you have written to me three days running, and good part
of each of your letters is disquisition on _Calvinism_.... Thus I have
here lying by my side nine pages of your handwriting. I have just
swallowed my dinner, after travelling from London, and sit down to
discharge part of my debt, and in half an hour (I look at the watch, and
it says ten minutes) I must go and dress myself for my reading, and here
still will be the nine pages unanswered to-morrow morning, when I must
set off for Manchester.
You talk of the logic of my mind, my dear friend, but my mind has no
logic whatever; and in so far as that is concerned, Calvinism need look
for as little help as hindrance from me. I do not believe I can _think_;
and from the difficulty, not to say impossibility, I find in doing so, I
don't think I would if I could; and if that is not logical, neither is
that most admirable of all chains of reasoning, "Je n'aime pas les
epinards," etc. There, now, here comes my maid to interrupt me, and
there's an end of epistolary correspondence; I must go and dress.
Now it is to-morrow morning, dear Hal, and until the breakfast comes I
can talk a few more words with you.... But don't you know that one
reason why I appear to you to have positive mental results, is because I
have no mental processes? I never think; for, as a lawyer would say,
whenever I do, it seems to me as if there was no proposition (a few
arithmetical and scientific ones excepted _perhaps_, like two and two
are four) which does not admit of its own reverse. I don't say this is
so, but it seems so to me; and whenever I attempt to put the notions
that float through my brain, on which I float comfortably enough over
infinite abysses of inconclusion, into precise form and shape, there is
not one of them that does not seem to be quite controvertible; nor did I
ever utter or assume a position of which I felt most assured while
uttering it, without perceiving almost immediately that it was
assailable on many sides. This is extremely disagreeable to me; the
labor necessary to establish any mental or moral proposition simply on
intellectual grounds, appears to me so great that I hate the very idea
of it, and then I hate myself for my laziness, and wonder if some
"judgment" does not await wits that will not work because work is
tiresome. But if I appear to you to have strong convictions, it is
because I have strong mental and moral impulses, instincts, intuitions,
and never allow myself to weaken them by that most debilitating process,
long-continued questioning, leading to no result.
You ask me what book I read now to put me to sleep--why, Murray's
"Handbook for France;" ditto, for Savoy, Switzerland, and Piedmont;
ditto, for the North of Italy, and the foreign "Bradshaw." These furnish
my lullaby now-a-nights.
I read yesterday, in the railroad carriage, a little story translated
from the French by Lady (Lucy) Duff Gordon, with which I was greatly
touched and delighted. It costs one shilling, and is called "The Village
Doctor," and is one of those pale green volumes headed, "Reading for
Travellers," to be found on all the railroad bookstands. I thought it
charming, and a most powerful appeal to the imagination in behalf of
Roman Catholicism.
I have already told you what route I intend to take, and I think we
shall be a week or ten days going from Paris to Turin, coasting all the
way from Marseilles, as I wish to do.
I do not read at Manchester to-day, but Halle, who conducts the music,
wishes me to attend a rehearsal, which, of course, I am anxious to do at
his request. On Monday I read the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and on
Tuesday "Macbeth," at Mr. Scott's desire. To-morrow I shall, I hope,
hear Mr. Scott read and comment again on the Bible, and I am looking
forward with great pleasure to being with him and Mrs. Scott again.
No doubt there are several more direct ways of getting to Nice than
coasting round, as I propose doing, but I wish to see that Mediterranean
shore, and have no desire to travel hard....
Adelaide Procter [the daughter of my friends was to be my companion in
this journey] has no enthusiasm whatever for me; she does not know me at
all, and I do not know her at all well; and I do not think, when we know
each other more, that she will like me any better. Her character and
intellectual gifts, and the delicate state of her health, all make her
an object of interest to me.... I love and respect Mr. Procter very
much; and her mother, who is one of the kindest-hearted persons
possible, has always been so good to me, that I am too glad to have the
opportunity of doing anything to oblige them. I am going to Turin
because, as they have entrusted their daughter to me, I will not leave
her until I see her safe in the house to which she is going; I owe that
small service to the child of her parent.... Dear Harriet, if you will
come to Switzerland this summer, nothing but some insuperable impediment
shall prevent my meeting you there. If you are "old and stiff," I am
_fat, stuffy, puffy, and old_; and you are not of such proportions as to
break a mule's back, whereas if I got on one I should expect it to cast
itself and me down the first convenient precipice, only to avoid
carrying me to the next.
I spent Thursday evening with Mrs. Jameson; she had a whole heap of
people at her house, and among them the American minister and his
niece--Philadelphians....
I do not pity Mrs. Jameson very much in her relations with Lady Byron. I
never thought theirs a real attachment, but a connection made up of all
sorts of motives, which was sure not to hold water long, and never to
hold it after it had once begun to leak. It was an instance of one of
those relationships which are made to _wear out_, and as it always
appeared so to me, I have no great sympathy with either party in this
foreseen result.
I pity Mrs. Jameson more because she is mortified than because she is
grieved, and I pity Lady Byron because she is more afraid of mortifying
than of giving her pain. It is all very _uncomfortable_; but real sorrow
has as little to do with it now as real love ever had.... I am writing
to you at Mr. Scott's, where I arrived yesterday afternoon, the
beginning of my letter having been written in London, the middle at
Bradford, and the end here.
It is Sunday afternoon: our morning service is over. I am sorry to say I
find both Mr. and Mrs. Scott quite unwell, the former with one of those
constitutional headaches from which he has suffered so much for many
years. They incapacitate him for conversation or any mental exertion,
and I am a great loser by it, as well as grieved for his illness....
Farewell.
Ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
[Lucy Austin, the clever and handsome daughter of a cleverer and
handsomer mother--Mrs. John Austin, wife of the eminent lawyer and
writer--excited a great deal of admiration, as the wife of Sir
Alexander Duff Gordon, in the London society of my day. Loss of
health compelled her to pass the last years of her life in the East;
and the letters she wrote during her sojourn there are not only full
of charm and interest, but bear witness to a widespread personal
influence over the native population among whom she lived, the
result of her humane benevolence towards, and kindly sympathy for,
them.
One or two amusing incidents occurred with regard to my reading of
the "Midsummer Night's Dream" at Manchester. The gentleman who had
the management of the performance wrote to me offering me forty
pounds for my share of it--a very liberal price, which I declined,
my price for one of my readings being invariably _twenty_ pounds. At
the end of the performance one of the gentlemen of the committee
came to pay me my salary, which having done, he expressed himself,
in his own behalf and that of his fellow-managers, greatly obliged
to me for the liberality I had exhibited (honesty, it seems to me)
in not accepting double my usual terms when they offered it to me.
"And," said he, drawing a five-pound note from his pocket-book, "I
really--we really--if you would--if you could--allow us to offer you
five pounds in addition----" The gentleman's voice died away, and he
seemed to be becoming nervous, under the effect of the steadfast
seriousness with which, in spite of the greatest inclination to
burst out laughing, I listened to this strange proposal. The
five-pound note fluttered a little between his finger and thumb, and
for one moment I had a diabolical temptation to twitch it from him
and throw it into the fire. This prompting of Satan, however, I
womanfully resisted, and merely civilly declined the gratuity; and
the gentleman left me with profuse acknowledgments of the service I
had rendered them and my "extreme liberality."
My friend Charles Halle, coming in just at this moment, was thrown
into fits of laughter at the transaction, and my astonishment at it.
Halle was a friend of ours, an admirable musician, and a most
amiable man, and one of the best masters of our modern day. His
style was more remarkable for sensibility, delicacy, and refinement,
than for power or brilliancy of execution; but I preferred his
rendering of Beethoven to that of all the other virtuosi I ever
heard; and some of the hours of greatest musical enjoyment I have
had in my life I owe to him, when he and his friend Joachim, playing
almost, as it seemed, as much for their own delight as ours,
enchanted a small circle of enthusiastic and grateful listeners,
gathered round them in my sister's drawing-room.
Mr. Scott's comment upon my reading gave me great pleasure. "It was
good," he said, "from beginning to end; but you _are_ Theseus."
Oddly enough, a similar compliment was paid me in the same words at
the end of a reading that I gave for the Working Men's Institute in
Brighton, when my friend, Mr. R----, kindly complimenting me on the
performance, said, "It was all delightful: but you _are_ Henry V.,"
and whatever difference of opinion may have existed among my critics
as to my rendering the tragic and comic characters of Shakespeare's
plays, I think the heroic ones were those in which I ought to have
succeeded best, for they were undoubtedly those with which I had
most sympathy.]
FULFORD, YORK, Saturday, 3d.
MY DEAREST HAL,
I am amused at your gasping anxiety to be told where I am going, as if I
was about to depart into some non-postal region, where letter of yours
should never reach me more, instead of spending the next week in
Edinburgh, which surely you did know.... My dearest Hal, J---- W---- has
just come into my room, bringing the news of the Emperor of Russia's
death. It has seized me quite hysterically, and the idea of the possible
immediate cessation of carnage and desolation, and war and wickedness
(in that peculiar shape), has shaken me inexpressibly, and I am shocked
at the tears of joy that are raining from my eyes, so that I can't see
the paper on which I am writing to you; and if I can thus weep my
thanksgivings for the news of this man's death, who have no dear son, or
brother, or husband on that murderous Crimean soil, think of the shout
of rejoicing which will be his only dirge throughout France and England.
I am shocked at the exclamation of gratitude which escaped my lips when
I heard the announcement. Poor human soul, how terrible that its sudden
summons from its heavy and difficult responsibilities should thus be
hailed by any other human creature! and yet how many will draw a long
breath, as of a great deliverance, at this news!
I can hardly write at all, my hand shakes so, and I cannot think of
anything else; and yet I had purposed to send dear Dorothy some account
of her family here, who are all well and most kind to me. I will wait a
while....
DEAREST DOROTHY,
I sit here in this pleasant room [I was in Miss Wilson's home], the
prospect from which is improved by the rising of the river, which
presents the appearance of a lake. The snowdrops hang their white
clusters above the brown mould of the garden beds, and watery rays of
sunshine slant shyly across the meadows: the whole is very sweet and
peaceful, and I was enjoying it extremely, when the report of this
imperial death broke like a peal of thunder over it all, as unexpectedly
as terribly.
To-morrow I am to go and hear afternoon service at the minster, which I
have never seen. Everything is done for my pleasure and satisfaction
that can be thought of, and I feel very grateful for it. The thought of
the old love and friendship between my dead kindred and the former
owners of this house makes the place pleasant with a saddish
pleasantness to me.
Dear Dorothy, I wish you were here; I write you a very affectionate
kiss, and am
Yours,
FANNY.
GEORGE HOTEL, BANGOR, Monday, 20th.
MY DEAREST HAL,
If you had given way to your impulse of accompanying us to Wales, I do
not think you could have returned under three days, or that even by that
time you could in any degree have recovered from the effect of our
to-day's passage. Every creature on board was sick except M---- and
myself....
"A quelque chose malheur est bon," and the indisposition I was suffering
all yesterday preserved me from the lesser evil of sea-sickness. This
was my experience the last time I crossed the Atlantic, when my voyage
was preceded by a week of serious illness, and during the whole passage
I did not suffer from sea-sickness....
On our arrival here, we found that the excellent Miss Roberts [mistress
of the charming hotel at Bangor] had treated us exactly as the last
time; _i.e._, "A party were just finishing dinner in our sitting-room.
She was very sorry, very sorry indeed; but it would be ready for us in
less than a quarter of an hour;" and we were thrust provisionally into
another, where letters, books, workboxes, india-rubber shoes, and
smoking-caps attested that we had no business, and suggested that their
owners were in all probability the "party" finishing off their dinner in
our bespoken apartment, which gave me an inclination to toss all the
things in the room about, and poke the smoking-caps into the
india-rubber shoes; but I didn't. What innumerable temptations I do
resist! I assured Miss Roberts I was very ill-tempered, and proceeded to
make assurance doubly sure by blowing her up sky-high, to which she
merely replied with a Welsh "Eh! come si ha da far?" and declared that
if I was in her place I should do just the same, which excited my wrath
to a pitch of fury.
We had some lunch, and then set off to the quarries. The afternoon was
bright and beautiful, and we were charmed with the drive and all we
saw, M---- never ceasing to exclaim with fervent satisfaction at the
comfortable, cheerful, healthy, well-to-do appearance of the people and
their habitations--a most striking and suggestive contrast to all we had
seen in poor Ireland, certainly....
We have just done dinner, and M---- is fast asleep on the sofa, with
"Pilgrim's Progress" in her arms. My head aches, and my nerves twitch
with fatigue and pain, but I am better than I was yesterday.
The trains from this place are very inconvenient. The one we have to go
by starts from here at nine, and does not reach London till half-past
seven in the evening, so we shall have a wearisome day of it....