of them with infinite anxiety, and pray, "whenever I remember to be
holy," that this dreadful war may now soon come to a close, and they be
spared further anguish. [Colonel Richard Taylor, Miss S----'s nephew,
was with the army in the Crimea.]
I am ever most affectionately yours,
FANNY.
BATH, Monday, December 9th.
MY DEAREST HAL,
... You cannot think how forlorn I feel, walking in and out of our room
here without farewell or greeting from you; and yet the place where you
have been with me has a remembered presence of your affectionate
companionship that makes it pleasant, compared to those where I go for
the first time and have no such friendly association to cheer me. My
disposition, as you know, is averse to all strangeness, and takes little
delight in novelty; and the wandering life I lead compels me to both,
forbidding all custom and the comfortable feeling of habit and use,
which make me loath to leave a place where I have stayed only three
days, for another where I have never stayed at all.
I was not very happy at Oxford. The beautiful place impressed me sadly;
but that was because I was very unwell and sad while I was there. The
weather was horrible; a dark greasy fog pervaded the sky the whole time.
The roads were so muddy as to render riding odious, and the streets so
slimy that walking was really dangerous as well as disagreeable. Still,
I saw some things with which I was much charmed, and have no doubt that,
if I could but have had an hour's daylight, I should have been delighted
with the place altogether.
E---- S---- came down from London on Thursday morning, and took me to
see the fine collection of drawings by Raphael and Michael Angelo at the
Taylor Institute, and I spent three hours there in a state of great
enjoyment. I wandered in ignorant wonderment through the Bodleian
Library and the Ashmolean Museum, with A---- M----, who seemed quite as
little familiar with the learned treasures of the place as myself. He
took me to see his own college, Christ Church, with which, especially
the great dining-hall, I was enchanted; and with the fine avenue at the
back of the colleges, and the tower and cloisters of Magdalen.
I have no doubt I should enjoy another visit to Oxford very much; but I
was miserable while I was there, and could not do justice to the beauty
of the place. The inn where I stayed was dirty and uncomfortable, and
dearer than any I have yet stayed at. My sitting-room was dingy and
dark, and I was glad when I came into this large light sitting-room of
ours again, out of which, however, they have removed the piano--a loss I
have not thought it worth while to replace, as I go to Cheltenham on
Wednesday afternoon.... You ask what I would sell my "English Tragedy"
for. Why, anything anybody would give me for it. It cannot be acted, and
nobody reads plays nowadays--small blame to them....
Ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
CHELTENHAM, Thursday, 12th.
MY DEAREST HAL,
I found your loving greeting on my arrival here yesterday evening. I am
troubled at your account of yourself.... What _things_ these bodies of
ours are! I sometimes think that, when we lay them down in the earth, we
shall have taken leave of all our sinfulness; and yet there are sins of
the soul that do not lodge in the flesh, though the greater proportion
of our sins, I think, do: and when I reflect how little control we have
over our physical circumstances, what with inherited disease and
infirmity, and infirmity and disease incurred through the ignorant
misguidance of others during our youth, and our own ignorant
misdirection afterwards, I think the miseries we reap are punishment
enough for much consequent sin; and that, once freed from the "body of
this death," we shall cease to be subject to sin in anything like the
same degree.... It is very muddy underfoot; but if the sky does not
fall, I shall ride out on my old post-horse at twelve o'clock.
Certainly your question, as to where the wise men are who are to
encounter the difficulties of legislation for this country next spring,
was an exclamation--a shriek--and not an interrogation, addressed to
_me_ at any rate; for though I suppose God's quiver is never empty of
arrows, and that some _are_ always found to do His work, it may be that
saving this country from a gradual decline of greatness and decay of
prosperity may not be work for which He has appointed hands, and which
therefore will not be done....
I declined being in the room we formerly occupied in this house, because
I feared, now the days are so much shorter, that it would be
inconveniently dark. I am in a charming light room, with three windows
down to the ground, and a bewitching paper of pale green, with slender
gold rods running up it, all wound round with various colored
convolvuli. It's one of the prettiest papers I ever saw, and makes me
very happy. You know how subject I am even to such an influence as that
of a ridiculous wall-paper....
I have had no conversation with Mr. Churchill; but, in spite of my
requesting him not to be at the trouble of moving the piano into my
present sitting-room, as I am here for so short a time, I find it
installed here this morning. He certainly is the black swan of
hotel-keepers; and how kind and indulgent people are to me
everywhere!... My young devotee, Miss A----, acquiesced very cordially
in all my physical prescriptions for mental health, and did not seem to
take at all amiss my plunging her hysterical enthusiasm first into
perspirations, and then into cold baths.
Her maid has been with me this morning, with lovely fresh flowers--a
bunch of delicious Persian lilac, and two flower-pots full of various
mosses, smelling so fragrantly of mere earthy freshness that no perfume
ever surpassed it.
The only other greeting she sent me was some pretty lines of Victor
Hugo's, with which I was unacquainted, and which I send you, not for
their singular inappropriateness as applied to me, but for their
graceful turn:
"Tu es comme l'oiseau pose pour un instant
Sur des rameaux trop freles,
Que sent ployer la branche, et qui chante pourtant
Sachant qu'il a des ailes;"
which I translate impromptu thus:
Thou art like the bird that alights, and sings
Though the frail spray bends, for he knows he has wings.
God bless you, my dear. Love to dear Dorothy.
Ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
WORCESTER, Tuesday, 17th.
MY DEAREST HAL,
Those pretty French lines I sent you are by Victor Hugo, a man of great
genius, but almost the most exaggerated writer of the exaggerated modern
school of French style. Some of his poems, in spite of this, are fine
and charming; and, indeed, there is not much better French to be found
than the prose of some of the French writers of novels and essays.
Madame George Sand, Merimee, Ste. Beuve, write with admirable simplicity
and force.
I sent my young adorer back, in return for her quatrain, Millevoye's
lines on the withered leaf--a far more appropriate image of my
peregrinations. These, no doubt, you know, ending with four pretty
lines--
"Je vais ou va toute chose,
Sans me plaindre, ou m'inquieter
Ou va la feuille de rose,
Et la feuille de laurier."
... You ask after my audiences. At Bath the same singular-looking
gentleman, who is beautiful as well as singular looking, and wonderfully
like my uncle John, came and sat at my last morning reading in the same
conspicuous place. He is a helpless invalid, and was wheeled in his
chair through my private room, to the place which he occupied near my
reading-stage. His name is C----, and he and his wife were intimate
friends of John Kemble's, and sent to beg I would see them after the
reading. As I had to start immediately for Cheltenham, this was
impossible, which I was very sorry for, as I should like to have spoken
to that beautiful face.
You impress upon me the value of the blessing of health, and I think I
estimate it duly; for although I said it mattered little how I was, I
meant that, isolated as I am, my ill health would affect and afflict
fewer persons than that of some one who had bonds and ties of one sort
and another.... My work goes on without interruption, and I think with
little variation in my mode of performing it; and I make efforts of this
kind, sometimes under such circumstances of physical suffering and
weakness, that I am almost hard-heartedly incredulous about the
difficulty of doing _anything_ that one _has to do_--which is not very
reasonable either, for the force of will, the nervous energy, which
carries one through such efforts, depends itself on physical conditions,
which vary in different temperaments, and in the same temperament at
different times.
The first day of my arrival in Cheltenham I received a note from Miss
A----'s mother--a very touching expression of thanks for what she calls
my kindness to her child, full of anxiety about the training and guiding
of her mind and character, accepting with much gratitude my offer of
personal acquaintance with her daughter (personal acquaintance is an
excellent antidote to enthusiasms), whom she brought herself the next
day to see me.... In our conversation I insisted much on the importance
of physical training, and commended to her, after the highest of all
help (without which, indeed, none other can avail), systematic and
regular exercise, and systematic and sedulous occupation, both followed
as a positive duty; all possible sedatives for the mind and imagination;
and the utmost attention and care to all the physical functions. I gave
her the wisdom which I have bought; but she will buy her own, or I am
much mistaken.... I went on Sunday to the cathedral to hear afternoon
service, but was late, and did not get within the choir, but sat on a
chair in a lonely corner of the transept, and followed the service from
without the pale. Yesterday, at my usual hour for exercise, I went to
walk by the river; but rain came on, and I finished my walk under the
cloisters, which rang from end to end with the shrill shouts of a parcel
of school-boys, let out for their noon-day recess. Last night the
weather was fearful, a perfect storm of wind and rain, so that, though
my audience was small, I was agreeably surprised to find I had any at
all.
I have not seen the letter you refer to in the _Times_, but think it
very likely Charles Greville should write such a one, as I heard him say
he should give the public a piece of his mind on the subject, and he
occasionally does write in the _Times_, and his views are precisely what
you describe those of "Carolus" to be.
Good-bye, dear. I have a _bundle_ of violets from you this morning, for
which many thanks. Love to dear Dorothy.
Ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
18, ORCHARD STREET, December 7th.
I have no patience with letters at all, my dear Hal. I am conscious half
the time I write that I don't say clearly what I mean, and when I get
your answers, I have that disagreeable conviction confirmed. Perhaps it
is just as well, however; for the sort of feverish impatience I have
very often while writing, because of the insufficiency of the process to
express, as rapidly and distinctly as I wish, my thoughts, is so
excessive, as to be childish. I am content, henceforth, to answer you to
the best of my _circumstances_ (for it is not to the best of my ability,
really) on any subject you please. It is enough that my words are of use
to you, and God knows it signifies nothing at all that I cannot conceive
how they should be so. You have misunderstood me, or I misexpressed
myself, with regard to the ground of my objecting to write upon the
subjects we have lately discussed in our letters. I do not think it
irreverent to advert to the highest subjects at any time. That which is
most profoundly serious to me, is always very near my thoughts--so much
so that it mingles constantly with them and my words in a manner rather
startling and shocking, I think, to people whose minds are parcelled out
into distinct and detached divisions--pigeon-holes, as it were--for the
sacred and profane, and whose seriousness never comes near their mirth.
This is not at all the case with me, with whom they are apt to run into
each other very frequently; seriousness is perhaps more habitual to my
mind than folly, but my laughter and jests are not very remotely allied
to my deepest convictions.
My instincts of vital truth being a very essential part of me, _must_
go with me to the playhouse, rehearsals, and performances, and all the
intermediate time of various occupations, so that it is not my
"veneration" which is shocked at the superficial mode in which I have
handled these themes, while writing of them to you, but my
"conscientiousness," which suggests the whole time that such matters
should not be spoken of without sufficient previous process of
reflection, and that it is behaving irreverently to _anything_ that
requires consideration to talk of it crudely without any. If the
sincerest and most strenuous mental application can hardly enable us to
arrive at glimpses of the truth upon those subjects, there is an
impertinent levity in uttering mere _notions_ about them which have been
submitted to no such test. You do _think_, and though you come to no
conclusions, are perfectly entitled to utter your _non_-conclusiveness;
but I have a cowardly dread of the labor of thinking steadily and
consecutively upon these difficult subjects, and I have certainly not at
present the proper leisure or opportunities for doing so, and therefore
but for your last letter I should say it was a _shame_ to speak upon
them. But since the vague suggestions which arise in my mind upon these
only important matters comfort and are of any use to you, then, my
beloved friend, they have a value and virtue, and I shall no longer feel
reluctant to utter them.
I have written this last page since my return from Covent Garden
Theatre, where I have been enacting the dying scene of Queen Katharine,
and doing what I am as sorry for as I can be for anything of that kind.
At the conclusion of my performance the audience called for me, but I
was seized with a perfect nervous terror at the idea of going on, and
left the house as quickly as possible.
All the other actors will be called for, and will go on, and I shall
incur unpleasant comments and probably have very untrue motives
attributed to me for having, as it must appear, ungraciously withdrawn
myself from the public call. This does not trouble me very deeply, but I
am sorry for it because I am afraid it will be misinterpreted and
noticed, and considered disrespectful, which it was not....
Give my dear love to Dorothy. I hope to be with you on the 3d of
January.
I am ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
18, ORCHARD STREET, Tuesday, 8th.
Now I must lump my answer to you, my dearest Hal--a thing that I hate
doing; but here are three unanswered letters of yours on my table, and I
shall never get through the payment of them if one letter may not do for
the three, for every day brings fresh claims of this sort, and I feel a
kind of smothering sensation as they accumulate round me, such as might
attend one's gradually sinking into a well: what though Truth were at
the bottom--if one was drowned before one got to her?...
Send the pamphlet on "Bread" to Lenox, and write to Elizabeth Sedgwick
about it--that is pure humanity, and I see you do not think I shall copy
the recipe and measurements correctly. (It's pouring with rain, and
thundering as loud as it knows how in England)....
My spirits are fair enough, though the first evening I spent alone here,
after I came back, tried them a little, and I had a cowardly impulse to
rush in next door [my friends the Miss Hamiltons, Mrs. Fitzhugh's
sisters, were my neighbors] to be with some friendly human beings; but I
reflected that this would never do--those who are alone must learn to be
lonely.... This was the only _black_ hour I have had since my return to
London....
I have finished the first volume of Grote's "History of Greece." O ye
gods, ye beautiful gods of Greece, that ever ye should have lived to
become such immortal bores through the meritorious labors of an eminent
English historian! Thank Heaven, I have done with what has hitherto been
always the most attractive part of history to me--its legendary and
poetical prologue (I hate the history of my dear native land the moment
the Commons begin to vote subsidies), and I do not think I ever before
rejoiced in passing from tradition to matter-of-fact in an historical
work. I have no doubt, now we have come down from Olympus, I shall enjoy
Mr. Grote's great work much more.
I have read through Morier's "Hadji Baba in England," while eating my
dinner, in order not to eat too fast, a precaution I learned years ago
while eating my lonely dinners at Butler Place day after day. (Of course
Grote was too heavy as sauce for eating.) At other seasons I have read
through another number of the _Dublin Magazine_, and during my
hair-combings continue to enchant myself with "Wilhelm Meister." I am
reading the "Wanderjahr," having finished the "Lehrjahr." I never read
the former in German before; it is altogether a wonderful book. I
practise before breakfast, and I have drawn for two hours every day
lately. I have received and returned visits, and when my daily exercise
takes its place again among my occupations, my time will be full, and I
hope to bless God for my days, even now.... This answers you as to my
spirits....
I had a letter from E---- yesterday, desiring me to forward my book to
them, and talking of still remaining where they are, as long as the heat
is endurable and the children continue well.
I had a note from Lady Duff Gordon yesterday, who is just returned from
Rome, where she saw my sister frequently and intimately; and she seems
to think Adelaide very tolerably resigned to remain where she is,
especially as she has found a cupboard in her palazzo, which has so
delighted her that she is content to abide where such things are rare
and she has one, rather than return home where they are common and she
might have many. In the mean time, seats in the next Parliament are, it
seems, to go begging, and Charles Greville has written to E---- again to
come over and stand.... I disapprove of this incessant urging E---- to
return, especially as the Grevilles only want him to become a British
legislator in order that she may open a pleasant house in London and
amuse them....
You ask me what I shall do with regard to America. If I act there, I
shall do so upon the plan I started with here; _i.e._, a nightly
certainty, to be paid nightly: it is what the managers send to offer me,
and is, without doubt, the safest, if not the most profitable plan....
I am diverted with your rage at Liston [the eminent surgeon under whose
care I had been]. I must say, I wish he had been a little more attentive
to me professionally....
My singing neighbors--I suppose lodgers for the season--have departed,
or, at any rate, become silent; I hear them no more, and make all my own
music, which I prefer, though sometimes of an evening, when I am not
singing, the lonely silence round me is rather oppressive. But my
evenings are short; I dine at seven, and go to bed at ten; and in spite
of my endeavors to achieve a better frame of mind, I do look with
positive joy at my bed, where, lying down, the day will not only be
past, but forgotten.... It is difficult for me not to rejoice when each
day ends....
Dear Hal, I dined with the Horace Wilsons, and in the evening my father
came there. He said Miss Cottin, with whom he was to have dined, was
ill, and had put him off; that he had only come up from Brighton the day
before, and was going back to-morrow--to-day, _i.e._; that he was not
well, but that Brighton agreed with him, and that he should steam about
from Brighton to Havre and Dieppe and Guernsey and Jersey, as that
process suits him better than abiding on dry land....
ORCHARD STREET, Thursday, June 10th.
Of course, dear Harriet, I know that the officials of our public
charities cannot be thrown into paroxysms of pity by every case of
misery brought before them; they would soon cease to be relieving
officers, and have to be relieved themselves. But "there is reason in
roasting of eggs," whatever that may mean: our forefathers knew, and so
did Touchstone, for he talks of "an ill-roasted egg, done all o' one
side." I assure you when I went to the workhouse to see after that
wretched young girl who was taken up for sleeping in the park because
she had nowhere else to sleep in, though I cried like a Magdalene, and
talked like a magpie, I felt as if I was running my head against a stone
wall all the time I appealed to the authorities to save her from utter
ruin. The only impression I seemed to make upon them was that of
surprise that any one should take to heart in such wise the case of some
one not belonging to them. Perhaps the worthy overseer thought me her
sister in another sense from that in which I am so, from the vehemence
with which I urged upon him the imperative duty of snatching so young a
creature from the doom to which she seemed inevitably delivered over.
All their answers reminded me of Mephistopheles' reply to Faust's
frantic pity for Gretchen, "She is not the first."
Now to answer your last question. I do not intend to cut the manager of
the Princess's Theatre; but I do not intend either to make any
application to him. If he offers me a reasonable weekly engagement, I
will take it, and make him a curtsey; if he does not, I will do without
it, and live as I best may on what I have already earned, and what I
can earn in the provinces, till the spring....
C---- came up from Bath to London with me, and after talking politics,
art, and literature, began upon religion, which, not being
controversially disposed, I declined, commending him to the study of the
newspaper, and, curling myself up in one of those charming long seats of
the Great Western railroad coaches, went to sleep, and so accomplished
the latter part of my journey, in spite of that dangerous proximity, an
unconverted heterodox Protestant. Farewell, my dearest Hal.
I am ever as ever yours,
FANNY.
18, ORCHARD STREET, December 10th.
DEAREST HAL,
... I had a horrible day yesterday, from which I am not yet recovered
this morning. It wound up by the shock of hearing of Liston's death.
There was something in my last intercourse with him that made this
unexpected intelligence very painful; and then his wonderful strength,
his great, noble frame, that seemed to promise so long and vigorous a
hold on life, made his sudden death very shocking. When I met him last
in the park, he told me he was very ill, and had been spitting up a
quart of blood after walking twenty-five miles, and that there was
something all wrong with his throat; in spite of which, I was greatly
shaken by the news of his death, which was occasioned by aneurism in the
throat.
I am marking "Wilhelm Meister" for you; it is a book that interests me
almost more than any other I could name; it is very painful, and I know
nothing comparable to the conception and execution of Mignon. The whole
book is so wise, so life-like, so true, and so merciless in its truth,
that it is like life itself, endured by a stoic, an illustration of what
existence would be to a thoughtful mind without faith in God--that faith
which alone can bear us undespairing over the earth, where the mere doom
of inevitable change would be enough to fill the human soul with
amazement and anguish.
Goethe's books always make me lay a terrified and aching hold on my
religious faith; they show me, even as life itself does, the need of
steadfast belief in something better, if one would not lie down and die
from the mere sense of what has been endured, what is endured, and what
must be endured.
I forgot to tell you that I have had proposals again from the Norwich
manager, and from Bath and Bristol; and yesterday the Princess's Theatre
potentate called upon me; but upon my telling him that I should prefer
transacting my arrangements with him in writing rather than _viva voce_,
he took himself off....
God bless you, dear. Give my dear love to Dorothy.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
18, ORCHARD STREET, December 11th, 1847.
MY DEAR HAL,