Greville, the latter having invited himself to join us. I spent a rather
dolorous three hours hearing indifferent music, indifferently sung, and
admiring compassionately the mental condition of such a man as my friend
Henry, who must needs divert himself with such an entertainment, having,
moreover, taste enough to know what is really good, and yet persuading
himself that this was not bad, only because to him anything is better
than spending an evening quietly alone at home.... On the other hand,
several things struck me a good deal. The music of the opera was poor,
but it was not worse than much of Donizetti's music, and it was composed
by an Englishman. It was put together with considerable skill and
cleverness, but was far less agreeable than the poorest Italian music of
the same order; and it was well executed, by a good orchestra, chiefly
composed of English musicians. The principal singers were all English,
and some of them had fine voices, and though they seldom used them well,
they did so occasionally; and, upon the whole, did not sing much worse
than Italian performers of the same class would have done. The choruses
and concerted pieces, also all given by English people, were well
executed, though stupid and tiresome in themselves; and certainly the
progress our people have made in music in my time, to which the whole
opera testified, is very great. The audience was very numerous, and
though the galleries were crowded, and it is Christmas-time, and the
after-piece was the pantomime, there was not the slightest noise, or
riot, or disturbance, even among "the gods," and the pieces in the opera
which were encored, were redemanded in the polite fashion of the Queen's
Theatre, by a prolonged, gentle clapping, without a single shout or
shriek of "Hangcor!" or "Brayvo!" This is a wonderful change within my
recollection, for I remember when, during the run of a pantomime, the
galleries presented a scene of scandalous riot and confusion; bottles
were handed about, men sat in their shirt-sleeves, and the shouting,
shrieking, bawling, squalling, and roaring were such as to convert the
performance of the first piece into mere dumb show.
All this is well, and testifies to an improved civilization, and not to
a mere desire to ape those above them in society; for that could hardly
suffice to persuade these Drury Lane audiences that they are amused by a
tiresome piece tiresomely acted, and tedious musical strains, of which
they cannot carry away a single phrase, which sets nobody's foot tapping
or head bobbing with rhythmical sympathy, being all but devoid of
melody.
I am very fond of music, but I would rather have sat out the poorest
play than that imitation opera; the scenery, dresses, decorations, etc.,
were all very good, and testified to the much more cultivated taste of
the times in all these matters.
On Sunday I dined with the Horace Wilsons, whom I had not seen for some
time, and for whom I have a very great regard, ... Returning home, I
stopped at dear old Miss Cottin's.... I am much attached to her, and
think, next to my own dear Aunt Dall, she is one of the sweetest and
most unselfish creatures I have ever known, and love her accordingly....
I left London for this place on Monday morning, and having a sulky
deliberate cab-driver, arrived at the station just five minutes after
the train had departed. This kept me waiting from 11.30 till 3.30,
during which time Hayes, thinking I should be hungry, went out
privately, and coming back with a paper of biscuits, pointed out a
raspberry tart at the bottom of it, and said, "Here is a little tart I
have got on purpose for you." Was not that courtly and kind of her?
I act here till Thursday. Friday and Saturday I act at Yarmouth; and I
shall return to town on Sunday, unless the Vice-Chancellor should allow
the manager to open the Cambridge Theatre, which is not generally
allowed during term; if he should, I shall act there on Monday night,
and only return to town Tuesday morning.
I have promised Mrs. Grote to go down to the Beeches on Saturday, 29th,
and shall only stay there till Monday, 31st. This is all I know of
myself at present, except that I am
Affectionately yours,
FANNY.
DEAR DOROTHY,
Here is my love with my pen and ink, which I flatter myself are as
wretchedly bad as those of any gentlewoman in the universe, and St.
Leonard's.
You may be impertinent to Hal; she is only a bully, and will give in if
you try: if you don't like to try, as you are meek and lowly, I'll try
for you, when I come down, if you'll give me your power-of-attorney and
instructions, without which I don't suppose I should know how to be
impertinent. Farewell, dearest Dorothy. I love you entirely for your own
sake; I don't like mixing up matters, and thank God for you, for
Harriet's sake, as often as I think of you both.
BEGUN AT NORWICH, FINISHED AT YARMOUTH, Friday, 21st.
I do but poorly at Norwich, my dearest Hal, in body and estate, having a
wretched influenza, sore throat, sore chest, and cold in my head,
through which I am obliged to stand bare-necked and bare-armed,
bare-headed and almost bare-footed (for the thin silk stockings and
satin shoes are a poor protection), on the stage, to houses, I am sorry
to say, as thin as my stockings; so that the money return for all this
fatigue, discomfort, and expense is but inconsiderable, _i.e._ by
comparison, for undoubtedly it is a fair harvest for such grain as I
sow.
My mind rather thrives upon this not too prosperous condition of my body
and estate, inasmuch as I naturally make some effort to be courageous
and cheerful, and therefore do better in that respect than when I was
cheerful and needed no courage, while you were spoiling me at St.
Leonard's with all your love for me, and Dorothy with all her love for
you.
In half an hour I leave this place for Yarmouth, where I act to-night
and to-morrow. The manager has made an arrangement with me to act at his
theatres at Lynn and Cambridge next week, so that instead of returning
to London the day after to-morrow, I shall not do so until Friday,
28th....
We have dismal weather, snow on the ground, and blackness in the skies.
My poor Hayes has got the influenza too, and goes hacking and snivelling
at my heels like an unpleasant echo. I shall be thankful for both our
sakes when our winter work is over, for the exposure is very great; and
though, of course, she has much less of it than I have, she bears it
worse, catches colds oftener, and keeps them longer than I do....
I should, I believe, find it very difficult indeed to be economical, and
yet I suppose that if I felt the duty and necessity of it I should be
more so than I am. The saving of money without any special motive for it
does not appear to me desirable, any more than self-denial without a
sufficient motive--and I do not call mere mortification such--appears to
me reasonable. I do not feel called upon to curtail the comforts of my
daily life, for in some respects it is always miserable, and in many
respects often inevitably very uncomfortable; and while I am laboring to
spare sacrifice and disgrace to others, I do not see any very strong
motive for not applying a sufficient portion of the money I work so hard
for, to make my wandering and homeless life as endurable as I can....
Your mode of living is without pretension, and without expenditure for
mere appearances; and I feel certain that appearances, and not the
positive and necessary comforts of life, such as sufficient firing and
food, are the heaviest expenses of gentlefolks.... If the life is more
than meat or raiment, which I quite agree to, meat and raiment are more
than platters and trimmings; and it is the style that half the time
necessitates the starvation....
Now I am at Yarmouth; though t'other side the page I was at Norwich. The
earth is white, the sea is black, the sky gray, and everything most
melancholy. I act here to-night, and to-morrow and on Sunday go on to
Lynn, where I act Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; and Thursday at
Cambridge. On Friday I go back to town, and on Saturday to Mrs. Grote's.
I am in just such a little room as those we used to pass in walking
along the Parade at St. Leonard's--a small ground-floor room, about
sixteen feet square, the side facing the sea, one large bow-window in
three compartments; just such a gravel terrace before it as the one we
walked up and down together; and the very same sea, dark,
neutral-tinted, with its frothing edge of white, as if it was foaming at
the mouth in a black convulsion, that your eyes look upon from your
window. It is in some respects exactly like St. Leonard's, and again as
much the reverse as sad loneliness is to loving and delightful
companionship.
I have a sort of lost-child feeling whenever I go to a strange place,
that very few people who know me would give me credit for; but that's
because they don't know me.
God bless you, dear. Kiss dear Dorothy for me.
I am ever yours,
FANNY.
YARMOUTH, 22d.
My very dear and most sententious friend, I never _do_ run the time of
my departure for railroad trains "to the chances of free streets and
fast-driving cabmen;" I always allow amply for all accidents, as I have
a greater horror of being hurried and jostled even than of being too
late. But my driver, the day I left town, was, I think, inexperienced
as well as sulky. He was very young, and though I was too ignorant of
city localities to direct him positively, my recollection of the route
which I had traversed before seemed to me to indicate that he did not
take the most direct way.
You ask me what I think of E----'s note, and if it seems "wonderfully
aristocratic" to me. Aristocratic after the English fashion, which,
thank God, is far from being a very genuine fashion--their "airs" being
for the most part _adulterated_ by the good, sound, practical common
sense of the race, as their blood is _polluted_ with the wholesome,
vigorous, handsome, intelligent vital fluid of the classes below them.
No real aristocrat would have mentioned Miss ----'s maiden name as if
she was a woman of family--(_nee_--_geborne_; that was a delightful
German woman who said she wasn't _geborne_ at all)--for Miss ----, being
only a banker's daughter, was, of course "nobody."
The real aristocratic principle is not--I say again, thank God!--often
to be found among us islanders of Britain. In Austria, where the
Countess Z---- and the Princess E---- are looked upon as the earth under
the feet of the Vienna nobility, the one being Lord S----'s daughter and
the other Lord J----'s, they have a better notion of the principle of
the question. There were only four families in all the British peerage
who could have furnished their daughter with the requisite number of
quarterings for one of those Austrian alliances.
In folly, as in wisdom, a principle is at least consistent; but that the
aristocratic pretensions of our upper class can never be: for our gentry
is of more ancient date in a great many instances, and our nobles are,
fortunately for themselves and us, a mixed race, admitting to the
temporary fellowship of social companionship and the permanent alliance
of matrimony, wealth, influence, beauty, and talent from every grade
beneath them; therefore they are fit to endure, and will endure longer
than any other European aristocracy, in spite of Prince Puckler Muskau's
epigram against the most "mushroom of nobilities."
The "airs" they do give themselves are, therefore, very droll, whereas
the similar pretensions of an Austrian _creme de la creme_ are
comprehensible and consistent--folly without a flaw, and rather
admirable in its kind as a specimen of human absurdity.... I have the
honor of being slightly acquainted with E----'s portrait painter. He is
a Scotch gentleman, of very great merit as an artist. He was in Rome the
winter I was there, and I met him in society, and saw several of his
pictures. He was rather injured artistically, I think, by living with
mad lords and silly ladies who used to pet and spoil him, which sort of
thing damages our artists, who become bitten with the "aristocratic"
mania, and destroy themselves as fine workmen in their desire to become
fine gentlemen.
There was a story in Rome about Lady C---- and the German princess, Lady
D----, going one day to Mr. ----'s studio and finding his fire out,
falling down on their own fair knees, and with their own fair hands
kindling it again for him. After this, how could he paint anything less
than a countess? Jesting apart, however, my dear Hal, the terms Mr. ----
asks are very high; and though he is a very elegant and graceful
portrait-painter, I would rather, upon the whole, sit to Richmond, whose
chalk drawings are the same price, and whose style is as good and more
vigorous.
You ask me why Mrs. ----, who is undoubtedly a clever woman, is also
undoubtedly a silly one?
If I wished to be saucy, which I never do and never am, I should tell
you, being an Irishwoman, that it was because she was Irish, and,
therefore, capable of a sort of intellectual bull; but, unluckily,
though ingenious, this is not true. The sort of ability or abilities, to
which we give the ill-defined name of "cleverness," is entirely distinct
from common sense, judgment, discretion; so distinct as to be almost
their opposite. I think a clever woman requires quite an unusual portion
of the above qualities not to be silly, _because_ she is clever. This
may sound paradoxical, but if you think it worth examining, you will
find it true.
I am very cold and very comfortless in these horrible theatres, and
shall be glad to get back to King Street, and as soon as I am there will
take measures about my readings, which I think I had better begin in
earnest with.
There are no rocks on the beach here, like that pretty little reef that
runs right out before your windows, but three miles from the shore there
is a fatal stretch of sand where wrecks are frequent, and all along
which ominous white clouds are springing up from the inky surface of the
wintry sea, like warning ghosts. It is very dreary and dismal looking;
but, nevertheless, as I have no rehearsal, I am going out to walk. Kiss
Dorothy for me. I am yours and hers most affectionately,
FANNY.
I have had another foolish note from Lady ---- about "Jane Eyre"--the
universal theme of conversation and correspondence--in which, speaking
of herself, she says that she is "_dished and done for, and gone to the
dogs_;" and then accuses the writer of "Jane Eyre" of not knowing how
ladies and gentlemen talk--which I think, too; but the above expressions
are a peculiar example of refined conventional language, which perhaps
the author of that very remarkable book would have hesitated to ascribe
to a lady--or a gentleman.
BIRNHAM BEECHES, Sunday, March 20th,
and KING STREET, Friday, February 1st, 1848.
Now I have two long letters of yours to answer, and my own opinion is
that they will not be answered until I get to the Beeches, and have a
few hours' breathing-time, for I am just now setting off for Cambridge,
where I act to-night. To-morrow I travel to Bury St. Edmund's, and act
there the same night; and Friday I shall just get to London in time for
my dinner, and the next morning I go down to Birnham.... The air of St.
Leonard's, though you call it cold and sharp, was mild compared with the
raw, sunless climate I have since _enjoyed_ at Lynn and Yarmouth; a
bracing climate always suits me better than a relaxing one.... I cannot,
however, agree with you that there is more "excitement" in rehearsing
every morning, and sitting in a dull, dirty, hired room, and acting that
everlasting "Hunchback" every evening, than in being your mounted escort
to Bex Hill and Fairlight church, and reading to you either "Mary
Stuart" or "Jane Eyre." I am glad to see that L---- and I agree about
what always seems to me the most improbable part of the latter very
remarkable book. I am slow in determining in my own mind the course that
other women would pursue in exceptionally difficult circumstances; many
of them would doubtless display an amount of principle of which I should
be quite incapable; and so I am glad that L---- thinks, as I do, that
Jane Eyre's safest course would have been to have left Thornfield
without meeting her lover's despair.
Fever at the gates of Ardgillan, my dear Hal, must indeed make you
anxious; but as your family have moved thence, I suppose they will not
return while there is any danger to be apprehended from doing so.
And now, dear Hal, from the Beeches, where I arrived yesterday
afternoon, and am now writing to you.... I have really kept both cold
and cough down wonderfully, considering the horrible weather and
exposure I have gone through travelling, and in those damp barns of
theatres. Hayes will certainly not recover as soon as I do, for she has
all the aversion of her class to physic and spare diet....
Charles Greville is here, and I asked him your question, if he had ever
published any other book but the one upon Ireland you are reading. He
said no. He has, however, written pamphlets and newspaper articles of
considerable ability upon political subjects. I have been taking a long
walk, and will now resume my letter to you. I perceive I have brought
Charles Greville and his book into the middle of what I was telling you
about those poor young Norwich actors.
A very pretty and charming niece of my dear friend, Mr. Harness, is
married and living within a short distance of Lynn, and as I had not
time to stay with her now, I have promised to go back into Norfolk to
visit her, and at the same time I have promised to act a night for these
poor people if they can get their manager's leave for me to do so.
My dear Hal, this letter seems destined to pass its unfinished existence
on the railroads. I am now at this present moment finishing it in my
King Street lodging, to which I returned yesterday afternoon, Mrs. Grote
being seized in the morning with one of her attacks of neuralgia, for
which she is obliged to take such a quantity of morphine that she is
generally in a state of stupor for four and twenty to thirty hours. The
other guests departed in the morning, and I in the afternoon, after
giving her medicine to her, and seeing her gradually grow stupid under
its effect. Poor woman, she is a wretched sufferer, and I think these
attacks of acute pain in her head answerable for some of the singularity
of her demeanor and conversation, which are sometimes all but
unaccountably eccentric.
You ask me if I saw anything on that bitter cold journey, as I went
along, to interest me. You know I am extremely fond of the act of
travelling: being carried through new country excites one's curiosity
and stimulates one's powers of observation very agreeably, even when
nothing especially beautiful or noteworthy presents itself in the
landscape. I had never seen the east counties of England before, and am
glad to have become acquainted with their aspect, though it is certainly
not what is usually called picturesque. The country between Norwich and
Yarmouth is like the ugliest parts of Holland, swampy and barren; the
fens of Lincolnshire flat and uninteresting, though admirably drained,
cultivated, and fertile. Ely Cathedral, of which I only saw the outside,
is magnificent, and the most perfect view of it is the one from the
railroad, as one comes from Lynn.
Lynn itself is a picturesque and curious old town, full of remains of
ancient monastic buildings. The railroad terminus is situated in a
property formerly part of a Carthusian convent, and the wheelwrights'
and blacksmiths' and carpenters' cottages are built partly in the old
monkish cells, of which two low ranges remain round a space now covered
with sleepers, and huge chains, and iron rails, and all the modern
materials of steam travel.
Cambridge, of course, I saw nothing of. On the road between it and Bury
St. Edmund's one passes over Newmarket heath, the aspect of which is
striking, apart from its "associations." Bury St. Edmund's--which is
famous, as you know, for its beautiful old churches and relics of monastic
greatness--I saw nothing of, but was most kindly and hospitably sheltered
by Mr. Donne, who, being now the father of sons, is living in Bury in
order to educate them at the school where he and my brothers were as boys
under Dr. Malkin. [William Bodham Donne, my brother John's school and
college mate, for more than fifty years of this changeful life the
unchanged, dear, and devoted friend of me and mine--accomplished scholar,
elegant writer, man of exquisite and refined taste, and such a _gentleman_
that my sister always said he was the _original_ of the hero of
Boccaccio's story of the "Falcon."]
God bless you, my dear. I have a pain in my chest, and bad cough, which
don't prevent my being
Yours most truly,
FANNY.
29, KING STREET, Thursday, 3d.
It is no longer the bitter cold morning on which you asked me how I was,
and now I cannot for the life of me remember how or where I was on that
said 26th. Oh, it was last Wednesday, and I was travelling from Lynn to
Cambridge, and I was pretty well, and had a pleasant railroad trip, the
gentlemen in the railroad carriage with me being intelligent and
agreeable men, and one of them well acquainted with my brother John, and
all his Cambridge contemporaries. Though it was cold, too, the sun
shone, and threw long streaks of brightness across the fens of
Lincolnshire, producing effects on the unfrequent and in themselves
unpicturesque farm-houses, with their groups of wintry skeleton-trees
exactly like those in the Dutch pictures, which are, for the most part,
representations of just such landscapes.
Mitchell sent me yesterday a box at the French theatre for a morning
performance of the "Antigone," with Mendelssohn's choruses. Previous to
the performance of the Greek drama, they played, very inappropriately it
seems to me, his music of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the effect
of it upon my nerves was such that, though screened by the curtain of
the box, and my sobs drowned by the orchestra, I thought I should have
been obliged to leave the theatre. It is the first time that I have
heard a note of Mendelssohn's music since his death.
How thankful I am I did not attempt that reading at the Palace! What
should I have done there, thus convulsed with pain and sorrow, in the
midst of those strange people, and the courtly conventions of their
condition! Oh, what a bitter, bitter loss to the world, and all who
loved him, has been the death of that bright and amiable great genius!
The Greek play was given in the true Grecian fashion, and was
interesting and curious as a spectacle. The French literal translation
of the grand old tragedy seemed at once stilted and bald, and yet I
perceived and felt through it the power of the ancient solemn Greek
spell; and though strange and puppet-like in its outward form, I was
impressed by its stern and tragic simplicity. It is, however, merely an
archaeological curiosity, chiefly interesting as a reproduction of the
times to which it belongs. To modern spectators, unless they are poets
or antiquarians, I should think it must be dull, and so I find it is
considered, in spite of Mendelssohn's fine music, which, indeed, is so
well allied in spirit to the old tragedy, that to most listeners I dare
say it has something of the dreamy dreariness of the drama itself.
Mrs. Jameson was with me, and it was chiefly on her account that I did
not give way to my impulse to leave the theatre.
Good-bye. God bless you, my dear.
Ever yours,
FANNY.
[The foregoing letter refers to my having declined to read the
"Antigone" at Buckingham Palace, under the following circumstances.
My father was desired to do so, but his very serious deafness made
his reading anything to which there was an occasional accompaniment
of music difficult to him, and he excused himself; at the same time,
unfortunately for me, he suggested that I should be applied to to
read the play. Accordingly, I received a message upon the subject,
but was obliged to decline the honor of reading at the Palace, for
reasons which had not occurred to my father when he answered for my
accepting the task he had been unable to undertake. I had never yet
read at all in public, and to make my first experiment of my powers
before the queen, and under circumstances calculated to increase my
natural nervousness and embarrassment, seemed hardly respectful to
her, and almost impossible to me.
Then, for my first attempt of the kind, to select a play accompanied
by Mendelssohn's music, of which I had not heard one bar since the
shock of his death, was to incur the almost certain risk of breaking
down in an uncontrollable paroxysm of distress, and perhaps being
unable to finish my performance.
What I endured at the St. James's Theatre, on the occasion I have
spoken of in this letter, confirms me in my conviction that I
couldn't have attempted what was proposed to me with a reasonable
chance of being able to fulfil my task.
I was told afterwards that I had been guilty of "disloyal
disobedience to a royal command,"--a severe sentence, which I do not
think I had deserved, and found it painful to bear.]
KING STREET, Saturday, February 9th, 1848.
Mrs. Jameson is no longer in the house with me, dearest Hal. She went
away the other day from the theatre, where we were hearing Mendelssohn's
"Antigone" together, and will probably not return for some time; when
she does, I shall most likely be out of town.