and going thither before the time for his beginning, found him
standing like a forlorn disconsolate giant in the middle of the
room, gazing about him. "Oh, Lord," he exclaimed, as he shook hands
with me, "I'm sick at my stomach with fright." I spoke some words of
encouragement to him, and was going away, but he held my hand, like
a scared child, crying, "Oh, don't leave me!" "But," said I,
"Thackeray, you mustn't stand here. Your audience are beginning to
come in," and I drew him from the middle of his chairs and benches,
which were beginning to be occupied, into the retiring-room
adjoining the lecture-room, my own readings having made me perfectly
familiar with both. Here he began pacing up and down, literally
wringing his hands in nervous distress. "Now," said I, "what shall
I do? Shall I stay with you till you begin, or shall I go, and leave
you alone to collect yourself?" "Oh," he said, "if I could only get
at that confounded thing" (his lecture), "to have a last look at
it!" "Where is it?" said I. "Oh, in the next room on the
reading-desk." "Well," said I, "if you don't like to go in and get
it, I'll fetch it for you." And remembering well the position of my
reading-table, which had been close to the door of the
retiring-room, I darted in, hoping to snatch the manuscript without
attracting the attention of the audience, with which the room was
already nearly full. I had been used to deliver my reading seated,
at a very low table, but my friend Thackeray gave his lectures
standing, and had had a reading-desk placed on the platform, adapted
to his own very tall stature, so that when I came to get his
manuscript it was almost above my head. Though rather disconcerted,
I was determined not to go back without it, and so made a half jump,
and a clutch at the book, when every leaf of it (they were not
fastened together), came fluttering separately down about me. I
hardly know what I did, but I think I must have gone nearly on
all-fours, in my agony to gather up the scattered leaves, and
retreating with them, held them out in dismay to poor Thackeray,
crying, "Oh, look, look, what a dreadful thing I have done!" "My
dear soul," said he, "you couldn't have done better for me. I have
just a quarter of an hour to wait here, and it will take me about
that to page this again, and it's the best thing in the world that
could have happened." With which infinite kindness he comforted me,
for I was all but crying, at having, as I thought, increased his
distress and troubles. So I left him, to give the first of that
brilliant course of literary historical essays with which he
enchanted and instructed countless audiences in England and America.
The last time I saw Thackeray, was at a dinner at my dear friend,
Mr. Harness'. As we were about to seat ourselves at table, I being
between Mr. Harness and Thackeray, his daughter Annie (now Mrs.
Ritchie) was going to place herself on the other side of her father.
"No, no," said our dear host, "that will not do. I cannot have the
daughter next the father." And Miss Thackeray was invited to take
another place. She had just published her story, "The History of
Elizabeth," in which she showed herself to have inherited some of
the fine elements of her father's literary genius. As we sat down, I
said to him, "But it appears very evident, I think, that the
daughter _is_ to be _next_ to the father." He looked at me for a
moment with a beaming face, and then said, "Do you know, I have
never read a word of that thing?" "Oh," cried I, "Thackeray! Why
don't you? It is excellent! It would give you so much pleasure!" "My
dear lady, I couldn't, I couldn't!" said he with tears in his eyes.
"It would _tear my guts out_!"--which powerful English description
of extreme emotion would have startled me less in French or Italian;
"Cela m'arracherait les entrailles," or "mi sois-cerelbero."
In the evening, he talked back to our early times, and my coming out
at Covent Garden, and how, "We all of us," said he (and what a noble
company of young brains and hearts they were!), "were in love with
you, and had your portrait by Lawrence in our rooms"--which made me
laugh and cry, and abuse him for tantalizing me with the ghost of a
declaration at that late hour of both our days. And so we parted,
and I never met him again. On his way home that evening, his
daughter told me that he had spoken kind compassionate words of
commendation of me. I have kept them in grateful remembrance. Fine
genius! and tender gentle heart! the classic writer of the keenest
and truest satire of the social vices of our day; the master of
English style, as powerful and pure as that of the best models,
whose works he has so admirably illustrated.
"Vanity Fair" will, I suppose, be always considered Thackeray's
masterpiece--though everybody loves, beyond all his other portraits,
the exquisite one of Colonel Newcome--but it seems to me that
"Esmond" is a more extraordinary literary feat than any other of his
works--except, indeed, "Lyndon of Barry Lyndon," which is even a
more remarkable production of the same order.]
KING STREET, Monday, 14th.
If you begin your letter with such questions as "What do you think of
me?" I do not know any reason in life why my answer should ever have an
end, even within the liberal limits of the two pages which you extort
from me daily. That is a question I cannot answer; although, I must say,
I should have expected from you rather more of that constancy and
consistency (a male rather than a female quality, however), which,
having determined on a certain course as best, does not lament having
abided by it when the issue appears unprosperous. I think women are
seldom of a sufficiently determined mind to make their opinion or
resolution itself their consolation under defeat. They are more liable
to mental as well as moral misgivings and regrets than men, and an
unfortunate result easily induces them to repent a course they
deliberately adopted.
_Sole vales Veritas_ is the motto upon a little pencil-case contained in
the small work-case Emily has given me. She had it engraved on the seal,
and though it is not altogether so congenial a motto to me as Arnold and
Robertson's Christian device "Forward!" (and is moreover axiomatic
rather than hortatory), I use it partly for her sake, and partly because
it is undeniable.
Pilate wished to know what is truth--or rather pretended that he
did--and I have a very general conviction that "What is truth?" is the
speech of Pilate to this day; _i.e._, of those who know, but will not
do, what they know to be right. It is very seldom, indeed, that the mind
earnestly desires a conviction, strives for one, prays for one, and
labors to attain one, that it does not acquire what, to all intents and
purposes, _is_ truth for that individual soul.
God's perfect and absolute Truth remedies in a thousand ways the
defectiveness of the partial truth that we arrive at; and so that the
_endeavor_ after truth be true, the highest result of all is reached,
_truth towards God_, though, humanly speaking, the mental result may be
a failure. What _absolute truth_ is, my dearest Hal, you will certainly
not know before you die, and possibly not then. In the mean time, I take
it, you have, or may have if you will, that which will serve your turn.
At any rate, I have--which is not at all the same thing--but that don't
signify.
I am very glad I was welcome in Bedford Place, and that Miss ---- was
good enough to be pleased with me.
There is great goodness in her voice and manner, and to have kept her
face unwrinkled and her hair unblanched till the present age (as it is
no result of selfish insensibility in her), bespeaks a virtuous life,
and sweet serene temper.
I wonder more women to whom their good looks are precious, do not ponder
upon the _beauty_ of holiness.... I have not heard from Adelaide or
E---- for some time, but of them, that they and the children are well;
that she is in good looks, and admirable voice; that their house is the
pleasantest in Rome, and their parties _the_ thing to which everybody is
anxious to be admitted: so all is prosperous and pleasant with them. I
have told you of her nice new house in Eaton Place. It is in a
considerable state of forwardness, the bedrooms being all papered, and
the drawing-rooms nearly painted. Henry Greville has had it all done for
her, and in very good taste; the grates are all up, and I should think
in another fortnight they might take possession if they were here.
I have read more of Stanley's sermons, and am struck with their
resemblance, in tone and spirit, to that book of my friend Mr. Furness,
which I do not know if I ever gave you to read, called, "Jesus and His
Biographers."
Stanley's sermons are excellent, but they seem to me curiously
unorthodox. There is an inletting of new views upon the subject of the
Christian Revelation, against which the Protestantism of the Church of
England--in many respects illogical and anomalous, as it appears to its
opponents--will have to fight a hard and difficult battle.
Lady Ellesmere was absolutely in despair about the bill for admitting
the Jews to Parliament, and had influence enough with Lord Ellesmere to
make him vote against it. This is sad enough; but she is so excellent
that her influence over him, in one case where it is bad is good in a
great many others....
God bless you, my dear. Give my love to Dorothy: I am both yours, but
yours most particularly,
FANNY.
P.S. My course with regard to my engagement at the Princess Theatre was
determined by my father's opinion, and confirmed by the advice of all my
friends who spoke to me upon the subject--Emily, Harness, the Grevilles,
and others; and all that Mr. Maddox said in his various conversations
with me upon the subject, enabled the best experienced among us to form
a very fair idea of what he could afford to give, and what I was
justified in asking.
29, KING STREET, Friday, February 18th, 1848.
I have been this morning to a rehearsal of Macbeth, at which Macready
did not attend; so that in point of fact, as far as I was concerned, it
was _nil_. He is, I believe, finishing some country engagements, and I
suppose had not returned to town. I have another rehearsal to-morrow, at
which it is to be hoped he will attend, as otherwise my being there is
really quite a work of supererogation.
My men friends--among whom I include my father--one and all, did what I
think women would not have done. The minute Mr. Maddox agreed to the
terms I had demanded, they lamented bitterly (even my dear Mr.
Harness--who is a good man) that I had not stood out for higher ones,
feeling quite sure I should have got them. Now, this I think quite as
contemptible, and a great deal more dishonest, than the womanly process
(Emily's and yours) of lamenting that I had not taken less than I had
demanded, because you feared my doing so had broken off the negotiation
altogether. I think, upon the whole, it behooves people to know what
they mean, and to abide by it, without either weak regrets at an ill
result, or selfish ones that it is not better than what one had made up
one's mind to--when it seems that it might have been so. I do wish
people would learn to be like my aunt's cook, and "stand upon their own
bottom, with fortitude and similarity." (A woman that Mrs. Siddons was
engaging as cook, replied to the question, "Can you make pastry?" "Well,
no, ma'am--not exactly to say, the very finest of pastry. I can make
plain puddings and pies, but--I am not a professed puff pastry cook, and
I think it best to say so, as every one should stand upon their own
bottom, with fortitude and similarity, I think.")
I act Lady Macbeth on Monday, on Wednesday Queen Katharine, and on
Friday Desdemona, for the first time in my life. I have a beautiful and
correct dress for her (you know I always liked my clothes), for which,
nevertheless, I expect to be much exclaimed against, as our actresses
have always thought proper to dress her in white satin. I have arrayed
her in black (the only habit of the noble Venetian ladies) and gold, in
a dress that looks like one of Titian's pictures.
That smothering scene, my dear Harriet, is most extremely horrible, and
like nothing in the world but the catastrophe of poor Madame de Praslin.
I think I shall make a desperate fight of it, for I feel horribly at the
idea of being murdered in my bed. The Desdemonas that I have seen, on
the English stage, have always appeared to me to acquiesce with
wonderful equanimity in their assassination. On the Italian stage they
run for their lives round their bedroom, Pasta in the opera (and Salvini
in the tragedy, I believe), clutching them finally by the hair of the
head, and then murdering them. The bedgown in which I had arrayed
Desdemona for the night would hardly have admitted of this flight round
the stage; besides that, Shakespeare's text gives no hint of any such
attempted escape on poor Desdemona's part; but I did think I should like
not to be murdered, and therefore, at the last, got up on my knees on my
bed, and threw my arms tight round Othello's neck (having previously
warned Mr. Macready, and begged his pardon for the liberty), that being
my notion of the poor creature's last appeal for mercy.
What do you think of our fine ladies amusing themselves with giving
parties, at which they, and their guests, take chloroform as a pastime?
Lady Castlereagh set the example, and was describing to me her
sensations under the process. I told her how imprudent and wrong I
thought such experiments, and mentioned to her the lecture Brand gave
upon the subject, in which the poor little guinea-pig, who underwent his
illustrations for the benefit of the audience, died on the table during
the lecture; to which she replied, "Oh yes; that she knew that, _for she
was present_." Can you conceive, after such a spectacle, trying similar
experiments upon one's ignorant self? Is it not very brave? or is it
only idiotical?...
I have been making a desperate struggle, _giving my reasons_ (four pages
of them--think of it!) to the committee of the Liverpool Institution, to
induce them to let me read Shakespeare _straight through_ to them; at
least, each play I read, divided into two readings, and with only the
omissions required by modern manners: but I fear they will not let me. I
shall be grievously disappointed....
Was there ever such a to-do as that woman Lola Montez is kicking up?
Everybody is turning Catholic as fast as possible, and the good
Churchwomen are every way in despair. They already see their sons all
circumcised, and their daughters refusing to eat ham, and their brothers
and husbands confessing the Real Presence. The lady members of the
Established Church, especially the more serious ones, are in great
tribulation at all that is going on. Lady Ellesmere is desperate at the
Jews coming into Parliament, and Lord Ellesmere has voted against them.
He, poor man, has been, within the last few days, all but at death's
door with the gout, and perhaps near finding out how different, or
_in_different, these differences _really_ are. It is wonderful to hear
everybody talk.
Good-bye. I am yours and Dorothy's
Most respectfully,
FANNY.
[My first intention in undertaking my readings from Shakespeare was
to make, as far as possible, of each play a thorough study in its
entireness; such as a stage representation cannot, for obvious
reasons, be. The dramatic effect, which of course suffers in the
mere delivery from a reading-desk, would, I hoped, be in some
measure compensated for by the possibility of retaining the whole
beauty of the plays as poetical compositions. I very soon, however,
found my project of making my readings "studies of Shakespeare" for
the public quite illusory.
To do so would have required that I should take two, and sometimes
three, evenings to the delivery of one play; a circumstance which
would have rendered it necessary for the same audience, if they
wished to hear it, to attend two and three consecutive readings; and
in many other respects I found the plan quite incompatible with the
demand of the public, which was for a dramatic entertainment, and
not for a course of literary instruction.
My father had found it expedient, in this mode of illustrating
Shakespeare, to make one play the subject of each reading; taking
two hours for the performance, and dividing the piece as fairly as
possible in two parts; retaining the whole _story_ of the play, and
so much only of the wisdom and beauty bestowed on its development by
the author, as could be kept well within the two hours' delivery,
and make the reading resemble as nearly as possible, in dramatic
effect, the already garbled and coarsely mutilated stage plays the
general public are alone familiar with. I was grievously
disappointed, but could not help myself. In Germany I should have
had no such difficulty; but the German public is willing to take its
amusements in earnest.
The readings were to be my livelihood, and I had to adapt them to
the audiences who paid for them--
"For those who live to please, must please to live."
I gladly availed myself of my father's reading version of the
plays, and read those he had delivered, cut and prepared for the
purpose according to that. When I came to cut and prepare for
reading the much greater number which I read, and he did not, I
found the task a very difficult one; and was struck with the
judgment and taste with which my father had performed it. I do not
think it possible to have adapted these compositions better or more
successfully to the purposes for which he required them. But I was
determined, at least, not to limit my repertory to the few most
theatrically popular of Shakespeare's dramas, but to include in my
course _all_ Shakespeare's plays that it was possible to read with
any hope of attracting or interesting an audience. My father had
limited his range to a few of the most frequently acted plays. I
delivered the following twenty-four: King Lear, Macbeth, Cymbeline,
King John, Richard II., two parts of Henry IV., Henry V., Richard
III., Henry VIII., Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra,
Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The
Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure, Much Ado about Nothing, As You
Like It, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, and The
Tempest.
These plays I read invariably through once before repeating any of
them; partly to make such of them as are seldom or never acted,
familiar to the public, by delivering them alternately with those
better known; and partly to avoid, what I much dreaded, becoming
mechanical or hackneyed myself in their delivery by perpetual
repetition of the same pieces, and so losing any portion of the
inspiration of my text by constant iteration of those garbled
versions of it, from which so much of its nobler and finer elements
are of hard necessity omitted in such a process as my reading of
them. I persisted in this system for my own "soul's sake," and not
to debase my work more than was inevitable, to the very considerable
detriment of my gains.
The public _always_ came in goodly numbers to hear "Macbeth,"
"Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and "The Merchant of Venice;" and
Mendelssohn's exquisite music, made an accompaniment to the reading
of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," rendered that a peculiarly popular
performance. But to _all_ the other plays the audiences were
considerably less numerous, and to some few of them I often had but
few listeners. Mr. Mitchell, who for a considerable length of time
_farmed_ my readings, protested bitterly against this system, which
involved, of course, less profits than he might have made by
repeating only the most popular plays; and my own agents, when I was
reading on my own account, did not fail to represent to me that I
was what they called sacrificing my interests, _i.e._ my receipts,
to this plan of operations; but man does not live by bread alone,
and for more than twenty years that I followed the trade of a
wandering rhapsodist, I never consciously sacrificed my sense of
what was due to my work, for the sake of what I could make by it. I
have wished, and hoped, and prayed, that I might be able to use my
small gift _dutifully_; and to my own profound feeling of the
_virtue_ of these noble works, have owed whatever power I found to
interpret them. My great reward has been, passing a large portion of
my life in familiar intercourse with that greatest and best English
mind and heart, and living almost daily in that world above the
world, into which he lifted me. One inspiration alone could have
been purer or higher; and to that, my earthly master's work, done as
well as it was in me to do it, often helped, and from it, never
hindered me.]
29, KING STREET, Saturday, February 19th.
_Imprimis_, will you and Dorothy fasten your dinner-napkins with these
things, or rings, which I have made for you? for my imagination is sick
with the memory of those bits of strings you use. I have made these too
short, and so have been obliged to put strings to them, having
originally intended them to be complete rounds; but my needle
performances are always ill-managed and untidy, and as such I commend
these to your indulgent acceptance. I wrought at them those bitter
evenings that I spent in those barns of theatres in Norfolk, where the
occupation contributed to entertain the warmth of my heart, which was
all the heat I had to keep me alive....
I must tell you rather a droll observation of the worthy Hayes. When I
explained to her that I had made those worsted bands to fasten your
dinner-napkins, for which you had nothing but strings, she said, "Dear
me! I wonder at that! And Miss S---- seemed so fond of clever, curious
contrivances, for everything." I screamed with delight when she said
that, for hadn't I cursed that "curious contrivance" of an inkstand you
gave me (Dorothy cursed hers too, no doubt, after her own blessed
fashion)? and didn't I curse that execrable "curious contrivance" of a
taper you gave me at St. Leonard's, with which I was so enchanted
_before I used it_, and which wasted me by its own small fire every time
I did use it, and for the final burning out of which I was so thankful?
But are not Hayes's comments on your character comical?
I am sorry to say I have not the same dressing-room I had before at the
Princess's Theatre. Mr. Macready is quite too great a man to give it up
to anybody, and my attiring apartment now is up a steep flight of
stairs, which is a great discomfort to me on several grounds, for I fear
the call-boy will hardly come so far out of his way to summon me, and I
shall have to sit in the greenroom, which, however, I won't, if I can by
any means avoid it; but the proximity of the other room to the stage,
and its being on the same level with it, was a great advantage.
I am going to dine with Lady Grey (the Countess, widow of _the_ Lord
Grey), and after that to the opera with Henry Greville and Alfred
Potocki, who have a box, and have given me a ticket, which I am very
glad of.
I had a three hours' rehearsal this morning, and Macready was there. As
far as I could judge, he was less unfair in his mode of acting than I
had been led to expect. To be sure, at night, he may stand two yards
behind me while I am speaking to him, as I am told he often does. He is
not courteous or pleasant, or even well-bred; remains seated while one
is standing talking to him; and a discussion having arisen as to the
situation of a table, which he wished on the stage, and I wished
removed, he exhibited considerable irritability and ill-humor.
He is unnecessarily violent in acting, which I had always heard, and
congratulated myself that in Lady Macbeth, I could not possibly suffer
from this; but was much astonished and dismayed when at the exclamation,
"Bring forth men-children only," he seized me ferociously by the wrist,
and compelled me to make a demivolte, or pirouette, such as I think that
lady did surely never perform before, under the influence of her
husband's admiration.
God bless you, dear,
Ever yours,
FANNY.
[I have always had a cordial esteem and respect for Mr. Macready's
character, which has been increased by reading the record he has
himself left of his life. Of his merits as an actor, I had not a
very high opinion, though in one or two parts he was excellent, and
in the majority of the tragical ones he assumed, better than his
contemporaries, my father, Charles Young, and Charles Kean. He was
disqualified for sentimental tragedy by his appearance, and he was
without comic power of any kind. _Parts_ of his Macbeth, Lear,
Othello, and King John, were powerful and striking, but his want of
musical ear made his delivery of Shakespeare's blank-verse
defective, and painful to persons better endowed in that respect. It
may have been his consciousness of his imperfect declamation of
blank-verse that induced him to adopt what his admirers called the
natural style of speaking it; which was simply chopping it up into
prose--a method easily followed by speakers who have never learned
the difference between the two, and that blank-verse demands the
same care and method that music does, and when not uttered with due
regard to its artificial construction, and rules of rhythm and
measure, is precisely as faulty as music sung out of time.
The school of "natural speaking" reached its climax, I presume, in
the performance of a charming young actress, of whose delivery of
the poetry of Portia it was said in high commendation, by her
admirers, that she gave the blank verse so _naturally_ that it was
impossible to tell that it was not _prose_. What she did with
Shakespeare's _prose_ in the part these judicious critics did not
mention.