Records of Later Life Part 38

I am ever yours, f.a.n.n.y.

PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, 30th, 1843.

MY DEAR F----,

We are all established in a boarding-house here, where my acquaintances a.s.sure me that I am very comfortable; and so I endeavor to persuade myself that my acquaintances are better judges of that than I am myself.

It is the first time in my life that I have ever lived in any such manner or establishment; so I have no means of trying it by comparison; it is simply detestable to me, but compared with _more_ detestable places of the same sort it is probably _less_ so. "There are differences, look you!" ...

I am sure your family deserve to have a temple erected to them by all foreigners in America; for it seems to me that you and your people are home, country, and friends to all such unfortunates as happen to have left those small items of satisfaction behind them. The stranger's blessing should rest on your dwellings, and one stranger's grateful blessing does rest there....

Believe me, yours most truly, F. A. B.

_Please to observe_ that the charge of 13_s._ 8_d._ is for personal advice, conferences, and tiresome morning visits; and if you make any such charge, I shall expect you to earn it. 6_s._ 4_d._ is all you are ent.i.tled to for anything but personal communication.

[This postscript, and the beginning of the letter, were jesting references to a lawyer's bill, amounting to nearly 50, presented to me by a young legal gentleman with whom we had been upon terms of friendly acquaintance, and whom we had employed, as he was just beginning business, to execute the papers for the deed of gift I have mentioned, by which my father left me at his death my earnings, the use of which I had given up to him on my marriage for his lifetime.

Our young legal gentleman used to pay us the most inconceivably tedious visits, during which his princ.i.p.al object appeared to be to obtain from us every sort of information upon the subject of all and sundry American investments and securities. Over and over again I was on the point of saying "Not at home" to these interminably wearisome visitations, but refrained, out of sheer good nature and unwillingness to mortify my _visitant_. Great, therefore, was our surprise, on receiving a _bill of costs_, to find every one of these intolerable intrusions upon our time and patience charged, as personal business consultations, at 13_s._ 8_d._ The thing was so ludicrous that I laughed till I cried over the price of our friend's civilities. On paying the amount, though of course I made no comment upon the price of my social and legal privileges, I suppose the young gentleman's own conscience (he was only just starting in his profession, and may have had one) p.r.i.c.ked him slightly, for with a faint hysterical giggle, he said, "I dare say you think it rather sharp practice, but, you see, getting married and furnis.h.i.+ng the house is rather expensive,"--an explanation of the reiterated thirteens and sixpences of the bill, which was candid, at any rate, and put them in the more affable light of an extorted wedding present, which was rather pleasant.]

PHILADELPHIA, June 4th, 1843.

DEAREST GRANNY,

You will long ere this have received my grateful acknowledgments of your pretty present and most kind letter, received, with many tears and heart-yearnings, in the middle of that horrible ocean. I will not renew my thanks, though I never can thank you enough for that affectionate inspiration of following me on that watery waste, with tokens of your remembrance, and cheering that most dismal of all conditions with such an unlooked-for visitation of love.

I wrote to you from Halifax, where, on the deck of our steamer, your name was invoked with heartfelt commendations by myself and Major S----.

That was a curious conversation of his and mine, if such it could be called; scarcely more than a breathless enumeration of the names of all of you, coupled indeed with loving and admiring additions, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns full of regret and affection. Poor man, how I did pity him!

and how I did pity myself!

I have just written to our B----, and feel sad at the meagre and unsatisfactory account which my letter contains of me and mine; to you, my excellent friend, I will add this much more.... But I shall forbear saying anything about my conditions until they become better in themselves, or I become better able to bear them. G.o.d bless you and those you love, my dear Lady Dacre. Give my affectionate "duty" to my lord, and believe me ever your gratefully attached

F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, June 26th, 1843.

MY DEAREST HAL,

Your sad account of Ireland is only more shocking than that of the newspapers because it is yours, and because you are in the midst of all this wild confusion and dismay. How much you must feel for your people!

However much one's sympathy may be enlisted in any public cause, the private instances of suffering and injustice, which inevitably attend all political changes wrought by popular commotion, are most afflicting.

I hardly know what it is reasonable to expect from, or hope for, Ireland. A separation from England seems the wildest project conceivable; and yet, Heaven knows, no great benefit appears. .h.i.therto to have accrued to the poor "earthen pot" from its fellows.h.i.+p with the "iron" one. As for hoping that quiet may be restored through the intervention of military force, at the bayonet's point,--I cannot hope any such thing. Peace so procured is but an earnest of future war, and the victims of such enforced tranquillity bequeath to those who are only temporarily _quelled_, not permanently _quieted_, a legacy of revenge, which only acc.u.mulates, and never goes long unclaimed and unpaid.

England seems to me invariably to deal unwisely with her dependencies; she performs in the Christian world very much the office that Rome did in the days of her great heathen supremacy--carry to the ends of the earth by process of conquest the seeds of civilization, of legislation, and progress; and then, as though her mission was fulfilled, by gradual mismanagement, abuse of power, and insolent contempt of those she has subjugated, is ejected by the very people to whom she had brought, at the sword's point, the knowledge of freedom and of law. It is a singular office for a great nation, but I am not sure that it is not our Heaven-appointed one, to conquer, to improve, to oppress, to be rebelled against, to coerce, and finally to be kicked out, _videlicet_, these United States.

But now to matters personal.... The intense heat affects me extremely; and not having a horse, or any riding exercise, the long walks which I compel myself to take over these burning brick pavements, and under this broiling sun, are not, I suppose, altogether beneficial to me....

I went to church yesterday, and Mr. F---- preached an Abolition sermon.

This subject seems to press more and more upon his mind, and he speaks more and more boldly upon it, in spite of having seen various members of his congregation get up and leave the church in the middle of one of his sermons in which he adverted to the forbidden theme of slavery. Some of these, who had been members of the church from its earliest establishment, and were very much attached to him, expressed their regret at the course they felt compelled to adopt, and said if he would only _give them notice_ when he intended to preach upon that subject they would content themselves with absenting themselves on those occasions only, to which his reply not unnaturally was, "Why, those who would leave the church on those occasions are precisely the persons who are in need of such exhortations!"--and of course he persevered.

I think it will end by his being expelled by his congregation. It will be well with him wherever he goes; but alas for those he leaves! I expect to be forbidden to take S---- to church, as soon as the report of yesterday's sermon gets noised abroad....

G.o.d bless you, dear. Good-bye. I am heavy-hearted, and it is a great effort to me to write. What would I not give to see you! Love to dear Dorothy, when you see or write to her.

I am ever yours, f.a.n.n.y.

YELLOW SPRINGS, PENNSYLVANIA, July 6th, 1843.

MY DEAREST HAL,

Here I am sitting (not indeed "on a rail"), but next thing to it, on the very hardest of wooden benches; my feet on the very hardest bar of the very hardest wooden chair; and my _cork_ inkstand, of the most primitive formation, placed on a rough wooden table about a foot square, which is not large enough to hold my paper (so my knees are my desk), and is covered with a coa.r.s.e piece of rag carpeting;--the whole, a sort of prison-cell furnis.h.i.+ng. Before me stretches as far as it can about a quarter of an acre of degraded uneven ground, enclosed in a dilapidated whitewashed wooden paling, and clothed, except in several mangy bare patches, with rank weedy gra.s.s, untended unwholesome shrubs, and untidy neglected trees.... Behind me is a whitewashed room about fifteen feet by twelve, containing a rickety, black horse-hair sofa, all worn and torn into p.r.i.c.kly ridges; six rheumatic wooden chairs; a lame table covered with a plaid shawl of my own, being otherwise without cloth to hide its nakedness or the indefinite variety of dirt-spots and stains which defile its dirty skin. In this room Miss Hall and S---- are busily engaged at "lessons." Briefly, I am sitting on the piazza (so-called) of one of a group of tumble-down lodging-houses and hotels, which, embosomed in a beautiful valley in Pennsylvania, and having in the midst of them an exquisite spring of mineral water, rejoice in the t.i.tle of the "Yellow Springs."

Some years ago this place was a fas.h.i.+onable resort for the Philadelphians, but other watering-places have carried off its fas.h.i.+on, and it has been almost deserted for some time past; and except invalids unable to go far from the city (which is within a three hours' drive from here), and people who wish to get fresh air for their children without being at a distance from their business, very few visitors come here, and those of an entirely different sort from the usual summer haunters of watering-places in the country.

The heat in the city has been perfectly frightful.... On Sunday last a thermometer, rested on the ground, rose to 130, that being the heat of the earth; and when it was hung up in the shade the mercury fell, but remained at 119. Imagine what an air to breathe!... Late in the afternoon last Sunday, a storm came on like a West Indian tornado; the sky came down almost to the earth, the dust was suddenly blown up into the air in red-hot clouds that rushed in at the open windows like thick volumes of smoke, and then the rain poured from the clouds, steadily, heavily, and continuously, for several hours.

In the night the whole atmosphere changed, and as I sat in my children's nursery after putting them to bed in the dark, that they might sleep, I felt gradually the spirit of life come over the earth, in cool breezes between the heavy showers of rain. The next morning the thermometer was below 70, 30 lower than the day before.... This morning the children took me up a hill which rises immediately at the back of the house, on the summit of which is a fine crest of beautiful forest-trees, from which place there is a charming prospect of hill and dale, a rich rolling country in fine cultivation--the yellow crops of grain, running like golden bays into the green woodland that clothes the sides and tops of all the hills, the wheat, the gra.s.s, the oats, and the maize, all making different checkers in the pretty variegated patchwork covering of the prosperous summer earth.

The scattered farmhouses glimmered white from among the round-headed verdure of their neighboring orchards. Nowhere in the bright panorama did the eye encounter the village, the manor-house, and the church spire,--that picturesque poetical group of feudal significance; but everywhere, the small lonely farmhouse, with its accompaniments of huge barns and outhouses, ugly the one and ungainly the others, but standing in the midst of their own smiling well-cultivated territory, a type of independent republicanism, perhaps the pleasantest type of its pleasantest features.

In the whole scene there was nothing picturesque or poetical (except, indeed, the blue glorious expanse of the unclouded sky, and the n.o.ble trees, from the protection of whose broad shade we looked forth upon the sunny world). But the wide landscape had a peaceful, plenteous, prosperous aspect, that was comfortable to one's spirit and exceedingly pleasant to the eye.

After our walk we came down into the valley, and I went with the children to the cold bath--a beautiful deep spring of water, as clear as crystal and almost as cold as ice, surrounded by whitewashed walls, which, rising above it to a discreet height, screen it only from earthly observers. No roof covers the watery chamber but the green spreading branches of tall trees and the blue summer sky, into which you seem to be stepping as you disturb the surface of the water. Into this lucid liquid gem I gave my chickens and myself, overhead, three breathless dips--it is too cold to do more,--and since that I have done nothing but write to you.

You ask what is said to Sydney Smith's "pet.i.tion." Why, the honest men of the country say, "'Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true." It is thought that Pennsylvania will _ultimately_ pay, and not repudiate, but it will be _some time_ first. G.o.d bless you, my dear Hal. I have not been well and am miserably depressed, but the country always agrees excellently with me.

Ever yours, f.a.n.n.y.

PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, 9th, 1843.

MY DEAR T----,

After last Sunday's awful heat, it became positively impossible to keep the children any longer in Philadelphia; and they were accordingly removed to the Yellow Springs, a healthy and pleasant bathing-place at three hours' distance from the city. On Sat.u.r.day morning their nurse, the only servant we have, thought proper to disapprove of my deportment towards her, and left me to the maternal delights of dressing, was.h.i.+ng, and looking after my children during that insufferable heat. Miss H---- was entirely incapacitated, and I feared was going to be ill, and I have reason to thank Heaven that I am provided with the const.i.tution that I have, for it is certain that I need it. On Sunday night a violent storm cooled the atmosphere, and on Monday morning the nurse was good enough to forgive me, and came back: so that the acme of my trial did not last too long. On Tuesday the children were removed to the country, and though the physician and my own observation a.s.sured me that F---- required sea-bathing, it is an unspeakable relief to me to see her out of the city, and to find this place healthy and pleasant for them. The country is pretty, the air pure, the baths delightful; and my chicks, thank G.o.d, already beginning to improve in health and spirits.

As for the accommodations, the less said about them the better. We inhabit a sort of very large barn, or barrack, divided into sundry apartments, large and small; and having gleaned the whole house to furnish our _drawing-room_, that chamber now contains one rickety table, one horse-hair sofa that has three feet, and six wooden chairs, of which it may be said that they have several legs among them; but I must add that we have the whole house to ourselves, and our meals are brought to us from the "Great Hotel" across the street,--privileges for which it behoves me to be humbly thankful, and so I am. If the children thrive I shall be satisfied; and as for accommodation, or even common comfort, my habitation and mode of life in our Philadelphia boarding-house have been so far removed from any ideas of comfort or even decency that I ever entertained, that the whitewashed walls, bare rooms, and tumble-down verandas of my present residence are but little more so.... I suppose there was something to like in Mr. Webster's speech, since you are surprised at my not liking it; but what was there to like? The one he delivered on the laying of the foundation-stone of the monument (on Bunker's Hill, near Boston) pleased me very much indeed; I thought some parts of it very fine. But the last one displeased me utterly.... Pray send me word all about that place by the sea-side, with the wonderful name of "Quoge." My own belief is that the final "e" you tack on to it is an affected abbreviation for the sake of refinement, and that it is, by name and nature, really "Quagmire."

Believe me always Yours truly, F. A. B.

YELLOW SPRINGS, July 12th, 1843.

DEAR GRANNY,

The intelligence contained in your letter [of the second marriage of the Rev. Frederick Sullivan, whose first wife was Lady Dacre's only child]

gave me for an instant a painful shock, but before I had ended it that feeling had given place to the conviction that the contemplated change at the vicarage was probably for the happiness and advantage of all concerned. The tone of B----'s letter satisfied me, and for her and her sister's feeling upon the subject I was chiefly anxious. About you, my dearest Granny, I was not so solicitous; however deep your sentiment about the circ.u.mstance may be, you have lived long and suffered much, and have learned to accept sorrow wisely, let it come in what shape it will. The impatience of youth renders suffering very terrible to it; and the eager desire for happiness which belongs to the beginning of life makes sorrow appear like some unnatural accident (almost a personal injury), a sort of horrid surprise, instead of the all but daily business, and part of the daily bread of existence, as one grows by degrees to find that it is.

His daughter's feeling about Mr. Sullivan's marriage being what it is, the marriage itself appears to me wise and well; and I have no doubt that it will bring a blessing to the home at the vicarage and its dear inmates. Pray remember me most kindly to Mr. Sullivan, and beg him to accept my best wishes for his happiness, and that of all who belong to him; the latter part of my wish I know he is mainly instrumental in fulfilling himself. May he find his reward accordingly!

Of myself, my dear friend, what shall I tell you? I am in good health, thank G.o.d! and as much good spirits as inevitably belong to good health and a sound const.i.tution in middle life....

The intense heat of the last month had made both my children ill, and a week ago they were removed to this place, called the Yellow Springs, from a fine mineral source, the waters of which people bathe in and drink. Round it is gathered a small congregation of rambling farm-houses, built for the accommodation of visitors. The country is pretty and well cultivated, and the air remarkable for its purity and healthiness; and here we have taken lodgings, and shall probably remain during all the heat of the next six weeks, after which I suppose we shall return to town.

I wish you could see my present _locale_. The house we are in is the furthest from the "Hotel" (as it is magnificently called), and is a large, rambling, whitewashed edifice, with tumble-down wooden piazzas (verandas, as we should call them) surrounding its ground-floor. This consists of one very large room, intended for a public dining-room, with innumerable little cells round it, all about twelve feet by thirteen, which are the bedrooms. One of these s.p.a.cious sleeping-apartments, opening on one side to the common piazza and on the other to the common eating-room, is appropriated to me as a "private parlor," as it is called; and being at present, most fortunately, the only inmates of this huge barrack, we have collected into this "extra exclusive" saloon all the furniture that we could glean out of all the other rooms in the house; and what do you think we have got? Two tiny wooden tables, neither of them large enough to write upon; a lame horse-hair sofa, and six lame wooden chairs. As the latter, however, are not all lame of the same leg, it is quite a pretty gymnastic exercise to balance one's self as one sits by turns upon each of them, bringing dexterously into play all the different muscles necessary to maintain one's seat on any of them. It makes sitting quite a different process from what I have ever known it to be, and separates it entirely from the idea usually connected with it, of rest. But this we call luxury, and, compared with the condition of the other rooms (before we had stripped them of their contents), so it undoubtedly is. The walls of this boudoir of mine are roughly whitewashed, the floor roughly boarded, and here I abide with my chicks. The decided improvement in their health and looks and spirits, since we left that horrible city, is a great deal better than sofas and armchairs to me, or anything that would be considered elsewhere the mere decencies of life; and having the means of privacy and cleanliness, my only two absolute indispensables, I take this rather primitive existence pleasantly enough. This house is built at the foot of a low hill, the sides of which are cultivated; while the immediate summit retains its beautiful crest of n.o.ble trees, from beneath which to look out over the wide landscape is a very agreeable occupation towards sunset.

Chester County, as this is called, is the richest, agriculturally speaking, in Pennsylvania; and the face of the country is certainly one of the comeliest, well-to-do, smiling, pleasant earth's faces that can be seen on a summer's day; the variety of the different tinted crops (among them the rich green of the maize, or Indian corn, which we have not in England), clothing the hill-sides and running like golden bays into the green forest that once covered them from base to summit, and still crowns every highest point, forms the gayest coat of many colors for the whole rural region.

The human interest in the landscape is supplied not by village, mansion, parsonage, or church, but by numerous small isolated farm-houses, their white walls gleaming in the intense sunlight from amidst the trim verdure of their orchards, and their large barns and granaries surveying complacently far and wide the abundant harvests that are to be gathered into their capacious walls. The comfort, solidity, loneliness, and inelegance, not to say ugliness, of these rural dwellings is highly characteristic, the latter quality being to a certain degree modified by distance; the others represent very pleasingly, in the midst of the prosperous prospect, the best features of the inst.i.tutions which govern the land--security, freedom, independence.