Records of Later Life Part 63

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.

G.o.d bless you, my dear. Love to dear Dorothy.

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

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 circ.u.mstances 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 grat.i.tude 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, f.a.n.n.y.

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 _circ.u.mstances_ (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 G.o.d knows it signifies nothing at all that I cannot conceive how they should be so. You have misunderstood me, or I mis.e.xpressed 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 ent.i.tled 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, f.a.n.n.y.

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 acc.u.mulate 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 G.o.ds, ye beautiful G.o.ds 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. .h.i.therto 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sure 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 s.n.a.t.c.hing 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, f.a.n.n.y.

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, n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.tration of what existence would be to a thoughtful mind without faith in G.o.d--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....

G.o.d bless you, dear. Give my dear love to Dorothy.

Yours ever, f.a.n.n.y.

18, ORCHARD STREET, December 11th, 1847.