>My dear Lady Dacre,
Will you be kind enough to send "Isaure" to my father? We will take the greatest possible care of her, and return her to you in all safety. I am only sorry that he cannot have the pleasure of hearing you read it; for though it can take its own part very well, you know even Shakespeare is not the worse for the interpretation of a sweet voice, musical accent, and correct emphasis. With regard to the production of the piece on the stage, I do not like to venture an opinion, because my short experience has been long enough already to show me how easily I might be mistaken in such matters.
There is no rule by which the humors of an audience can be predicted. On a benefit night, indeed, I feel sure that the piece would succeed, and answer your kind intention of adding to the attractions of the bill, be they what they might; but our judges are not the same, you know, two consecutive evenings, and therefore it is impossible to foretell the sentence of a second representation, for no "benefit" but that of the public itself. Isaure is a refined patrician beauty, and I am sometimes inclined to think that the Memphian head alone is of fit proportions for uttering oracles in the huge space of our modern stage. My father, however, is, from long experience, the best guesser of these riddles, and he will tell you honestly his opinion as to your heroine's public capacity. I am sure he will find his own reward in making her acquaintance. I am, my dear Lady Dacre, faithfully yours,
Fanny Kemble.
Great Russell Street.
Dear Mrs. Jameson,
Thank you for the book you were so good as to send me. I have read that which concerns the Cenci in it, and think Leigh Hunt's reflections on the story and tragedy very good. I am glad you were at the play last night, because I thought I acted well—at least, I tried to do so. I stayed the first act of the new after-piece, and was rather amused by it. I do not know how the ladies' "inexpressibles" might affect the fortunes of the second act, but I liked all their gay petticoats in the first, extremely. The weather is not very propitious for us; we start to-morrow at nine. I send you the only copy of Sophocles I can lay my hand on this morning. Yours ever truly,
F. A. Kemble.
A little piece called "The Invincibles," in which a smart corps of young Amazons in uniform were officered by Madame Vestris in the prettiest regimentals ever well worn by woman, was the novelty I alluded to. The effect of the female troop was very pretty, and the piece was very successful.
I had only lately read Shelley's great tragedy, and Mrs. Jameson had been so good as to lend me various notices and criticisms upon it. The hideous subject itself is its weak point, and his selection of it one cause for doubting Shelley's power as a dramatic writer. Everything else in the terrible play suggests the probable loss his death may have been to the dramatic literature of England. At the same time, the tenor of all his poems denotes a mind too unfamiliar with human life and human nature in their ordinary normal aspects and conditions for a good writer of plays. His metaphysical was almost too much for his poetical imagination, and perhaps nothing between the morbid horror of that Cenci story and the ideal grandeur of the Greek Prometheus would have excited him to the dramatic handling of any subject.
His translation from Calderon's "El Magico Prodigioso," and his bit of the Brocken scene from "Faust," are fine samples of his power of dramatic style; he alone could worthily have translated the whole of "Faust;" but I suppose he really was too deficient in the vigorous flesh-and-blood vitality of the highest and healthiest poetical genius to have been a dramatist. He could not deal with common folk nor handle common things; humor, that great tragic element, was not in him; the heavens and all their clouds and colors were his, and he floated and hovered and soared in the ethereal element like one native to it. Upon the firm earth his foot wants firmness, and men and women as they are, are at once too coarse and complex, too robust and too infinitely various for his delicate, fine, but in some sense feeble handling.
Browning is the very reverse of Shelley in this respect; both have written one fine play and several fine dramatic compositions; but throughout Shelley's poetry the dramatic spirit is deficient, while in Browning's it reveals itself so powerfully that one wonders how he has escaped writing many good plays besides the "Blot on the Scutcheon" and that fine fragmentary succession of scenes, "Pippa Passes."
Great Russell Street.
Dear Mrs. Jameson,
I fear I am going to disappoint you, and 'tis with real regret that I do so, but I have been acting every night almost for the last month, and when to-day I mentioned my project of spending this my holiday evening with you, both my aunt and my father seemed to think that in discharging my debt to you I was defrauding nearer and older creditors; and suggested that my mother, who really sees but little of me now, might think my going out to-night unkind. I cannot, therefore, carry out my plan of visiting you, and beg that you will forgive my not keeping my promise this evening. I am moreover so far from well that my company would hardly give you much pleasure, nor could I stay long if I came, for early as it is my head is aching for its pillow already.
As soon as a week occurs in which I have two holidays I will try to give you one of them. I send you back Crabbe, which I have kept for ever; for a great poet, which he is, he is curiously unpoetical, I think. Yours ever truly,
F. A. Kemble.
Great Russell Street.
Dear Mrs. Jameson,
My mother bids me say that you certainly will suppose she is mad, or else Mother Hubbard's dog; for when you called she was literally ill in bed, and this evening she cannot have the pleasure of receiving you, because she is engaged out, here in our own neighborhood, to a very quiet tea. She bids me thank you very much for the kindness of your proposed visit, and express her regret at not being able to avail herself of it. If you can come on Thursday, between one and two o'clock, I shall be most happy to see you. Thank you very much for Lamb's "Dramatic Specimens;" I read the scene you had copied from "Philaster" directly; how fine it is! how I should like to act it! Mr. Harness has sent me the first volume of the family edition of the "Old Plays." I think sweeping those fine dramas clean is a good work that cannot be enough commended. What treasures we possess and make no use of, while we go on acting "Gamesters" and "Grecian Daughters," and such poor stuff! But I have no time for ecstasies or exclamations. Yours ever most truly,
F. A. Kemble.
I have said that hardly any new part was ever assigned to me that I did not receive with a rueful sense of inability to what I called "do anything with it." Julia in "The Hunchback," and Camiola in "The Maid of Honor," were among the few exceptions to this preparatory attack of despondency; but those I in some sort choose myself, and all my other characters were appointed me by the management, in obedience to whose dictates, and with the hope of serving the interests of the theater, I suppose I should have acted Harlequin if I had been ordered to do so.
Lady Teazle and Mrs. Oakley were certainly no exceptions to this experience of a cold fit of absolute incapacity with which I received every new part appointed me, and my studying of them might have been called lugubrious, whatever my subsequent performance of them may have been. My mother was of invaluable assistance to me in the process, and I owe to her whatever effect I produced in either part. She had great comic as well as pathetic power, and the incisive point of her delivery gave every shade of meaning of the dialogue with admirable truth and pungency; her own performance of Mrs. Oakley had been excellent; I acted it, even with the advantage of her teaching, very tamely. Jealousy, in any shape, was not a passion that I sympathized with; the tragic misery of Bianca's passion was, however, a thing I could imagine sufficiently well to represent it; but not so Mrs. Oakley's fantastical frenzies. But the truth is that it was not until many years later and in my readings of Shakespeare that I developed any real comic faculty at all; and I have been amused in the later part of my public career to find comedy often considered my especial gift, rather than the tragic and pathetic one I was supposed at the beginning of it to possess.
The fact is that except in broad farce, where the principal ingredient being humor, animal spirits and a grotesque imagination, which are of no particular age, come strongly into play, comedy appears to me decidedly a more mature and complete result of dramatic training than tragedy. The effect of the latter may, as I myself exemplified, be tolerably achieved by force of natural gifts, aided but little by study; but a fine comedian must be a fine artist; his work is intellectual, and not emotional, and his effects address themselves to the critical judgment and not the passionate sympathy of an audience. Tact, discretion, fine taste, are quite indispensable elements of his performance; he must be really a more complete actor than a great tragedian need be. The expression of passion and emotion appears to be an interpretation of nature, and may be forcibly rendered sometimes with but little beyond the excitement of its imaginary experience on the actor's own sensibility; while a highly educated perfection is requisite for the actor who, in a brilliant and polished representation of the follies of society, produces by fine and delicate and powerful delineations the picture of the vices and ridicules of a highly artificial civilization.
Good company itself is not unapt to be very good acting of high comedy, while tragedy, which underlies all life, if by chance it rises to the smooth surface of polite, social intercourse, agitates and disturbs it and produces even in that uncongenial sphere the rarely heard discord of a natural condition and natural expression of natural feeling.
Of my performance of Mrs. Oakley I have but one recollection, which is that of having once, while acting it with my father, disconcerted him to such a degree as to compel him to turn up the stage in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. I remember the same thing happening once when I was playing Beatrice to his Benedict. I have not the least notion what I did that struck my father with such irrepressible merriment, but I suppose there must have been something in itself irresistibly ludicrous to him, toward whom my manner was habitually respectfully deferential (for our intercourse with our parents, though affectionate, was not familiar, and we seldom addressed them otherwise than as "sir" and "ma'am"), to be pelted by me with the saucy sallies of Beatrice's mischievous wit, or pummeled with the grotesque outbursts of poor Mrs. Oakley's jealous fury.
Our personal relation, which thus rendered our performance of comedy together especially comical to my father, added infinitely to my distress in all tragedies in which we acted together; the sense of his displeasure or the sight of his anguish invariably bringing him, my father, and not the part he was acting, before me; and, as in the play of "The Stranger" and the pathetic little piece of "The Deserter," affecting me with almost uncontrollable emotion.
Great Russell Street, April 10, 1831.
My dearest H——,
I owe you something like an explanatory note after that ejaculatory one I sent you the other day. You must have thought me crazy; but indeed, since all these late alarming reports from Spain, until the news came of John's safety, I did not know how much fear and anxiety lay under the hope and courage I had endeavored to maintain about him.
From day to day I had read the reports and tried to reason with regard to their probability, and to persuade my mother that we had every cause for hoping the best; and it was really not until that hope was realized that it seemed as if all my mental nerves and muscles, braced to the resistance of calamity, had suddenly relaxed and given way under the relief from all further apprehension of it. I have kept much of my forebodings to myself, but they have been constant and wretched enough, and my gratitude for this termination of them is unspeakable.
I heard last night a report which I have not mentioned to my mother for fear it should prove groundless. Horace Twiss showed me a note in which a gentleman assured him that John had positively taken his passage in a Government vessel, and was now on his way home; even if this is true, I am afraid to tell my mother, because if the vessel should be delayed a day or two by weather or any other cause, her anxiety will have another set of apprehensions to feed upon, and to prey upon her with. She desires her best love to you; she likes your pamphlet on "The Education of the People" very much, at the same time that it has not convinced her that instruction is wholesome for the lower orders; she thinks the dependence of helplessness and ignorance a better security (for them, or for those above them, I wonder?) than the power of reasoning rightly and a sense of duty, in which opinion, as you will believe, I do not agree.
Thank you for your account of your visit to Wroxton Abbey [the seat of the Earl of Guilford]; it interested me very much; trees are not to me, as they seem to be to you, the most striking and beautiful of all natural objects, though I remember feeling a good deal of pain at the cutting down of a particular tree that I was very fond of.
At the entrance of Weybridge was a deserted estate and dilapidated mansion, Portmore Park, once a royal domain, through which the river ran and where we used to go constantly to fish. There was a remarkably beautiful cedar tree whose black boughs spread far over the river, and whose powerful roots, knotted in every variety of twist, formed a cradle from which the water had gradually washed away the earth. Here I used to sit, or rather lie, reading, or writing sometimes, while the others pursued their sport, and enjoying the sound and sight of the sparkling water which ran undermining my bed and singing treacherous lullabies to me the while. For two years this tree was my favorite haunt; the third, on our return to Weybridge from London, on my running to the accustomed spot, I found the hitherto intercepted sun staring down upon the water and the bank, and a broad, smooth, white tabula rasa level with the mossy turf, which was all that remained of my cedar canopy; and though it afforded an infinitely more commodious seat than the twisted roots, I never returned there again.
To-morrow we dine with the F——s, and there is to be a dance in the evening; on Wednesday I act Constance; Thursday there is a charade party at the M——s'; Friday I play Mrs. Beverley; and Monday and Wednesday next, Camiola. I hope by and by to act Camiola very well, but I am afraid the play itself can never become popular; the size of the theater and the public taste of the present day are both against such pieces; still, the attempt seemed to me worth making, and if it should prove successful we might revive one or two more of Massinger's plays; they are such sterling stuff compared with the Isabellas, the Jane Shores, the everything but Shakespeare. You saw in my journal what I think about Camiola. I endeavor as much as I can to soften her, and if I can manage to do so I shall like her better than any part I have played, except my dear Portia, who does not need softening.
I am too busy just now to read "Destiny" [Miss Ferrier's admirable novel]; my new part and dresses and rehearsals will occupy me next week completely. I have taken a new start about "The Star of Seville" [the play I was writing], and am working away hard at it. I begin to see my way through it. I wish I could make anything like an acting play of it; we want one or two new ones so very much.
My riding goes on famously, and Fozzard thinks so well of my progress that the other day he put me upon a man's horse—an Arab—which frightened me half to death with his high spirits and capers; but I sat him, and what is more, rode him. Tuesday we go to a very gay ball a little way out of town; Saturday we go to a party at old Lady Cork's, who calls you Harriet and professes to have known you well and to remember you perfectly.
Now, H——, as to what you say of fishing, if you are bloody-minded enough to desire to kill creatures for sport, in Heaven's name why don't you do it? The sin lies in the inclination (by the bye, I think that's half a mistake). Never mind, your inclination to fish and my desire to be the tigress at the Zoological Gardens have nothing whatever in common. I admire and envy the wild beast's swiftness and strength, but if I had them I don't think I would tear human beings to bits unless I were she, which was not what I wished to be, only as strong and agile as she; do you see? I am in a great hurry, dear, and have written you an inordinately stupid letter; never mind, the next shall be inconceivably amusing. Just now my head is stuffed full of amber-colored cashmere and white satin. My mother begs to be kindly remembered to Mrs. Kemble. Always affectionately yours,
F. A. K.
My determination to soften the character of Camiola is another indication of my imperfect comprehension of my business as an actress, which was not to reform but to represent certain personages. Massinger's "Maid of Honor" is a stern woman, not without a very positive grain of coarse hardness in her nature. My attempt to soften her was an impertinent endeavor to alter his fine conception to something more in harmony with my own ideal of womanly perfection. I was a very indifferent actress and had not begun to understand my work, nor was Mr. Macready far wrong when, many years after, he spoke to me as "not knowing the rudiments of my profession."
JOURNAL, 1831.
Thursday, April 21st.—Walked in the square, and studied Lady Teazle. The trees are thickly clothed with leaves, and the new-mown grass, even in the midst of London, smelt fresh and sweet; I was quite alone in the square, and enjoyed something like a country sensation. I went to Pickersgill, and Mrs. Jameson came while I was sitting to him; that Medora of his is a fine picture, full of poetry. We dined with the Harnesses; Milman and Croly were among the guests (it was a sort of Quarterly Review in the flesh). I like Mr. Milman; not so the other critic.
Friday, 22d.—Visiting with my mother; called on Lady Dacre, who gave me her pretty little piece of "Wednesday Morning," with a view to our doing it for my father's benefit. It is really very pretty, but I fear will look in our large theater as a lady's water-color sketch of a landscape would by way of a scene. I walked in the square in the afternoon, and studied Lady Teazle, which I do not like a bit, and shall act abominably. At the theatre to-night the house was not very full, and the audience were unpleasantly inclined to be political; they took one of the speeches, "The king, God bless him," and applied it with vehement applause to his worthy Majesty, William IV.
Saturday, 23d.—After my riding lesson, went and sat in the library to hear Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Hunchback." Mr. Bartley and my father and mother were his only audience, and he read it himself to us. A real play, with real characters, individuals, human beings, it is a good deal after the fashion of our old playwrights, and does not disgrace its models. I was delighted with it; it is full of life and originality; a little long, but that's a trifle. There is a want of clearness and coherence in the plot, and the comic part has really no necessary connection with the rest of the piece; but none of that will signify much, or, I think, prevent it from succeeding. I like the woman's part exceedingly, but am afraid I shall find it very difficult to act.
After dinner there was a universal discussion as to the possibility and probability of Adorni's self-sacrifice in "The Maid of Honor," and as the female voices were unanimous in their verdict of its truth and likelihood, I hold it to be likely and true, for Dante says we have the "intellect of love," and Cherubino (a very different kind of authority) says the same thing; and I suppose we are better judges of such questions than men. The love of Adorni seems to me, indeed, more like a woman's than a man's, but that does not tell against its verisimilitude. Our love is characterized generally by self-devotion and self-denial, but the qualities which naturally belong to our affection were given to Adorni by his social and conventional position. He was by birth and fortune dependent on and inferior to Camiola, as women are by nature dependent on and inferior to men; and so I think his love for her has something of a feminine quality.
In the evening went with my mother to a party at old Lady Cork's. We started for our assembly within a few minutes of Sunday morning. Such rooms—such ovens! such boxes full of fine folks and foul air! in which we stood and sat, and looked and listened, and talked nonsense and heard it talked, and perspired and smothered and suffocated. On our arrival, as I was going upstairs, I was nearly squeezed flat against the wall by her potent grace, the Duchess of St. Albans. We remained half an hour in the steaming atmosphere of the drawing-rooms, and another half-hour in the freezing hall before the carriage could be brought up; caught a dreadful cold and came home; did not get to bed till two o'clock, with an intolerable face-ache and tooth-ache, the well-earned reward of a well-spent evening.
[The career of the Duchess of St. Albans was, as far as worldly circumstances went, a curious one. As Miss Mellon she was one of my mother's stage contemporaries; a kind-hearted, good-humored, buxom, rather coarse actress, with good looks, and good spirits of a somewhat unrefined sort, which were not without their admirers; among these the old banker, Mr. Coutts, married her, and dying, left her the sole possessor and disposer of his enormous wealth. My mother, who had always remained on friendly though not intimate terms with her old stage-mate, went to see her in the early days of her widowhood, when Mrs. Coutts gave her this moderate estimate of her "money matters:" "Ah, I assure you, dear Mrs. Charles, the reports of what poor, dear Mr. Coutts has left me are very much exaggerated—not, I really believe, more than a few hundred thousand pounds. To be sure" (after a dejected pause), "there's the bank—they say about fifty thousand a year."
This small fortune and inconsiderable income proved sufficient to the moderate desires of the young Duke of St. Albans, who married this destitute widow, who thenceforth took her place (and a large one) in the British aristocracy, and chaperoned the young Ladies Beauclerc, her husband's sisters, in society. She was a good-natured woman, and more than once endeavored to get my father and mother to bring me to her balls and magnificent parties. This, however, they steadily declined, and she, without resenting it, sent her invitations to my youngest brother alone, to whom she took a great fancy, and to whose accepting her civilities no objection was made. At her death she left her great wealth to Mr. Coutts's granddaughter, Miss Burdett Coutts, the lady whose excellent use of her riches has made her known all over the world as one of the most munificently charitable of Fortune's stewards.
The Duchess of St. Albans was not without shrewd sense and some humor, though entirely without education, and her sallies were not always in the best possible taste. Her box at Covent Garden could be approached more conveniently by crossing the stage than by the entrance from the front of the house, and she sometimes availed herself of this easier exit to reach her carriage with less delay. One night when my father had been acting Charles II., the Duchess of St. Albans crossing her old work-ground, the stage, with her two companions, the pretty Ladies Beauclerc, stopped to shake hands with him (he was still in his stage costume, having remained behind the scenes to give some orders), and presenting him to her young ladies, said, "There, my dears; there's your ancestor." I suppose in her earlier day she might not have been a bad representative of their "ancestress."]
Monday, April 25th.—Finished studying Lady Teazle. In the evening at the theater the house was good, but the audience was dull and I was in wretched spirits and played very ill.
Dall was saying that she thought in two years of hard work we might—that is, my father and myself—earn enough to enable us to live in the south of France. This monstrous theater and its monstrous liabilities will banish us all as it did my uncle Kemble. But that I should be sorry to live so far out of the reach of H——, I think the south of France would be a pleasant abode: a delicious climate, a quiet existence, a less artificial state of society and mode of life, a picturesque nature round me, and my own dear ones and my scribbling with me—I think with all these conditions I could be happy enough in the south of France or anywhere.
The audience were very politically inclined, applied all the loyal speeches with fervor, and called for "God save the King" after the play. The town is illuminated, too, and one hopes and prays that the "Old Heart of Oak" will weather these evil days, but sometimes the straining of the tackle and the creaking of the timbers are suggestive of foundering even to the most hopeful. The lords have been vindicating their claim to a share in common humanity by squabbling like fishwives and all but coming to blows; the bishops must have been scared and scandalized, lords spiritual not being fighting men nowadays.
After the play Mr. Stewart Newton, the painter, supped with us—a clever, entertaining man and charming artist; a little bit of a dandy, but probably he finds it politic to be so. He told us some comical anecdotes about the Royal Academy and the hanging of the pictures.
The poor, dear king [William IV.], who it seems knows as much about painting as una vacca spagnuola, lets himself, his family, and family animals be painted by whoever begs to be allowed that honor. So when the pictures were all hung the other day, somebody discovered in a wretched daub close to the ceiling a portrait of Lady Falkland [the king's daughter], and another of his Majesty's favorite cat, which were immediately lowered to a more honorable position, to accomplish which desirable end, Sir William Beechey [then president of the academy] removed some of his own paintings. On a similar occasion during the late King George IV.'s life, a wretched portrait of him having been placed in one of the most conspicuous situations in the room, the Duke of Wellington and sundry other distinguished cognoscenti complimented Sir Thomas Lawrence on it as his; this was rather a bitter pill, and must have been almost too much for Lawrence's courtierly equanimity.
Wednesday, April 27th.—To the riding school, where Miss Cavendish and I discoursed on the stay-at-home sensation, and agreed that it is bad to encourage it too far, as one may narrow one's social circle till at last it resolves itself into one's self.
Wrote to thank Dr. Thackeray [provost of King's College, Cambridge, and father of my life-long friend A—— T——] for the Shakespeare he has sent me, and Lady Dacre for her piece of "Wednesday Morning." In the evening they all drove out in the open carriage to see the illuminations; I stayed at home, for the carriage was full and I had no curiosity about the sight. The town is one blaze of rejoicing for the Reform Bill triumph; the streets are thronged with people and choked up with carriages, and the air is flashing and crashing with rockets and squibs and crackers, to the great discomfort of the horses. So many R's everywhere that they may stand for reform, revolution, ruin, just as those who run may choose to read, or according to the interpretation of every individual's politics; the most general acceptation in which they will be taken by the popular understanding will assuredly be row.
Friday, 29th.—Went off to rehearsal without any breakfast, which was horrible! but not so horrible as my performance of Lady Teazle promises to be. If I do the part according to my notion, it will be mere insipidity, and yet all the traditional pokes and pats with the fan and business of the part, as it is called, is so perfectly unnatural to me that I fear I shall execute it with a doleful bad grace. It seems odd that Sir Peter always wears the dress of the last century, while the costume of the rest of the dramatis personæ is quite modern. Indeed, mine is a ball dress of the present day, all white satin and puffs and clouds of white tulle, and garlands and wreaths of white roses and jasmine; it is very anomalous, and makes Lady Teazle of no date, as it were, for her mariners are those of a rustic belle of seventeen hundred and something, and her costume that of a fine lady of the present day in the height of the present fashion, which is absurd.
Mrs. Jameson paid me a long visit; she threatens to write a play; perhaps she might; she is very clever, has a vast fund of information, a good deal of experience, and knowledge and observation of the world and society. She wanted me to have spent the evening with her on the 23d, Shakespeare's birth and death day, an anniversary all English people ought to celebrate. Lady Dacre called, in some tribulation, to say that she had committed herself about her little piece of "Wednesday Morning," and that Lady Salisbury, who wants it for Hatfield, does not like its being brought out on the stage.
Lady Dacre says Lady Salisbury is "afraid of comparisons" (between herself and me, in the part), I think Lady Salisbury, would not like "our play" to be made "common and unclean" by vulgar publicity. In the evening I went to the theater to see a new comedy by a Spaniard. The house was literally empty, which was encouraging to all parties. The piece is slightly constructed in point of plot, but the dialogue is admirably written, and, as the work of a foreigner, perfectly surprising. I was introduced to Don Telesforo de Trueba, the author, an ugly little young man, all hair and glare, whiskers and spectacles; he must be very clever and well worth knowing, Mr. Harness took tea with us after the play.
[The comedy, in five acts, of "The Exquisites" was a satirical piece showing up the ridiculous assumption of affected indifference of the young dandies of the day. The special airs of impertinence by which certain officers of a "crack" regiment distinguished themselves had suggested several of the most telling points of the play, which was in every respect a most remarkable performance for a foreigner.]
Saturday, April 30th.—Received a letter from John; he has determined not to leave Spain at present; and were he to return, what is there for him to do here? In the evening to Mrs. C——'s ball; it was very gay, but I am afraid I am turning "exquisite," for I didn't like the music, and my partners bored me, and the dancing tired me, and my journal is getting like K——'s head—full of naked facts, unclothed with a single thought.
Sunday, May 1st.—As sulky a day as ever glouted in an English sky. The "young morn" came picking her way from the east, leading with her a dripping, draggled May, instead of Milton's glorious vision.
After church, sundry callers: Mr. C—— bringing prints of the dresses for "Hernani," and the W——s, who seem in a dreadful fright about the present state of the country. I do not suppose they would like to see Heaton demolished.
In the evening we went to the Cartwrights'. It is only in the morning that one goes there to be tortured; in the evening it is to eat delicious dinners and hear delightful music.
Hummel, Moscheles, Neukomm, Horsley, and Sir George Smart, and how they did play! à l'envi l'un de l'autre. They sang, too, that lovely glee, "By Celia's Arbor." The thrilling shudder which sweet music sends through one's whole frame is a species of acute pleasure, very nearly akin to pain. I wonder if by any chance there is a point at which the two are one and the same thing!
Tuesday, May 3d.—I wrote the fourth scene of the fifth act of my play ["The Star of Seville"], and acted Lady Teazle for the first time; the house was very good, and my performance, as I expected, very bad; I was as flat as a lady amateur. I stayed after the play to hear Braham sing "Tom Tug," which was a refreshment to my spirit after my own acting; after I came home, finished the fifth act of "The Star of Seville." "Joy, joy for ever, my task is done!" I have not the least idea, though, that "heaven is won."
Wednesday, May 4th.—A delightful dinner at the B——s', but in the evening a regular crush; however, if one is to be squeezed to death (though 'tis an abolished form of torture), it may as well be in good company, among the fine world, and lots of pleasant people besides: Milman, Sotheby, Lockhart, Sir Augustus Calcott, Harness, Lady Dacre, Joanna Baillie, Lady Calcott, etc.
Friday, May 6th.—Real March weather: cold, piercing, damp, wretched, in spite of which I carried Shakespeare to walk with me in the square, and read all over again for the fiftieth time all the conjectures of everybody about him and his life. How little we know about him, how intimately we seem to know him! I had the square all to myself, and it was delicious: lilac, syringa, hawthorn, lime blossoms, and new-mown grass in the midst of London—and Shakespeare to think about. How grateful I felt for so much enjoyment! When I got home, corrected the proof-sheets of "Francis I.," and thought it looked quite pretty in print.
Out so late dancing, Wednesday and Thursday nights, or rather mornings, that I had no time for journal-writing. What a life I do lead!
Friday, May 13th.—At twelve o'clock to Bridgewater House for our first rehearsal of "Hernani." Lady Francis wants us to go down to them at Oatlands. I should like of all things to see Weybridge once more; there's many a nook and path in those woods that I know better than their owners. The rehearsal lasted till three, and was a tolerably tidy specimen of amateur acting. Mr. Craven is really very good, and I shall like to act with him very much, and Mr. St. Aubin is very fair. Was introduced to Mrs. Bradshaw, whose looks rather disappointed me, because she "did contrive to make herself look so beautiful" on the stage, in Clari and Mary Copp and everything she did; I suppose her exquisite acting got into her face, somehow. Henry Greville is delightful, and I like him very much. When we left Bridgewater House we drove to my aunt Siddons's. Every time I see that magnificent ruin some fresh decay makes itself apparent in it, and one cannot but feel that it must soon totter to its fall.
What a price she has paid for her great celebrity!—weariness, vacuity, and utter deadness of spirit. The cup has been so highly flavored that life is absolutely without savor or sweetness to her now, nothing but tasteless insipidity. She has stood on a pinnacle till all things have come to look flat and dreary; mere shapeless, colorless, level monotony to her. Poor woman! what a fate to be condemned to, and yet how she has been envied, as well as admired!
After dinner had only just time to go over my part and drive to the theater. My dear, delightful Portia! The house was good, but the audience dull, and I acted dully to suit them; but I hope my last dress, which was beautiful, consoled them. What with sham business and real business, I have had a busy day.
Saturday, May 14th.—Received a note from Theodosia [Lady Monson], and a whole cargo of delicious flowers from Cassiobury. She writes me that poor old Foster [an old cottager who lived in Lord Essex's park and whom my friend and I used to visit] is dying. The last I saw of that "Old Mortality" was sitting with him one bright sunset under his cottage porch, singing to him and dressing his hat with flowers, poor old man! yet after walking this earth upward of ninety-seven years the spirit as well as the flesh must be weary. His cottage will lose half its picturesqueness without his figure at the door; I wonder who will take care now of the roses he was so fond of, and the pretty little garden I used to forage in for lilies of the valley and strawberries! I shall never see him again, which makes me sad; I was often deeply struck by the quaint wisdom of that old human relic, and his image is associated in my thoughts with evening walks and summer sunsets and lovely flowers and lordly trees, and he will haunt Cassiobury always to me. I went with my mother to buy my dresses for "Hernani," which will cost me a fortune and a half.
Great Russell Street, Saturday.
My dearest H——,
You see I have taken your advice, and, moreover, your paper, in order that, in spite of the dispersion of Parliament and the unattainability of franks, our correspondence may lose nothing in bulk, though it must in frequency. I think you are behaving very shabbily in not writing to me. Are you consulting your own pleasure, or my purse? I dedicate so much of my income to purposes which go under the head of "money thrown away;" don't you think the cost of our correspondence may be added to that without seriously troubling my conscience? What shall I say to you? "Reform" is on the tip of my pen, and great as are our private matters of anxiety, they scarcely outweigh in our minds the national interest that is engrossing almost every thinking person throughout the country. You know I am no politician, and my shallow causality and want of adequate information alike unfit me from understanding, much less discussing, public questions of great importance; but the present crisis has aroused me to intense interest and anxiety about the course events are taking. You can have no conception of the state of excitement prevailing in London at this moment. The scene in the House of Lords immediately preceding the dissolution the papers will have described to you, though if the spectators and participators in it may be believed, the tumult, the disorder, the Billingsgate uproar on that occasion would not be easy to describe. Lord Londonderry, it seems, thought that the days of faust-recht had come back again, and I fancy more than he are of that opinion.
An illumination was immediately ordered by the Lord Mayor Donkin (or key, as "t'other side" call him); but, owing to the shortness of the notice he gave, it seems the show of light was not satisfactory to the tallow chandler part of the population, so another was appointed two nights after. My mother and the two Harrys went out in the open carriage to drive through the streets. I was depressed and disinclined for sight-seeing, and did not go, which I regretted afterward, as all strong exhibitions of public feeling are curious and interesting. They say the crowd was immense in all the principal thoroughfares, and of the lowest order. They testified their approbation of the various illuminated devices by shouts and hurrahs and applause; their displeasure against the various non-illuminators was more violently manifested by assailing their houses and breaking their windows.
Sundry were the glass sacrifices offered at the shrine of consistent Tory patriotism at the West End of the town. The mottoes and sentences on some of the illuminations were noteworthy for their democratic flavor: "The king and the people," "The people of England," "The glorious dissolution," "The glorious reform," "The people and the press," "The people's triumph." A man who seemed by his dress to belong to the very lowest class (a cross apparently between a scavenger and a rag-seller), with a branch of laurel waving in his tattered hat, stopped before this last sentence and exclaimed, "No—they don't yet; but they will."
I have been having quite a number of holidays at the theater lately. They have brought out a comedy in which I do not play, and are going to bring out a sort of historical melodrama on the life of Bonaparte, so that I think I shall have easy work, if that succeeds, for the rest of the season. I have just finished correcting the proof-sheets of "Francis I.," and think it looks quite pretty in print, and have dedicated it to my mother, which I hope will please her....
Dear H——, this is Saturday, the 14th, and 'tis now exactly three weeks since I began this letter. I know not what you will think of this, but, indeed, I am almost worn out with the ceaseless occupations of one sort and another that are crowded into every day, and the impossibility of commanding one hour's quiet out of the twenty-four....
I am afraid we shall not come to Ireland this summer, after all, my dear H——. The Dublin manager and my father have not come to terms, and I hear Miss Inverarity (a popular singer) is engaged there, so that I conclude we shall not act there this season. This is so great a disappointment to me that I cannot say anything whatever about it. I have been acting Lady Teazle for Mr. Bartley and my father's benefit. It seems to have pleased the public very well. Without caring for it much myself, I find it light and amusing work, and much easier for me than Lady Townley, because it is a natural and that an entirely artificial character; the whole tone and manners, too, of Sheridan's rustic belle are much more within my scope than those of the woman of fashion of Sir John Vanbrugh's play.
On Friday we had our first rehearsal of "Hernani," at Bridgewater House, and I was greatly surprised with some of the acting, which, allowing for a little want of technical experience, was, in Mr. Craven's instance, really very good. He is the grandson of old Lady Craven, the Margravine of Anspach, and enacts the hero of the piece, which I think he will do very well. The whole play, I think, will be fairly acted for an amateur performance. Lord and Lady Francis have pressed my mother very much to go down for a little while to Oatlands, the beautiful place close to Weybridge, which belonged to the Duke of York, and of which they have taken a lease. My mother has accepted their invitation, and looks forward with great pleasure to revisiting her dear Weybridge. I know a good deal more of that lovely neighborhood and all its wild haunts than the present proprietors of Oatlands. Lady Francis is a famous horsewoman, and told me by way of inducement to go there that we would gallop all over the country together, which sounded very pleasant....
I called on my aunt Siddons the other day, and was shocked to find her looking wretchedly ill; she has not yet got rid of the erysipelas in her legs, and complained of intense headache. Poor woman! she suffers dreadfully.... Cecilia's life has been one enduring devotion and self-sacrifice. I cannot help wishing, for both their sakes, that the period of her mother's infirmity and physical decay may be shortened. I received a charming letter from Theodosia yesterday, accompanying a still more charming basketful of delicious flowers from dear Cassiobury—how much nicer they are than human beings! I don't believe I belong to man (or woman) kind, I like so many things—the whole material universe, for example—better than what one calls one's fellow-creatures. She told me that old Foster (you remember the old cottager in Cassiobury Park) was dying. The news contrasted sadly with the sweet, fresh, living blossoms that it came with. The last time that I saw that old man I sat with him under his porch on a bright sunny evening, talking, laughing, winding wreaths round his hat, and singing to him, and that is the last I shall ever see of him. He was a remarkable old man, and made a strong impression on my fancy in the course of our short acquaintance. There was a strong and vivid remnant of mind in him surviving the contest with ninety and odd years of existence; his manner was quaint and rustic without a tinge of vulgarity; he is fastened to my memory by a certain wreath of flowers and sunset light upon the brook that ran in front of his cottage, and the smell of some sweet roses that grew over it, and I shall never forget him.
I went to the opera the other night and saw Pasta's "Medea" for the first time. I shall not trouble you with any ecstasies, because, luckily for you, my admiration for her is quite indescribable; but I have seen grace and majesty as perfect as I can conceive, and so saying I close my account of my impressions. I fancied I was slightly disappointed in Taglioni, whose dancing followed Pasta's singing, but I suppose the magnificent tragical performance I had just witnessed had numbed as it were my power of appreciation of her grace and elegance, and yet she seemed to me like a dancing flower; so you see I must have like her very much.
God bless you, dear; pray write to me very soon. I want some consolation for not seeing you, nor the dear girls, nor the sea. I could think of that fresh, sparkling, fresh looking, glassy sea till I cried for disappointment.
Ever yours,
F. A. K.
The Miss Inverarity mentioned in this letter was a young Scotch singer of very remarkable talent and promise, who came out at Covent Garden just at this time. She was one of the tallest women I ever saw, and had a fine soprano voice as high as herself, and sang English music well. She was a very great favorite during the short time that I remember her on the stage.
My dearest H——,
My mother has just requested me to talk with A—— about her approaching first communion, and it troubles me because I fear I cannot do so satisfactorily to her (I mean my mother) and myself. I think my feeling about the sacrament, or rather the preparation necessary for receiving it, is different from hers. It is not so much to me an awful as a merciful institution. One goes to the Lord's Table because one is weak and wicked and wretched, not because one is, or even has striven to be, otherwise. A holy reverence for the holy rite is indispensable, but not, I think, such a feeling as would chill us with fear, or cast us down in despondency. The excess of our poverty and humility is our best claim to it, and therefore, though the previous "preparations," as it is rather technically called, may be otherwise beneficial, it does not seem to me necessary, much less indispensable. Our Lord did not say, "Cleanse yourselves, amend yourselves, strip yourselves of your own burdens and come to me;" but, "Come to me and I will cleanse you, I will cure you, I will help you and give you rest." It is remembering this that I venture to take the sacrament, but I know other people, and I believe my mother among them, think a much more specific preparation necessary, and I am afraid, therefore, that I might not altogether meet my mother's views in what I might say to A—— upon the subject. I wish you would tell me what your opinion and feeling is about this.
Your affectionate F. A. K.
Sunday, May 15th.—Walked home from church with Mrs. Montagu and Emily and Mrs. Procter, discussing among various things the necessity for "preparation" before taking the sacrament. I suppose the publican in the parable had not prepared his prayer, and I suppose he would have been a worthy communicant.
They came in and sat a long time with my mother talking about Sir Thomas Lawrence, of whom she spoke as a perfect riddle. I think he was a dangerous person, because his experience and genius made him delightfully attractive, and the dexterity of his flattery amounted in itself to a fine art. The talk then fell upon the possibility of friendship existing between men and women without sooner or later degenerating, on one part or the other, into love. The French rhymster sings—
Et je sens qu'il est mal aisé;
Que l'ami d'une belle dame,
Ne soit un amant déguisé."
My father came in while the ladies were still here, and Mrs. Procter behaved admirably well about her husband's play....
I do think it is too bad of the management to have made use of my name in rejecting that piece, when, Heaven knows, so far from rejecting, I never even object to anything I am bidden to do; that is, never visibly or audibly....
Mrs. P—— called, and the talk became political and lugubriously desponding, and I suddenly found myself inspired with a contradictory vein of hopefulness, and became vehement in its defense. In spite of all the disastrous forebodings I constantly have, I cannot but trust that the spread of enlightenment and general progress of intelligence in the people of this country—the good judgment of those who have power and the moderation of those who desire improvement—will effect a change without a crash and achieve reform without revolution.
Wednesday, May 18th.—My mother and I started at two o'clock for Oatlands. The day was very enjoyable, for the dust and mitigated east wind were in our backs; the carriage was open, and the sun was almost too powerful, though the earth has not yet lost its first spring freshness, nor the trees, though full fledged, their early vivid green. The turf has not withered with the heat, and the hawthorn lay thick and fragrant on every hedge, like snow that the winter had forgotten to melt, and the sky above was bright and clear, and I was very happy. I had taken "The Abbot" with me, which I had never read; but my mother did not sleep, so we chatted instead of my reading. She recalled all our former times at Weybridge. It was a great pleasure to retrace this well-known road, and again to see dear old Walton Bridge and the bright, broad Thames, with the noble chestnut trees on its banks, the smooth, smiling fields stretching beyond it, and the swans riding in such happy majesty on its bosom. I really think I do deserve to live in the country, it is so delightsome to me. We reached Oatlands an hour before dinner-time and found the party just returned from riding. We sauntered through part of the grounds to the cemetery of the Duchess of York's dogs.... We had some music in the evening. Lady Francis sang and I sang, and was frightened to death, as I always am when asked to do so....
Thursday, 19th.—A bright sunny morning, the trees all bowing and bending, and the water chafing and crisping under a fresh, strong, but not cold, wind. I lost my way in the park and walked toward Walton, thinking I was going to Weybridge, but, discovering my mistake, turned about, and crossing the whole park came out upon the common and our old familiar cricketing ground. I flew along the dear old paths to our little cottage, but "Desolate was the dwelling of Morna"—the house closed, the vine torn down, the grass knee-deep, the shrubs all trailing their branches and blossoms in disorderly luxuriance on the earth, the wire fence broken down between the garden and the wood, the gate gone; the lawn was sown with wheat, and the little pine wood one tangled maze, without path, entrance, or issue. I ran up the mound to where John used to stand challenging the echo with his bugle....
O tempo passato!—the absent may return and the distant be brought near, the dead be raised and in another world rejoin us, but a day that is gone is gone, and all eternity can give us back no single minute of the past! I gathered a rose and some honeysuckle from the poor disheveled shrubs for my mother, and ran back to Oatlands to breakfast. After breakfast we went over "Hernani," with Mrs. Sullivan for prompter, and when that was over everybody went out walking; but I was too tired with my morning's tramp, and sat under a tree on the lawn reading a very good little book on the sacrament, which went over the ground of my late discussion with Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Procter on the subject of "preparation" for taking it.
After lunch there was a general preparation for riding, and just as we were all mounted it began to rain, and persevered till, in despair, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan rode off without our promised escort. Mr. C—— arrived just as we had disequipped, and the gentlemen all dispersed. Lady Francis and I sang together for some time, and suddenly the clouds withholding their tears, she and I, in one of those instants of rapid determination which sometimes make or mar a fate, tore on our habits again, jumped on our horses, and galloped off together over the park. We had an enchanting, gray, soft afternoon, with now and then a rain-drop and sigh of wind, like the last sob of a fit of crying. The earth smelt deliriously fresh, and shone one glittering, sparkling, vivid green. Our ride was delightful, and we galloped back just in time to dress for dinner.
In the evening, sauntering on the lawn and pleasant, bright talk indoors. Lord John (the present venerable Earl Russell) would be quite charming if he wasn't so afraid of the rain. I do not think he is made of sugar, but, politically, perhaps he is the salt of the earth; he certainly succeeds in keeping himself dry.
Friday, Oatlands.—Walked out before breakfast; the night's rain had refreshed the earth and revived every growing thing, the east wind had blown itself away, and a warm, delicious western breeze came fluttering fitfully over the new-mown lawn. After breakfast we rehearsed Mr. Craven's and Captain Shelley's and my scenes in "Hernani." I think they will do very well if they do not shy at the moment of action, or rather acting. We had some music, and then the gentlemen went out shooting. I took "The Abbot" and established myself on a hay-cock, leaving Lady Francis to her own indoor devices. By and by the whole party came out, and we sat on the lawn laughing and talking till the gentlemen's carriage was announced, and our rival heroes took their departure for town, cheek by jowl, in a pretty equipage of Mr. Craven's, in the most amicable mood imaginable. As soon as they were off we mounted and rode out, past our old cottage, down by Brooklands, through the second wood, and by the Fairies' Oak. O Lord King, Lord King (we were riding through the property of the Earl of Lovelace, then Lord King), if I was one of those bishops whom you do not love, I would curse, excommunicate, and anathematize you for cutting down all those splendid trees and laying bare those deep, dark, leafy nooks, the haunts of a thousand "Midsummer Night's Dreams," to the common air and the staring sun. The sight of the dear old familiar paths brought the tears to my eyes, for, stripped and thinned of their trees and robbed of their beauty, my memory restored all their former loveliness. On we went down to Byefleet to the mill, to Langton's through the sweet, turfy meadows, by hawthorn hedges musical as sweet, over the picturesque little bridge and along that deep, dark, sleepy water flowing so silently in its sullen smoothness. On we went a long way over a wide common, where the coarse-grained peaty earth and golden glory of the flowering gorse reminded me of Suffolk's motto—
Back by St. George's Hill, snatching many a leaf and blossom as I rode to carry back to A—— mementoes of our dear Weybridge days, and so home by half-past seven, just time to dress for dinner. As we rode along, Lord Francis and I discussed poets and poetry in general—more particularly Byron, Keats, and Shelley; it was a very pretty and proper discourse for such a ride.
In the evening heard all manner of delicious ghost stories; afterward made music, Lady Francis and I trying all sorts of duets, my mother keeping up a "humming" third and Lord Francis listening and applauding with equal zeal and discretion....
Saturday, May 21st.—My brother John come home from Spain....
Sunday, 22d.—What a very odd process dreaming is! I dreamt in the night that John had come home, and flung myself out of bed in my sleep to run downstairs to him, which naturally woke me; and then I remembered that he was come home and that I had seen and welcomed him, which it seems to me I might as well have dreamed too while I was about it, and saved myself the jump out of bed. I hate dreaming; it's like being mad—having one's brain work without the control of one's will.
Dear A—— took the sacrament for the first time at the Swiss church. On my return from church in the afternoon found Sir Ralph and Lady Hamilton and Don Telesforo de Trueba. I like that young Spaniard; he's a clever man. It was such fun his telling me all the story of the Star of Seville, little imagining I had just perpetrated a five-act tragedy on that identical subject.
Tuesday, May 24th.—Drove down to Clint's studio to see Cecilia's (Siddons's) portrait. It's a pretty picture of a "fine piece of a woman," as the Italians say, but it has none of the very decided character of her face....
Wednesday, May 25th.—After dinner went over my part, dressed and set off for Bridgewater House for our dressed rehearsal of "Hernani." Found the stage in a state of unfinish, the house topsy-turvy, and every body to the right and left. Sat for an hour in the drawing-room while our very specially small and select audience arrived. Then heard Lady Francis, Henry Greville, Mrs. Bradshaw, and Mr. Mitford try their glee—one of Moore's melodies arranged for four voices—which they sang at the top of their lungs in order to hear themselves, while the carpenters and joiners hammered might and main at the other end of the gallery finishing the theater.
About nine they were getting under way, and we presently began the rehearsal. The dresses were all admirable; they (not the clothes, but the clothes pegs) were all horribly frightened. I was a little nervous and rather sad, and I felt strange among all those foolish lads, taking such immense delight in that which gives me so very little, dressing themselves up and acting. To be sure, "nothing pleaseth but rare accidents." Mr. M——, our prompter, thought fit by way of prompting to keep up a rumbling bass accompaniment to our speaking by reading every word of the play aloud, as the singers are prompted at the opera house, which did not tend much to our assistance. Everything went very smoothly till an unlucky young "mountaineer" rushed on the stage and terrified me and Hernani half to death by inarticulating some horrible intelligence of the utmost importance to us, which his fright rendered quite incomprehensible. He stood with his arms wildly spread abroad, stuttering, sputtering, madly ejaculating and gesticulating, but not one articulate word could he get out. I thought I should have exploded with laughter, but as the woman said who saw the murder, "I knew I mustn't (faint), and I didn't." With this trifling exception it all went off very well. Either I was fagged with my morning's ride or the constitution of the gallery is bad for the voice; I never felt so exhausted with the mere effort of speaking, and thought I should have died prematurely and in earnest in the last scene, I was so tired. When it was over we adjourned with Lord and Lady Francis and the whole dramatis personæ to Mrs. W——'s magnificent house and splendid supper....
While we were at table everybody suddenly stood up, my mother and myself reverently with the rest, when the whole company drank my health, and I collapsed down into my chair as red and as limp as a skein of scarlet wool, and my mother with some confusion expressed my obligation and her own surprise at the compliment. I talked a good deal to Captain Shelley, who is a nice lad, and, considering his beauty, and the admiration bestowed on him by all the fine ladies in London, remarkably unaffected. We are asked down to Oaklands again, and I hope my work at the theater will allow of my going. What a shocking mess those young gentlemen actors did make of their greenroom this evening, to be sure! rouge, swords, wine, mustaches, soda water, and cloaks strewed in every direction. I wonder what they would say to the drawing-room decorum of our Covent Garden greenroom.
Thursday, May 26th.—Tried on dresses with Mrs. Phillips, and talked all the while about the characteristics of Shakespeare's women with Mrs. Jameson, who had come to see me. I pity her from the bottom of my heart; she has a heavy burden to carry, poor woman.... Went in the evening to rather a dull dinner, after which, however, I had the pleasure of hearing Mrs. Frere sing, which she did very charmingly, and so as quite to justify her great society musical reputation. After our dinner at the F——s' we went to Mrs. W——'s evening party, where I sat alone, heard somebody sing a song, was introduced to a man, spoke incoherently to several people, got up, was much jostled in a crowd of human beings, and came home—and that's society. We are asked to a great supper at Chesterfield House, after a second representation which is to be given of "Hernani." My mother thinks it is too much exertion and dissipation for me, and as it is not a ball I do not care to go.
Friday, May 27th.—At eight o'clock drove with my mother to Bridgewater House. We went into the library, where there was nobody, and Lady Francis, Henry Greville, and Lady Charlotte came and sat with us. I was literally crying with fright. Lady Francis took me to my dressing-room, my mother rouged me, blessed me, and went off to join the audience assembled in the great gallery. I went over my part once and my room a hundred times in every direction. At nine they began; the audience very wisely were totally in the dark, which threw out the brilliantly illuminated stage to great advantage, and considering that they were the finest folk in England they behaved remarkably well—listened quietly and attentively, and applauded like Covent Garden galleries. It all went well except poor Mr. Craven's first speech, in which he got out. I don't know whether Lady L—— was among the spectators, and gave him des éblouissements. It all went off admirably, however, and oh, how glad I was when it was over!
Saturday, May 28th.—I was awakened by a basket of flowers from Cassiobury, and a letter from Theodosia. Old Foster is dead. I wish he might be buried near the cottage. I should like to know where to think of his resting-place, poor old man!...
In the evening Mrs. Jameson, the Fitzhughs, R—— P——, and a Mr. K——, a friend of John's, and sundry and several came.... We acted charades, and they all went away in high good humor.
Sunday, May 29th.—An "eternal, cursed, cold, and heavy rain," as Dante sings. My mother, A——, and I went to the Swiss church; the service is shorter and more unceremonious than I like; that sitting to sing God's praise, and standing to pray to Him, is displeasing to all my instincts of devotion.
After church my mother was reading Milton's treatise on Christian doctrine, and read portions of it aloud to me. I always feel afraid of theological or controversial writings, and yet the faith that shrinks from being touched lest it should totter is certainly not on the right foundation. I suppose we ought, on the contrary, to examine thoroughly the reason of the faith that is in us. Declining reading upon religious subjects may be prudent, but it may be indolence, cowardice, or lack of due interest in the matter. I think I must read that treatise of Milton's.
Great Russell Street, May 29th, 1831.
My dearest H——,
I have but little time for letter-writing, getting daily "deeper and deeper still" in the incessant occupations of one sort and another that crowd upon and almost overwhelm me; and now my care is not so much whether I shall have time to write you a long letter, as how I shall get leisure to write to you at all. You complain that, in spite of the present interest I profess in public affairs, I have given you no details of my opinion about them—my hopes or fears of the result of the Reform movement. I have other things that I care more to write to you about than politics, and am chary of my space, because, though I can cross my letter, I can only have one sheet of paper. "The Bill," modified as it now is, has my best prayers and wishes, for to say that the removal of certain abuses will not give the people bread which they expect is nothing against it; but, at the same time that I sincerely hope this measure will be carried, I cannot conceive what Government will do next, for though trade is at this moment prosperous, great poverty and discontent exist among large classes of the people, and as soon as these needy folk find out that Reform is really not immediate bread and cheese and beer, they will seek something else which they may imagine will be those desired items of existence, and that is what it may be difficult to give them. In the mean time party spirit here has reached a tremendous pitch; old friendships are broken up and old intimacies cease; former cordial acquaintances refuse to meet each other, houses are divided, and the dearest relations disturbed, if not destroyed. Society is become a sort of battle-field, for every man (and woman too) is nothing if not political. In fact, there really appears to be no middle or moderating party, which I think strange and to be deplored. It seems as if it were a mere struggle between the nobility and the mobility, and the middle-class—that vast body of good sense, education, and wealth, and efficient to hold the beam even between the scales—throws itself man by man into one or the other of them, and so only swells the adverse parties on each side.
Parliament meets again in a few days, and then comes the tug of war. Lord John Russell was at Oatlands while we were there, and as the Francis Egertons and their guests were all anti-Reformers, they led him rather a hard life. He bore all their attacks with great good humor, however, and with the well-satisfied smile of a man who thinks himself on the right, and knows himself on the safe side, and wisely forbore to reply to their sallies. Our visit there was delightful.
As the distance is but one and twenty miles, my mother and I posted down in the open carriage. The only guests we found on our arrival were Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan (she is a daughter of Lady Dacre's, and a charming person), Lord John Russell, and two of our corps dramatique, Mr. Craven and Captain Shelley, son of Sir John Shelley, a handsome, good-humored, pleasant young gentleman, who acts Charles V. in "Hernani." I got up very early the first morning I was there and went down before breakfast to our little old cottage. In the lane leading to it I met a poor woman who lived near us, and whom we used to employ. I spoke to her, but she did not know me again. I wonder if these four years can have changed me so much? The tiny house had not been inhabited since we lived there.... My aunt Siddons is better, and Cecy very well.
Your affectionate
F. A. K.
[The beautiful domain of Oatlands was only rented at this time by Lord Francis Egerton, who delighted so much in it that he made overtures for the purchase of it. The house was by no means a good one, though it had been the abode of royalty; but the park was charming, and the whole neighborhood, especially the wooded ranges of St. George's Hill, extremely wild and picturesque.... Lord Francis Egerton bought St. George's Hill, at the foot of which he built Hatchford, Lady Ellesmere's charming dower house and residence after his death, and the house of Oatlands became a country inn, very pleasant to those who had never known it as the house of former friends, and therefore did not meet ghosts in all its rooms and garden walks; and the park was cut up into small villa residences and rascally inclined citizen's boxes. Hatchford, the widowed home of Lady Ellesmere and burial-place of her brother, to whose memory she erected there an elaborate mausoleum, has passed out of the family possessions and become the property of strangers. One son of the house lives on St. George's Hill, and has his home where I have so often drawn rein while riding with his father and mother to look over the wild, wooded slopes to the smiling landscape stretching in sunny beauty far below us.]