Records of a Girlhood Part 37

Unfortunately, all these a.s.sociations did not reconcile me to the c.o.c.kney-Scotch of our Covent Garden actors, and Mackay's Bailie Nicol Jarvie was not the least tender of my reminiscences. [It was at a public dinner in Edinburgh, at which Walter Scott and Mackay were guests, that, in referring to the admirable impersonation of the Bailie, Scott's habitual caution with regard to the authorship of the Waverley Novels for a moment lost its balance, and in his warm commendation of the great comedian's performances a sentence escaped him which appeared conclusive to many of those present, if they were still in doubt upon the subject, that he was their writer.] Miss Inveraretie was a cruel Diana, but who would not be?...

_Sat.u.r.day, 14th._--I rode at two with my father. Pa.s.sed Tyrone Power; what a clever, pleasant man he is; Count d'Orsay joined us; he was riding a most beautiful mare; and then James Macdonald, _c.u.m multus aliis_, and I was quite dead, and almost cross, with cold.... After dinner I came up to my room, and set to work like a little galley slave, and by tea-time I had finished my play. "Oh, joy forever! my task is done!" I came down rather tipsy, and proclaimed my achievement. After tea I began copying the last act, but my father desired me to read it to them; so, at about half-past nine, I began. My mother cried much; what a nice woman she is! My father, Dall, and John agreed that it was beautiful, though I believe the two first excellent judges were fast asleep during the latter part of the reading, which was perhaps why they liked it so much. At the end my mother said to me, "I am proud of you, my dear;" and so I have my reward. After a little congratulatory conversation, I came to bed at two o'clock, and slept before my head touched the pillow. So now that is finished, and I am glad it is finished. Is it as good as a second piece of work ought to be? I cannot tell. I think so differently of it at different times that I cannot trust my own judgment. I will begin something else as soon as possible. I wonder why nowadays we make all our tragedies foreign? Romantic, historical, knightly England had people and manners once picturesque and poetical enough to serve her play-writers' turn, though Shakespeare always took his stories, though not his histories, from abroad; but people live tragedies and comedies everywhere and all time. I think by and by I will write an English tragedy. [I little thought then that I should write a play whose miserable story was of my own day, and call it "An English Tragedy."]

_Sunday, 15th._-- ... In the afternoon hosts of people called; among others Lady Dacre, who stayed a long time, and wants us to go to her on Thursday. Copied "The Star of Seville" all the evening.

At ten dear Mr. Harness came in, and stayed till twelve.

_Monday, 16th._--Rehea.r.s.ed "Katharine of Cleves" at eleven, but as Lord Francis did not come till twelve we had to begin it again, and kept at it until two. The actors seem frightened about it. Mr.

Warde quakes about the pinching (an incident in the play taken, I suppose, from Ruthven's proceeding toward Mary Stewart at Lochleven). I am only afraid I cannot do anything with my part; it is a sort of melodramatic, pantomimic part that I have no capacity for. The fact is, that neither in the first nor last scenes are my legs long enough to do justice to this lady. The Douglas woman who barred the door with her arm to save King James's life must have been a strapping la.s.s, as well a heroine in spirit. I am not tall enough for such feats of arms. Copied my play till time to go to the theater. My aunt Victoire came to my dressing-room just as I was going on, and persuaded dear Dall, who has never once seen me act, to go into the front of the house. She came back very soon in a state of great excitement and distress, saying she could not bear it. How odd that seems! Dear old Dall! she cannot bear seeing me make-believe miserable. The house was very good, and I played fairly well.

_Tuesday, 17th._--Went to my mother's room before she was down, with Henry. It is her birthday, and I carried her the black velvet dress I have got for her, with which she seemed much pleased. Went to rehearsal at twelve. Lord and Lady Francis were there, and we acted the whole play, of course, to please them, so that I was half dead at the end of the rehearsal. They want us to go to Lady Charlotte's (Greville) to-morrow. My father said we would if we were all well and _in spirits_ (_i.e._, if the play was not damped).... I wonder how my dear old Newhaven fish-wife does. "Eh!

gude gracious, ma'am, it's yer ain sel come back again!" Poor body!

I believe I love the very east wind that blows over the streets of Edinburgh.... After dinner Mrs. Jameson's beautiful toy-likeness of me helped off the time delightfully till the gentlemen came up, and then helped it off delightfully till everybody went away. What a misfortune it is to have a broken nose, like poor dear Thackeray!

He would have been positively handsome, and is positively ugly in consequence of it. John and his friend Venables broke the bridge of Thackeray's nose when they were schoolboys playing together. What a mishap to befall a young lad just beginning life! [I suppose my friend Thackeray's injury was one that did not admit a surgical remedy, but my father, late in life, fell down while skating, and broke the bridge of his nose, and Liston, the eminent surgeon, urged him extremely to let him raise it--"build it again," as he used to say. My father, however, declined the operation, and not only remained with his handsome nose disfigured, but suffered a much greater inconvenience, which Liston had predicted--very aggravated deafness in old age, from the stopping of the pa.s.sages in the nose, which helped to transmit sound to the brain.] After all, I suppose, it does not much signify to a man whether he is ugly or not. Wilkes, who was pre-eminently so, but brilliantly agreeable, used always to say that he was only half an hour behindhand with the handsomest man in England.

_Wednesday, 18th._--Went to the theater to rehea.r.s.e "Katharine of Cleves;" we were kept at it till half-past two. Drove home through the park. The day was beautiful, but my poor father could not get released from that hateful theater, and went without his ride.... I had not felt at all nervous about to-night till the carriage came to the door, and then I turned quite faint and sick with fright. At the theater found Madame le Beau (the forewoman of the great fashionable French milliner, Madame Devy, by whom all my dresses were made) waiting for me. All was in darkness in my dressing-room; neither Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l nor Jane were come (my two servants, or dressers, as they are called at the theater). Presently in scuttled the former, puffing, and whimpering apologies, and presently the room was filled with the pleasant incense of eight candles that she lighted, and blew out and relighted, and wondered that we didn't enjoy the operation. Then Jane bounced breathless in, and made our discomfort perfect. I sat speechless, terrified, and disconsolate.

My fright was increasing every instant, and by the time I was dressed I shook like an aspen leaf from head to foot, and was as sick as no heart could desire. My dresses were most beautiful, and fitted me to perfection. The house was very fine. My poor dear father, who was as perfect in his part as possible this morning, did not speak three words without prompting; he was so nervous and anxious about the success of the piece that his own part was driven literally out of his head. I never saw anything so curious. To be sure, his illness has shattered him very much, and all the worry he has had this week has not mended matters. However, the play went admirably, and was entirely successful, to a.s.sist which result I thought I should have broken a blood-vessel in the last scene, the exertion was so tremendous. My voice was weak with nervousness and excitement, and at last I could hardly utter a word audibly. I almost broke my arm, too, in good earnest, with those horrible iron stanchions. However, it did be over at last, and "all's well that ends well." I was so tired that I could scarcely stand; my mother came down from her box and seemed much pleased with me. She went to my father's room to see if I might not go home instead of to Lady Charlotte's, but he seemed to think it would please them if we made the effort of going for a few minutes; and so I dressed and set off, and there we found a regular "swarry," instead of something to eat and drink, and a chair to sit upon in peace and quiet. There was a room full of all the fine folks in London; very few chairs, no peace and quiet, and heaps of acquaintance to talk to.... All the London world that is in London. Lord and Lady Francis took their success very composedly. I don't think they would have cared much if the play had failed. Henry Greville seemed to be much more interested for them than they for themselves, and discussed it all for a long time with me. I liked him very much.... At long last I got home, and had some supper, but what with fatigue and nervousness, and _it_--_i.e._, the supper--so late, I had a most wretched night, and kept dreaming I was out in my part and jumping up in bed, and all sorts of agonies. What a life! I don't steal my money, I'm sure.

_Thursday, 19th._-- ... Henry and I rode in the park, and though the day was detestable, it did me good. As we were walking the horses round by Kensington Gardens, Lord John Russell, peering out of voluminous wrappers, joined us. Certainly that small, sharp-visaged gentleman does not give much outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual power he possesses and wields over this realm of England just now. His bodily presence might almost be described as St. Paul's. This turner inside out and upside down of our body, social and political, this hero of reform, one of the ablest men in England--I suppose in Europe--he rode with us for a long time, and I thought how H---- would have envied me this conversation with her idol.... In the evening, at the theater, though I had gone over my part before going there, for the first time in my play-house experience I was _out_ on the stage. I stopped short in the middle of one of my speeches, thinking I had finished it, whereas I had not given Mr. Warde the cue he was to reply to. How disgraceful!... After the play, my mother called for us in the carriage, and we went to Lady Dacre's, and had a pleasant party enough.... C---- G---- was there, with her mother (the clever and accomplished auth.o.r.ess of several so-called fashionable novels, which had great popularity in their day). Miss G----, now Lady E---- T----, used to be called by us "la Dame Blanche," on account of the dazzling fairness of her complexion. She was very brilliant and amusing, and I remember her saying to one of her admirers one evening, when her snowy neck and shoulders were shining in all the unveiled beauty of full dress, "Oh, go away, P----, you _tan_ me."

(The gentleman had a shock head of fiery-red hair.)

_Friday._-- ... I am horribly f.a.gged, and after dinner fell fast asleep in my chair. At the theater, in the evening, the house was remarkably good for a "second night," and the play went off very well.... My voice was much better to-night, though it cracked once most awfully in the last scene, from fatigue.... I think Lord Francis, or the management, or somebody ought to pay me for the bruises and thumps I get in this new play. One arm is black and blue (besides being broken every night) with bolting the door, and the other grazed to the bone with falling in fits upon the floor on my elbows. This sort of tragic acting is a service of some danger, and I object to it much more than to the stabbing and poisoning of the "Legitimate Drama;" in fact, "I do not mind death, but I cannot bear pinching."

_Sat.u.r.day._-- ... Rode in the park with my father. Lord John Russell rode with us for some time, and was very pleasant. He made us laugh by telling us that Sir Robert Inglis (most bigoted of Tory anti-reformers) having fallen asleep on the ministerial benches at the time of the division the other night, they counted him on their side. What good fun! I never saw a man look so wretchedly worn and hara.s.sed as Lord John does. They say the ministry must go out, that they dare not make these new peers, and that the Bill will stick fast by the way instead of pa.s.sing. What frightful trouble there will be!...

_Sunday, 22d._-- ... After church looked over the critiques in the Sunday papers on "Katharine of Cleves." Some of them were too good-natured, some too ill-natured. The _Spectator_ was exceedingly amusing.

By far the best account and criticism of this piece is Mr. Barham's metrical report of it in the "Ingoldsby Legends." Lord Francis himself used to quote with delight, "She didn't mind death, but she couldn't bear pinching." ...

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, January 22, 1832.

Thank you, my dearest H----, for your last delightful letter, which I should have answered before, but for the production of a new piece at Covent Garden, which has taken up all my time for the last week in rehearsals, and trying on dresses and the innumerable and invariable etceteras of a new play and part. It has been highly successful, and I think is likely to bring money to our treasury, which is _the_ consummation most devoutly to be wished. It is nothing more than an interesting melodrama, with the advantage of being written in gentlemanly (n.o.blemanly?) blank verse instead of turgid prose, and being acted by the princ.i.p.al instead of the secondary members of the company. This will suffice to make you appreciate my satisfaction, when I am complimented upon my acting in it, and you will sympathize with the shout of laughter my father and myself indulged in in the park the other day, when Lord John Russell, who was riding with us, told us that a young lady of his acquaintance had a.s.sured him that "Katharine of Cleves" (the name of the piece) was vastly more interesting than any thing Shakespeare had ever written.

The report is that there is to be no new creation of peers, and that the Bill will not pa.s.s. Certainly poor Lord John looks worried to death. He and Lord Grey have almost the whole weight and responsibility of this most momentous question upon their shoulders, and it must be no trifle to carry. As for the judicious young lady's judgment about "Katharine of Cleves," it is just this sort of thing that makes me _rub the hands of my mind_ with satisfaction that I have never cared for my profession as my family has done. I think if I had, such folly, or rather stupidity, would have exasperated me too much. Besides, I should have been much less useful to the theater, for I should have lived in an everlasting wrangle with authors, actors, and managers on behalf of the mythological bodies supposed to preside over tragedy and comedy, and I should have killed myself (or perhaps been killed), and that quickly, with ineffectual protests against half the performances before the lamps, which are enough to make the angels weep and laugh--in short, go into hysterics, if they ever come to the play....

Do you know you have almost increased my very sufficient tendency to superst.i.tion by your presentiment when you last left us that you should never return to this house. There is some talk now of our leaving it. My mother yearns for her favorite suburban haunts, the scene of her courtship, and the spot where most of her happy youthful a.s.sociations abide, and has half persuaded my father to let this house and take one in a particular row of "cottages of gentility" called Craven Hill. It only consists of twelve houses, in _five_ of which my mother has, at different periods of her life, resided. This is all vague at present; I will let you know if it a.s.sumes a more definite shape. Some time will elapse before it is decided on, and more before it is done; and in any case, somehow or other, you must be once more under this roof with us before we leave it....

I quite agree with you that such books as Mr. Hope's (on the nature and immortality of the soul, the precise t.i.tle of which I have forgotten) "may be useless," and sometimes, indeed, worse. If a person has nothing better to do than count the sea sands or fill the old bottomless tub of the Danaides, they may be excused for devoting their time and wits to such riddles, perhaps. But when the mind has positive, practical work to perform, and time keeps bringing _all the time_ specific duties, or when, as in your case, a predisposition to vague speculation is the intellectual besetting sin, I think _addition_ to such subjects to be avoided. I suppose all human beings have, in some shape or degree, the desire for that knowledge which is still the growth of the forbidden tree of Paradise, and the l.u.s.t for which inevitably thrusts us against the bars of the material life in which we are consigned; but to give up one's time to writing and reading elaborate theories of a past and future which we may conceive to exist, but of the existence of which it is impossible we should achieve _any_ proof, much less any detailed knowledge, appears to me an unprofitable and unsatisfactory misuse of time and talent....

You are mistaken in supposing me familiar with the early history of Poland. I am ashamed to say I know nothing about it, and my zeal for the cause of its people is an ignorant sentiment_alism_--partly, perhaps, mere innate combativeness that longs to strike on the weaker side, and partly, too, resentful indignation at the cold-blooded neutrality observed by all the powers of Europe while that handful of men were making so brave a stand against the Russian giant.

That reminds me that Prince Zartoryski, who is in this country just now, came to the play the other night, and was so struck with my father that he sent round to him to say that he desired the honor of his acquaintance, and begged he would do him the favor of dining with him on some appointed day, which seemed to me a very pretty piece of impulsive enthusiasm. I believe Prince Zartoryski is a royal personage, and so above conventionalities....

My father is pretty well, though very far from having entirely regained his strength, but he is making gradual progress in that direction....

Always affectionately yours, f.a.n.n.y.

_Tuesday, 24th._-- ... Read over "The Star of Seville," as Mr.

Bartley (our worthy stage manager) has cut it, with a view to its possible performance. He has cut it with a vengeance--what one may call to the quick. However, I suppose they know their own business (though, by the by, I am not always so sure of that). At any rate, I shall make no resistance, but be silent while I am sheared....

I rode in the park with John. My mare was ill, and Mew (the stable-keeper) had sent me one of his horses, a great awkward brute, who, after jolting me well up Oxford Street, no sooner entered the park than he bolted down the drive as fast as legs could carry him, John following afar off. In Rotten Row we were joined by young T----.... When I thought the devil was a little worked out of my horse, I raised him to a canter again, whereupon scamper the second--I like a flash of lightning, they after me as well as they could. John would not force my father's horse, but Mr.

T----, whose horse was a thoroughbred hunter, managed to keep up with me, but lamed his horse in so doing. We then walked soberly round the park and saw our friends and acquaintances, and, turning down the drive, I determined once more to try my horse's disposition, whereupon off he went again, like a shot, leaving John far behind. I flitted down Rotten Row like Faust on the demon horse, and as I drew up and turned about I heard, "Well, that woman does ride well," which was all, whoever said it, knew of the matter; whereas, in my mad career, I had pa.s.sed Fozzard, who shook his head lamentably at John, exclaiming, "Oh, Miss f.a.n.n.y! Miss f.a.n.n.y!" After this last satisfactory experiment I made no more, and we cut short our ride on account of my unmanageable steed....

We had a dinner party at home, and in the evening additional guests, among them Thackeray, who is very clever and delightful. We had music and singing and pleasant, bright talk, and they departed and left us in great good humor.

_Wednesday, 25th._--Read the "Prometheus Unbound." How gorgeous it is! I do not think Sh.e.l.ley is read or appreciated now as enthusiastically as he was, even in my recollection, some few years ago. I went over my part, and at half-past five to the theater. The play was "Katharine of Cleves," the house very good; and, to please Henry Greville, I resumed the gold wreath I had discarded and restored the lines I had omitted. After the play came home and supped, and at eleven went to Lady F----'s.... A very fine party; "everybody"--that is in town--was there, and Mrs. Norton looking more magnificent than "everybody." Old Lady S---- like nothing in the world but the mummy carried round at the Egyptian feasts, with her parchment neck and shoulders bare, and her throat all drawn into strings and cords, hung with a dozen rows of perfect precious stones glittering in the glare of the lights with the constant shaking of her palsied head. [This lady continued to frequent the gayest a.s.semblies in London when she had become so old and infirm that, though still persisting daily in her favorite exercise on horseback, she used to be tied into her saddle in such a manner as to prevent her falling out of it. She had been one of the finest riders in England, but used often, at the time when I knew her, to go to sleep while walking the horse round the park, her groom who rode near her being obliged to call to her "My lady! My lady!" to make the poor old woman open her eyes and see where she was going.

At upward of eighty she died an unnatural death. Writing by candle-light on a winter's evening, it is supposed that her cap must have taken fire, for she was burnt to death, and had for her funeral pile part of the n.o.ble historical house of Hatfield, which was destroyed by the same accident.]

Lord Lansdowne desired to be introduced to me, and talked to me a long time. I thought him very good-natured and a charming talker.

Mrs. Bradshaw (Maria Tree) was there, looking beautiful. Our hostess's daughter, Miss F----, is very pretty, but just misses being a beauty; in that case a miss is a great deal worse than a mile. Just as the rooms were beginning to thin, and we were going away, Lord O---- sat down to the piano. I had heard a great deal about his singing, and was rather disappointed; he has a sweet voice and a sweet face, but Henry Greville's bright, sparkling countenance and expressive singing are worth a hundred such mere musical sentimentalities. [Mr. Henry Greville was one of the best amateur singers of the London society of his day. He was the intimate personal friend of Mario, whom I remember he brought to our house, when first he arrived in London, as M. de Candia, before the beginning of his public career, and when, in the very first bloom of youth, his exquisite voice and beautiful face produced in society an effect which only briefly forestalled the admiration of all Europe when he determined to adopt the profession which made him famous as the incomparable tenor of the Italian stage for so many years.] Then, too, those lads sing songs, the words of which give one the throat-ache with strangled crying, and when they have done you hear the women all round mincing, "Charming!--how nice!--sweet!--what a dear!--darling creature!"

_Thursday, 26th._--Murray was most kind and good-natured and liberal about all the arrangements for publishing "Francis I." and "The Star of Seville." He will take them both, and defer the publication of the first as long as the managers of Covent Garden wish him to do so. [As there was some talk just then of bringing out "The Star of Seville" at the theater, it was thought better not to forestall its effect by the publication of "Francis I."]

At the theater the play was "The School for Scandal." A---- F---- was there, with young Sheridan; I hope the latter approved of my method of speaking the speeches of his witty great-grandfather. I played well, though the audience was dull and didn't help me. Mary and William Harness supped with us....

_Friday, 27th._--A long discussion after breakfast about the necessity of one's husband being clever. Ma foi je n'en vois pas la necessite. People don't want to be entertaining each other all day long; _very_ clever men don't grow on every bush, and _middling_ clever men don't amount to anything. I think I should like to have married Sir Humphry Davy. A well-a.s.sorted marriage, as the French say, seems to me like a well-arranged duet for four hands; the treble, the woman, has all the brilliant and melodious part, but the whole government of the piece, the harmony, is with the base, which really leads and sustains the whole composition and keeps it steady, and without which the treble for the most part _runs to tune_ merely, and wants depth, dignity, and real musical importance.

In the afternoon went to Lady Dacre's.... She read me the first act of a little piece she has been writing; while listening to her I was struck as I never had been before with the great beauty of her countenance, and its very varied and striking expression.... At home spent my time in reading Sh.e.l.ley. How wonderful and beautiful the "Prometheus" is! The unguessed heavens and earth and sea are so many storehouses from which Sh.e.l.ley brings gorgeous heaps of treasure and piles them up in words like jewels. I read "The Sensitive Plant" and "Rosalind and Helen." As for the latter--powerful enough, certainly--it gives me bodily aches to read such poetry.

What extraordinary proceedings have been going on in the House of Commons! Mr. Percival getting up and quoting the Bible, and Mr.

Hunt getting up and answering him by quoting the Bible too. It seems we are to have a general fast--on account of the general national misconduct, I suppose; serve us right.

_Sunday, 29th._--Went into my mother's room before going to church.

Henry Greville has sent her Victor Hugo's new book, "Notre Dame de Paris," but she appears half undetermined whether she will go on reading it or not, it is so painfully exciting. I took Mrs.

Montague up in the carriage on my way to church, and after service drove her home, and went up to see Mrs. Procter, and found baby (Adelaide Procter) at dinner. That child looks like a poet's child, and a poet. It has something "doomed" (what the Germans call "fatal") in its appearance--such a preternaturally thoughtful, mournful expression for a little child, such a marked brow over the heavy blue eyes, such a transparent skin, such pale-golden hair.

John says the little creature is an elf-child. I think it is the prophecy of a poet. [And so, indeed, it was, as all who know Adelaide Procter's writings will agree--a poet who died too early for the world, though not before she had achieved a poet's fame, and proved herself her father's worthy daughter.] ... In the afternoon, I found my mother deep in her French novel, from which she read me two very striking pa.s.sages--the description of Esmeralda, which was like a fine painting, and extremely beautiful, and the sketch of Quasimodo's life, ending with his riding on the great bell of the cathedral. Very powerful and very insane--a sort of mental nightmare, giving one as much the idea of disorder of intellect as such an image occurring to one in a dream would of a disordered stomach. Harmony, order, the beauty of goodness and the justice of G.o.d, are alike ignored in such works. How sad it is for the future as well as for the present!

_Monday, 30th._--King Charles' martyrdom gives me a holiday to-night. Excellent martyr! Victor Hugo has set my mother raving.

She didn't sleep all night, and says the book is bad in its tendency and shocking in its details; nevertheless, she goes on reading it....

_Tuesday, January 31st._-- ... Went to Turnerelli's. He is making a bust of me, that will perhaps be like--the man in the moon. Dall was kind enough to read to me Mrs. Jameson's "Christina" while I sat. I like it extremely. After I came home, read Shirley's play of "The Two Sisters." I didn't like it much. It is neither very interesting, very witty, nor very poetical, and might almost be a modern work for its general want of power and character. The women appear to me a little exaggerated--the one is mad and the other silly. At the theater in the evening the house was very good indeed--the play, "Katharine of Cleves;" but poor Mr. Warde was so ill he could hardly stand.

_Wednesday, February 1st._-- ... Drove out with Henry in the new carriage. It is very handsome, but by no means as convenient or capacious as our old rumble. Oh, these vanities! How we sacrifice everything to them!

_Thursday, 2d._ ... Rode out with my father. The whole world was abroad in the sunshine, like so many flies. My mother was walking with John and Henry, and Henry Greville. I should like to tell him two words of my mind on the subject of lending "Notre Dame de Paris" about to women. At any rate, we vulgar females are not as much accustomed to mental dram-drinking as his fine-lady friends, and don't stand that sort of thing so well.... In the evening we went to the theater to see "The Haunted Tower." Youth and first impressions are wonderful magicians. (I forget whether the music of this piece was by Storace or Michael Kelly.) This was an opera which I had heard my father and mother talk of forever. I went full of expectation accordingly, and was entirely disappointed. The meagerness and triteness of the music and piece astonished me.

After the full orchestral accompaniments, the richly harmonized concerted pieces and exquisite melodies lavished on us in our modern operas, these simple airs and their choruses and mean finales produce an effect from their poverty of absolute musical starvation.

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, January 31, 1832.

MY DEAREST H---- G----,

You are coming to England, and you will certainly not do so again without coming to us. My father and mother, you know, speak by me when I a.s.sure you that a visit from you would give us all the greatest pleasure.... Do not come late in the season to us, because at present we do not know whether June or July may take us out of town.... With my scheme of going to America, I think I can look the future courageously in the face. It is something to hold one's fortune in one's own hands; if the worst comes to the worst it is but another year's drudgery, and the whereabouts really matters little.... We hear that the cholera is in Edinburgh. I cannot help thinking with the deepest anxiety of those I love there, and I imagine with sorrow that beautiful, n.o.ble city, those breezy hills, those fresh, sea-weedy sh.o.r.es and coasts breathed upon by that dire pestilence. The city of the winds, where the purifying currents of keen air sweep through every thoroughfare and eddy round every corner--perched up so high upon her rocky throne, she seems to sit in a freer, finer atmosphere than all the world beside! (I appear, in my enthusiastic love for Edinburgh, to have forgotten those Immonderraze, the wynds and closes of the old town.) I hope the report may not prove true, though from a letter I have received from my cousin Sally (Siddons) the plague is certainly within six miles of them. She writes very rationally about it, and I can scarce forbear superst.i.tiously believing that G.o.d's mercy will especially protect those who are among His most devoted and dutiful children....

You speak of my love of nature almost as if it were a quality for which I deserve commendation. It is a blessing for which I am most grateful. You who live uninclosed by paved streets and brick walls, who have earth, sea, and sky _a discretion_ spread round you in all their majestic beauty, cannot imagine how vividly my memory recalls and my mind dwells upon mere strips of greensward, with the shadows of trees lying upon them. The colors of a patch of purple heather, broken banks by roadsides through which sunshine streamed--often mere effects of light and shade--return to me again and again like tunes, and _to shut my eyes and look at them_ is a perfect delight to me. I suppose one is in some way the better as well as the happier for one's sympathy with the fair things of this fair world, which are types of things yet fairer, and emanations from the great Source of all goodness, loveliness, and sublimity. Whether in the moral or material universe, images and ideas of beauty must always be in themselves good. Beauty is one manifestation and form of truth, and the transition seems to me almost inevitable from the contemplation of things that are lovely to one's _senses_ to those which are _lovable_ by one's spirits' higher and finer powers of apprehension. The mind is kept sunny and calm, and free from ill vapors, by the influence of beautiful things; and surely G.o.d loves beauty, for from the greatest to the smallest it pervades all His works; and poetry, painting, and sculpture are not as beautiful as the things they reproduce, because of the imperfect nature-of their creator--man; though _his_ works are only good in proportion as he puts his soul--_i.e._, the Spirit of G.o.d--inspiration into them.

Your affectionate

F. A. K.