Records of Later Life Part 26

"But it is past, the glory is congealing, The fervor of the heart grows dead and dim; I gaze all night upon a whitewashed ceiling, And catch no glimpses of the Seraphim."

I think the ruins of the German hills especially excellent in that they are ruins, and can by no possibility ever again be made strongholds of debauchery, ferocity, and filth; and finally and to conclude, my dear Harriet, lights and shadows, the colors of the earth and sky, the beauty of G.o.d's creation, in short, alone now moves me very deeply, and this, I am thankful to say, is as powerful to do so as ever.

I must tell you something pretty and poetical, and which I think has made more impression upon me than anything else in the course of my travels. The other evening at Cologne, by the sloping light of a watery autumnal sunset, the wind blowing loud and strong, the river rolling fast and free, and the great, violet-colored clouds drooping heavily down the sky, we suddenly heard the guns along each bank fire repeatedly, saluting the approach of some greatness or other down the stream. Whether it was king or kaiser, or only one of the merchant-princes to whom the navigation of this stream now belongs, and who receive these honors whenever they go up or down the river, n.o.body could tell; and still peal after peal was fired, and one echo rolled into another from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. At length a long low boat came in sight, sweeping down with the wide current towards the city walls. She was covered from stem to stern with bright flags and pennons, and was freighted with stone, which the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt was sending down from his quarries, to help the people of Cologne to finish their beautiful cathedral; and as this cargo came along their sh.o.r.es they were saluting it with royal honors. The crane which was to lift the blocks from the boat had its great iron arm all wreathed with flowers, and flags and streamers floating from its top, which peaceful half-religious jubilee pleased me greatly, and affected me too.

At Cologne, six weeks before, we had seen the King of Hanover, Ernest Augustus, the wicked Duke of c.u.mberland, received just in the same way, except that the cannonading was closed on that occasion, in an exceedingly appropriate manner to my mind, by a sudden fierce peal of derisive thunder.

We went, while at Cologne, to the Museum, and there saw another beautiful thing of another sort, Bendermann's picture of the Jews weeping by the waters of Babylon--a very striking picture, sad and harmonious in its coloring, and full of feeling and expression; I was greatly impressed by it. And thus, you see, from only one of the places I have visited, I have brought away two living recollections, perpetual sources of pleasant mental contemplation. Two such treasures in one's storehouse of memory would have been worth the whole journey; but I have had many more such, and I incline to think that it is very often in retrospect that travel is most agreeable--the little annoyances and hindrances, which often qualify one's pleasure a good deal at the time one receives it, seldom mix themselves with the recollection of it in the same vivid manner; and so, as the American widow said she thought it was a charming thing "to have been married _and be done with it_," I think it is a charming thing to have been up the Rhine and be back again.

I forget whether I wrote you word of my father's joining us for a single day at Frankfort, and then returning immediately to England.... He was not at all well, and the hurried journey was, I fear, a most imprudent one. My sister is at present at Liege with Henry, Liszt, and our friend Chorley....

Good-bye, my dearest H----.

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

[My friend Miss S---- came to us in London, and witnessed with me my sister's coming out at Covent Garden, which took place on Tuesday, the 2nd of November, 1842, in Bellini's opera of "Norma,"

which she sang in English, retaining the whole of the recitative. My sister's success was triumphant, and the fortunes of the unfortunate theatre, which again were at the lowest ebb, revived under the influence of her great and immediate popularity, and the overflowing houses that, night after night, crowded to hear her. Her performances, which I seldom missed, were among my most delightful pleasures, during a season in which I enjoyed the companionship of my dear friend, and a great deal of pleasant social intercourse with the most interesting and agreeable people of the great gay London world.]

BOWOOD, Sunday, December 19th.

_To Theodore Sedgwick, Esq._ MY DEAR THEODORE,

I cannot conceive how it happens that a letter of yours, dated the 8th September, should have reached me only a fortnight ago in London. Either it must have been forgotten after written, and not sent for some time, or Messrs. Harnden and Co.'s _Express_ is the slowest known conveyance in the world. However that may be, the letter and the Philadelphia Bank statement did arrive safe at last, and my father desires me to thank you particularly for your kindness in sending it to him. Not, indeed, that it is peculiarly consolatory in itself, inasmuch as it confirms our worst apprehensions about the fate of all moneys lodged in that disastrous inst.i.tution. But perhaps it is better to have a term put to one's uncertainty, even by the positive conviction of misfortune not to be averted. My father's property in that bank--"The United States Bank"--was considerable for him, and had been hardly earned money. I understand from him that my share of our American earnings are in the New Orleans banks, which, though they pay no dividends, and have not done so for some time past, are still, I believe, supposed to be safe and solvent....

We are staying just now with Lord and Lady Lansdowne, in this pleasant home of theirs--a home of terrestrial delights. Inside the house, all is tasteful and intellectual magnificence--such pictures! such statues!

And outside, a charming English landscape, educated with consummate taste into the very perfection of apparently natural beauty.... They are amiable, good, pleasant, and every way distinguished people, and I like them very much. He, as you know, is one of our leading Whig statesmen, a munificent patron of the arts and literature, a man of the finest taste and cultivation, at whose house eminences of all sorts are cordially received. Lady Lansdowne is a specimen Englishwoman of her cla.s.s, refined, intelligent, well-bred, and most charming. I believe Lord Lansdowne was kindly civil to your aunt Catherine when she was in London; I wish she could have see this enchanting place of his.

Rogers, Moore, and a parcel of choice _beaux esprits_ are staying here; but, to tell you a fact which probably accuses me of stupidity, they are so incessantly clever, witty, and brilliant that they every now and then give me a brain-ache.

I do not know the exact depth of your patience, but I have an idea that it has a bottom, therefore I think it expedient not to pursue _crossing_ any further with you.

Give my kindest love to Sarah, and

Believe me ever, my dear Theodore, Yours very truly, f.a.n.n.y BUTLER.

Please remember me very kindly to your mother. I sat by a man at dinner yesterday, a Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who was talking to me of having known her friends Mrs. Jay and Mrs. Banian, when they were in England; and their names were pleasant to me on account of their a.s.sociation with her.

BOWOOD, Tuesday, December 21st, 1841.

Did you expect an immediate answer from me, dear Harriet, or did you think your letters would be put at the bottom of the budget, to wait their appointed time? You say your thought in parting from me was chiefly to preserve your tranquillity; and so was mine to preserve my own and yours.... There are many occasions on which I both feel much more than I show, and perceive in others much more feeling than I believe they think I am aware of. There are times when, for one's own sake, as well as for that of others, to be--or, if that is not possible, to seem--absorbed in outward things of the most indifferent description is highly desirable; and I am even conscious sometimes of a sort of hardness, which seems to come involuntarily to my aid, in seasons when I know myself or fear that others are about to be carried away by their feelings, or to break down under them....

I was glad enough to get your second letter, and to know you were safe in Dublin. It was calm the night you crossed, but it has blown once or twice fearfully since.

Our visit to the Francis Egertons, at Worsley, was prosperous and pleasant in the highest degree; and we are now paying our promised one at Bowood. I must tell you a trait of Anne [my children's American nurse], who, it is my belief, is nothing less than the Princess Pocahontas, who, having returned to earth, has condescended to take charge of my children.

You know that this place is celebrated; the house is not only fine in point of size, architecture, and costly furnishing, but is filled with precious works of art, painting and sculpture, modern and ancient, beautiful, rare, and costly. The first day that we arrived, ushered up the great staircase to our rooms, I followed the servant with wide-open eyes, gazing in delighted admiration at everything I saw. "Well," said I to Anne, "is not this a fine house, Anne?" "The staircase is well enough," was her imperturbable reply. Wouldn't one think she had had the Vatican for her second-best house, and St. Peter's for her private chapel, all the days of her life? She certainly must have, some Indian blood in her veins.

This morning I took a brisk walk along the sunny terrace, where, from under the shining shelter of holly, laurel, cedar, and all other evergreen shrubs and trees, one looks over a garden--that even now, with its graceful vases, its terraces, its ivy winter dressing, is gay and beautiful--to a lawn that slopes gently to a sheet of water, losing itself like a lake among irregular wooded banks, whose brown feathery outline borrows from the winter's sun a golden tinge of soft sad splendor. Upon this water swans and wild-fowl sail and sport about; and the whole scene this morning, tipped with sparkling frost, and shining under a brilliant sky, seemed very charming to me, and to S---- too, who, running by my side, exclaimed, "Well, this is my idea of heaven! I do think this might be called Paradise, or that garden--I forget its name--that Adam and Eve were put into!" (Eden had escaped her memory, as, let us hope, in time it did theirs.) I was pleased to find that my Biblical teachings had suggested positive images, and that she had caught none of her nurse's stolid insensibility to beauty....

We have a choice society here just now, and fortunately among them persons that we know and feel at our ease with: Rogers, Moore, Macaulay, Babbage, Westmacott, Charles Greville, and two or three charming, agreeable, unaffected women....

You ask if Lady Holland is at Bowood. No, she had returned home _by land_, as they say [at the beginning of railroad travelling, persons who still preferred the former method of posting on the high-road were said to go by land], not choosing to risk her precious body on the railway without Brunel's personal escort to keep it in order and prevent it from doing her any accident. He having had the happiness of travelling down to Bowood with her, which she insisted upon, naturally enough declined coming all the way down again from London to see her safe home; so not being able to accomplish his fetching her back to town, she contrived to extort from him a letter stating that, owing to the late heavy rains, her journey back to London upon the railroad would probably be both tedious and uncomfortable, and advising her by all means to go home "by land," which, considering that the Great Western is his own road--his iron child, so to speak,--by which he is bound to swear under all circ.u.mstances, is, I think, a pretty good specimen of her omnipotence.

She did post home accordingly, but not without dismal misgivings as to what might befall her while crossing a wood of Lord Salisbury's, where she was to be, for a short s.p.a.ce of time, seven miles off from any village or town. I never knew such a terrified, terrible, foolish old woman in my life.

After all, she is right: life is worth more to very good and to very good-for-nothing people than to others. My father dined with her in town while we were away, and in her note of invitation she included us, if we had returned, saying all manner of civil fine things about me; but, as far as I am concerned, it won't do, and she cannot put salt upon my tail....

We returned to town on Friday. Charles Greville saw my father on Sat.u.r.day, and says he is, and is looking, very well. Adelaide was gone down to Addlestone, to see John and his wife. My children--bless them!--are making such a riot here at my table that I scarcely know what I am writing.

Good-bye, dearest Harriet. I will write to you again to-morrow.

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

_Bowood_, Wednesday, December 22nd, 1841.

_Dearest Harriet_,

I was a "happy woman" at Worsley [a "happy woman" was the term used by me from my childhood to describe a woman on horseback], and, as sometimes happens, had even too much of my happiness. My friend Lady Francis is made of whalebone and india-rubber in equal proportions, very neatly and elegantly fastened together with the finest steel springs, and is incapable of fatigue from exertion, or injury from exposure.

Having an exalted idea of my capabilities in the way of horse exercise (which, indeed, when I am in my usual condition, are pretty good), she started off with me to H----, a distance of about eight miles, and we did the whole way there and back (besides an episodical gallop, three times full tear round a field, to tame our horses, which were wild) either at a hard gallop or a harder trot. I, who have grown fat and soft, and have hardly ridden since I left America, came home bruised and beaten, and aching in every limb to that degree that I was glad to lie down--conceive the humiliation!--and was much put to it to get up again to dress for dinner; having, moreover, the consolation of being a.s.sured by Lady Francis that she had ridden thus hard out of pure consideration for me; supposing that the faster I went, the better I should be pleased. I was, besides, mounted upon a fiery little fiend of a pony, who pulled my arms out of their sockets and would not walk. However, by repeating the dose every day, I suffered less and less, and am now once more in excellent riding condition.

I remember a ludicrous circ.u.mstance of the same kind happening to me in America, on the occasion of the first ride I ever took with my brother-in-law, who was then comparatively a stranger to me. He was a cavalry officer, a capital horseman, and hard rider; which qualities he exhibited the first time I ever went out with him, by riding at such a pace and for such a length of time that, perceiving he did not kill himself, I asked if he was in the habit of killing his horse every time he rode out; when he burst out laughing, and a.s.sured me that he thought he was only conforming to my habitual pace.

Yesterday I varied my exercise, for I went out on horseback with Lord Lansdowne, and finding the roads dangerously slippery for our horses, which were not sharped, when we were at some distance from Bowood we dismounted, and gave them to the groom, and came home on foot, a distance of three miles, which, carrying one's habit [riding-skirts in those days were very long], I think was as good as four.

You cannot conceive anything more melancholy than the aspect of H----.... It was a miserable day, dark, dismal, and foggy; the Manchester smoke came down, together with a penetrating cold drizzle, like the defilement and weeping of irretrievable shame, and sin, and sorrow; and the whole aspect of the place struck me with dismay. The house was shut up, and looked absolutely deserted, not a soul stirring about it; the garden dismantled and out of order. Altogether, the contrast of the whole scene to that which I remembered so bright, cheerful, gay, and lovely, combined with the cause of its present condition, struck me as beyond measure mournful....

You ask after the welfare of my children's nurse, Anne; and I will tell you something comically characteristic both of the individual and her nation. Here at Bowood she eats alone with the children, as she has been in the habit of doing at home; but at Worsley the little ones dined with us at our luncheon-table, and she ate in the housekeeper's room. Not knowing myself exactly what would be the place a.s.signed to an American nursery-maid in the society of the servants' hall at Worsley, I inquired of her whether she was comfortable and well-treated. She said, "Oh, yes, perfectly well;" but there seemed to me by her manner to be something or other amiss, and upon my inquiring further, she said, "Well, then, Mrs.

Butler, I'll tell you what it is: I do wish they'd let me dine at the lower table. Everything is very good and very fine, to be sure, and the people are very kind and civil to me, but I cannot bear to have men in livery and maid-servants standing up behind my chair waiting on me, and that's the truth of it." She said this with an air of such sincere discomfort that it was quite evident to me that if, in common with her countrymen, she thought herself "as good as anybody," she certainly was not seduced by the glories of the upper table into forgetting that any one was as good as she.

I was spared the discomfort of having the children in another house; for either Lady Francis has fewer guests than she expected, or she had contrived to manage better than she had supposed she could, for they were lodged under the same roof with me, and quite near enough for comfort or convenience....

Thank you for your kindness in copying that account of Cavanagh for me; thank you, too, for Archbishop Whately's book, which I read immediately.

There is nothing in it that I have not read before, nor certainly anything whatever to alter my opinion that the acc.u.mulation of enormous wealth in the hands of individuals who transmit it to their eldest sons, who inherit it without either mental or physical exertion of theirs, is an inevitable source of moral evil. There was nothing in that book to shake my opinion that hereditary idleness and luxury are not good for the country where they exist. An opinion was expressed in general conversation by almost everybody at Worsley which suggested a conclusion to my mind that did not appear to occur to any one else. In speaking of the education of young English boys at our great public schools, the whole system pursued in those inst.i.tutions was condemned as bad; but on all sides, nevertheless, admitted to be better (at any rate, for the sons of n.o.blemen) than the incessant, base, excessive complaisance and flattery of their servants and dependents, from which they all said that it was impossible to screen them in their own homes, and equally impossible that they should not suffer serious moral evil. Lord Francis said that for a lad like his nephew, the Marquis of Stafford, there was but one thing worse than being educated at Eton, and that was being educated at home; therefore, concluded they all in chorus, we send our boys to our public schools. So the children are sent away lest they should be corrupted by the obsequious servants and luxurious habits and general mode of life of their parents. And this, of course, is one of the inevitable results of distinctions of cla.s.ses and hereditary wealth and influence; it is not one of the good ones, but there are better.

G.o.d bless you, dearest Harriet. I wrote to you yesterday, and shall probably do so again to-morrow.

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

HARLEY STREET, LONDON, Sunday, December 26th, 1841.

DEAR HARRIET,

I must tell you a droll little incident that occurred the day of our leaving Bowood. As I was crossing the great hall, holding little F---- by the hand, Lord Lansdowne and Moore, who were talking at the other end, came towards me, and, while the former expressed kind regrets at our departure, Moore took up the child and kissed her, and set her down again; when she clutched hold of my gown, and trotted silently out of the hall by my side. As the great red door closed behind us, on our way to my rooms, she said, in a tone that I thought indicated some stifled sense of offended dignity, "Pray, mamma, who was dat little dentleman?"

Now, Harriet, though Moore's fame is great, his stature is little, and my belief is that my three-year-old daughter was suffering under an impression that she had been taken a liberty with by some enterprising schoolboy. Oh, Harriet! think if one of his own Irish rosebuds of sixteen had received that poet's kiss, how long it would have been before she would have washed that side of her face! I believe if he had bestowed it upon me, I would have kept mine from water for its sake, till--bed-time. Indeed, when first "Lalla Rookh" came out, I think I might have made a little circle on that cheek, and dedicated it to Tom Moore and dirt forever; that is--till I forgot all about it, and my habit of plunging my face into water whenever I dress got the better of my finer feelings. But, you see, he didn't kiss my stupid little child's intelligent mother, and this is the way that fool Fortune misbestows her favors. She is spiteful, too, that whirligig woman with the wheel. I am not an autograph collector, of course; if I was, I shouldn't have got the prize I received yesterday, when Rogers, after mending a pen for me, and tenderly caressing the nib of it with a knife as sharp as his own tongue, wrote, in his beautiful, delicate, fine hand, by way of trying it--

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."

Is that a quotation from himself or some one else? or was it an impromptu?--a seer's vision, and friend's warning? Chi sa?

I cannot help being a little surprised at the earnestness with which you implore me to read Archbishop Whately's treatise. My objection to reading of books never extends to any book either given or lent, or strongly recommended to me. I am so fond of reading that I care very little what I read, so well satisfied am I with the movement and activity which even the stupidest, shallowest book rouses in my mind.

With regard to the little work in question, you probably thought the subject might not interest me, and therefore I should neglect it. The subject, _i.e._, political economy, interests me so little that, though I have read at various times and in sundry places publications of the same nature with much attention, they, in common with other books on other subjects for which I do not care, have left not the slightest trace upon my memory; at least, until I come to read the matter all over again, when my knowledge of it reappears, as it were, on the surface of my mind, though it had seemed to me to run through my brain like water through a sieve.