Records of Later Life Part 62

I do not read at Manchester to-day, but Halle, who conducts the music, wishes me to attend a rehearsal, which, of course, I am anxious to do at his request. On Monday I read the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and on Tuesday "Macbeth," at Mr. Scott's desire. To-morrow I shall, I hope, hear Mr. Scott read and comment again on the Bible, and I am looking forward with great pleasure to being with him and Mrs. Scott again.

No doubt there are several more direct ways of getting to Nice than coasting round, as I propose doing, but I wish to see that Mediterranean sh.o.r.e, and have no desire to travel hard....

Adelaide Procter [the daughter of my friends was to be my companion in this journey] has no enthusiasm whatever for me; she does not know me at all, and I do not know her at all well; and I do not think, when we know each other more, that she will like me any better. Her character and intellectual gifts, and the delicate state of her health, all make her an object of interest to me.... I love and respect Mr. Procter very much; and her mother, who is one of the kindest-hearted persons possible, has always been so good to me, that I am too glad to have the opportunity of doing anything to oblige them. I am going to Turin because, as they have entrusted their daughter to me, I will not leave her until I see her safe in the house to which she is going; I owe that small service to the child of her parent.... Dear Harriet, if you will come to Switzerland this summer, nothing but some insuperable impediment shall prevent my meeting you there. If you are "old and stiff," I am _fat, stuffy, puffy, and old_; and you are not of such proportions as to break a mule's back, whereas if I got on one I should expect it to cast itself and me down the first convenient precipice, only to avoid carrying me to the next.

I spent Thursday evening with Mrs. Jameson; she had a whole heap of people at her house, and among them the American minister and his niece--Philadelphians....

I do not pity Mrs. Jameson very much in her relations with Lady Byron. I never thought theirs a real attachment, but a connection made up of all sorts of motives, which was sure not to hold water long, and never to hold it after it had once begun to leak. It was an instance of one of those relationships which are made to _wear out_, and as it always appeared so to me, I have no great sympathy with either party in this foreseen result.

I pity Mrs. Jameson more because she is mortified than because she is grieved, and I pity Lady Byron because she is more afraid of mortifying than of giving her pain. It is all very _uncomfortable_; but real sorrow has as little to do with it now as real love ever had.... I am writing to you at Mr. Scott's, where I arrived yesterday afternoon, the beginning of my letter having been written in London, the middle at Bradford, and the end here.

It is Sunday afternoon: our morning service is over. I am sorry to say I find both Mr. and Mrs. Scott quite unwell, the former with one of those const.i.tutional headaches from which he has suffered so much for many years. They incapacitate him for conversation or any mental exertion, and I am a great loser by it, as well as grieved for his illness....

Farewell.

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

[Lucy Austin, the clever and handsome daughter of a cleverer and handsomer mother--Mrs. John Austin, wife of the eminent lawyer and writer--excited a great deal of admiration, as the wife of Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, in the London society of my day. Loss of health compelled her to pa.s.s the last years of her life in the East; and the letters she wrote during her sojourn there are not only full of charm and interest, but bear witness to a widespread personal influence over the native population among whom she lived, the result of her humane benevolence towards, and kindly sympathy for, them.

One or two amusing incidents occurred with regard to my reading of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" at Manchester. The gentleman who had the management of the performance wrote to me offering me forty pounds for my share of it--a very liberal price, which I declined, my price for one of my readings being invariably _twenty_ pounds. At the end of the performance one of the gentlemen of the committee came to pay me my salary, which having done, he expressed himself, in his own behalf and that of his fellow-managers, greatly obliged to me for the liberality I had exhibited (honesty, it seems to me) in not accepting double my usual terms when they offered it to me.

"And," said he, drawing a five-pound note from his pocket-book, "I really--we really--if you would--if you could--allow us to offer you five pounds in addition----" The gentleman's voice died away, and he seemed to be becoming nervous, under the effect of the steadfast seriousness with which, in spite of the greatest inclination to burst out laughing, I listened to this strange proposal. The five-pound note fluttered a little between his finger and thumb, and for one moment I had a diabolical temptation to twitch it from him and throw it into the fire. This prompting of Satan, however, I womanfully resisted, and merely civilly declined the gratuity; and the gentleman left me with profuse acknowledgments of the service I had rendered them and my "extreme liberality."

My friend Charles Halle, coming in just at this moment, was thrown into fits of laughter at the transaction, and my astonishment at it.

Halle was a friend of ours, an admirable musician, and a most amiable man, and one of the best masters of our modern day. His style was more remarkable for sensibility, delicacy, and refinement, than for power or brilliancy of execution; but I preferred his rendering of Beethoven to that of all the other virtuosi I ever heard; and some of the hours of greatest musical enjoyment I have had in my life I owe to him, when he and his friend Joachim, playing almost, as it seemed, as much for their own delight as ours, enchanted a small circle of enthusiastic and grateful listeners, gathered round them in my sister's drawing-room.

Mr. Scott's comment upon my reading gave me great pleasure. "It was good," he said, "from beginning to end; but you _are_ Theseus."

Oddly enough, a similar compliment was paid me in the same words at the end of a reading that I gave for the Working Men's Inst.i.tute in Brighton, when my friend, Mr. R----, kindly complimenting me on the performance, said, "It was all delightful: but you _are_ Henry V.,"

and whatever difference of opinion may have existed among my critics as to my rendering the tragic and comic characters of Shakespeare's plays, I think the heroic ones were those in which I ought to have succeeded best, for they were undoubtedly those with which I had most sympathy.]

FULFORD, YORK, Sat.u.r.day, 3d.

MY DEAREST HAL,

I am amused at your gasping anxiety to be told where I am going, as if I was about to depart into some non-postal region, where letter of yours should never reach me more, instead of spending the next week in Edinburgh, which surely you did know.... My dearest Hal, J---- W---- has just come into my room, bringing the news of the Emperor of Russia's death. It has seized me quite hysterically, and the idea of the possible immediate cessation of carnage and desolation, and war and wickedness (in that peculiar shape), has shaken me inexpressibly, and I am shocked at the tears of joy that are raining from my eyes, so that I can't see the paper on which I am writing to you; and if I can thus weep my thanksgivings for the news of this man's death, who have no dear son, or brother, or husband on that murderous Crimean soil, think of the shout of rejoicing which will be his only dirge throughout France and England.

I am shocked at the exclamation of grat.i.tude which escaped my lips when I heard the announcement. Poor human soul, how terrible that its sudden summons from its heavy and difficult responsibilities should thus be hailed by any other human creature! and yet how many will draw a long breath, as of a great deliverance, at this news!

I can hardly write at all, my hand shakes so, and I cannot think of anything else; and yet I had purposed to send dear Dorothy some account of her family here, who are all well and most kind to me. I will wait a while....

DEAREST DOROTHY,

I sit here in this pleasant room [I was in Miss Wilson's home], the prospect from which is improved by the rising of the river, which presents the appearance of a lake. The snowdrops hang their white cl.u.s.ters above the brown mould of the garden beds, and watery rays of sunshine slant shyly across the meadows: the whole is very sweet and peaceful, and I was enjoying it extremely, when the report of this imperial death broke like a peal of thunder over it all, as unexpectedly as terribly.

To-morrow I am to go and hear afternoon service at the minster, which I have never seen. Everything is done for my pleasure and satisfaction that can be thought of, and I feel very grateful for it. The thought of the old love and friendship between my dead kindred and the former owners of this house makes the place pleasant with a saddish pleasantness to me.

Dear Dorothy, I wish you were here; I write you a very affectionate kiss, and am

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

GEORGE HOTEL, BANGOR, Monday, 20th.

MY DEAREST HAL,

If you had given way to your impulse of accompanying us to Wales, I do not think you could have returned under three days, or that even by that time you could in any degree have recovered from the effect of our to-day's pa.s.sage. Every creature on board was sick except M---- and myself....

"A quelque chose malheur est bon," and the indisposition I was suffering all yesterday preserved me from the lesser evil of sea-sickness. This was my experience the last time I crossed the Atlantic, when my voyage was preceded by a week of serious illness, and during the whole pa.s.sage I did not suffer from sea-sickness....

On our arrival here, we found that the excellent Miss Roberts [mistress of the charming hotel at Bangor] had treated us exactly as the last time; _i.e._, "A party were just finishing dinner in our sitting-room.

She was very sorry, very sorry indeed; but it would be ready for us in less than a quarter of an hour;" and we were thrust provisionally into another, where letters, books, workboxes, india-rubber shoes, and smoking-caps attested that we had no business, and suggested that their owners were in all probability the "party" finishing off their dinner in our bespoken apartment, which gave me an inclination to toss all the things in the room about, and poke the smoking-caps into the india-rubber shoes; but I didn't. What innumerable temptations I do resist! I a.s.sured Miss Roberts I was very ill-tempered, and proceeded to make a.s.surance doubly sure by blowing her up sky-high, to which she merely replied with a Welsh "Eh! come si ha da far?" and declared that if I was in her place I should do just the same, which excited my wrath to a pitch of fury.

We had some lunch, and then set off to the quarries. The afternoon was bright and beautiful, and we were charmed with the drive and all we saw, M---- never ceasing to exclaim with fervent satisfaction at the comfortable, cheerful, healthy, well-to-do appearance of the people and their habitations--a most striking and suggestive contrast to all we had seen in poor Ireland, certainly....

We have just done dinner, and M---- is fast asleep on the sofa, with "Pilgrim's Progress" in her arms. My head aches, and my nerves twitch with fatigue and pain, but I am better than I was yesterday.

The trains from this place are very inconvenient. The one we have to go by starts from here at nine, and does not reach London till half-past seven in the evening, so we shall have a wearisome day of it....

Give my kindest love to dear Mrs. Taylor and "the girls." I shall think of them with infinite anxiety, and pray, "whenever I remember to be holy," that this dreadful war may now soon come to a close, and they be spared further anguish. [Colonel Richard Taylor, Miss S----'s nephew, was with the army in the Crimea.]

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

BATH, Monday, December 9th.

MY DEAREST HAL,

... You cannot think how forlorn I feel, walking in and out of our room here without farewell or greeting from you; and yet the place where you have been with me has a remembered presence of your affectionate companionship that makes it pleasant, compared to those where I go for the first time and have no such friendly a.s.sociation to cheer me. My disposition, as you know, is averse to all strangeness, and takes little delight in novelty; and the wandering life I lead compels me to both, forbidding all custom and the comfortable feeling of habit and use, which make me loath to leave a place where I have stayed only three days, for another where I have never stayed at all.

I was not very happy at Oxford. The beautiful place impressed me sadly; but that was because I was very unwell and sad while I was there. The weather was horrible; a dark greasy fog pervaded the sky the whole time.

The roads were so muddy as to render riding odious, and the streets so slimy that walking was really dangerous as well as disagreeable. Still, I saw some things with which I was much charmed, and have no doubt that, if I could but have had an hour's daylight, I should have been delighted with the place altogether.

E---- S---- came down from London on Thursday morning, and took me to see the fine collection of drawings by Raphael and Michael Angelo at the Taylor Inst.i.tute, and I spent three hours there in a state of great enjoyment. I wandered in ignorant wonderment through the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum, with A---- M----, who seemed quite as little familiar with the learned treasures of the place as myself. He took me to see his own college, Christ Church, with which, especially the great dining-hall, I was enchanted; and with the fine avenue at the back of the colleges, and the tower and cloisters of Magdalen.

I have no doubt I should enjoy another visit to Oxford very much; but I was miserable while I was there, and could not do justice to the beauty of the place. The inn where I stayed was dirty and uncomfortable, and dearer than any I have yet stayed at. My sitting-room was dingy and dark, and I was glad when I came into this large light sitting-room of ours again, out of which, however, they have removed the piano--a loss I have not thought it worth while to replace, as I go to Cheltenham on Wednesday afternoon.... You ask what I would sell my "English Tragedy"

for. Why, anything anybody would give me for it. It cannot be acted, and n.o.body reads plays nowadays--small blame to them....

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

CHELTENHAM, Thursday, 12th.

MY DEAREST HAL,

I found your loving greeting on my arrival here yesterday evening. I am troubled at your account of yourself.... What _things_ these bodies of ours are! I sometimes think that, when we lay them down in the earth, we shall have taken leave of all our sinfulness; and yet there are sins of the soul that do not lodge in the flesh, though the greater proportion of our sins, I think, do: and when I reflect how little control we have over our physical circ.u.mstances, what with inherited disease and infirmity, and infirmity and disease incurred through the ignorant misguidance of others during our youth, and our own ignorant misdirection afterwards, I think the miseries we reap are punishment enough for much consequent sin; and that, once freed from the "body of this death," we shall cease to be subject to sin in anything like the same degree.... It is very muddy underfoot; but if the sky does not fall, I shall ride out on my old post-horse at twelve o'clock.

Certainly your question, as to where the wise men are who are to encounter the difficulties of legislation for this country next spring, was an exclamation--a shriek--and not an interrogation, addressed to _me_ at any rate; for though I suppose G.o.d's quiver is never empty of arrows, and that some _are_ always found to do His work, it may be that saving this country from a gradual decline of greatness and decay of prosperity may not be work for which He has appointed hands, and which therefore will not be done....

I declined being in the room we formerly occupied in this house, because I feared, now the days are so much shorter, that it would be inconveniently dark. I am in a charming light room, with three windows down to the ground, and a bewitching paper of pale green, with slender gold rods running up it, all wound round with various colored convolvuli. It's one of the prettiest papers I ever saw, and makes me very happy. You know how subject I am even to such an influence as that of a ridiculous wall-paper....

I have had no conversation with Mr. Churchill; but, in spite of my requesting him not to be at the trouble of moving the piano into my present sitting-room, as I am here for so short a time, I find it installed here this morning. He certainly is the black swan of hotel-keepers; and how kind and indulgent people are to me everywhere!... My young devotee, Miss A----, acquiesced very cordially in all my physical prescriptions for mental health, and did not seem to take at all amiss my plunging her hysterical enthusiasm first into perspirations, and then into cold baths.

Her maid has been with me this morning, with lovely fresh flowers--a bunch of delicious Persian lilac, and two flower-pots full of various mosses, smelling so fragrantly of mere earthy freshness that no perfume ever surpa.s.sed it.

The only other greeting she sent me was some pretty lines of Victor Hugo's, with which I was unacquainted, and which I send you, not for their singular inappropriateness as applied to me, but for their graceful turn:

"Tu es comme l'oiseau pose pour un instant Sur des rameaux trop freles, Que sent ployer la branche, et qui chante pourtant Sachant qu'il a des ailes;"