Records of Later Life Part 68

G.o.d's perfect and absolute Truth remedies in a thousand ways the defectiveness of the partial truth that we arrive at; and so that the _endeavor_ after truth be true, the highest result of all is reached, _truth towards G.o.d_, though, humanly speaking, the mental result may be a failure. What _absolute truth_ is, my dearest Hal, you will certainly not know before you die, and possibly not then. In the mean time, I take it, you have, or may have if you will, that which will serve your turn.

At any rate, I have--which is not at all the same thing--but that don't signify.

I am very glad I was welcome in Bedford Place, and that Miss ---- was good enough to be pleased with me.

There is great goodness in her voice and manner, and to have kept her face unwrinkled and her hair unblanched till the present age (as it is no result of selfish insensibility in her), bespeaks a virtuous life, and sweet serene temper.

I wonder more women to whom their good looks are precious, do not ponder upon the _beauty_ of holiness.... I have not heard from Adelaide or E---- for some time, but of them, that they and the children are well; that she is in good looks, and admirable voice; that their house is the pleasantest in Rome, and their parties _the_ thing to which everybody is anxious to be admitted: so all is prosperous and pleasant with them. I have told you of her nice new house in Eaton Place. It is in a considerable state of forwardness, the bedrooms being all papered, and the drawing-rooms nearly painted. Henry Greville has had it all done for her, and in very good taste; the grates are all up, and I should think in another fortnight they might take possession if they were here.

I have read more of Stanley's sermons, and am struck with their resemblance, in tone and spirit, to that book of my friend Mr. Furness, which I do not know if I ever gave you to read, called, "Jesus and His Biographers."

Stanley's sermons are excellent, but they seem to me curiously unorthodox. There is an inletting of new views upon the subject of the Christian Revelation, against which the Protestantism of the Church of England--in many respects illogical and anomalous, as it appears to its opponents--will have to fight a hard and difficult battle.

Lady Ellesmere was absolutely in despair about the bill for admitting the Jews to Parliament, and had influence enough with Lord Ellesmere to make him vote against it. This is sad enough; but she is so excellent that her influence over him, in one case where it is bad is good in a great many others....

G.o.d bless you, my dear. Give my love to Dorothy: I am both yours, but yours most particularly,

f.a.n.n.y.

P.S. My course with regard to my engagement at the Princess Theatre was determined by my father's opinion, and confirmed by the advice of all my friends who spoke to me upon the subject--Emily, Harness, the Grevilles, and others; and all that Mr. Maddox said in his various conversations with me upon the subject, enabled the best experienced among us to form a very fair idea of what he could afford to give, and what I was justified in asking.

29, KING STREET, Friday, February 18th, 1848.

I have been this morning to a rehearsal of Macbeth, at which Macready did not attend; so that in point of fact, as far as I was concerned, it was _nil_. He is, I believe, finishing some country engagements, and I suppose had not returned to town. I have another rehearsal to-morrow, at which it is to be hoped he will attend, as otherwise my being there is really quite a work of supererogation.

My men friends--among whom I include my father--one and all, did what I think women would not have done. The minute Mr. Maddox agreed to the terms I had demanded, they lamented bitterly (even my dear Mr.

Harness--who is a good man) that I had not stood out for higher ones, feeling quite sure I should have got them. Now, this I think quite as contemptible, and a great deal more dishonest, than the womanly process (Emily's and yours) of lamenting that I had not taken less than I had demanded, because you feared my doing so had broken off the negotiation altogether. I think, upon the whole, it behooves people to know what they mean, and to abide by it, without either weak regrets at an ill result, or selfish ones that it is not better than what one had made up one's mind to--when it seems that it might have been so. I do wish people would learn to be like my aunt's cook, and "stand upon their own bottom, with fort.i.tude and similarity." (A woman that Mrs. Siddons was engaging as cook, replied to the question, "Can you make pastry?" "Well, no, ma'am--not exactly to say, the very finest of pastry. I can make plain puddings and pies, but--I am not a professed puff pastry cook, and I think it best to say so, as every one should stand upon their own bottom, with fort.i.tude and similarity, I think.")

I act Lady Macbeth on Monday, on Wednesday Queen Katharine, and on Friday Desdemona, for the first time in my life. I have a beautiful and correct dress for her (you know I always liked my clothes), for which, nevertheless, I expect to be much exclaimed against, as our actresses have always thought proper to dress her in white satin. I have arrayed her in black (the only habit of the n.o.ble Venetian ladies) and gold, in a dress that looks like one of t.i.tian's pictures.

That smothering scene, my dear Harriet, is most extremely horrible, and like nothing in the world but the catastrophe of poor Madame de Praslin.

I think I shall make a desperate fight of it, for I feel horribly at the idea of being murdered in my bed. The Desdemonas that I have seen, on the English stage, have always appeared to me to acquiesce with wonderful equanimity in their a.s.sa.s.sination. On the Italian stage they run for their lives round their bedroom, Pasta in the opera (and Salvini in the tragedy, I believe), clutching them finally by the hair of the head, and then murdering them. The bedgown in which I had arrayed Desdemona for the night would hardly have admitted of this flight round the stage; besides that, Shakespeare's text gives no hint of any such attempted escape on poor Desdemona's part; but I did think I should like not to be murdered, and therefore, at the last, got up on my knees on my bed, and threw my arms tight round Oth.e.l.lo's neck (having previously warned Mr. Macready, and begged his pardon for the liberty), that being my notion of the poor creature's last appeal for mercy.

What do you think of our fine ladies amusing themselves with giving parties, at which they, and their guests, take chloroform as a pastime?

Lady Castlereagh set the example, and was describing to me her sensations under the process. I told her how imprudent and wrong I thought such experiments, and mentioned to her the lecture Brand gave upon the subject, in which the poor little guinea-pig, who underwent his ill.u.s.trations for the benefit of the audience, died on the table during the lecture; to which she replied, "Oh yes; that she knew that, _for she was present_." Can you conceive, after such a spectacle, trying similar experiments upon one's ignorant self? Is it not very brave? or is it only idiotical?...

I have been making a desperate struggle, _giving my reasons_ (four pages of them--think of it!) to the committee of the Liverpool Inst.i.tution, to induce them to let me read Shakespeare _straight through_ to them; at least, each play I read, divided into two readings, and with only the omissions required by modern manners: but I fear they will not let me. I shall be grievously disappointed....

Was there ever such a to-do as that woman Lola Montez is kicking up?

Everybody is turning Catholic as fast as possible, and the good Churchwomen are every way in despair. They already see their sons all circ.u.mcised, and their daughters refusing to eat ham, and their brothers and husbands confessing the Real Presence. The lady members of the Established Church, especially the more serious ones, are in great tribulation at all that is going on. Lady Ellesmere is desperate at the Jews coming into Parliament, and Lord Ellesmere has voted against them.

He, poor man, has been, within the last few days, all but at death's door with the gout, and perhaps near finding out how different, or _in_different, these differences _really_ are. It is wonderful to hear everybody talk.

Good-bye. I am yours and Dorothy's

Most respectfully, f.a.n.n.y.

[My first intention in undertaking my readings from Shakespeare was to make, as far as possible, of each play a thorough study in its entireness; such as a stage representation cannot, for obvious reasons, be. The dramatic effect, which of course suffers in the mere delivery from a reading-desk, would, I hoped, be in some measure compensated for by the possibility of retaining the whole beauty of the plays as poetical compositions. I very soon, however, found my project of making my readings "studies of Shakespeare" for the public quite illusory.

To do so would have required that I should take two, and sometimes three, evenings to the delivery of one play; a circ.u.mstance which would have rendered it necessary for the same audience, if they wished to hear it, to attend two and three consecutive readings; and in many other respects I found the plan quite incompatible with the demand of the public, which was for a dramatic entertainment, and not for a course of literary instruction.

My father had found it expedient, in this mode of ill.u.s.trating Shakespeare, to make one play the subject of each reading; taking two hours for the performance, and dividing the piece as fairly as possible in two parts; retaining the whole _story_ of the play, and so much only of the wisdom and beauty bestowed on its development by the author, as could be kept well within the two hours' delivery, and make the reading resemble as nearly as possible, in dramatic effect, the already garbled and coa.r.s.ely mutilated stage plays the general public are alone familiar with. I was grievously disappointed, but could not help myself. In Germany I should have had no such difficulty; but the German public is willing to take its amus.e.m.e.nts in earnest.

The readings were to be my livelihood, and I had to adapt them to the audiences who paid for them--

"For those who live to please, must please to live."

I gladly availed myself of my father's reading version of the plays, and read those he had delivered, cut and prepared for the purpose according to that. When I came to cut and prepare for reading the much greater number which I read, and he did not, I found the task a very difficult one; and was struck with the judgment and taste with which my father had performed it. I do not think it possible to have adapted these compositions better or more successfully to the purposes for which he required them. But I was determined, at least, not to limit my repertory to the few most theatrically popular of Shakespeare's dramas, but to include in my course _all_ Shakespeare's plays that it was possible to read with any hope of attracting or interesting an audience. My father had limited his range to a few of the most frequently acted plays. I delivered the following twenty-four: King Lear, Macbeth, Cymbeline, King John, Richard II., two parts of Henry IV., Henry V., Richard III., Henry VIII., Coriola.n.u.s, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Oth.e.l.lo, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Tempest.

These plays I read invariably through once before repeating any of them; partly to make such of them as are seldom or never acted, familiar to the public, by delivering them alternately with those better known; and partly to avoid, what I much dreaded, becoming mechanical or hackneyed myself in their delivery by perpetual repet.i.tion of the same pieces, and so losing any portion of the inspiration of my text by constant iteration of those garbled versions of it, from which so much of its n.o.bler and finer elements are of hard necessity omitted in such a process as my reading of them. I persisted in this system for my own "soul's sake," and not to debase my work more than was inevitable, to the very considerable detriment of my gains.

The public _always_ came in goodly numbers to hear "Macbeth,"

"Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and "The Merchant of Venice;" and Mendelssohn's exquisite music, made an accompaniment to the reading of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," rendered that a peculiarly popular performance. But to _all_ the other plays the audiences were considerably less numerous, and to some few of them I often had but few listeners. Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, who for a considerable length of time _farmed_ my readings, protested bitterly against this system, which involved, of course, less profits than he might have made by repeating only the most popular plays; and my own agents, when I was reading on my own account, did not fail to represent to me that I was what they called sacrificing my interests, _i.e._ my receipts, to this plan of operations; but man does not live by bread alone, and for more than twenty years that I followed the trade of a wandering rhapsodist, I never consciously sacrificed my sense of what was due to my work, for the sake of what I could make by it. I have wished, and hoped, and prayed, that I might be able to use my small gift _dutifully_; and to my own profound feeling of the _virtue_ of these n.o.ble works, have owed whatever power I found to interpret them. My great reward has been, pa.s.sing a large portion of my life in familiar intercourse with that greatest and best English mind and heart, and living almost daily in that world above the world, into which he lifted me. One inspiration alone could have been purer or higher; and to that, my earthly master's work, done as well as it was in me to do it, often helped, and from it, never hindered me.]

29, KING STREET, Sat.u.r.day, February 19th.

_Imprimis_, will you and Dorothy fasten your dinner-napkins with these things, or rings, which I have made for you? for my imagination is sick with the memory of those bits of strings you use. I have made these too short, and so have been obliged to put strings to them, having originally intended them to be complete rounds; but my needle performances are always ill-managed and untidy, and as such I commend these to your indulgent acceptance. I wrought at them those bitter evenings that I spent in those barns of theatres in Norfolk, where the occupation contributed to entertain the warmth of my heart, which was all the heat I had to keep me alive....

I must tell you rather a droll observation of the worthy Hayes. When I explained to her that I had made those worsted bands to fasten your dinner-napkins, for which you had nothing but strings, she said, "Dear me! I wonder at that! And Miss S---- seemed so fond of clever, curious contrivances, for everything." I screamed with delight when she said that, for hadn't I cursed that "curious contrivance" of an inkstand you gave me (Dorothy cursed hers too, no doubt, after her own blessed fashion)? and didn't I curse that execrable "curious contrivance" of a taper you gave me at St. Leonard's, with which I was so enchanted _before I used it_, and which wasted me by its own small fire every time I did use it, and for the final burning out of which I was so thankful?

But are not Hayes's comments on your character comical?

I am sorry to say I have not the same dressing-room I had before at the Princess's Theatre. Mr. Macready is quite too great a man to give it up to anybody, and my attiring apartment now is up a steep flight of stairs, which is a great discomfort to me on several grounds, for I fear the call-boy will hardly come so far out of his way to summon me, and I shall have to sit in the greenroom, which, however, I won't, if I can by any means avoid it; but the proximity of the other room to the stage, and its being on the same level with it, was a great advantage.

I am going to dine with Lady Grey (the Countess, widow of _the_ Lord Grey), and after that to the opera with Henry Greville and Alfred Potocki, who have a box, and have given me a ticket, which I am very glad of.

I had a three hours' rehearsal this morning, and Macready was there. As far as I could judge, he was less unfair in his mode of acting than I had been led to expect. To be sure, at night, he may stand two yards behind me while I am speaking to him, as I am told he often does. He is not courteous or pleasant, or even well-bred; remains seated while one is standing talking to him; and a discussion having arisen as to the situation of a table, which he wished on the stage, and I wished removed, he exhibited considerable irritability and ill-humor.

He is unnecessarily violent in acting, which I had always heard, and congratulated myself that in Lady Macbeth, I could not possibly suffer from this; but was much astonished and dismayed when at the exclamation, "Bring forth men-children only," he seized me ferociously by the wrist, and compelled me to make a demivolte, or pirouette, such as I think that lady did surely never perform before, under the influence of her husband's admiration.

G.o.d bless you, dear,

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

[I have always had a cordial esteem and respect for Mr. Macready's character, which has been increased by reading the record he has himself left of his life. Of his merits as an actor, I had not a very high opinion, though in one or two parts he was excellent, and in the majority of the tragical ones he a.s.sumed, better than his contemporaries, my father, Charles Young, and Charles Kean. He was disqualified for sentimental tragedy by his appearance, and he was without comic power of any kind. _Parts_ of his Macbeth, Lear, Oth.e.l.lo, and King John, were powerful and striking, but his want of musical ear made his delivery of Shakespeare's blank-verse defective, and painful to persons better endowed in that respect. It may have been his consciousness of his imperfect declamation of blank-verse that induced him to adopt what his admirers called the natural style of speaking it; which was simply chopping it up into prose--a method easily followed by speakers who have never learned the difference between the two, and that blank-verse demands the same care and method that music does, and when not uttered with due regard to its artificial construction, and rules of rhythm and measure, is precisely as faulty as music sung out of time.

The school of "natural speaking" reached its climax, I presume, in the performance of a charming young actress, of whose delivery of the poetry of Portia it was said in high commendation, by her admirers, that she gave the blank verse so _naturally_ that it was impossible to tell that it was not _prose_. What she did with Shakespeare's _prose_ in the part these judicious critics did not mention.

Mr. Macready's eye was as sensitive and cultivated as his ear was the reverse. He had a painter's feeling for color and grouping and scenic effect; was always picturesque in his appearance, dress, att.i.tudes, and movements; and all the pieces that were put upon the stage under his supervision were admirable for the appropriate harmony of the scenery, decorations, dresses, and whole effect; they were carefully accurate, and extremely beautiful. "Acis and Galatea," as produced under his direction, was one of the most exquisite dramatic spectacles I ever saw, in spite of the despair to which he reduced the chorus and ballet nymphs by rigorously forbidding all padding, bustle, crinoline, or other artificial adjunct to their natural graces, in the severely simple cla.s.sical costume of the Greek mythological opera.

Mr. Macready's great parts were Virginius, in Knowles's play of that name; Werner, in Lord Byron's romantic drama; and Rob Roy, in the melodrama taken from Scott's novel. These were original performances, in which n.o.body has surpa.s.sed or equalled him; genuine artistic creations, which, more than his rendering of Shakespeare's characters, ent.i.tled him to his reputation as a great actor.

He was unpopular in the profession, his temper was irritable, and his want of consideration for the persons working with him strange in a man of so many fine qualities. His artistic vanity and selfishness were unworthy of a gentleman, and rendered him an object of dislike and dread to those who were compelled to encounter them.

He was quite aware of this himself, for once, when he came to see me, while the negotiation was pending about my engagement to act with him, he alluded to his own unpopularity, said he was sure I had heard all sorts of disagreeable stories about him, but a.s.sured me, laughing, that "the devil was not nearly so black as he was painted."

It was quite impossible for me to tell Mr. Macready that I had heard he was _pleasant_ to act with, remembering, as I did while he spoke to me, the various accounts I had received of actors whose eyes had been all but thrust out by his furious fighting in Macbeth; of others nearly throttled in his paternal vengeance on Appius Claudius; of actresses whose arms had been almost wrenched out of their sockets, and who had been bruised black and blue, buffeted alike by his rage and his tenderness. One special story I thought of, and was dying to tell him, of one pretty and spirited young woman, who had said, "I am told Mr. Macready, in such a part, gets hold of one's head, and holds it in chancery under his arm, while he speaks a long speech, at the end of which he releases one, more dead than alive, from his embrace; but I shall put so many pins in my hair, and stick them in in such a fashion, that if he takes me by the head, he will have to let me instantly go again."

My personal experience of Macready's stage temper was not so bad as this, though he began by an act of unwarrantable selfishness in our performance of "Macbeth."

From time immemorial, the banquet scene in "Macbeth" has been arranged after one invariable fashion: the royal dais and throne, with the steps leading up to it, holds the middle of the stage, sufficiently far back to allow of two long tables, at which the guests are seated on each side, in front of it, leaving between them ample s.p.a.ce for Macbeth's scene with Banquo's ghost, and Lady Macbeth's repeated rapid descents from the dais and return to it, in her vehement expostulations with him, and her courteous invitations to the occupants of both the tables to "feed, and regard him not."

Accustomed to this arrangement of the stage, which I never saw different anywhere in all my life for this scene, I was much astonished and annoyed to find, at my first rehearsal, a long banqueting-table set immediately at the foot of the steps in front of the dais, which rendered all but impossible my rapid rushing down to the front of the stage, in my terrified and indignant appeals to Macbeth, and my sweeping back to my place, addressing on my way my compliments to the tables on either side. It was as much as I could do to pa.s.s between the bottom of the throne steps and the end of the transverse table in front of them; my train was in danger of catching its legs and my legs, and throwing it down and me down, and the whole thing was absolutely ruinous to the proper performance of my share of the scene. If such a table had been in any such place in Glamis Castle on that occasion, when Macbeth was seized with his remorseful frenzies, his wife would have jumped over or overturned it to get at him.