Records of Later Life Part 36

Adelaide is still pretty well. The night before last was her benefit; she had a very fine house, and sang "Norma," and the great scene from "Der Freyschutz," and "Auld Robin Gray;" and yesterday evening she seemed very tired, but she had people to dinner and to tea nevertheless....

Certainly one had need believe in something better than one sees, or at any rate than I see just now; for such petty selfishnesses and despicable aims, pursued with all the energy and eagerness which should be bestowed upon the highest alone; such cheating, tricking, swindling, lying, and slandering, are enough to turn any Christian cat's stomach....

I must tell you two things about Miss Hall that have given me such an insight into the delights of the position of an English governess as I certainly never had before. When first she joined us here at the Clarendon, Anne was still with us, and she being always accustomed to take her meals with the children, and yet of course not a proper companion for Miss Hall, we thought that till the nurse went to America we would request the governess to dine with us. On Anne's departure, I signified to the head waiter that from that time Miss Hall would take her dinner with the children; whereupon, with a smirk and sniff of the most insolent disdain, and an air of dignity that had been hurt, but was now comforted, the bloated superior servant replied, "Well, ma'am, to be sure, it always was so in _them famullies_ where I have lived; the governess never didn't eat at the table." The fact is natural, and the reason obvious, but oh! my dear, the manner of the fat, pampered porpoise of a man-menial was too horrid. Then, on going for a candle into Miss Hall's room one evening, I found she had been provided with tallow ones, and, upon remonstrating about it with the chambermaid, she replied (with a courtesy at every other word to me), "Oh, ma'am, we always puts _tallow_ for the governesses."

Good-bye, dear. G.o.d bless you.

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

CRANFORD HOUSE, January 8th, 1843.

DEAREST HAL,

I am spending two days at Cranford--you know, I believe, where I mean, old Lady Berkeley's place.... I came to get the refreshment of the country; old Lady Berkeley is very kind to me, and I like her daughters, Lady Mary particularly. I came down yesterday (Sat.u.r.day), and shall return early to-morrow, for on Wednesday the children are to have a party of their little friends, and I am making a Christmas-tree for them (rather out of date), and expect to be exceedingly busy both to-morrow and Tuesday in preparing for their amus.e.m.e.nt.

My father does not suffer nearly as much pain as he did a short time ago, but his strength appears to me to be gradually diminis.h.i.+ng....

[Our return to America being once more indefinitely postponed, we now took a house in Upper Grosvenor Street, close to Hyde Park, to which we removed from the Clarendon, my sister residing very near us, in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square.]

26, UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, Wednesday, March 1st, 1843.

Thank you, my dear T----, for your attention to our interests and affairs.... It seems to me that to have to accept the conviction of the unworthiness of those we love must be even worse than to lay our dearest in the earth, for we may believe that they have risen into the bosom of G.o.d. However, each human being's burden is the one whose weight must seem the heaviest to himself, and He alone who lays them on proportions them to our strength and enables us to walk upright beneath them....

[Extract from a letter from Miss Sedgwick.]

NEW YORK, March 3rd, 1843.

The great topic with us just now is the trial of Mackenzie, of whom, as the chief actor in the tragedy of the "Somers," you must have heard.

Some of your journals cry out upon him, but, as we think, only the organs of that hostile inhuman spirit that bad minds try to keep alive on both sides of the water. His life has been marked with courage and humanity; all enlightened and unperverted, I may say all sane opinion with us, is in his favor. After the most honorable opinion from the Court of Inquiry, he is now under trial by court-martial, demanded by his friends to save him from a civil suit. S----, the father of the Ohio mutineer, is a man of distinguished talent, of education, and head of the War Department, but a vindictive and unscrupulous man. He is using every means to ruin Mackenzie, to revenge the death of a son, Heaven-forsaken from the beginning of his days, and whose maturest acts (he died at nineteen) were robbing his mother's jewel-case and stealing money from his father's desk. My nephew is acting as Mackenzie's counsel, and his wife, a Roman wife and mother, is a friend of mine....

I heard a story the other day, "a true one," that I treasured for you as racy, as characteristic of slavery and human nature. A most notoriously atrocious, dissolute, _h.e.l.lish_ slave-owner died, and one of his slaves--an old woman--said to a lady, "Ma.s.sa prayed G.o.d so to forgive him! Oh, how he prayed! And I am afraid G.o.d heard him; they say He's so good."

UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, April 17th, 1843.

MY DEAR T----,

I have executed your commission with regard to two of the books you desired me to get, but the modern Italian work, published in 1840, in Florence, and the "Mariana" of 1600, I am very much afraid I shall not be able to procure; the first because it would be necessary to send to Florence for it, which could very easily be done, but then I shouldn't be here to receive it; and the second, the copy of "Mariana," of the edition you specify, because Bohn a.s.sures me that it is extremely rare, having been suppressed on account of the king-killing doctrines it inculcates, and the subsequent editions being all garbled and incorrect.

As you particularly specified that of 1600, of course I would not take any other, and shall still make further attempts to procure that, though Panizzi, the librarian of the British Museum, and Macaulay, who are both friends of mine, and whom I consulted about it, neither of them gave me much encouragement as to my eventual success. The "Filangieri" and Buchanan will arrive with me. I would send them to G---- A----, but that, as we return on the 4th of May, I think there is every reason to expect that we shall be in America first.

So much for your commission. With regard to your complaint that I give you nothing to do, I think you will have found that fault amended in my last communication, wherein I request you to accept my father's power of attorney, and undertake to watch over his interests in the New Orleans Bank....

As for people's comments on me or my actions, I have not lived on the stage to be cowardly as well as bold; and being decidedly bold, "I thank G.o.d," as Audrey might say, that I am not cowardly, which is my only answer to the suggestion of "people saying," etc.

For a year and a half past I have been perfectly wretched at our protracted stay in Europe, and as often as possible have protested against our prolonged sojourn here, and all the consequences involved in it. This being the case, "people" attributing our remaining here to me troubles me but little, particularly as I foresaw from the first that that must inevitably be the result of our doing so.

I seldom read the newspapers, and therefore have not followed any of the details of this Mackenzie trial. The original transaction, and his own report of it, I read with amazement; more particularly the report, the framing and wording of which appeared to me utterly irreconcilable with the fact of his having written, as Lord Ashburton informed me, a very pleasing book, of which certainly the style must have been very different. He, Lord Ashburton, spoke of him as though he knew him, and gave him the same character of gentleness and single-mindedness that you do.

Although our return to America will be made under circ.u.mstances of every possible annoyance and anxiety, it gives me heartfelt pleasure to think I shall soon see all my good friends there again, among whom you and yours are first in my regard....

Butler Place is to be let, if possible, and at any rate we are certainly not to go back to it; whereat my poor little S---- cries bitterly, and I feel a tightening at the heart, to think that the only place which I have known as a _home_ in America is not what I am to return to.... The transfer of that New Orleans stock by my father to me--I mean the law papers necessary for the purpose--cost 50 sterling. England is a dear country many ways.

Ellsler is in London now, and, I am a.s.sured by those who know, _diviner_ than ever. I think her gone off both in looks and dancing. That rascal W---- has robbed her of the larger portion of her earnings. What a nice lover to have!

Believe me ever

Yours most truly, F. A. B.

April 15th 1843.

MY DEAREST HAL,

You must not scold if there are letters missing in my words this week, for I have enough to do and to think of, as you well know, to put half the letters of the alphabet out of my head for the next twelvemonth....

Immediately after breakfast on Sat.u.r.day I went down on my knees and packed till Emily came to walk with me, and packed after I came in till it was time to go shopping and visiting. I went to bid the L----'s good-bye; we dined with the Procters, and had a pleasant dinner: Mr. and Mrs. Grote, Rogers, Browning, Harness and his sister. In the evening I went to Miss Berry's, where Lady Charlotte Lindsay and I discoursed about you, and she pitied you greatly for having, upon the top of all your troubles, forgotten your keys....

Sunday morning I packed instead of going to church, and, in fact, packed the blessed livelong day, with an interval of rest derived from an interminable visit from Frederick Byng (_alias_ Poodle). Yesterday my father and Victoire (my aunt), and Adelaide and E---- (who, to my infinite joy, came home on Sat.u.r.day), dined with us. My father was better, I think, than the last evening we were with him, though, of course, a good deal out of spirits. Victoire was pretty well, but quite surprised and mortified at hearing that I would not suffer her to pack my things, for fear of its fatiguing her; and told me how she had been turning in her mind her best way of contriving to be here packing all day, and home in Charlotte Street in time to give my father his dinner.

She is Dall's own sister!

Yesterday I completed, with Emily's a.s.sistance (which nearly drove me mad), the packing of the great huge chest of books, boxes, etc., and she and I walked together, but it was bitter cold and ungenial, regular _beasterly_ wind. (Mrs. Grote says _she_ invented that name for it, and, for reasons which will be obvious to you, I gave it up to her without a blow.) In the afternoon I went shopping with Adelaide, and then flew about, discharging my own commissions.

In the evening our "first grand party of the season came off;" nearly two hundred people came, and seemed, upon the whole, tolerably well amused. Adelaide and Miss Ma.s.son and I sang, and Benedict played, and it all went off very well. There were six policeman at the door, and Irish Jack-o'-lanterns without count; "the refreshment table was exceedingly elegantly set out" by _Gunter_--at a price which we do not yet know....

I dread our sea-voyage for myself, for all sorts of physical reasons; morally, I dare say I shall benefit from a season of absolute quiet and the absence of all excitement. The chicks are well; they are to go down to Liverpool on Sat.u.r.day, in order to be out of the way, for we leave this house on Monday, and their departure will facilitate the verifying of inventories and all the intolerable confusion of our last hours. Mrs.

Cooper, as well as Miss Hall, will go with them to Liverpool, and I have requested that, instead of staying in the town, they may go down to Crosby Beach, six miles from it, and wait there for our arrival. This is all my history. I am in one perpetual bustle, and I thank Heaven for it; I have no leisure to think or to feel....

I beg leave to inform you that Miss Hall came to my party in a most elegant black satin dress, with her hair curled in _profuse ringlets_ all over her head.

G.o.d bless you, my dear Hal. Good-bye.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

Thursday, April 27th, 1843.

DEAREST HAL,

You ask how it goes with me. Why, I think pretty much as it did with the poor gentleman who went up in the flying machine t'other day, which, upon some of his tackle giving way, began, as he describes, to "turn round and round in the air with the most frightful velocity." My condition, I think, too, will find the same climax as his, viz. falling in a state of _senselessness_ into a steam-packet. If the account be true, it was a very curious one. As for me, I am absolutely breathless with things to do and things to think of.... Still, I get on (like a deeply freighted s.h.i.+p in a churning sea, to be sure), but I _do_ make some way, and the days _do_ go by, and I am glad to see the end of this season of trial approaching, for all our sakes.

Any one would suppose I was in great spirits, for I fly about, singing at the top of my voice, and only stop every now and then to pump up a sigh as big as the house, and clear my eyes of the tears that are blinding me. Occasionally, too, a feeling of my last moments here, and my leave-taking of my father and sister, shoots suddenly through my mind, and turns me dead sick; but all is well with me upon the whole, nevertheless.

Adelaide was in great health and spirits on Monday night, and sang for us, and seemed to enjoy herself very much, and gave great delight to everybody who heard her. She sang last night again at Chorley's, but I thought her voice sounded a little tired. To be sure, in those tiny boxes of rooms, the carpets and curtains choke one's voice back into one's throat, and it just comes out beyond one's teeth, with a sort of m.u.f.fled-drum sound. Thus far, dearest Hal, yesterday. To-day, before I left my dressing-room, I got your present. Thank you a thousand times for the pretty chain [a beautiful gold chain, which, together with a very valuable watch, was stolen from me in a boarding-house in Philadelphia, almost immediately on my return there], which is exquisite, and will be very dear. Yet, though I found the "fine gold,"

the empty page of letter-paper on each side of it disappointed me more than it would have been grateful to express; but when I came down to breakfast I found your letter, and was altogether happy.... I was wearing my watch again, for I found the risk and inconvenience of always carrying it about very tiresome, but I had it on an old silver chain that I have had for some years. Yours is prettier even than my father's, and I love to feel it round my neck.

You say you hope my sister will be brave on the occasion of our parting, and not try my courage with her grief. I will answer for her. I am sure she will be brave. I know of no one with more determination and self-control than she has....

The secret of helping people every way most efficiently is to stand by and be _quiet_ and _ready_ to do anything you _may be asked to do_. This is the only real way to help people who have any notion of helping themselves.

On Monday evening we had our first party, which went off exceedingly well. On Tuesday morning Emily and I walked together, and I packed till lunch, after which I drove out with Adelaide, shopping for her, and doing my own _do's_. In the evening I went to my father, whom I found in most wretched spirits, but not worse in health. He has determined, I am thankful to say, not to see the children again before they go, which I think is very wise. After leaving him, I went to a party at our friend Chorley's, where dear Mendelssohn was, and where I heard some wonderful music, and read part of "Much Ado about Nothing" to them. Yesterday Emily came, and we walked together, and I packed and did commissions all day. Our second party took place in the evening, and we had all our grandee friends and fine-folk acquaintances....

G.o.d bless you, dear Hal. Emily is waiting for me to go out walking with her.

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

26, UPPER GROSVENOR STREET.

MY DEAR CHARLES GREVILLE,