Records of Later Life Part 59

Oh, my dear, what a world is this! or rather, what an unlucky experience mine has been--in some respects--yes, in _some_ respects! for while I write this, images of the good, and true, and excellent people I have known and loved rise like a cloud of witnesses to shut out the ugly vision of the moral deformity of some of those with whom my fate has been interwoven....

I have agreed with Mrs. Humphreys to take the apartments that T---- M---- had in King Street, from the beginning of January till the beginning of May. She says she cannot let me have them longer than that, but I shall endeavor for at least a month's extension, for it will be so very wretched to turn out and have to hunt for new lodgings, for a term of six weeks.

My success at Leeds was very good, considering the small size of the theatre.... I am not exempt from a feeling about "ill.u.s.trious localities," but the world seems to me to be so absolutely Shakespeare's domain and dwelling-place, that I do not vividly a.s.sociate him with the idea of those four walls, between which he first saw the light of an English day. If the house he dwelt in in the maturity of his age, and to which he retired to spend the evening of his life, still existed, I should feel considerable emotion in being where his hours and days were spent when his mind had reached its zenith.

A baby is the least intelligent form of a rational human being, and as it mercifully pleased G.o.d to remove His wonderfully endowed child before the approach of age had diminished his transcendent gifts, I do not care to contemplate him in that condition in which I cannot recognize him--that is, with an undeveloped and dormant intelligence.

We know nothing of his childhood, nothing of the gradual growth and unfolding of his genius; his acknowledged works date from the season of its ripe perfection.

You know I do not regret the dimness that covers the common details of his life: his humanity was allied to that of its kind by infirmities and sins, but I am glad that these links between him and _me_ have disappeared, and that those alone remain by which he will be bound, as long as this world lasts, to the love and reverence of his fellow-beings. Shakespeare's childhood, boyhood, the season of his moral and intellectual growth, would be of the deepest interest could one know it: but Shakespeare's mere birthplace and babyhood is not much to me; though I quite agree that it should be respectfully preserved, and allowed to be visited by all who find satisfaction in such pilgrimage.

He could not have been different from other babies you know; nor, indeed, need be,--for a _baby_--_any_ baby--is a more wonderful thing even than Shakespeare.

I have told you how curiously affected I was while standing by his grave, in the church at Stratford-upon-Avon: how I was suddenly overcome with sleep (my invariable refuge under great emotion or excitement), and how I prayed to be allowed to sleep for a little while on the altar-steps of the chancel, beside his bones: the power of a.s.sociation was certainly strong in me then; but his bones _are_ there, and above them streamed a warm and brilliant sunbeam, fit emblem of his vivifying spirit;--but I have no great enthusiasm for his house....

Does not the power of conceiving in any degree the _idea_ of G.o.d establish some relation between Him and the creature capable of any approach by thought to Him? Do we not, in some sense, possess mentally that which we most earnestly think of? is it not the possession over which earthly circ.u.mstances have the least power? The more incessantly and earnestly we think of a thing the more we become possessed _by_ and _of_ it, and in some degree a.s.similated to it; and can those thoughts which reach towards G.o.d alone fail to lay hold, in any sort or degree, of their object?...

Surely, whether we are, or are not, the result of an immense chain of material progression, we have attained to that idea which preserves alive to all eternity the souls upon which it has once dawned. We have caught hold of the feet of the omnipotent Creator; and to the spirit that once has received the conception, however feeble or remote, of His greatness and goodness, there can be no cessation of the bond thus formed between itself and its great Cause. I cannot write about this; I could not utter in words what I think and feel about it: but it seems to me that if organization, mere development, has reached a pitch at which it becomes capable of _divine_ thoughts, it thenceforth can never be anything _less_ than a creature capable of such conceptions; and if so, then how much _more_?

Farewell. Love to Dorothy.

Yours ever, F. A. K.

ORCHARD STREET, Monday, 18th.

I arrived yesterday in town, my dearest Hal, and found your letter waiting for me. The aspect of these, my hired Penates, is comfortable and homelike to me, after living at inns for a fortnight; and the spasmodic and funereal greetings of the nervous Mulliner, and the lugubrious Jeffreys, _gladden_ my spirits with a sense of returning to _something_ that expects me.

About Lady Emily ---- and her _ethereal_ confinement: did I not tell you that Mrs. C---- wrote me word from America that f.a.n.n.y Longfellow had been brought to bed most prosperously under the beneficent influence of ether? at which my dear S---- C---- expresses some anxiety touching the authority of the Book of Genesis, which she thinks may be impaired if women continue, by means of ether, to escape from the special curse p.r.o.nounced against them for their share in the original sin.

For my part I am not afraid that the worst part of the curse will not abide upon us, in spite of ether; the woman's desire will still be to her husband, who, consequently, will still rule over her. For these (curses or not, as people may consider them), I fear no palliating ether will be found; and till men are more righteous than they are, all creatures subject to them will be liable to suffer misery of one sort or another....

I wonder if I have ever spoken to you of Lady Morley--a kind-hearted, clever woman (who, by the bye, always calls men "the softer s.e.x"), a great friend of Sydney Smith's, whom I have known a good deal in society, and who came to see me just before I left town. In speaking of poor Lady Dacre, and the difficulty she found in accepting her late bereavement, Lady Morley said, "I think people should be very grateful whose misfortunes fall upon them in old age rather than in youth: they're all the nearer having done with them." There was some whimsical paradox in this, but some truth too. An habitual saying of hers (not serious, of course, but which she applies to everything she hears) is: "There's nothing new, nothing true, and nothing signifies." The last time I dined at Lady Grey's a discussion arose between Lady Morley, myself, and some of the other guests, as to how much or how little truth it was _right_ to speak in our usual intercourse with people. I maintained that one was bound to speak the whole truth; so did my friend, Lady G----; Lady F---- said, "Toute verite n'est pas bonne a dire;" and Lady Morley told the following story: "I sat by Rogers at dinner the other day (the poet of memory was losing his, and getting to repeat the same story twice over without being aware that he did so), and he told me a very good story, which, however, before long, he began to repeat all over again; something, however, suggesting to him the idea that he was doing so, he stopped suddenly, and said, 'I've told you this before, haven't I?' And he had, not a quarter of an hour before. Now, ladies, what would you have said? and what do you think I said? 'Oh yes,' said I, 'to be sure: you were beginning to tell it to me when the fish came round, and _I'm dying to hear the end of it_.'" This was on all hands allowed to have been a most ingenious reply; and I said I thought she deserved to be highly complimented for such graceful dexterity in falsehood: to which she answered, "Oh, well, my dear, it's all very fine; but if ever you get the truth, depend upon it you won't like it"--a retort which turned the laugh completely against me, and sent her ladys.h.i.+p off with flying colors; and certainly there was no want of tolerably severe sincerity in that speech of hers.

Lady Morley's great vivacity of manner and very peculiar voice added not a little to the drollery of her sallies.

A very conceited, effeminate, and absurd man coming into a room where she was one evening, and beginning to comb his hair, she exclaimed, "La!

what's that! Look there! There's a mermaid!"

Frederick Byng told me that he was escorting her once in a crowded public a.s.sembly, when she sat down on a chair from which another woman had just risen and walked away. "Do you know whose place you have just taken?" asked he. Something significant in his voice and manner arrested her attention, when, looking at him for an instant with wide-open eyes, she suddenly jumped up, exclaiming, "Bless my heart, don't tell me so!

_Predecessor!_" Lord Morley, before marrying her, had been divorced from his first wife, who had just vacated the seat taken by his second, at the a.s.sembly to which they had both gone.

On the occasion of my acting at Plymouth, Lady Morley pressed me very kindly to go and stay some days with her at Soltram, her place near there: this I was unable to do, but drove over to see her, when, putting on a white ap.r.o.n, to "sustain," as she said, "the character," she took me, housekeeper fas.h.i.+on, through the rooms; stopping before her own charming watercolor drawings, with such comments as, "Landscape,--capital performance, by Frances Countess of Morley;" "Street in a foreign town, by Frances Countess of Morley,--a piece highly esteemed by _connyshures_;"

"Outside of a church, by Frances Countess of Morley,--supposed by good judges to be her _s.h.i.+ff duver_," etc....

I have just had a visit from that pretty Miss Mordaunt who acted with me at the St. James's Theatre, and who tells me that her sister, Mrs.

Nisbett, was cheated at the Liverpool theatre precisely as I was; but she has a brother who is a lawyer, who does not mean to let the matter rest without some attempt to recover his sister's earnings....

I went this morning to inquire at the St. George's Workhouse for the unfortunate girl I took out of the hands of the police in the park the other day (her offence was being found asleep at early morning, and suspected of having pa.s.sed the night there), and found, to my great distress and disappointment, that she was in the very act of starting for Bristol.

I had, as I told you, interested dear Mr. Harness, and Mr. Brackenbury, the chaplain of the Magdalen, about her, and when I went out of town she seemed fully determined to go into that asylum. The chaplain of the workhouse in Mount Street, however, has dissuaded her from doing so, told her she would come out worse than she went in; in short, they have despatched her to Bristol, to the care and guardians.h.i.+p of a poor young sister, only a year older than herself, who earns a scanty support by sewing; and all that remained for me to do was to pay her expenses down, and send her sister something to help her through the first difficulties of her return. I am greatly troubled about this. They say the poor unfortunate child is in the family-way, and therefore could not be received at the Magdalen Asylum; but it seems to me that there has been some prejudice, or clerical punctilio, or folly, or stupidity at work, that has induced the workhouse officials thus to alter the poor girl's determination, and send her back whence she came, no doubt to go through a similar experience as soon as possible again. G.o.d help her, and us all! What a world it is!...

The clergyman of the workhouse called upon me to explain why he had so advised the girl, but I did not think his reasons very satisfactory....

G.o.d bless you.

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

ORCHARD STREET.

The houses at Plymouth and Exeter were wretched.... These gains, my dearest Hal, will not allow of my laying up much, but they will prevent my being in debt, that horror of yours and mine. I paid my expenses, besides bringing home something, and a considerable increase of health and strength--which is something more....

I remain in town till the end of next week, then go to Norwich, Ipswich, and Cambridge, my midland circuit, as I call it; after which I shall return to London. Towards the middle of August I go to York, Leeds, Sheffield, and Newcastle, thence to visit Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l at Carolside; after which I shall take my Glasgow and Edinburgh engagements, and then come back to London. There is a rumor of Macready being about to take Drury Lane for the winter, but I have no idea whether it is true or not.

I am sure I don't know what is to become of my poor dog Hero [a fine Irish retriever given me by my friend]. I am almost afraid that Mrs.

Humphreys will not take him into her nice lodging. If I can't keep him with me till I go away to America, I should beg you in the interim to receive him, for my sake, at Ardgillan.

You cannot think with what a sense of relief at laying hold of something _that could not lie_ I threw my arms round his neck the other day, after ---- had left me. This is melancholy, is it not? but I believe many poor human creatures whose hearts have been lacerated by their (un)kind have loved brutes for their freedom from the complicated and reflected falsehood of which the n.o.bler nature is, alas! capable and guilty.

Tell me if it will be inconvenient to you to take charge of Hero when I go away. In a place where he had a wider range than this narrow little dwelling of mine, and where his defects were not incessantly ministered to by the adulation of an idiotical old maid besotted with the necessity of adoring and devoting herself to something, he would be very endurable....

[I injured one of my hands in getting out of a pony-carriage at Hawick.]

Touching my broken finger, my dear, I am sure I did take off the splints too soon, and the recovery has been protracted in consequence; but as I knew it would recover anyhow, and that the splints were inconvenient in acting, and, moreover, expensive, as they compelled me to cut off the little finger of all my white gloves, I preferred dispensing with them.

The pain, inflammation, and stiffness are almost gone, and nothing remains but the thickening of the lower part of the finger, which makes it look crooked, and I think may continue after the injury is healed. I did not, I believe, break the bone at all, but tore away the ligament on one side, that keeps the upper joint in its socket. The cold water pumping is a capital thing, and I give it a douche every time I take my bath. It might, perhaps, be a little better for bandaging, but will get well without it.... A healthy body, with common attention to common-sense, will recover, undoctored, from a great many evils. In almost all cases of slight fractures, cuts, bruises, etc., if the patient is temperate and healthy, and has no const.i.tutional tendency to fever or inflammation, the evil can be remedied by cold water bandages and rest.

Give my dear love to my dear Dorothy and your dear Dorothy. I shall be happy with you both, for she is quite too good to be jealous of.

G.o.d bless you, dear.

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

ORCHARD STREET, Sunday, 4th.

MY DEAREST HAL,

First of all let me tell you, what I am sure you will be glad to learn, that E---- S---- is in England. You will imagine how glad I was to see him. I am very fond of him, have great reliance on his mind as well as his heart; and then he seems like something kind and dependable belonging to me--the only thing of the kind that I possess, for my sister is a woman, and you know I am heartily of opinion that we are the weaker s.e.x, and that an efficient male protector is a tower of strength.

In seeing E----, too, I saw, as it were, alive again the happy past. He seemed part of my sister and her children, and the blessed time I spent with them in Rome, and it was a comfort to me to look at him....

Charles Greville had been out of town, and found the letter announcing E----'s advent, and came up, very good-naturedly, dinnerless, to bring me word of the good news. The next day, however, he was as cross as possible (a way both he and his brother Henry have, in common with other spoiled children) because I expressed some dismay when he said E----'s obtaining a seat in Parliament was quite an uncertainty (I think Mr.

S---- contemplated standing for Kidderminster). Now, from all he had said, and the letter he had written about it, I should have supposed E----'s return to have been inevitable; but this is the sort of thing people perpetually do who endeavor to persuade others that what they themselves wish is likely to happen. E---- seems quite aware himself that the thing is a great chance, but says that even if he does not get a seat in Parliament, he shall not regret having come, as he wanted change of air, is much the better for the journey, and has had the satisfaction of seeing his sister in Paris. Nevertheless, if this effort to settle himself to his mind in England proves abortive, I do not think the Grevilles will get him back in a hurry again....

I am surprised by the term "worthless fellow" which A---- applies to ----. I think him selfish and calculating, but I am getting so accustomed to find everybody so that it seems to me superfluous fastidiousness to be deterred from dealings with any one on that account....

I do not write vaguely to my sister about my arrangements; but you know I have no certain plans, and it is difficult to write with precision about what is not precise.

I am not going to Norwich just yet; the theatre is at present engaged by the Keeleys, and the manager's arrangements with them and Mademoiselle Celeste are such that he cannot receive me until August. I may possibly act a night or two at Newcastle in Staffords.h.i.+re, and at Rochdale, but this would not take me away for more than a week.

In answer to your question of what "coa.r.s.enesses" L---- finds in my book ["A Year of Consolation"], I will give you an extract from her letter.

"There are a few expressions I should like to have stricken out of it; _par exemple_, I hate the word _stink_, though I confess there is no other to answer its full import; and there are one or two pa.s.sages the careless manner of writing which astonished me in you. You must have caught it from what you say is my way of talking." Now, Hal, I can only tell you that more than once I thought myself actually to blame for not giving with more detail the disgusting elements which in Rome mingle everywhere with what is sublime and exquisite; for it appeared to me that to describe and dilate upon one half of the truth only was to be an unfaithful painter, and destroy the merit, with the accuracy, of the picture. I remember, particularly, standing one morning absorbed in this very train of reflection, in the Piazza del Popolo, when on attempting to approach the fine fountains below the Pincio I found it impossible to get near them for the abominations by which they were surrounded, and thought how unfaithful to the truth it would be to speak of the grace and beauty of this place, and not of this detestable desecration of it.

The place and the people can only be perfectly described through the whole, as you know. Farewell.