Chapter XXI · (continued 2)

Thursday, June 2d.—Mr. Hayter called. Lord Francis has spoken to him about the picture he wishes him to do of me, and he came to take the position, and I gave him his choice of three or four. I dare say he will make a very pretty picture. As for my likeness, that I am not hopeful about. I have gone through the operation in vain so very often. Murray has sent me some beautiful and delightful books.... A third representation of "Hernani" is called for, it seems, and, as far as I am concerned, they are welcome to it; but Lady Francis came to say that the Duchess of Gloucester wants it to be acted on the 23d, and I am afraid that will not do for my theater arrangements; they must try and have it earlier, if possible. Lady Francis has half bribed me with a ball. They want us to go down to Oatlands for Saturday and Sunday, and I hope we may be able to manage it.... After Lady F—— was gone, my mother had a visit from Mrs. B——; her manner is bad, her matter is good. She is clever and excellent, and I have a great respect for her. She interested me immensely by her account of Mrs. Fry's visits to Newgate. What a blessed, happy woman to do so much good; to be the means of comfort and consolation, perhaps of salvation, to such desolate souls! How I did honor and love what I heard of her. Mrs. B—— said Mrs. Fry would be delighted to take me with her some day when she went to the prison. My mother laughingly said she was afraid Mrs. Fry would convert me—surely not to Quakerism. I do not think I need a new faith, but power to act up to the one I profess. I need no Quaker saint to tell me I do not do that.

[I had the great honor of accompanying Mrs. Fry in one of her visits to Newgate, but from various causes received rather a painful impression instead of the very different one I had anticipated. Her divine labor of love had become famous, and fine ladies of fashion pressed eagerly to accompany her, or be present at the Newgate exhortations. The unfortunate women she addressed were ranged opposite their less excusable sister sinners of the better class, and I hardly dared to look at them, so entirely did I feel out of my place by the side of Mrs. Fry, and so sick for their degraded attitude and position. If I had been alone with them and their noble teacher I would assuredly have gone and sat down among them. On the day I was there a poor creature sat in the midst of the congregation attired differently from all the others, who was pointed out to me as being under sentence of transportation for whatever crime she committed. Altogether I felt broken-hearted for them and ashamed for us.]

My mother has had a letter from my father (he was acting in the provinces), who says he has met and shaken hands with Mr. Harris (his co-proprietor of Covent Garden, and antagonist in our ruinous lawsuit about it). I wonder what benefit is to be expected from that operation with—such a person.

Sunday, June 5th. ... On my return from afternoon service found Mr. Walpole with my mother; they amused me extremely by a conversation in which they ran over, as far as their memories would stretch (near sixty years), the various fashions and absurd modes of dress which have prevailed during that period. Toupees, fêtes, toques, bouffantes, hoops, bell hoops, sacques, polonaises, levites, and all the paraphernalia of horsehair, powder, pomatum, and pins, in the days when court beauties had their heads dressed over-night for the next day's drawing-room, and sat up in their chairs for fear of destroying the edifice by lying down. No wonder they were obliged to rouge themselves—the days when once in a fortnight was considered often enough for ridding the hair of its horrible paste of flour and grease. We are certainly cleaner than our grandmothers, and much more comfortable, though it is not so long since my own head was dressed à la giraffe, in three bows over pins half a foot high, so that I could not sit upright in the carriage without knocking against the top of it. My mother's and Mr. Walpole's recollections and descriptions were like seeing a set of historical caricatures pass before one.

Monday, June 6th.—The house was very full at the theater this evening, and Miss C—— sent me round a delicious fresh bouquet. I acted well, I think; the play was "Romeo and Juliet." It is so very pleasant to return to Shakespeare, after reciting Bianca and Isabella, etc. I reveled in the glorious poetry and the bright, throbbing reality of that Italian girl's existence; and yet Juliet is nothing like as nice as Portia—nobody is as nice as Portia. But the oftener I act Juliet the oftener I think it ought never to be acted at all, and the more absurd it seems to me to try to act it. After the play my mother sent a note with the carriage to say she would not go to the ball, so I dressed myself and drove off with my father from the theater to the Countess de S——'s. At half-past eleven the ball had not begun. Mrs. Norton was there in splendid beauty; at about half-past twelve the dancing began, and it was what is called a very fine ball. While I was dancing with Mr. C——, I saw my father talking to a handsome and very magnificent lady, who my partner told me was the Duchess of B——; after our quadrille, when I rejoined my father, he said to me, "Fanny, let me present you to ——" here he mumbled something perfectly inaudible, and I made a courtesy, and the lady smiled sweetly and said some civil things and went away. "Whose name did you mention," said I to my father, with some wickedness, "just now when you introduced me to that lady?" "Nobody's, my dear, nobody's; I haven't the remotest idea who she is." "The Duchess of B——," said I, glibly, strong in the knowledge I had just acquired from my partner. "Bless my soul!" cried the poor man, with a face of the most ludicrous dismay, "so it was! I had quite forgotten her, though she was good enough to remember me, and here I have been talking cross-questions and crooked answers to her for the last half-hour!"

Was ever any thing so terrible! I feared my poor father would go home and remain awake all night, sobbing softly to himself, like the eldest of the nine Miss Simmonses in the ridiculous novel, because in her nervous flurry at a great dinner party she had refused instead of accepting a gentleman's offer to drink wine with her. Lady G—— then came up, whom he did remember, and who was "truly gracious;" and I left him consoled, and, I hope, having forgotten his dreadful duchess again. All the world, as the saying is, was at this ball, and it certainly was a very fine assembly. We danced in a splendid room hung with tapestry—a magnificent apartment, though it seemed to me incongruous for the purpose; dim burning lights and flitting ghosts and gusts of wind and distant footfalls and sepulchral voices being the proper furniture of the "tapestried chamber," and not wax candles, to the tune of sunlight and bright eyes and dancing feet and rustling silks and gauzes and laughing voices, and all the shine and shimmer and flaunting flutter of a modern ball....

At half-past two, though the carriage had been ordered at two, my father told me he would not "spoil sport," and so angelically stayed till past four. He is the best of fathers, the most affectionate of parents, the most benevolent of men! There is a great difference between being chaperoned by one's father instead of one's mother: the latter, poor dear! never flirts, gets very sleepy and tired, and wants to go home before she comes; the former flirts and talks with all the pretty, pleasant women he meets, and does not care till what hour in the morning—a frame of mind favorable to much dancing for the youngers. After all, I had to come away in the middle of a delightful mazurka.

Tuesday, June 7th.— ... We had a very pleasant dinner at Mr. Harness's. Moore was there, but Paganini was the chief subject discussed, and we harped upon the one miraculous string he fiddles on without pauses.... After dinner I read one of Miss Mitford's hawthorny sketches out of "Our Village," which was lying on the table; they always carry one into fresh air and green fields, for which I am grateful to them.

Wednesday, June 8th.—While I was writing to H—— my mother came in and told me that Mrs. Siddons was dead. I was not surprised; she has been ill, and gradually failing for so long.... I could not be much grieved for myself, for of course I had had but little intercourse with her, though she was always very kind to me when I saw her.... She died at eight o'clock this morning—peaceably, and without suffering, and in full consciousness.... I wonder if she is gone where Milton and Shakespeare are, to whose worship she was priestess all her life—whose thoughts were her familiar thoughts, whose words were her familiar words. I wonder how much more she is allowed to know of all things now than she did while she was here. As I looked up into the bright sky to-day, while my father and mother were sadly recalling the splendor of her day of beauty and great public power, I thought of the unlimited glory she perhaps now beheld, of the greater holiness and happiness I trust she now enjoys, and said in my heart, "It must be well to be as she is." I had never thought it must be well to be as she was....

As soon as the news came my father went off to see what he could do for Cecilia, poor thing, and to bring her here, if she can be persuaded to leave Baker Street. He was not much shocked, though naturally deeply grieved by the event; my aunt has now been ill so long that any day might have brought the termination of the protracted process of her death. When he returned he said Cecilia was composed and quiet, but would not leave the house at present. I have written to Lady Francis to decline going to Oatlands, which we were to have done this week.

At dinner my father told me some of the arrangements he has made for the summer. We are to act at Bristol, Bath, Exeter, Plymouth, and Southampton. He then said, "Suppose we take steamer thence to Marseilles, and so on to Naples?" My heart jumped into my mouth at the thought; but how should I ever come back again?... Everything here is so ugly, even without comparison with that which is beautiful elsewhere; from Italy how should one come back to live in London?

Thursday, June 9th.— ... And so I am to act Lady Macbeth! I feel as if I were standing up by the great pyramid of Egypt to see how tall I am! However, it must be done; perhaps I may even do it less ill than Constance—the greater intensity of the character may perhaps render majesty less indispensable. Power (if one had enough of it) might atone for insufficient dignity. Lady Macbeth made herself a queen by dint of wickedness; Constance was royal born—a radical difference, which ought to be in my favor. But dear, dear, dear, what a frightful undertaking for a poor girl, let her be never so wicked!

And the Lady Macbeth will never be seen again! I wish just now that in honor of my aunt the play might be forbidden to be performed for the next ten years. My father and myself have a holiday at the theater—but only for the week—because of Mrs. Siddons's death, and we are to go down to Oatlands—nobody being there but ourselves, that is my brother and I—for the rest and quiet and fresh air of these few days.

Friday, June 10th.—Before three the carriage was announced, and we started for the country. We dropped Henry at Lord Waldegrave's and had a very pleasant drive, though the day was as various in its moods as if we were in April instead of June. We arrived at about six, and found Mr. C—— had been made an exception to the "positively nobody" who was to meet us....

Saturday, June 11th.—Read the French piece called "Une Faute," which half killed me with crying. It is exceedingly clever, but altogether too true, in my opinion, for real art. It is not dramatic truth, but absolute imitation of life, and instead of the mitigated emotion which a poetical representation of tragic events excites, it produces a sense of positive suffering too acutely painful for an artistic result; it is a perfectly prosaical reproduction of the familiar vice and its inseparable misery of modern everyday life; it wants elevation and imagination—aërial perspective; it is close upon one, and must be agonizing to see well acted. My studies were certainly not of the most cheerful order, for after finishing this morbid anatomy of human hearts I read an article in the Phrenological Journal on Bouilland's "Anatomy of the Brain," which made me feel as if my brain was stuck full of pins and needles.

Perhaps a certain amount of experience must be attained through experiment, and if the wits of the human species are to be better understood, governed, and preserved by the results obtained by cutting and hacking the brains of living animals, perhaps some of our more immediate mercy is to be sacrificed to our humanity in the lump; but if this is not the forbidden doing evil that good may come of it, I do not know what is. One of the effects of Mr. Bouilland's excruciating experiments on his victims was to turn me already sick and give me an agonizing pain in my brain. I hope their beneficial consequences did not end there.

I did all this reading before breakfast, and when I left my room it was still too early for any one to be up, so I set off for a run in the park. The morning was lovely, vivid, and bright, with soft shadows flitting across the sky and chasing one another over the sward, while a delicious fresh wind rustled the trees and rippled the grass; and unable to resist the temptation, bonnetless as I was, I set off at the top of my speed, running along the terrace, past the grotto, and down a path where the syringa pelted me with showers of mock-orange blossoms, till I came under some magnificent old cedars, through whose black, broad-spread wings the morning sun shone, drawing their great shadows on the sweet-smelling earth beneath them, strewed with their russet-colored shedding. I thought it looked and smelt like a Russia-leather carpet. Then I came to the brink of the water, to a little deserted fishing pavilion surrounded by a wilderness of bloom that was once a garden, and then I ran home to breakfast. After breakfast I went over the very same ground with Lady Francis, extremely demure, with my bonnet on my head and a parasol in my hand, and the utmost propriety of decorous demeanor, and said never a word of my mad morning's explorings. A girl's run and a young lady's walk are very different things, and I hold both pleasant in their way. The carriage was ordered to take my mother to Addlestone to see poor old Mrs. Whitelock, and during her absence Lady Francis and I repaired to her own private sitting-room, and we entertained each other with extracts from our respective journals. I was struck with the high esteem she expressed for Lord Carlisle; in one place in her journal she said she wished she could hope her boys would grow up as excellent men as he is, and this in spite of her party politics, for she is a Tory and he a Whig, and she is really a partisan politician.

In the afternoon, after a charming meandering ride, we determined to go to Monks Grove, the place Lady Charlotte Greville has taken on St. Anne's Hill.... In the evening we had terrifical ghost stories, which held, us fascinated till one o'clock in the morning.

Sunday, June 12th.— ... It's nearly five years since I said my prayers in that dear old little Weybridge church....

On our return, as the horses are never used on Sunday, we went down to the water and got into the boat. The day was lovely, and as we glided along the bright water my mother and Lady Francis and I murmured, half voice, all sorts of musical memories, which made a nice accompaniment to Lord Francis's occasional oar-dip that just kept the boat in motion. When we landed, my mother returned to the house, and the rest of us set off for a long delightful stroll to the farm, where I saw a monstrous and most beautiful dog whom I should like to have hugged, but that he looked so grave and wise it seemed like a liberty. We walked on through a part of the park called America, because of the magnificent rhododendrons and azaleas and the general wildness of the whole. The mass was so deep one's feet sank into it; the sun, setting, threw low, slanting rays along the earth and among the old tree trunks. It was a beautiful bit of forest scenery; how like America I do not know. Upon the racecourse we emerged into a full, still afternoon atmosphere of brilliant and soft splendor; the whole park was flooded with sunshine, and little creeks of light ran here and there into the woods we had just left, touching with golden radiance a solitary tree, and glancing into leafy nooks here and there, while the mass of woodland was one deep shadow....

Much discussion as to the possibilities and probabilities of our being able to stay here another day. When we came back from our afternoon ride at near eight, found Mr. Greville and Lady Charlotte here, and a letter from my father, saying that I could be spared from my work at the theater a little longer, and promising to come down to us.... In the evening Mr. C—— and I acted some of Racine's "Andromaque" for them; my old school part of Hermione which I have not forgotten, and then two scenes from Scribe's pretty piece of "les premières Amours." He acts French capitally, and, moreover, bestowed upon me the two following ridiculous conundrum puns, for which I shall be forever grateful to him:

"Que font les Vaches à Paris?"

"Des Vaudevilles" (des Veaux de Ville).

"Quelle est la sainte qui n'a pas lesoin de Jarretières?"

"Ste. Sébastienne" (ses has se tiennent).

What absurd, funny stuff!

Tuesday, June 14th.—Gardening on the lawn—hay-making in the meadow—delightful ride in the afternoon, the beginning of which, however, was rather spoiled by some very disagreeable accounts Mr. C—— was giving us of Lord and Lady ——'s mènage. What might, could, would, or should a woman do in such a case? Endure and endure till her heart broke, I suppose. Somehow I don't think a man would have the heart to break one's heart; but, to be sure, I don't know....

We did not return home till near nine, and so, instead of dinner, all sat down to high tea, at which everybody was very cheerful and gay, and the talk very bright....

I wish I could have painted my host and hostess this morning as they stood together on the lawn; she with her beautiful baby in her arms, her bright, fair forehead and eyes contrasting so strikingly with his fine, dark head. I never saw a more charming picture. (Landseer has produced one version of it in his famous "Return from Hawking.") Are not all such groups "Holy Families"? They looked to me holy as well as handsome and happy.

Wednesday, June 15th.— ... The races in the park were to begin at one, and we wished, of course, to keep clear of them and all the gay company; so at twelve my mother and I got into the pony carriage, and drove to Addlestone to my aunt Whitelock's pretty cottage there. It rained spitefully all day, and the races and all the fine racing folk were drenched. At about six o'clock my father came from London, bringing me letters; the weather had brightened, and I took a long stroll with him till time to dress for dinner.... In the evening music and pleasant talk till one o'clock.

Thursday, June 16th.—At eight o'clock my mother and I walked with my father to meet the coach, on the top of which he left us for London. After breakfast took my mother down to my "Cedar Hall," and established her there with her fishing, and then walked up the hill to the great trees and amused myself with bending down the big branches, and, seating myself on them, let them spring up with me. Climbing trees, as poor Combe would say, excites one's "wonder" and one's "caution" very agreeably, and I like it. I took Lord Francis's translation of "Henri Trois" back to the "Cedar Hall," where my mother was still watching her float. I was a good deal struck with it. He has not finished the whole of the first act yet, but there is one scene between the Duchess of Guise and St. Megrin that I should think ought to be very effective on the stage; and I can imagine how charming Mdlle. Mars must have been in her sleep-walking gestures and intonations. The situation, which is highly dramatic, is, I think, quite new; I cannot recollect any similar one in any other play....

After lunch my mother, Lady Charlotte, and Mr. Greville drove off to Monks Grove, and we followed them on horse-back; it is a little paradise of a place, with its sunny, smooth sloping lawns and bright, sparkling piece of water, the masses of flowers blossoming in profuse beauty, and the high, overhanging, sheltering woods of St. Anne's Hill rising behind it. On our way home much talk of Naples. I might like to go there, no doubt; the question is how I should like to come back to London after Naples, and I think not at all. In the evening read the pretty French piece of "Michel et Christine" which my father had sent me.

Friday, June 17th.— ... My mother, Mr. C——, and I drove together back to town; so good-by, Oatlands.

Monday, June 20th.—Went to rehearsal at half-past ten for John Mason, who is to come out in Romeo to-night; he had caught a dreadful cold and could hardly speak, which was terribly provoking, poor fellow! After my theater rehearsal of "Romeo and Juliet" drove to Bridgewater House to rehearse "Hernani." In the evening the house was very good at Covent Garden; I played well. John Mason was suffering dreadfully from cold and hoarseness; the audience were very good-natured, however, and he got through uncommonly well. My mother said I played "beautifully," which was saying much indeed for her. I was delighted, especially as the Francis Levesons and —— were all there.

Tuesday, June 21st.—Went to Bridgewater House to rehearse. Charles Young was among our morning audience; I was so glad to see him, for dear old acquaintanceship. The king was going to the House of Parliament, and Palace Yard was thronged with people, and we sat round one of the Bridgewater House windows to see the show. At about one the royal carriages set out—such lovely cream-colored horses, with blue and silver trappings; such splendid, shining, coal-black ones, with coral-colored trappings. The equipages looked like some enchanted present in a fairy story. The king—God bless him!—cannot, I should think, have been much annoyed by the clamorous greetings of his people. I'm afraid that ominous, sullen silence is a bad sign of the times. We rehearsed very steadily. Lord Francis, who is taking the old duke's part because of Mr. St. Aubin going abroad, is much improved by some teaching Young has bestowed upon him; but still he is by no means so good as Mr. St. Aubin was....

Wednesday, 22d.—Read "La Chronique de Charles Neuf," which is very clever, but the history of that period in France is so revolting that works of fiction founded upon it are as disagreeable as the history itself. Hogarth's pictures and Le Sage's novels are masterpieces, and yet admirable only as excellent representations of what in itself is odious. However, they are satirical works, and so have their raison d'être, which I do not think a serious novel about detestable times and people has. Drove to Bridgewater House, feeling so unwell that I could scarcely stand, and was obliged to lie down till I was called to go on the stage. We had a magnificent audience—all the grandeurs in England except the King. The Queen, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland, Princess Elizabeth, Prince Leopold, the Duke of Brunswick. And lesser magnificoes the room full. Such very superior people make a dull audience, of course; the presence of royalty is always understood to bar applause, which is not etiquette when a Majesty is by. I played very ill; my voice was quite unmanageable, and broke twice, to my extreme dismay. The fact is, I am fagged half to death; but as I cannot give up my work and cannot bear to give up my play, the only wonder is that I am not fagged whole to death. Mr. Craven acted really capitally, and I wondered how he could. They put us out terribly in one scene by forgetting the bench on which I have to sit down. Hernani managed with great presence of mind and cleverness in its absence, but it spoilt our prettiest picture. After the play Lady Francis came to fetch me to be presented to the Queen; her Majesty was most gracious in her reception of me, and so were the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, who came and had quite a long chat with me. When I had received my dismissal from her Majesty I ran to disrobe, and returned to join the crowd in the drawing-room.... When they were all gone we adjourned to Lady Gower's—a most magnificent supper, which we enjoyed in the perfection of comfort, in a small boudoir opening into and commanding the whole length of the supper saloon. Our snuggery just held my mother, Lady Francis, myself, Charles Greville, and three of our corps dramatique, and we not only enjoyed a full view of the royal table, but what was infinitely amusing, poor Lord Francis's disconsolate countenance, which half killed us with laughing. Supper done, we all proceeded downstairs to see the Royalty depart, and looked at a fine picture of Lawrence's of that handsome creature, Lord Clanwilliam. Took leave of my friends for some months, I am sorry to say; took Mr. ——home in our carriage and set him down just at day-dawn. It was past four o'clock before I saw my bed; and the life I am leading is really enough to kill any one.

Thursday, June 23d.—Quite unwell, and in bed all day. Mrs. Jameson came and sat with me some time. We talked of marriage, and a woman's chance of happiness in giving her life into another's keeping. I said I thought if one did not expect too much one might secure a reasonably fair amount of happiness, though of course the risk one ran was immense. I never shall forget the expression of her face; it was momentary, and passed away almost immediately, but it has haunted me ever since.

Great Russell Street.

Dear Lady Dacre,

I am commissioned by my mother to request your kind permission to bring my brother to your evening party on Saturday; she hopes you will have no scruple in refusing this request, if for any reason you would rather not comply with it.... I have been thinking much about what you said to me both viva voce and in your note upon that "obnoxious word" in my play. Let me entreat you to put aside conventional regards of age and sex, which have nothing to do with works of art or literature, and view the subject without any of those considerations, which have their own proper domain, doubtless—although I think you have in this instance admitted their jurisdiction out of it.... I hope as long as I live that I shall never write anything offensive to decency or morality, or their pure source, religion; and I hope in my own manners and conversation always to preserve the decorum prescribed by society, good taste, and good feeling; but as a dramatic writer, supposing I am ever to be one, I shall have to depict men as well as women, coarse and common men as well as refined and courtly ones, and all and each, if I fulfill my task, must speak the language that their nature under their several circumstances points out as individually appropriate. But I forget that I am addressing one far better able than I am to say what belongs to all questions of poetry and art. Forgive me, my dear Lady Dacre, and allow me to add that, as when I put my play into your hands I told you that should you find it too intolerably dull and bad I would release you from your kind promise of accepting its dedication to yourself, I can only repeat my readiness to do so if upon any other ground whatever you feel reluctant to grace my title-page with your name. Pray tell me so without hesitation, as I had rather forego that honor than owe it to your courtesy without your entire good-will.

In any event pray accept my best acknowledgments for your kindness, and believe me always

Your very truly obliged

F. A. K.

This letter was written in answer to some strictures of Lady Dacre's on what appeared to her coarseness of language in my play of "The Star of Seville," which she thought unbecoming a "young lady." If I remember rightly, too, she said that the introduction of a scene in a bedchamber might be deemed objectionable. I had asked her permission to dedicate the play to her, which she had granted; and though she failed to convince me that a young-lady element had any business whatever in a play, she very kindly allowed her name to adorn the title-page of my un-young ladylike drama.

Soon after this my father and aunt and myself left London for our summer tour in the provinces, which we began at Bristol.

Monday, July 4th, Bristol.—The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and the nurse was a perfect farce in herself; she really was worth any money, and her soliloquy when she found me "up and dressed and down again," very nearly made me scream with laughter in the middle of my trance. Indeed, the whole play was probably considered an "improved version" of Shakespeare's Veronese story, both in the force and delicacy of the text. Sundry wicked words and coarse appellations were decorously dispensed with; many fine passages received judicious additions; not a few were equally judiciously omitted altogether. What a shocking hash!

Tuesday, July 5th.—After breakfast we sallied forth to the market, to my infinite delight and amusement. It is most beautifully clean; the fruit and vegetables look so pretty, and smell so sweet, and give such an idea of plentiful abundance, that it is delightful to walk about among them. Even the meat, which I am generally exceedingly averse to go near, was so beautifully and nicely arranged that it had none of its usual repulsiveness; and the sight of the whole place, and the quaint-looking rustic people, was so pleasantly envious. We stopped to gossip with a bewitching old country dame, whose market stock might have sat, with her in the middle of it, for its picture; the veal and poultry so white and delicate-looking, the bacon like striped pink and white ribbons, the butter so golden, fresh, and sweet, in a great basket trimmed round with bunches of white jasmine, the green leaves and starry blossoms and exquisite perfume making one believe that butter ought always to be served, not in a "lordly dish," but in a bower of jasmine. The good lady told us she had just come up from "the farm," and that the next time she came she would bring us some home-made bread, and that she was going back to brew and to bake. She looked so tidy and rural, and her various avocations sounded so pleasant as she spoke of them, that I felt greatly tempted to beg her to let me go with her to "the farm," which I am sure must be an enchanting place, neat and pretty, and flowery and comfortable, and full of rustic picturesqueness; and while the sun shone, I think I should like a female farmer's life amazingly. Went to the theater and rehearsed "Venice Preserved," which is an entirely different kind of thing. Charles Mason dined with us. After dinner I finished reading Miss Ferrier's novel of "Destiny," which I like very much; besides being very clever, it leaves a pleasant taste, in one's mind's mouth. Went to the theater at six; the play was "Venice Preserved," and I certainly have seldom seen a more shameful exhibition. In the first place C—— did not even know his words, and that was bad enough; but when he was out, instead of coming to a stop decently, and finishing at least with his cue, he went on extemporizing line after line, and speech after speech, of his own, by way of mending matters. I think I never saw such a performance. He stamps and bellows low down in his throat like an ill-suppressed bull; he rolls his eyes till I feel as if they were flying out of their sockets at me, and I must try and catch them. He quivers and quavers in his speech, and pulls and wrenches me so inhumanly, that what with inward laughter and extreme rage and pain, I was really all but dead in earnest at the end of the play. I acted very ill myself till the last scene, when my Jaffier having been done justice to by the Venetian Government, I was able to do justice to myself, and having gone mad, and no wonder, died rather better than I had lived through the piece.

July 6th, Bristol.—Walked out to order the horses, and afterwards went on to look at the Abbey Church. We examined one or two interesting old monuments; but were obliged to curtail our explorings, as the doors were about to be closed. We have been talking much lately of a remote possibility of going to America; and as I left this old brown pile to-day, it seemed to me curious to think of a country which has no cathedrals, no monuments of the Old Faith. How venerable, in spite of its superstitions and abuses; for its long undisputed sway over all civilized lands; for the great and good men who honored it by their lives and works—the religion of Augustine, of Bruno, Benedict, Francis d'Assisi, Francis de Sales, Fénelon, and how many more—the Christianity of Europe in its feudal, chivalrous times, those days of noble, good, as well as fierce, evil deeds and lives, the faith that kings and warriors bowed to when sovereignty was absolute and military power supreme. America has no gray abbeys, no ruined cloisters, to tell of monastic brotherhoods—the preserves of ancient historic chronicles, the guardians of the early wells and springs of classic learning and genius. In America there are no great, old, time-stained, weather-beaten, ivy-mantled churches full of tombs, such as we saw to-day, with curious carvings and quaint effigies, and where the early rulers of the land embraced the faith and received the baptism of Christ. That must be a very strange country. But they have Plymouth Rock, on the shore where the Protestant Pilgrims landed.

The horses having come to the door, we set off for our ride; our steeds were but indifferent hacks, but the road was charming, and the evening serene and pure, and I was with my father, a circumstance of enjoyment to me always. The characteristic feature of the scenery of this region is the vivid, deep-toned foliage of the hanging woods, through whose dense tufts of green, masses of gray rock and long scars of warm-colored red-brown earth appear every now and then with the most striking effect. The deep-sunk river wound itself drowsily to a silver thread at the base of steep cliffs, to the summit of which we climbed, reaching a fine level land of open downs carpeted with close, elastic turf. On we rode, up hill and down dale, through shady lanes full of the smell of lime-blossom, skirting meadows fragrant with the ripe mellow hay and honey-sweet clover, and then between plantations of aromatic, spicy fir and pine, all exhaling their perfumes under the influence of the warm sunset. At last we made a halt where the road, winding through Lord de Clifford's property, commanded an enchanting view. On our right, rolling ground rising gradually into hills, clothed to their summits with flourishing evergreens, firs, larches, laurel, arbutus—a charming variety in the monotony of green. On the farthest of these heights Blaise Castle, with two gray towers, well defined against the sky, looked from its bosky eminence over the whole domain, which spread on our left in sloping lawns, where single oaks and elms of noble size threw their shadows on the sunlit sward, which looked as if none but fairies' feet had ever pressed it. Beyond this, through breaks and frames, and arches made by the trees, the broad Severn glittered in the wavy light. It was a beautiful landscape in every direction. We returned home by sea wall and the shore of the Severn, which seemed rather bare and bleak after the soft loveliness we had just left....

Thursday, July 7th.—Went to the theater to rehearse "The Gamester." In the afternoon strolled down to the river with my father and Dall. We took boat and rowed toward the cliffs. Our time, however, was limited; and just as we reached the loveliest part of the river, we were obliged to turn home again.... At dinner, as we were talking about America, and I was expressing my disinclination ever to go thither, my father said: "If my cause (our Chancery suit) goes ill before the Lords, I think the best thing I can do will be to take ship from Liverpool and sail to the United States." I choked a little at this, but presently found voice to say, "Ebben son pronta;" but he replied, "No, that he should go alone." That you never should, my own dear father!... But I do hate the very thought of America.

Saturday, July 9th. ... In the afternoon drove out in an open carriage with Dall to Shirehampton, by the same road my father and I took in our ride the other day.

Bristol, July 10th, 1831.

My dear Mrs. Jameson,

I can neither bid you confirm nor deny any "reports you may hear," for I am in utter ignorance, I am happy to say, of the world's surmisings on my behalf, and had indeed supposed that my time for being honored by its notice in any way was pretty well past and over.

I am glad you are having rest, as you speak of it with the enjoyment which those alone who work hard are entitled to. I trust, too, that in the instance of your eyes no news is good news, for you say nothing of them, and I therefore like to hope that they have suffered you to forget them.

I'm disappointed about your Shakespeare book. I should like to have had it by my next birthday, which is the 27th of November, and to which I look forward with unusually mingled feelings. However, it cannot be helped; and I have no doubt the booksellers are right in point of fact, for we are embarked on board too troublous times to carry mere passe temps literature with us. "We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns," I am afraid, and shall find small public taste or leisure for polite letters.

I like this place very well; it is very quiet, and my life is always a happy one with my father. He always spoils me, and that is always pleasant, you know.

The Bristol people are rather in a bad state just now for our purposes, for trade here is in a very unprosperous condition; and the recent failure of many of their great mercantile houses does no good to our theatrical ones. The audiences are very pleasant, however, and the company by no means bad. We are here another week, and then take ship for Ilfracombe, and thence by land to Exeter; after that Plymouth and Southampton.... I wish I could be in London for "Anna Bolena." I cannot adequately express my admiration for Madame Pasta; I saw her in Desdemona the Saturday night on which I scrawled those few lines to you. I think if you knew how every look and tone and gesture of hers affects me, you would be satisfied. She is almost equal to an imagination; more than that I cannot say. If you rate "imagination" as I think you must, I need say nothing more. We shall certainly be back in London by the end of September, if not before. In the mean time believe me ever yours most truly,

F. A. K.

Sunday, July 10th.—My father wickedly dawdled about till we were nearly late for church, and had to scamper along the quays and up the steep street, to poor dear Dall's infinite discomfiture, who grumbled and puffed, and shuffled and shambled along, while I plunged on, breathlessly ejaculating, "It is so hateful to be late for church!" The cathedral (which I believe it is not) was quite full, but we obtained seats in the organ gallery, where we could not hear very well, but had a very fine view of the coup d'œil presented by the choir and church below us. The numerous and many-colored congregation, the white surpliced choristers, the charity-school children in their uniforms surrounding the altar, all framed in by the dark old oak screens with their quaint readings, and partially vividly illuminated by occasional gleams of strong sunlight which poured suddenly through the colored windows, presented a beautiful picture. The service was very well performed: the organ is a remarkably good one, and one or two of the boys' voices were exquisitely soft and clear. It is a fine service, and yet I do not like it by way of religious worship. It does not make me devout, in the proper form of the term; it appeals too much to my senses and my imagination; it is religion set to music and painting, and artistic religion does not suit me. The incessant passing of people through the church, too, disturbs one, and gives an unpleasant air of irreverence to the whole.... I think I might like to go to a cathedral for afternoon service, much as I like to spend my Sunday leisure in reading Milton, though I should not be satisfied to make my whole devotional exercises consist in reading "Paradise Lost." A wretchedly weak, poor sermon; how strange that such a theme should inspire nothing better than such a discourse! However, I suppose this sort of ministering is the inevitable result of a "ministry" embraced merely as a means of subsistence. No one could paint pictures or compose music, only because they wanted bread, so I do not see why any one should preach sermons fit to be heard, only because they want bread. If I was a despot, I would suppress hebdomadal writing of sermons, and people should be forbidden instead of bidden to talk nonsense upon sacred subjects.

Monday, 11th.—At night the theater was very full, and the audience pleasant. During supper my father, Charles Mason, and I had a long discussion about Kean. I cannot help thinking my father wrong about him. Kean is a man of decided genius, no matter how he neglects or abuses nature's good gift. He has it. He has the first element of all greatness—power. No taste, perhaps, and no industry, perhaps; but let his deficiencies be what they may, his faults however obvious, his conceptions however erroneous, and his characters, each considered as a whole, however imperfect, he has the one atoning faculty that compensates for everything else, that seizes, rivets, electrifies all who see and hear him, and stirs down to their very springs the passionate elements of our nature. Genius alone can do this.

As an actor, one whose efforts are the result of study, of mental research, reflection, and combination; as an intellectual anatomist, whose knowledge must dissect, and then re-form and reproduce again in beauty and harmony the image he has taken to pieces; as an artist, who is bound to conceal both the first and last processes, the dismembering of the parts and the reuniting them in a whole, and whose business is to make the most deliberate mental labor and the most studied personal effects appear the spontaneous result of unpremeditated passion and emotion (feigned passion and emotion, which are to appear real)—in capacity for all this Kean may be defective. He may not be an actor, he may not be an artist, but he is a man of genius, and instinctively with a word, a look, a gesture, tears away the veil from the heart of our common humanity, and lays it bare as it beats in every human heart, and as it throbs in his own. Kean speaks with his whole living frame to us, and every fiber of ours answers his appeal.

I do not know that I ever saw him in any character which impressed me as a whole work of art; he never seems to me to intend to be any one of his parts, but I think he intends that all his parts should be him. So it is not Othello who is driven frantic by doubt and jealousy, nor Shylock who is buying human flesh by its weight in gold, nor Sir Giles Overreach who is selling his child to hell for a few years of wealth and power; it is Kean, and in every one of his characters there is an intense personality of his own that, while one is under its influence, defies all criticism—moments of such overpowering passion, accents of such tremendous power, looks and gestures of such thrilling, piercing meaning, that the excellence of those parts of his performances more than atones for the want of greater unity in conception and smoothness in the entire execution of them.

The discussion about Kean led naturally to some talk about his most famous parts, particularly Shylock. My father's conception of Shylock seems to me less the right one than Kean's; but then, if my father took what I think the right view of the part, he would have to give up acting it. The real Shylock—that is, Shakespeare's—is a creature totally opposite in his whole organization, physical and mental, to my father's; and as my father cannot force his nature in any particular into uniformity with that of Shylock, he endeavors to persuade himself that the theory by which he tries to bring it into harmony with his individuality, and within the compass of his powers, is the right one; but I think him entirely mistaken about it. Kean did with the part exactly what my father wants to do—adapted his conceptions to his means of execution; but Kean's physical constitution was much better suited to express Shylock as Shylock should be expressed than my father's. My father attempts to make Shylock "poetical" (in the superficial sense), because that is the bias of his own mind in matters of art. Classical purity and refinement of taste are his specialties as an actor, and neither power nor intensity.

Shylock's master passion is not revenge, which is a savage, but avarice, which is a sordid motive. His hatred is inspired more by defeated hope of gain and positive losses and threatened ventures, than by the personal insults and contumely he has received.

Avarice is an absolutely base passion, and a grand poetical character cannot consistently be raised upon such a foundation, nor can a nature be at once groveling and majestic. Besides, Shakespeare has not made Shylock "poetical." The concentrated venom of his passion is prosaic in its vehement utterance—close, concise, vigorous, logical, but not imaginative; and in the scenes where his evil nature escapes the web of his cunning caution, and he is stung to fury by his complicated losses, there is intense passion but no elevation in his language.

There is a vein of humor in Shylock. A grim, bitter, sardonic flavor pervades the part, that blends naturally with the sordid thrift and shrewd, watchful, eager vigilance of the miser. It infuses a terrible grotesqueness into his rage, and curdles one's blood in the piercing, keen irony of his mocking humility to Antonio, and adds poignancy to the ferocity of his hideous revenge. This Kean rendered admirably, and in this my father entirely fails, but it is an important element of the character.

My father is hard upon Kean's defects because they are especially antagonistic to his artistic taste and tendency, but I think, too, there is a slight infusion of the vexation of unappreciated labor in my father's criticism of Kean. He forgets that power is universally felt and understood, and refinement seldom the one or the other, and for a thousand who applaud Kean's "What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?" probably not ten people are aware of his exquisite "nevertheless" in the reading of Antonio's letter. Most eyes can "see a church by daylight;" not many stop to look at the lights and shadows that are forever varying and adding to the beauty of its aspect. I wonder how, being as well aware as my father is of all the fine work that escapes the eyes of the public, he can care for this kind of thing as he does.

Tuesday, 12th.—We are having events at the theater, and not of a pleasant sort. Mr. Brunton, the manager, is in "difficulties" (civilized plural for debt), and it seems that last night during the play one of his creditors put an execution into the theater, and laid violent hands upon the receipts, which, as it was my father's benefit, rather dismayed us. So after breakfast this morning, having put out my dresses for my favorite Portia for to-night, I went to the theater to ascertain if there was to be a rehearsal or not. My father had gone in search of Mr. Brunton to see how matters could be arranged, and at all events to represent that we could not go on acting unless our money was secured to us. Charles Mason, Dall, and I in the mean time found the poor actors in the theater very much at a loss how to proceed, as it seemed extremely doubtful whether there would be any performance; so we returned home, where we found my father, who said that at all events there must be a rehearsal, for it was absolutely necessary if we did act to-night, and could do us no harm if we did not; so we repaired again to the theater, where the scattered and scared corps dramatique having been got together again, we proceeded to business.

Wednesday, 13th.—Mr. K—— called and told us that some arrangement had been made with the truculent creditor of our poor manager by which we shall not lose any more in this unlucky business. My father will be quit for about a hundred pounds. I am very sorry for Mr. Brunton, but he should not have placed us in such an uncomfortable position. My father has offered to act one night beyond our engagement for the sake, if possible, of making up to the actors the arrears of salary Mr. Brunton owes them. They are all poor, hard-working people, earning no more than the means of subsistence, and this withholding of their due falls very heavily on them.

Thursday, 14th.— ... At the theater the house was very good, and the audience very pleasant. The play was "The Provoked Husband," and I'm sure I play his provoking wife badly enough to provoke anybody; but she's not a person to my mind, which is an artistic view of the case.

[My modes of dealing with my professional duties at this very unripe stage of my career irresistibly remind me of a not very highly educated female painter who had taken it into her head to make an historical picture of Cleopatra. Sending to a friend for a few "references" upon the subject of that imperial gypsy's character and career, she sent them hastily back, saying she had relinquished her purpose, "having really no idea Cleopatra was that sort of person."]

Friday, July 15th.—Miserrima! I have broken a looking-glass! and on Friday, too! What do I think will happen to me! Had a long talk this morning with dear Dall about my dislike to the stage. I do not think it is the acting itself that is so disagreeable to me, but the public personal exhibition, the violence done (as it seems to me) to womanly dignity and decorum in thus becoming the gaze of every eye and theme of every tongue. If my audience was reduced to my intimates and associates I should not mind it so much, I think; but I am not quite sure that I should like it then.

At the theater the house was very full, and the audience particularly amiable. In the interval between the fourth and fifth acts Charles Mason made a speech to them, informing them of Mr. Brunton's distress, and our intention of acting for him on Monday. They applauded very much, and I hope they will do more, and come. My part of the charity is certainly not small; to be pulled and pushed and dragged hither and thither, and generally "knocked about," as the miserable Belvidera, for three mortal hours, is a sacrifice of self which my conscience bears me witness is laudable. I would much rather pay with my purse than my person in this case. Unfortunately, je n'ai pas de quoi.

Sunday, July 17th.—To Redcliffe Church with my father and Dall. What a beautiful old building it is!... What a sermon! Has the truth, as our Church holds it, no fitter expounders than such a preacher? Are these its stays, props, and pillars—teachers to guide, enlighten, and instruct people as cultivated and intelligent as the people of this country on the most momentous of all subjects? Are these the sort of adversaries to oppose to men like Channing? As for not going to church because of bad or foolish sermons, that is quite another matter, though I not unfrequently hear that reason assigned for staying away. One goes to church to say one's prayers, and not to hear more or less fine discourses; one goes because it is one's duty, and a delight and comfort, and a quite distinct duty and delight from that of private prayer. A good sermon, Heaven knows, is a rare blessing to be thankful for, but if one went to church only in the expectation of that blessing, one might stay away most Sundays in the year.

[My youthful scorn of "poor preaching" reminds me of what I once heard Edward Everett say, who, before becoming his country's "Minister," in the diplomatic sense of the word, had been a powerful and eloquent Unitarian preacher: "I hear a good deal of criticism upon sermons which are supposed to be religious or moral exhortations, not intellectual exercises. I dare say many sermons are not first rate, but moderate good preaching is not a bad thing, and pretty poor preaching is better than most men's practice."]

Monday, July 18th.—The theater was crowded to-night, which delighted me. It is pleasant to see malicious and evil actions produce such a result. I was very nervous and excited, and nearly went into hysterics over one small incident of the evening. At the close of the first separation scene—the play was "Venice Preserved"—when Jaffier is carried out by the nape of the neck by Pierre, and Belvidera extracted on the other side in the arms (and iron ones they were) of Bedamar, the audience of course were affected, harrowed, overcome by the poignant pathos of the situation. Charles looked woebegone. I called upon him in tones of the most piercing anguish (an agony not entirely feigned, as my bruises can bear witness). The curtain descended slowly amidst sympathetic sobs and silence—the musicians themselves, deeply moved, no doubt, with the sorrows of the scene, mournfully resumed their fiddles, and struck up "ti ti tum tiddle un ti tum ti"—the jolliest jig you ever heard. The bathos was irresistible; we behind the scenes, the principal sufferers (perhaps) in the night's performance, were instantly comforted, and all but shouted with laughter. I hope the audience were equally revived by this grotesque sudden cheering of their spirits. After the tragedy a Bristolian Paganini performed a concerto on one string. Dall declares that the whole orchestra played the whole time—but some sounds reached me in my dressing-room that were decidedly unique more ways than one, not at all unlike our favorite French fantasia—"Complainte d'un cochon au lait qui rêve." But the audience were transported; they clapped and the fiddle squeaked, they shouted and the fiddle squealed, they hurrahed and the fiddle uttered three terrific screams, and it was over and Paganini is done for—here, at any rate. He need never show face or fiddle here; he hasn't a string (even one) left to his bow in Bristol. "So Orpheus fiddled," etc.

Tuesday, July 19th.—Dinner-party at the —— which ought to have been chronicled by Jane Austen. I sat by a gentleman who talked to me of the hanging gardens of Semiramis and what might have been cultivated therein (hemp perhaps), then of the derivation of languages—he still kept among roots—and finally of tea, which he told me he was endeavoring to grow on the Welsh mountains. Some of the table-talk deserved printing verbatim, only it was almost too good to be true, or at any rate believed.

Wednesday, July 20th.—Charles Mason came after breakfast, and told us that there was some chance of poor Mr. Brunton's getting out of prison (into which his creditor has thrust him), for that the latter had been so universally scouted for his harsh proceeding that he probably would be shamed into liberating him.

We shall not leave Bristol to-day. The wind is contrary and the weather quite unfavorable for a party of pleasure, which our trip by sea to Ilfracombe was to be. It's very disagreeable living half in one's trunks and traveling-bags, as this sort of uncertainty compels one to do. I studied Dante, wrote verses and sketched, and tried to be busy; but a defeated departure leaves one's mind and thoughts only half unpacked, and I felt idle and unsettled, though I worked at "The Star of Seville" till dinner-time.

After dinner I studied politics in the Examiner and read an article on Cobbett, which made me laugh, and the motto to which might have been "Malvolio, thou art sick of self-conceit." ...

Thursday, July 21st.—At dinner a discussion, suggested by Mr. D——'s conduct to Mr. Brunton, on the subject of returning evil for evil, and the difficulty of not doing so, if not deliberately and in deed, upon impulse and by thought. Nothing is easier in such matters than to say what one would do, and nothing, I suppose, more difficult than to do what one should do. So God keep us all from convenient opportunities of revenging ourselves....

[Occasionally one hears in the streets voices in which the making of a fortune lies, and when one remembers what fortunes some voices have commanded, it seems bitterly cruel to think of such a possession begging its bread for want of the chance that might have made it available by culture. A woman, some years ago, used to sing at night in the neighborhood of St. James's Street, whose voice was so exquisite, so powerful, sweet, and thrilling, a mezzo soprano of such pure tone and vibrating quality, that Lady Essex, my sister, and myself, at different times, struck by the woman's magnificent gift and miserable position, had her into our houses, to hear her sing and see if nothing could be done to give her the full use of her noble natural endowment. She was a plain young woman of about thirty, tolerably decently dressed, and with a quiet, simple manner. She said her husband was a house-paperer in a small way, and when he was out of employment she used to go out in the evening and see what her singing would bring her. Poor thing! it was impossible to do anything for her; she was too old to learn or unlearn anything. No training could have corrected the low cockney vulgarity and coarse, ignorant indistinctness and incorrectness of her enunciation. And so in after years, as I returned repeatedly to England, after longer or shorter intervals of time, and always inhabited the same neighborhood in London, I still continued to hear, on dark drizzly evenings (and never without a thrill of poignant pain and pity) this angel's voice wandering in the muddy streets, its perfect, round, smooth edge becoming by degrees blunted and broken, its tones rough and coarse and harsh, some of the notes fading into feeble indistinctness—the fine, bold, true intonation hiding its tremulous uncertainty in trills and quavers, alternating with pitiful husky coughing, while every now and then one or two lovely, rich, pathetic notes, surviving ruin, recalled the early sweetness and power of the original instrument. The idea of what that woman's voice might have been to her used to haunt me.

It was hearing Rachel singing (barefoot) in the streets of Paris that Jules Janin's attention was first excited by her. Her singing, as I heard it on the stage in the drinking song of the extraordinary piece called "Valeria," in which she played two parts, was really nothing more than a chanting in the deep contralto of her speaking voice, and could hardly pass for a musical performance at all, any more than her wonderful uttering of the "Marseillaise," with which she made the women's blood run cold, and the men's hair stand on end, and everybody's flesh creep.

My sister and I used often to plan an expedition of street-singing for the purpose of seeing how much we could collect in that way for some charity. We were to put ourselves in "poor and mean attire"—I do not know that we were to "smirch our faces" with brown paint; we thought large battered poke-bonnets would answer the purpose, and, thus disguised, we were to go the rounds of the club windows, my father walking at a discreet distance for our protection on one side of the street, and our formidable pirate friend Trelawney on the other. We never carried out this project, though I have no doubt it would have brought us a very pretty penny for any endowment we might have wished to make.]

Friday, July 22d.—Long and edifying talk with dear Dall upon my prospects in marrying. "While you remain single," says she, "and choose to work, your fortune is an independent and ample one; as soon as you marry, there's no such thing. Your position in society," says she, "is both a pleasanter and more distinguished one than your birth or real station entitles you to; but that also is the result of your professional exertions, and might, and probably would, alter for the worse if you left the stage; for, after all, it is mere frivolous fashionable popularity." I ought to have got up and made her a courtesy for that. So that it seems I have fortune and fame (such as it is)—positive real advantages, which I cannot give with myself, and which I cease to own when I give myself away, which certainly makes my marrying any one or any one marrying me rather a solemn consideration; for I lose everything, and my marryee gains nothing in a worldly point of view—says she—and it's incontrovertible and not pleasant. So I took up Dante, and read about devils boiled in pitch, which refreshed my imagination and cheered my spirits very much.

[How far my ingenious mind was from foreseeing the days when men of high rank and social station would marry singers, dancers, and actresses, and be condescending enough to let their wives continue to earn their bread by public exhibition, and even to appropriate the proceeds of their theatrical labors! I have not yet made up my mind whether, in these cases, the gentleman ought not to take his wife's name in private, as a compensation for her not taking his in public. Poor Miss Paton's noble husband was the only Englishman, that I know of, who committed that act of self-effacement. To go much further back in dramatic and social history, the old, accomplished, mad Earl of Peterborough married the famous singer Anastasia Robinson, and refused to acknowledge the fact till her death. To be sure, this was a more cowardly, but a less dirty meanness. He withheld his name from her, but did not take her money.]

It is settled now that we go to Exeter by coach, and now that we have given up our pretty sea trip to Ilfracombe, the weather has become lovely—perverse creature!—but I am glad we are going away in every way.

Saturday, Bristol, July 23d. ... We started at eight, and taking the whole coach to ourselves as we do, I think traveling by a public conveyance the best mode of getting over the road. They run so rapidly; there is so little time lost, and so much trouble with one's luggage saved. The morning was gray and soft and promised a fine day, but broke its promise at the end of our second stage, and began to pelt with rain, which it continued to do the live-long blessed day. We could see, however, that the country we were passing through was charming. One or two of the cottages by the roadside, half-smothered in vine and honeysuckle, reminded me of Lady Juliana,[B] who, when she said she could live in a desert with her lover, thought that it was a "sort of place full of roses." ... These laborers' cottages were certainly the poor dwellings of very poor people, but there was nothing unsightly, repulsive, or squalid about them—on the contrary, a look of order, of tidy neatness about the little houses, that added the peculiarly English element of comfort and cleanliness to the picturesqueness of their fragrant festoons of flowery drapery, hung over them by the sweet season. The little plots of flower-garden one mass of rich color; the tiny strip of kitchen-garden, well stocked and trimly kept, beside it; the thriving fruitful orchard stretching round the whole; and beyond, the rich cultivated land rolling its waving corn-fields, already tawny and sunburnt, in mellow contrast with the smooth green pasturages, with their deep-shadowed trees and bordering lines of ivied hawthorn hedgerows, marking boundary-lines of division without marring the general prospect—a lovely landscape that sang aloud of plenty, industry, and thrift. I wonder if any country is more blessed of God than this precious little England? I think it is like one of its own fair, nobly blooming, vigorous women; her temper—that's the climate—not perfection, to be sure (but, after all, the old praise of it is true; it admits of more constant and regular out-of-door exercise than any other); the religion it professes, pure; the morality it practises, pure, probably by comparison with that of other powerful and wealthy nations. Oh, I trust that neither reform nor its extreme, revolution, will have power to injure this healthily, heartily constituted land....

Exeter, July 24th, 1831.

Dearest H——,

We arrived here last night, or rather evening, at half-past six o'clock, and I found your letter, which, having waited for me, shall not wait for my answer....

Thank you for John's translation of the German song, the original of which I know and like very much. The thoughts it suggested to you must constantly arise in all of us. I believe that in these matters I feel all that you do, but not with the same intensity. To adore is most natural to the mind contemplating beauty, might, and majesty beyond its own powers; to implore is most natural to the heart oppressed with suffering, or agitated with hopes that it cannot accomplish, or fears from which it cannot escape. The difference between natural and revealed religion is that the one worships the loveliness and power it perceives, and the other the goodness, mercy, and truth in which it believes. The one prays for exemption from pain and enjoyment of happiness for body and mind in this present existence; the other for deliverance from spiritual evils, or the possession of spiritual graces, by which the soul is fitted for that better life toward which it tends....

I do not think "Juliet" has written to you hitherto, and I am rather affronted at your calling me so. I have little or no sympathy with, though much compassion for, that Veronese young person.... There is but one sentiment of hers that I can quote with entire self-application, and that is—

In spite of which the foolish child immediately secures her lover's word, appoints the time for meeting, and makes every arrangement for following up the declaration she thought too sudden by its as sudden execution. Poor Juliet! I am very sorry for her, but do not like to be called after her, and do not think I am like her. I have been working very hard every day since you left Bristol (my belief is that Juliet was very idle). I am sorry to say I find my playing very hard work; but easy work, if there is such a thing, would not be best for me just now.

Yours ever,

F. A. K.

Sunday, Exeter.—To church with Dall and my father, a blessing that I can never enjoy in London, where he is all but stared out of countenance if he shows his countenance in a church, and it requires more devotion to the deed than I fear he possesses to encounter the annoyance attendant upon it. We heard an excellent sermon, earnest, sober, simple, which I was especially grateful for on my father's account. Women don't mind bad preaching; they have a general taste for sermons, and, like children with sweeties, will swallow bad ones if they cannot get good. "We have a natural turn for religion," as A.F. said of me; but men, I think, get a not unnatural turn against it when they hear it ill advocated....

The day has been lovely, and from my perch among the clouds here I am looking down upon a lovely view. Following the irregular line of buildings of the street, the eye suddenly becomes embowered in a thick rich valley of foliage, beyond which a hill rises, whose sides are covered with ripening corn-fields, meadows of vivid green, and fields where the rich red color of the earth contrasts beautifully with the fresh hedgerows and tall, dark elm trees, whose shadows have stretched themselves for evening rest down in the low rosy sunset. It is all still and bright, and the Sabbath bells come up to me over it all with intermitting sweetness, like snatches of an interrupted angels' chorus, floating hither and thither about the earth.

Monday.—We contrived to get some saddle-horses, and rode out into the beautiful country round Exeter, but the preface to our poem was rather dry prose. We rode for about an hour between powdery hedges all smothered in dust, up the steepest of hills, and under the hottest of suns; but we had our reward when we halted at the top, and looked down upon a magnificent panorama of land and water, hill and dale, broad smiling meadows, and dark shadowy woodland—a vast expanse of various beauty, over which the eye wandered and paused in slow contentment. As we came leisurely down the opposite side of the hill, we met a gypsy woman, and I reined up my horse and listened to my fortune: "I have a friend abroad who is very fond of me." I hope so. "I have a relation far abroad who is very fond of me too." I know so. "I shall live long." More is the pity. "I shall marry and have three children." Quite enough. "I shall take easily to love, but it will not break my heart." I am glad to hear that. "I shall cross the sea before I see London again." Ah! I am afraid not. "The end of my summer will be happier than its beginning"—and that may very easily be. For that I gave my prophetess a shilling. Oh, Zingarella! my blessing on your black eyes and red-brown cheeks! May you have spoken true!...

Meantime, my companions, my father and Mr. Kean, were discussing the fortunes of Poland. If I were a man, with a hundred thousand pounds at my disposal, I would raise a regiment and join the Poles. The Russians have been beaten again, which is good hearing. Is it possible this cause should fall to the earth? On our way home, had a nice smooth, long canter by the river-side. We turned off our road to visit a pretty property of Mr. F——'s, the house half-way up a hill, prettily seated among pleasant woods. We galloped up some fields above it to the brow of the rise, and had three mouthfuls of delicious fresh breeze, and a magnificent view of Exeter and the surrounding country.... After dinner, off to the theater; it was my benefit, "The Gamester." The house was very full, and I played and looked well; but what a Stukely! I was afraid my eyes would scarcely answer my purpose, but that I should have been obliged to "employer l'effort de mon bras" to keep him at a proper distance. What ruffianly wooing! and not one of the actors knew their parts. Stukely said to me in his love-speech, "Time has not gathered the roses from your cheeks, though often washed them." I had heard of Time as the thinner of people's hair, but never as the washer of their faces.

Sunday, July 31st.—Went to church, to St. Sidwell's.... We had another good sermon; that preacher must be a good man, and I should like to know him....

Our dinner-party this evening was like nothing but a chapter out of one of Miss Austen's novels. What wonderful books those are! She must have written down the very conversations she heard verbatim, to have made them so like, which is Irish.... How many things one ought to die of and doesn't! That dinner did come to an end. In the drawing-room afterward, in spite of the dreadful heat, two fair female friends actually divided one chair between them; I expected to see them run into one every minute, and kept speculating then which they would be, till the idea fascinated me like a thing in a nightmare. As we were taking our departure, and had got half way down the stairs, a general rush was made at us, and an attempt, upon some pretext, to get us back into that dreadful drawing-room. I thought of Malebranche hooking the miserable souls that tried to escape back again into the boiling pitch. But we got away and safe home, and leave Exeter to-morrow.

Exeter, July 31, 1831.

Dearest H——,

I am content to be whatever does not militate against your affection for me.... I had a long letter from dear A——, a day ago, from Weybridge. She is quite well, and says my mother is as happy as the day is long, now she is once more in her beloved haunts. I love Weybridge too very much.... It seems to me that memory is the special organ of pain, for even when it recalls our pleasures, it recalls only the past, and half their sweetness becomes bitter in the process. I have a tenacious and acute memory, and, as the phrenologists affirm, no hope, and feel disposed to lament that, not having both, I have either. The one seems the necessary counterpoise of the other; the one is the source of most of the pain, as the other is of most of the pleasure, which we derive from the things that are not; and I feel daily more and more my deficiency in the more cheerful attribute....

You have been to the Opera, and seen what even one's imagination does not shrug its shoulders at; I mean Madame Pasta. I admire her perfectly, and she seems to me perfect. How I wish I had been with you! And yet I cannot fancy you in the Opera House; it is a sort of atmosphere that I find it difficult to think of your breathing.... I wish you had not asked me to write verses for you upon that picture of Haydon's "Bonaparte at St. Helena." Of course, I know it familiarly through the engraving, and, in spite of its sunshine, what a shudder and chill it sends to one's heart! It is very striking, but I have neither the strength nor concentrativeness requisite for writing upon it. The simplicity of its effect is what makes it so fine; and any poetry written upon it would probably fail to be as simple, and therefore as powerful, as itself. I cannot even promise you to attempt it, but if ever I fall in with a suitable frame of mind for so bold an experiment, I will remember you and the rocks of St. Helena. "My lady" (an Italian portrait on which I had written some verses) "Mia Donna," or "Madonna," more properly to speak, was a most beautiful Italian portrait that I saw, not in Augustin's gallery, but in a small collection of pictures belonging to Mr. Day, and exhibited at the Egyptian Hall. Sir Thomas Lawrence told me when I described it to him, that he thought it was a painting of Giordano's. It was a lovely face, not youthful in its character of beauty; there is a calm seriousness about the brow and forehead, a clear, intellectual severity about the eye, and a sweet, still placidity round the mouth, that united, to my fancy, all the elements of beauty, physical, mental, and moral. What an incomparable friend that woman must have been! Why is it that we rejoice that a soul fit for heaven is constrained to tarry here, but that, in truth, the fittest for this is also the fittest for that life? For it seems to me more natural not to wish to detain the bright spirit from its brighter home, and not to sorrow at the decree which calls it hence to perfect its excellence in higher spheres of duty....

I think a blight of uncertainty must have pervaded the atmosphere when I was born, and penetrated, not certainly my nature, but my whole earthly destiny, with its influence; from my plans and projects for to-morrow on to those of next year, all is mist and indistinct indecision. I suppose it is the trial that suits my temper least, and therefore fits it best. It surely is that which "willfulness, conceit, and egotism" find hardest to endure. Yesterday I determined so far to escape from, or cheat, my destiny as to have a peep into futurity by the help of a gypsy. Riding with my father, and the whole hour, time, day, and scene, were in admirable harmony: the dark, sunburnt face, with its bright, laughing eyes and coal-black curls and flashing teeth; the old gateway against which she was leaning; the blue summer sky and sunny road skirted with golden corn-fields—the whole picture in which she was set was charming.

and I am sure I need not tell you that I am sincerely grateful for all the kindness and civility that is bestowed upon us wherever we go.... What with riding, rehearsing, and acting, my days are completely filled. We start for Plymouth to-morrow at eight, and act "Romeo and Juliet" in the evening, which is rather laborious work. We play there every night next week. When next I write I will tell you of our further plans, which are at this moment still uncertain....

Affectionately yours,

F. A. K.

[These were the days before railroads had run everything and everybody up to London. There were still to be found then, in various parts of England, life that was peculiar and provincial, and manners that had in them a character of their own and a stamp of originality that had often quite as much to attract as to repel. Men and women are, of course, still the same that sat to that enchanting painter, Jane Austen, but the whole form and color and outward framing and various countenance of their lives have merged its distinctiveness in a commonplace conformity to universal custom; and in regard to the more superficial subjects of her fine and gentle satire, if she were to return among us she would find half her occupation gone.]

Monday, August 1st.—I got some books while waiting for the coach, and we started at half-past eight. The heat was intolerable and the dust suffocating, but the country through which we passed was lovely. For a long time we drove along the brow of a steep hill. The valley was all glorious with the harvest: corn-fields with the red-gold billows yet untouched by the sickle; others full of sunburnt reapers sweeping down the ripe ears; others, again, silent and deserted, with the tawny sheaves standing, bound and dry, upon the bristling stubble, on the ground over which they rippled and nodded yesterday, a great rolling sea of burnished grain. All over the sunny landscape peace and prosperity smiled, and gray-steepled churches and red-roofed villages, embowered in thick protecting shade, seemed to beckon the eye to rest as it wandered over the charming prospect. The white-walled mansions of the lords of the land glittered from the verdant shelter of their surrounding plantations, and the thirsty cattle, beautiful in color and in grouping, stood in pools in the deeper parts of the brooks, where some giant tree threw its shadow over the water and the smooth sheltered sward round its feet. In spite of this charming prospect I was very sad, and the purple heather bordering the road, with its thick tufts, kept suggesting Weybridge and the hours I had lately spent there so happily.... To shake myself I took up "Adam Blair;" and, good gracious! what a shaking it did give me! What a horrible book! And how could D—— have recommended me to read it? It is a very fine and powerful piece of work, no doubt; but I turned from it with infinite relief to "Quentin Durward." Walter Scott is quite exciting enough for wholesome pleasure; there is no poison in anything that he has ever written: for how many hours of harmless happiness the world may bless him!

At Totnes we got out of the coach to shake ourselves, for we were absolute dust-heaps, and then resumed our powdery way, and reached Plymouth at about four o'clock. As we walked up toward our lodgings, we were met by Mr. Brunton, with the pleasing intelligence that those we had bespoken had been let, by some mistake, to another family. Dusty, dreary, and disconsolate, I sat down on the stairs which were to have been ours, while Dall upbraided the hostess of the house, and my father did what was more to the purpose—posted off to find other apartments for us; no easy matter, for the town is crammed to overflowing. In the mean time a little blue-eyed fairy, of about two years old, came and made friends with me, and I presently had her fast asleep in my lap. After carrying my prize into an empty room, and sitting by it for nearly half an hour while it slept the sleep of the blessed, I was called away from this very new interest, for my father had succeeded in finding house-room for us, and I had yet all my preparations to make for the evening.

The theater is a beautiful building for its purpose, of a perfectly discreet size, neither too large nor too small, of a very elegant shape, and capitally constructed for the voice. The house was very full; the play, "Romeo and Juliet." I played abominably ill, and did not like my audience, who must have been very good-natured if they liked me.

Tuesday, August 2d.—Rose at seven, and went off down to the sea, and that was delightful. In the evening the play was "Venice Preserved." I acted very well, notwithstanding that I had to prompt my Jaffier through every scene, not only as to words, but position on the stage, and "business," as it is called. How unprincipled and ungentlemanlike this is! The house was very fine, and a pleasanter audience than the first night. Found a letter from Mrs. Jameson after the play, with an account of Pasta's "Anna Bolena." How I wish I could see it!

Wednesday, August 3d.—Rose at seven, and went down to the sea to bathe. The tide was out, and I had to wait till the nymphs had filled my bath-tub.... At the theater in the evening, the play was "The Stranger." The house not so good as last night, and the audience were disagreeably noisy....

Thursday, August 4th.—They will not let me take my sea-bath every morning; they say it makes me too weak. Do they mean in the head, I wonder?... "Let the sanguine then take warning, and the disheartened take courage, for to every hope and every fear, to every joy and every sorrow, there comes a last day," which is but a didactic form of dear Mademoiselle Descuillier's conjuring of our impatiences: "Cela viendra, ma chère, cela viendra, car tout vient dans ce monde; cela passera, ma chère, cela passera, car tout passe dans ce monde." ... I finished my drawing, and copied some of "The Star of Seville." I wonder if it will ever be acted? I think I should like to see a play of mine acted. In the evening at the theater, the play was "Isabella." The house was very full, and I played well. The wretched manager will not afford us a green baize for our tragedies, and we faint and fall and die upon bare boards, and my unhappy elbows are bruised black and blue with their carpetless stage, barbarians that they be!

Friday, August 5th.—Down to the sea at seven o'clock; the tide was far out, the lead-colored strand, without its bright foam-fringes, looked bleak and dreary; it was not expected to be batheable till eleven, and as I had not breakfasted, I could not wait till then. Lingered on the shore, as Tom Tug says, thinking of nothing at all, but inhaling the fresh air and delicious sea-smell. I stood and watched a party of pleasure put off from the shore, consisting of a basket of fuel, two baskets of provisions, a cross-looking, thin, withered, bony woman, wrapped in a large shawl, and with boots thick enough to have kept her dry if she had walked through the sea from Plymouth to Mount Edgecombe. Her tête-à-tête companion was a short, thick, squat, stumpy, dumpy, dumpling of a man, in a round jacket, and very tight striped trousers. "Sure such a pair were never seen." The sour she, stepped into their small boat first, but as soon as her fat playfellow seated himself by her, the poor little cockle-shell dipped so with the increased weight that the tail of the cross-shawl hung deep in the water. I called after them, and they rectified the accident without sending me back a "Thank you." I love the manners of my country-folk, they are so unsophisticated with civility.

At the theater the play was "The Gamester," for my benefit, and the house was very fine. My father played magnificently; I "not even excellent well, but only so-so." The actors none of them knew their parts, abominable persons; and as for Stukely—well! Mdlle. Dumesnil, in her great, furious scene in Hermione, ended her imprecations against Orestes by spitting in her handkerchief and throwing it in his face. The handkerchief spoils the frenzy. I wonder if it ever occurred to Mrs. Siddons so to wind up her abuse of Austria in "King John." By the by, it was when asked to give his opinion of the comparative merits of Clairon and Dumesnil, that Garrick said, "Mdlle. Clairon was the greatest actress of the age, but that for Mdlle. Dumesnil he was not aware that he had seen her, but only Phedre, Rodogund, and Hermione, when she did them." After the play the audience clamored for my father. He thought that "l'envie leur en passerait;" and not being in a very good humor, he declined appearing. The uproar went on, the overture to the farce was inaudible, and the curtain drew up amid the deafening shouts of "Kemble! Kemble!"—they would not suffer the poor farçeurs to go on, even in dumb show. I was at the side scene, and thought it really a pity not to put an end to all the fuss; so I went to my father, who was standing at the stage door in the street, and requested him to stop the disturbance by coming forward at once. He turned round, and without saying anything but "Tu me le conseilles," walked straight upon the stage, and addressed the audience as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen, I had left the theater when word was brought to me that you had done me the honor to call for me; as I conclude you have done so merely in conformity to a custom which is becoming the fashion of calling for certain performers after the play, I can only say, ladies and gentlemen, that I enter my protest against such a custom. It is a foreign fashion, and we are Englishmen; therefore I protest against it. I will take my leave of you by parodying Mercutio's words: Ladies and gentlemen, bon soir; there's a French salutation for you." So saying he walked off the stage, leaving the audience rather surprised; and so was I. I think he is laboring under an incipient bilious attack.

We had a long discussion to-day as to the possibility of women being good dramatic writers. I think it so impossible that I actually believe their physical organization is against it; and, after all, it is great nonsense saying that intellect is of no sex. The brain is, of course, of the same sex as the rest of the creature; besides, the original feminine nature, the whole of our training and education, our inevitable ignorance of common life and general human nature, and the various experience of existence, from which we are debarred with the most sedulous care, is insuperably against it. Perhaps some of the manly, wicked Queens Semiramis, Cleopatra, could have written plays; but they lived their tragedies instead of writing them.

Saturday, August 6th.—After breakfast our excellent architect came to fetch us for our expedition to the breakwater. My father complained of being dreadfully bilious, a bad preparation for the purpose. I wanted to stay at home with him, or at all events to put off the party for an hour or two; but he would not hear of either plan. So as soon as I was ready we set off. We walked first to the M——s', and then proceeded in a body to the shore, where a Government boat was waiting for us; and what a cargo we were, to be sure! My father, certainly no feather; our worthy friend, who must weigh eighteen stone, if a pound; Mr. and Mrs. W——, thinnish bodies; but her friend, Dall, and myself decidedly thickish ones; then the pilot, a gaunt, square Scotchman; and four stout sailors. The gallant little craft courtesied and courtesied as she received us, one by one, and at length, when we were all fairly and pretty closely packed, she put off, and breasted the water bravely, rising and dancing on the back of the waves like a dolphin. I should have enjoyed it but for my father's ghastly face of utter misery. The day was dull, the sky and sea lead-colored, the brown coast by degrees lost its distinctness, and became covered with a dark haze that seemed to blend everything into a still, stony, threatening iron-gray mass. The wind rose, the sea became inky black and swelled into heavy ridges, which made our little vessel dip deep and spring high, as she toiled forward; and then down came the rain—such tremendous rain! Cloaks, shawls, and umbrellas were speedily produced; but we were two miles from shore, between the rising sea and the falling clouds, sick, wet, squeezed. Oh the delights of that party of pleasure! My father looked cadaverous, Dall was portentously silent, I shut my eyes and tried to sleep, being in that state when to see, or hear, or speak, or be spoken to, is equally fatal. At length we reached the foot of the breakwater, and I sprang out of the boat, too happy to touch the stable rock. The rain literally fell in sheets from the sky, and the wind blew half a hurricane; but I was on firm ground, and taking off my bonnet, which only served the purpose of a water-spout down my back, I ran, while Mr. M——, holding my arm, strode along the mighty water-based road, while the angry sea, turning up black caldrons full of boiling foam, dashed them upon the barrier man has raised against its fury in magnificent, solemn wrath. This breakwater is a noble work; the daring of the conception, its vast size and strength, and the utility of its purpose, are alike admirable. We do these things and die; we ride upon the air and water, we guide the lightning and we bridle the sea, we borrow the swiftness of the wind and the fine subtlety of the fire; we lord it in this universe of ours for a day, and then our bodies are devoured by these material slaves we have controlled, and helplessly mingle their dust with the elements that have obeyed our will, who reabsorb the garment of our soul when that has fled—whither?