Chapter XXI · (continued 5)

Monday, 12th.—Went to the theater to rehearse "Francis I." Miss Tree and Mr. Bennett will act their parts admirably, I think.... When I got home got ready my things for the theater, and went over my part. The play was "Much Ado about Nothing," and I played as ill as usual. The house was pretty good.

[Here occurs an interruption of some weeks in my journal.]

My friend, Miss S——, came and paid me a long visit, during which my play of "Francis I." and Knowles's play of "The Hunchback" were produced, and it was finally settled that Covent Garden should be let to the French manager and entrepreneur, Laporte, and that my father and myself should leave England, and go for two years to America.

[The success of "Francis I." was one of entirely indulgent forbearance on the part of the public. An historical play, written by a girl of seventeen, and acted in it by the authoress at one and twenty, was, not unnaturally, a subject of some curiosity; and, as such, it filled the house for a few nights. Its entire want of real merit, of course, made it impossible that it should do anything more; and, after a few representations, it made way for Knowles's delightful play, which had a success as great and genuine as it was well deserved, and will not fail to be a lasting favorite, alike with audiences and actors.]

Thursday, June 14th.—A long break in my journal, and what a dismal beginning to it again! At five o'clock H—— started for Ireland.... Poor dear Dall cried bitterly at parting from her (my aunt was to accompany me to America, and it was uncertain whether we should see Miss S—— again before we sailed).... When I returned, after seeing her off, I went disconsolately to my own room. As I could not sleep, I took up the first book at hand, but it was "Tristram Shandy," and too horribly discordant with my frame of mind; besides, I don't like it at any time; it seems to me much more coarse even than witty and humorous.

Friday, 15th.— ... Almost at our very door met old Lady Cork, who was coming to see us: We stopped our carriages, and had a bawling conversation through the windows respecting my plans, past, present, and to come, highly edifying, doubtless, to the whole neighborhood, and which ended by her ladyship shrieking out to me that I was "a supernatural creature" in a tone which must have made the mummies and other strange sojourners in the adjacent British Museum jump again.... In the evening, at the theater, the play was "The Hunchback," for Knowles's benefit, and the house was not good, which I do think is a shame. I played well, though Miss Taylor disconcerted me by coming so near me in her second scene that I gave her a real slap in the face, which I was very sorry for, though she deserved it. After the play, Mr. Harness, Mrs. Clarke, and Miss James supped with us; and after supper, I dressed for a ball at the G——s', ... and much I wondered what call I had to be at a ball, except that the givers of this festival are kind and good friends of ours, and are fond of me, and I of them. But I was not very merry at their ball for all that. We came home at half past two, which is called "very early." Mr. Bacon was there (editor of the Times, who married my cousin, Fanny Twiss), but I had no chance to speak to him, which I was sorry for, as I like his looks, and I liked his books: the first are good, and the latter are clever. I cried all the way home, which is a cheerful way of returning from a ball.

Saturday, 16th.— ... Mrs. Clarke, Miss James, the Messrs. M——, and Alfred Tennyson dined with us. I am always a little disappointed with the exterior of our poet when I look at him, in spite of his eyes, which are very fine; but his head and face, striking and dignified as they are, are almost too ponderous and massive for beauty in so young a man; and every now and then there is a slightly sarcastic expression about his mouth that almost frightens me, in spite of his shy manner and habitual silence. But, after all, it is delightful to see and be with any one that one admires and loves for what he has done, as I do him. Mr. Harness came in the evening. He is excellent, and I am very fond of him. They all went away about twelve.

Monday, 18th.— ... At the theater, in the evening, the house was good, and I played pretty fairly.... At supper my father read us his examination before the committee of the House of Commons about this minor theater business. Of course, though every word he says upon the subject is gospel truth, it will only pass for the partial testimony of a person deeply interested in his own monopoly.

Thursday, 21st.—Called on Mrs. Norton, ... and on Lady Dacre, to bid her good-by. At the theater, in the evening, the house was good, and I played very well. How sorry I shall be to go away! The actors, too, all seem so sorry to have us go, and it will be so hard to see none of the accustomed faces, to hear none of the familiar voices, while discharging the tasks that are often so irksome to me. John Mason came home after the play and supped with us.

Friday, 22d.— ... In the afternoon I called upon the Sotherbys, to bid them good-by; afterward to the Goldsmiths', on the same cheerless errand. Stopped at dear Miss Cottin's to thank her for the beautiful bracelet she had sent me as a farewell present; and then on to Lady Callcott's, with whom I spent a few solemn moments—solemnity not without sweetness—and I scarcely felt sorrowful when she said, "I shall never see you again." She is going to what we call heaven, nearer to God (that is, in her own consciousness, nearer to God)....

In the evening to the theater. I only played pretty well, except the last scene, which was better than the rest. At the end of the play Mr. Bartley made the audience a speech, mentioning our departure, and bespeaking their good will for the new management. The audience called for Knowles, and then clamored for us till we were obliged to go out. They rose to receive us, and waved their hats and handkerchiefs, and shouted farewell to us. It made my heart ache to leave my kind, good, indulgent audience; my friends, as I feel them to be; my countrymen, my English folk, my "very worthy and approved good masters;" and as I thought of the strangers for whom I am now to work in that distant strange country to which we are going, the tears rushed into my eyes, and I hardly knew what I was doing. I scarcely think I even made the conventional courtesy of leave-taking to them, but I snatched my little nosegay of flowers from my sash, and threw it into the pit with handfuls of kisses, as a farewell token of my affection and gratitude. And so my father, who was very much affected, led me off, while the house rang with the cheering of the audience. When we came off my courage gave way utterly, and I cried most bitterly. As my father was taking me to my dressing-room Laporte ran after us, to be introduced to me, to whom I wished success very dolorously from the midst of my tears. He said he ought to cry at our going away more than any one; and perhaps he is right, but we should be better worth his while when we come back, if ever that day comes. I saw numbers of people whom I knew standing behind the scenes to take leave of us.

I took an affectionate farewell of poor dear old Rye (the property-man), and Louis, his boy, gave me two beautiful nosegays. It was all wretched, and yet it was a pleasure to feel that those who surrounded and were dependent on us cared for us. I know all the servants and workpeople of the theater were fond of me, and it was sad to say good-by to all these kind, civil, cordial, humble friends; from my good, pretty little maid, who stood sobbing by my dressing-room door, to the grim, wrinkled visage of honest old Rye....

[That was the last time I ever acted in the Covent Garden my uncle John built; where he and my aunt took leave of the stage, and I made my first entrance upon it. It was soon after altered and enlarged, and turned into an opera-house; eventually it was burnt down, and so nothing remains of it.]

The Harnesses and their friend Mr. F—— supped with us. Mr. Harness talked all sorts of things to try and cheer me; he labored hard to prove to me that the world was good and happy, but only succeeded in convincing me that he was the one, and deserved to be the other.

Friday, 29th.—On board the Scotch steamer for Edinburgh.... We passed Berwick and Dunbar, and the Douglases' ancient hold Tantallon, and the lines from "Marmion" came to my lips. Poor Walter Scott! he will never sail by this lovely coast again, every bold headland and silver creek of which lives in his song or story. He has given of his own immortality to the earth, which must ere long receive the whole of his mortality....

Saturday, 30th.—Went to rehearsal.... After dinner Mary Anne, my maid, knowing my foible, came in with her arms full of two of the most beautiful children I ever saw in my life.... [These beautiful children were the daughters of the Duc de Grammont, and were sharing with their parents the exile of the King of France, Charles X., who had found in his banishment a royal residence as ruined as his fortunes in the old Scottish palace of Holyrood. Ida de Grammont, the eldest of my angels, fulfilled the promise of her beautiful childhood as the lovely Duchesse de Guyche.] We spent a pleasant evening at Mrs. Harry Siddons's. Mr. Combe and Macdonald (the sculptor) were there.

Sunday, July 1st.— ... We dined at Mr. Combe's, and had a very pleasant dinner, but unluckily, owing to a stupid servant's mistake, my old friend Mr. McLaren, who had been invited to meet me, did not come. After dinner there was a tremendous discussion about Shakespeare, but I do not think these men knew anything about him. I talked myself into a fever, and ended, with great modesty and propriety, by disabling all their judgments, at which piece of impertinence they naturally laughed very heartily.

Edinburgh, July 1, 1832.

Dearest H——,

We left London on Wednesday at eight o'clock. The parting between my mother and Dall (who never met again; my dear aunt died in America, in the second year of our stay there), and myself and my dear little sister, was most bitter.... John came down to Greenwich with us, but would not come on board the steamboat. He stood on the shore and I at the ship's side, looking at what I knew was him, though my eyes could distinguish none of his features from the distance. My poor mother stood crying by my side, and bade me send him away. I gave him one signal, which he returned, and then ran up the beach, and was gone!—gone for two years, perhaps more; perhaps gone from me forever in this world!...

We shall be in Liverpool on Monday morning, the 16th of July, and go to Radley's Hotel, where I hope we shall find you on our arrival. My father is pretty well, in spite of all the late anxieties and annoyances he has had to wade through. In the course of the day preceding our departure from London two arrests were served upon him by creditors of the theater, who, I suppose, think when he is gone the whole concern must collapse and fall to pieces, and I began to think some means would be devised to prevent our leaving England after all. Our parting on Wednesday morning was, as I told you, most miserable.... My poor mother was braver than I had expected; but her parting from us, poor thing, is yet to come.

I found a letter from Emily Fitzhugh here, inclosing one as an introduction to a lady in New York, who had once been her friend.... Edinburgh is lovely and dear, and peace and quiet and repose are always found by me near my dear Mrs. Harry Siddons; but my heart is, oh, so sad!... Pray answer this directly. The time is at hand when the quickest "directly" in our correspondence will be three months.

Ever your affectionate

F. A. K.

Monday, 2d.—My father and I went to the theater to rehearse "Romeo and Juliet." In the evening the house was very fair, considering how much the hot weather is against us; but of all the comfortless people to act to, commend me to an Edinburgh audience. Their undemonstrativeness, too, is something more than mere critical difficulty to be pleased; there is a want of kindliness in the cold, discourteous way in which they allow a stranger to appear before them without ever affording him the slightest token of their readiness to accept the efforts made to please them. I felt quite sorry this evening for poor Mr. Didear, to whom not the faintest sign of encouragement was vouchsafed on his first coming on. This is being cold to an unamiable degree, and seems to me both a want of good feeling and good breeding. I acted as well as they would let me. As for poor John Mason, concluding, I suppose, from their frozen silence that he was flat and ineffective, he ranted and roared, and pulled me about in the last scene, till I thought I should have come to pieces in his hands, as the house-maids say of what they break. I was dreadfully exhausted at the end of the play; there is nothing so killing as an ineffectual appeal to sympathy, and, as the Italians know, "ben servire e non gradire" is one of the "tre cose da morire." ...

Tuesday, 3d.—Went to the theater to rehearse.... In the evening the house was good, and the play went off very well. I acted well, in spite of my new dresses, which stuck out all round me portentously, and almost filled the little stage. J—— L—— was like a great pink bird, hopping about hither and thither, and stopping to speak, as if it had been well tamed and taught. The audience actually laughed and applauded, and I should think must have gone home very much surprised and exhausted with the unwonted exertion.

Wednesday, 4th.—Went to the theater to rehearse "Francis I." After I got home, my mother told me she had determined to leave us on Saturday, and go back to London with Sally Siddons; and I am most thankful for this resolution.... How sad it will be in that strange land beyond the sea, among those strange people, to whom we are nothing but strangers! But this is foolish weakness; it must be; and what a world of strength lies in those two little words!... At the theater the house was very good, and I played very well....

Thursday, 5th.—After breakfast went to rehearse "The Gamester." ... In the evening the house was not good. My father acted magnificently; I never played this part well, and am now gone off in it, and play it worse than not well; besides, I cannot bully that great, big man, Mr. Didear; it is manifestly absurd.

Friday, 6th.—To the theater to rehearse "Francis I." On my return found Mr. Liston and his little girl waiting to ride with me.... [This was the beginning of my acquaintance with the celebrated surgeon Liston, who afterward became an intimate friend of ours, and to whose great professional skill my father was repeatedly indebted for relief under a most painful malady. He was a son of Sir Robert Liston, and cousin of the celebrated comedian, between whom and himself, however, there certainly was no family likeness, Liston, the surgeon, being one of the handsomest persons I ever saw. The last time I saw him has left a melancholy impression on my mind of his fine face and noble figure. He had been attending me professionally, but I had ceased to require his care, and had not seen him for some time, when one morning walking, according to my custom in summer, before seven o'clock, as I came to the bridge over the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens, a horseman crossing the bridge stopped by the iron railing, and, jumping off his horse, came toward me. It was Liston, who inquired kindly after my health, and, upon my not answering quite satisfactorily, he said, "Ah! well, you are better than I am." I laughed incredulously, as I looked at a magnificent figure leaning against the great black horse he rode, and looking like a model of manly vigor and beauty. But in less than a week from that day Liston died of aneurism; and I suppose that when I met him he was well aware of the death which had got him literally by the throat.]

Saturday, 7th.—Miserable day of parting! of tearing away and wrenching asunder!... At eleven we were obliged to go to rehearsal, and when we returned found my mother busy with her packing.... When she was gone, I sat down beside my father with a book in my hand, not reading, but listening to his stifled sobbing; and every now and then, in spite of my determination not to do it, looking up to see how far the ship had moved. (Our windows looked over the Forth.) But the white column of steam was rising steadily from close under Newhaven, and for upward of half an hour continued to do so. I had resolved not to raise my eyes again from my book, when a sudden exclamation from my father made me spring up, and I saw the steamer had left the shore, and was moving fast toward Inchkeith, the dark smoky wake that lingered behind it showing how far it had already gone from us, and warning us how soon it would be beyond the ken of our aching eyes.... The carriage was announced, and with a heavy heart and aching head, I drove to the theater.... The play was "Francis I.," for the first time. The house was very fine; I acted abominably, but that was not much to be wondered at. However, I always have acted this part of my own vilely; the language is not natural—mere stilted declamation from first to last, most fatiguing to the chest, and impossible for me to do anything with, as it excites no emotion in me whatever....

Edinburgh, July 8, 1832.

My dearest H——,

I had just left my father at the window that overlooks the Forth, watching my poor mother's ship sailing away to England, when I received your letter; and it is impossible to imagine a sorer, sadder heart than that with which I greeted it.... Thank you for the pains you are taking about your picture for me; crammed with occupation as my time is here, I would have done the same for you, but that I think in Lawrence's print you have the best and likest thing you can have of me.... I cannot tell you at what hour we shall reach Liverpool, but it will be very early on Monday morning.... I am glad you have not deferred sitting for your picture till you came to Liverpool, for it would have encroached much upon our time together. I remember when I returned from abroad, a school-girl, I thought I had forgotten my mother's face. This copy of yours will save me from that nonsensical morbid feeling, and you will surely not forget mine.... You bid me, if anything should go ill with me, summon you across the Atlantic. Alas! dear H——, you forget that before a letter from that other world can reach this, more than a month must have elapsed, and the writer may no longer be in either. You say you hope I may return a new being; and I have no doubt my health will be benefited, and my spirits revived by change of external objects; but oh, how dreary it all is now! You bid me cheer my father when my mother shall have left us, without knowing that she is already gone. I make every exertion that duty and affection can prompt; but, you know, it is my nature rather to absorb the sorrow of others than to assist them in throwing it off; and when one's own heart is all but frozen, one knows not where to find warmth to impart to those who are shivering with misery beside one.... I have left myself scarcely any room to tell you of my present life. I work very hard, rehearsing every morning and acting every night, and spending the intervening time in long farewell rides round this most beautiful and beloved Edinburgh. Mr. Combe says I am wearing myself out, body and mind; but I am already looking better, and less thin, than when I left London; and besides, I shall presently have a longer rest—holiday I cannot call it—on board ship than I have had for the last three years. We acted "Francis I." here last night, for the first time; and I am sure that, mingled with the applause, I heard very distinct hissing; whether addressed to the acting, which was some of it execrable, or to the play itself, which I think quite deserving of such a demonstration, I know not.... You know my opinion of the piece; and as, with the exception of the two parts of De Bourbon and the Friar, and not excepting my own, it really was vilely acted, hissing did not appear to me an unnatural proceeding, though perhaps, under the circumstances, not altogether a courteous one on the part of the modern Athenians. I tell you this, because what else have I to tell you, but that I am your ever affectionate

F. A. K.

Tuesday, 10th.—At half-past twelve rode out with Liston and his daughter, Mr. Murray, and Allen (since Sir William, the celebrated artist, friend, and painter, of Walter Scott and his family).... In the evening, at the theater, the house was very full, and I acted very well, though I was so tired that I could hardly stand, and every bone in my body ached with my hard morning's ride. While I was sitting in the greenroom, Mr. Wilson came in, and it warmed my heart to see a Covent Garden face. He tells me Laporte is giving concerts in the poor old playhouse: well, good luck attend him, poor man (though I know it won't, for "there's nae luck about that house, there's nae luck at a'"). Walter Scott has reached Edinburgh, and starts for Abbotsford to-morrow: I am glad he has come back to die in his own country, in his own home, surrounded by the familiar objects his eyes have loved to look upon, and by the hearts of his countrymen, and the prayers, the blessings, the gratitude, and the love they owe him. All Europe will mourn his death; and for years to come every man born on this soil will be proud, for his sake, to call himself a Scotchman.

Wednesday, 11th.— ... At half-past twelve met Mr. Murray, Mr. Allen, and Mr. Byrne.... As we started for our ride, and were "cavalcading" leisurely along York Place, that most enchanting old sweetheart of mine, Baron Hume, came out of a house. I rode toward him, and he met me with his usual hearty, kind cordiality, and a world of old-fashioned stately courtesy, ending our conference by devoutly kissing the tip of my little finger, to the infinite edification of my party, upon whose minds I duly impressed the vast superiority of this respectful style of gallantry to the flippant, easy familiarity of the present day. These old beaux beat the young ones hollow in the theory of courtship, and it is only a pity that their time for practice is over. Commend me to this bowing and finger-kissing! it is at any rate more dignified than the nodding, bobbing, and hand-shaking of the present fashion. The be-Madaming, too, has in it something singularly pleasing to my taste; there's a hoop and six yards of brocade in each of its two syllables.... At the theater the play was "Francis I." I acted well, and the play went off very well. Mr. Allen came and sat in the greenroom, telling me all about Constantinople and the Crimea, and the beautiful countries he has seen, and where his memory and his wishes are forever wandering; a rather sad comment upon the perfect vision of content his charming home at Laurieston had suggested to me.

Thursday, 12th.— ... At the theater the play was "The Hunchback." The house was very good, and I acted very well. Dear Mr. Allen came into the greenroom, and had a long gossip with me.

Friday, 13th.— ... Went with Mr. Combe to the Phrenological Museum, and spent two hours listening to some very interesting details on the anatomy of the brain, which certainly tended to make the science more credible to my ignorance, though the general theory has never appeared to me as impossible and extravagant as some people think it. The insuperable point where I stick fast is a doubt of the practically beneficial result which its general acceptance would produce. I think they overrate the reforming power of their system, though Mr. Combe's account of the numbers who attend his lectures, and of the improvement of their bodily and mental conditions which he has himself witnessed, must, of course, make me feel diffident of my own judgment in the matter. Their own experience can alone test the utility of their system, and whether it does or does not answer their expectations. I thought of Hamlet as I sat on the ground, with my arms and lap full of skulls. It is curious enough to grasp the empty, worthless, unsightly case in which once dwelt the thinking faculty of a man. One of the best specimens of the human skull, it seems, is Raphael's; a cast of whose head I held lovingly in my hands, wishing it had been the very house where once abode that spirit of immortal beauty. [The phrenological authorities were mistaken, it seems, in attributing this skull to Raphael. I believe that it has been ascertained to be that of his friend, the engraver, Marc Antonio.] At the theater the play was "The Hunchback;" the house very good, and I played very well.

Saturday, 14th.—My last day in Edinburgh for two years; and who can tell for how many more? At eleven o'clock, Mr. Murray, Mr. Allen, Mr. Byrne, and myself sallied forth on horseback toward the Pentlands, having obtained half an hour's grace off dinner-time, in order to get to Habbies How. We went out by the Links, and up steep rises over a white and dusty road, with a flaring stone dyke on each side, and neither tree nor bush to shelter us from the scorching sunlight till we came to Woodhouseleigh, the haunted walk of a white specter, who, it seems, was fond of the shade, for her favorite promenade was an avenue overarched with the green arms of noble old elm trees; and we blessed the welcome shelter of the Ghost's Haunt.... A cloud fell over all our spirits as we rode away from this enchanting spot, and Mr. Murray, pointing to the sprig of heather I had put in my habit, said they would establish an Order of Knighthood, of which the badge should be a heather spray, and they three the members, and I the patroness; that they would meet and drink my health on the 14th of July, and on my birthday, every year till I returned; and a solemn agreement was made by all parties that whenever I did return and summoned my worthies, we should again adjourn together to the glen in the Pentlands. When we reached home, Mr. Allen, who cannot endure a formal parting, shook hands with me and bade me good-by as I dismounted, as if we were to ride again to-morrow. [And I never saw him again. Peace be with him! He was a most amiable and charming companion, and during these days of friendly intimacy, his conversation interested and instructed me, and his poetical feeling of Nature, and placid, unruffled serenity, added much to the pleasure of those delightful rides.] ... At the theater the play was "The Provoked Husband," for my benefit; the house was very fine, and I played pretty well. After it was over, the audience shouted and clamored for my father, who came and said a few words of our sorrow to leave their beautiful city.... Mrs. Harry, Lizzie, and I were in my dressing-room, crying in sad silence, and vainly endeavoring to control our emotion. Presently my father came hurriedly in, and folding them both in his arms, just uttered in a broken voice, "Good-by! God bless you!" and I, embracing my dear friends for the last time, followed him out of the room. It is not the time only that must elapse before I can see her again, it is the terrible distance, the slowness and uncertainty of communication; it is that dreadful America.

Thursday, 19th, Liverpool.— ... At eleven went to the theater for rehearsal; it was very slovenly. I wonder what the performance will be? In the evening to the theater; the play was "Francis I.," and the house was very good, which was almost to be wondered at in this plague-stricken city. [The cholera was raging in Liverpool.] I was frightened, as I always am at a new part, even in my own play, though glad enough to resign that odious dignity, the queen-mother. [The part of Louisa of Savoy had been given to me when first the piece was brought out at Covent Garden; I was now playing the younger heroine, Françoise de Foix.] I played pretty well, though there is nothing to be done with the part. She is perfectly uninteresting and ineffective; but it is better for the cast of the play that I should act her instead of Louisa. And when one can have such a specimen of a queen as we had to-night, it would be a thousand pities the audience should be put off with my inferior views of royalty. Such bouncing, frowning, growling, and snarling might have challenged a whole zoological garden full of wild beasts to surpass. It's a comfort to see that it is possible to play that part worse than I did.

Friday, 20th.—Went to rehearsal.... Received a letter from Lizzie, giving me an account of my dear old Newhaven fish-wife, poor body! to whom I had sent a farewell present by her. I received also a long copy of anonymous verses, in which I was rather pathetically remonstrated with for seeking fame and fortune out of my own country. The author is slightly mistaken; neither the love of money nor notoriety would carry me away from England, but the love of my father constrains me.... The American Consul and Mr. Arnold called. After dinner I read Combe's "Constitution of Man," which interested me very much, though it fails to convince me that phrenology can alone bestow this insight into human nature. At the theater "The School for Scandal;" I played pretty well, though the actors were all dreadfully imperfect, and some of them so nervous and quick, and some so nervous and slow, that it was hardly possible to keep pace with them.

Saturday, 21st.—From Liverpool to Manchester. After all, this Liverpool, with all its important wealth and industry, is a dismal-looking place, a swarming world of dingy red houses and dirty streets.... How well I remember the opening of this railway!... They have placed a marble tablet in the side of the road to commemorate the spot where poor Huskisson fell; I remembered it by the pools of dark-green water that, as we passed them then, made a dismal impression on me; they looked like stony basins of verdigris. How glad I was to see Chatmoss—that villainous, treacherous, ugly, useless bog—trenched and ditched in process of draining and reclaiming, with the fair, holy, healthy grain waving in bright green patches over the brown peaty soil! Next to moral conversion, and the reclaiming to their noble uses the perverted powers of human nature, there is nothing does one's heart so much good as the sight of waste and barren land reclaimed to the uses and wants of man; to see vegetation clothe the idle space, and the cursed and profitless soil teeming with the means of life and bringing forth abundant produce to requite the toil that fertilized it; to see the wilderness crowned with bounteous increase, and the blessing of God rising from the earth to reward the labor of His creatures. It forcibly reminds one of all that is left undone, and might be done, with that far more precious waste land, those multitudes of our ignorant poor, whose minds and spirits are as dark, as profitless, as barren, as dreary, and as dangerous, as this wild bog was formerly, and who were never ordained to live and die like so many human morasses.... In the evening to the theater, which was crammed from the floor to the ceiling; they are a pleasant audience, too, and make a delightful quantity of sympathetic noise. I did not play well, which was a pity and a shame, because they really deserved that one should do so; but my coadjutors were too much for me.

Sunday, 22d, Liverpool.—I did not think there was such another day in store for me as this. I thought all was past and over, and had forgotten the last drop in the bitter cup.... The day was bitter cold, and we were obliged to have a fire.

Liverpool, July 22.

My dear Mrs. Jameson,

I fear you are either anxious or vexed, or perhaps both, about the arrival of your books, and my non-acknowledgment of them. They reached me in all safety, and but for the many occupations which swallow up my time would have been duly receipted ere this. Thank you very much for them, for they are very elegant outside, and the dedication page, with which I should have been most ungracious to find any fault. The little sketch on that leaf differs from the design you had described to me some time ago, and I felt the full meaning of the difference. I read through your preface all in a breath; there are many parts of it which have often been matters of discussion between us, and I believe you know how cordially I coincide with most of the views expressed in it. The only point in your preliminary chapter on which I do not agree with you is the passage in which you say that humor is, of necessity and in its very essence, vulgar. I differ entirely with you here. I think humor is very often closely allied to poetry; not only a large element in highly poetic minds, which surely refutes your position, but kindred to the highest and deepest order of imagination, and frequently eminently fanciful and graceful in its peculiar manifestations. However, I cannot now make leisure to write about this, but while I read it I scored the passage as one from which I dissented. That, however, of course does not establish its fallacy; but I think, had I time, I could convince you of it. I acted Juliet on Wednesday, and read your analysis of it before doing so. Oh, could you but have seen and heard my Romeo!... I am sure it is just as well that an actress on the English stage at the present day should not have too distinct a vision of the beings Shakespeare intended to realize, or she might be induced, like the unfortunate heroine of the song, to "hang herself in her garters." To be sure there is always my expedient to resort to, of acting to a wooden vase; you know I had one put upon my balcony, in "Romeo and Juliet," at Covent Garden, to assist Mr. Abbott in drawing forth the expression of my sentiments. I have been reading over Portia to-day; she is still my dream of ladies, my pearl of womanhood.... I must close this letter, for I have many more to write to-night, and it is already late. Once more, thank you very much for your book, and believe me,

Ever yours very truly,

F. A. K.

August 1st.—Sailed for America.

The book referred to in this letter was Mrs. Jameson's "Analysis of Shakespeare's Female Characters," which she very kindly dedicated to me. The etching in the title-page was changed from the one she at first intended to have put in it, and represented a female figure in an attitude of despondency, sitting by the sea, and watching a ship sailing toward the setting sun; a design which I know she meant to have reference to my departure. I believe she subsequently changed it again to the one she had first executed, and which was of a less personal significance.... I exchanged no more letters with my friend Miss S——, who joined me at Liverpool, and remained with me till I sailed for America.... "A trip," as it is now called, to Europe or America, is one of the commonest of experiences, involving, apparently, so little danger, difficulty, or delay, that the feelings with which I made my first voyage across the Atlantic must seem almost incomprehensible to the pleasure-seeking or business-absorbed crowds who throng the great watery highway between the two continents.

But when I first went to America, steam had not shortened the passage of that formidable barrier between world and world. A month, and not a week, was the shortest and most favorable voyage that could be looked for. Few men, and hardly any women, undertook it as a mere matter of pleasure or curiosity; and though affairs of importance, of course, drew people from one shore to the other, and the stream of emigration had already set steadily westward, American and European tourists had not begun to cross each other by thousands on the high seas in search of health or amusement.

I was leaving my mother, my brothers and sister, my friends and my country, for two years, and could only hear from them at monthly intervals. I was going to work very hard, in a distasteful vocation, among strangers, from whom I had no right to expect the invariable kindness and indulgence my own people had favored me with. My spirits were depressed by my father's troubled fortunes, and I had just received the first sharp, smarting strokes in the battle of life; those gashes from which poor "unbruised youth," in its infinite self-compassion, fancies its very life-blood must all pour away; little imagining under what gangrened, festering wounds brave life will still hold on its way, and urge to the hopeless end its warfare with unconquerable sorrow. There is nothing more pathetic than the terrified impatience of youth under its first experience of grief, and its vehement appeal of "Behold, and see if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow!" to the patient adepts in suffering such as it has not yet begun to conceive of. Orlando's adjuration to the exiled duke in "As You Like It," and the wise Prince's reply, seem to me one of the most exquisite illustrations of the comparative griefs of youth and age.

Off Sandy Hook, Monday, September 5.

My dearest H——,

We are within three hours' sail of New York, having greeted the first corner of Long Island (the first land we saw) yesterday morning; but we are becalmed, and the sun shines so bright, and the air is so warm and breathless, that we seem to have every chance of lying here for the next—Heaven knows how long! In point of time, you see, our voyage has been very prosperous, and I am surprised that we have made such good progress, for the weather has been squally, with constant head-winds. I do not think we have had, in all, six days of fair wind, so that we have no reason whatever to complain of our advance, having come thus far in thirty-two days. You bade me write to you by ships passing us, but though we have encountered several bound eastward, we only hailed them without lying to; notwithstanding which, about a fortnight ago, on hearing that a vessel was about to pass us, I wrote you a scrawl, which none but you could have made out (so the fishes won't profit much by it), and a kind fellow-passenger undertook to throw it from our ship to the other as it passed us. She came alongside very rapidly, and though he flung with great force and good aim, the distance was too great, and my poor little missive fell into the black sea within twenty feet of its destination. I could not help crying to think that those words from my heart, that would have gladdened yours, should go down into that cold, inky water.... I pray to God that we may return to England, but I am possessed with a dread that I never shall....

I have been called away from this letter by one of those little incidents which Heaven in its mercy sends to break the monotony of a sea-voyage. Ever since daybreak this morning an English brig has been standing at a considerable distance behind us. About an hour ago we went on deck to watch the approach of a boat which they were sending off in our direction. The distance was about five miles, and the men had a hard pull in the broiling heat. When they came on board, you should have seen how we all clustered about them. The ship was a merchantman from Bristol, bound to New York; she had been out eleven weeks, her provisions were beginning to run short, and the crew was on allowance. Our captain, who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, eggs, etc., etc. The men remained about half an hour on board, and as they were remanning their boat we saw a whole cargo of eatables carried to it from our steerage passengers. You know that these are always poor people, who are often barely supplied themselves with necessaries for their voyage. The poor are almost invariably kind and compassionate to one another, and Gaffer Gray is half right when he says—

They (the men from the brig) gave us news from Halifax, where they had put in. The cholera had been in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York; the latter town was almost deserted, and the people flying in numbers from the others. This was rather bad news to us, who were going thither to find audiences (if possible not few, whether fit or not), but it was awful to such as were going back to their homes and families. I looked at the anxious faces gathered round our informer, and thought how the poor hearts were flying, in terrible anticipation of the worst, to the nests where they had left their dear ones, and eagerly counting every precious head in the homes over which so black a cloud of doom had gathered in their absence.... My father, though a bad sailor, and suffering occasionally a good deal, has, upon the whole, borne the voyage well. Poor dear Dall has been the greatest wretch on board; she has been perfectly miserable the whole time. It has made me very unhappy, for she has come away from those she loves very dearly on my account, and I cannot but feel sad to see that most excellent creature now, in what should be the quiet time of her life, leaving home and all its accustomed ways, habits, and comforts, and dear A——, who is her darling, to come wandering to the ends of the earth after me.... These distant and prolonged separations seem like foretastes of death.... We have seen an American sun, and an American moon, and American stars, and we think they "get up these things better than we do." We have had several fresh squalls, and one heavy gale; we have shipped sundry seas; we have had rat-hunting and harpooning of porpoises; we have caught several hake and dogfish.

New York, America, Wednesday, September 5, 1832.

Here we really are, and perhaps you, who are not here, will believe it more readily than I who am, and to whom it seems an impossible kind of dream from which I must surely presently wake. We made New York harbor Monday night at sunset, and cast anchor at twelve o'clock off Staten Island, where we lay till yesterday morning at half-past nine, when a steamboat came alongside to take the passengers to shore. A thick fog covered the shores, and the rain poured in torrents; but had the weather been more favorable, I should have seen nothing of our approach to the city, for I was crying bitterly. The town, as we drove through it from the landing, struck me as foreign in its appearance—continental, I mean; trees are mixed very prettily with the houses, which are painted of various colors, and have green blinds on the outside, giving an idea of coolness and shade.

The sunshine is glorious, and the air soft and temperate; our hotel is pleasantly situated, and our rooms are gay and large. The town, as I see it from our windows, reminds me a little of Paris. Yesterday evening the trees and lighted shop-windows and brilliant moonlight were like a suggestion of the Boulevards; it is very gay, and rather like a fair.

The cholera has been very bad, but it is subsiding, and the people are returning to town. We shall begin our work in about ten days. I have not told you half I could say, but foolscap will contain no more. God bless you, dear!

Affectionately yours,

F. A. K.

The foreboding with which I left my own country was justified by the event. My dear aunt died, and I married, in America; and neither of us ever had a home again in England.

New York, September 16, 1832.

My dearest H——,

What shall I say to you? First of all, pray don't forget me, don't be altered when I see you again, don't die before I come back, don't die if I never come back.... You cannot imagine how strange the comparisons people here are perpetually making between this wonderful sapling of theirs and our old oak seem to me.... My father, thank God, is wonderfully improved in health, looks, and spirits; the fine, clear, warm (hot it should be called) atmosphere agrees with him, and the release from the cares and anxieties of that troublesome estate of his in St. Giles' will, I am sure, be of the greatest service to him. He begins his work to-morrow night with Hamlet, and on Tuesday I act Bianca. It is thought expedient that we should act singly the two first nights, and then make a "constellation." Dall is in despair because I am to be discovered instead of coming on (a thing actors deprecate, because they do not receive their salvo of entrance applause), and also because I am not seen at first in what she thinks a becoming dress. For my part, I am rather glad of this decision, for besides Bianca's being one of my best parts, the play, as the faculty have mangled it, is such a complete monologue that I am less at the mercy of my coadjutors than in any other piece I play in....

Dall is very well, very hot, and very mosquito-bitten. The heat seems to me almost intolerable, though it is here considered mild autumn weather: the mornings and evenings are, it is true, generally freshened with a cool delicious air, which is at this moment blowing all my pens and paper away, and compensating us for our midday's broiling. I do nothing but drink iced lemonade, and eat peaches and sliced melon, in spite of the cholera.

Baths are a much cheaper and commoner luxury (necessary) in the hotels here than with us; a great satisfaction to me, who hope in heaven, if I ever get there, to have plenty of water to wash in, and, of course, it will all be soft rainwater there. What a blessing! On board ship we were not stinted in that respect, but had as much water as we desired for external as well as internal purposes.

There are no water-pipes or cisterns in this city such as we have, but men go about as they do in Paris, with huge water-butts, supplying each house daily; for although a broad river (so called) runs on each side of this water-walled city, the one—the East River—is merely an arm of the sea; and the Hudson receives the salt tide-water, and is rendered brackish and unfit for washing or cooking purposes far beyond the city. There are fine springs, and a full fresh-water stream, at a distance of some miles; but the municipality is not very rich, and is economical and careful of the public money, and many improvements which might have been expected to have been effected here long ago are halting in their advance, leaving New York ill paved, ill lighted, and indifferently supplied with a good many necessaries and luxuries of modern civilization.

[This was fifty-six years ago. Times are altered since this letter was written. New York is neither ill paved nor ill lighted; the municipality is rich, but neither economical, careful, nor honest, in dealing with the public moneys. The rapid spread of superficial civilization and accumulation of easily-got wealth, together with incessant communication with Europe, have made of the great cities of the New World, centres of an imperfect but extreme luxury, vying with, and in some respects going beyond, all that London or Paris presents for the indulgence of tastes pampered by the oldest civilization of Europe.

One day, after the Croton water had been brought into New York, I was sitting with the venerable Chancellor Kent at the window of his house in Union Square, and, pointing to the fountain that sprang up in the midst of the inclosure, he said, "When I was a boy, much more than half a century ago, I used to go to the Croton water, and paddle, and fish, and bathe, and swim, and loiter my time away in the summer days. I cannot go out there any more for any of these pleasant purposes, but the Croton water has come here to me." What a ballad Schiller or Goethe would have made of that! That morning visit to Chancellor Kent has left that pretty picture in my mind, and the recollection of his last words as he shook hands with me: "Ay, madam, the secret of life is always to have excitement enough, and never too much." But he did not give me the secret of that secret.]

There are, on an average, half a dozen fires in various parts of the town every night—I mean houses on fire. The sons of all the gentlemen here are volunteer engineers and firemen, and great is the delight they take in tearing up and down the streets, accompanied by red lights, speaking trumpets, and a rushing, roaring escort of running amateur extinguishers, who make night hideous with their bawling and bellowing. This evening as I was observing that we had had no fire to-day, Dall said the weather was so hot, she thought they must have left off fires for the season.

Speaking of carriages and the devices on the panels of them here, which appear to be rather fancy pieces than heraldic bearings, my father said, "I wonder what they do for arms." "Use legs," said Dall immediately, not at all bethinking herself how ancient a device on the shield of the Island of Man the three legs were, or knowing how much more ancient on the coins of Crotona, I think, or some other of the Magna Grecian colonies.

The hours which prevail here are those of our shop-keeping population; they rise and go to business very early, dine at three, which indeed is considered late, take tea at five, and supper at nine, which seems to us very primitive.... The women here are, generally speaking, very pretty little creatures, with a great deal of freshness and brilliancy; they dress in the extreme of the French fashion, and, I suppose from some unfavorable influence of the climate, they lose their beauty prematurely—they become full-blown very early, and their bloom is extremely evanescent; they fade almost suddenly.... There seems to be a great deal of consumption here. The climate is as capricious as ours, with this additional disadvantage, that the extremes of heat and cold are much more intense, and the transitions much more violent, the temperature varying occasionally as much as thirty degrees in the twenty-four hours. I have just left off writing for five minutes to watch the lightning, which is dancing in a fiery ring all round the horizon—summer lightning, no thunder, although the flashes are strong and vivid....

We have had such a tremendous storm—really gorgeous, grand, and awful; lightning that stretched from side to side of the sky, making a blaze like daylight for several seconds at a time. The mere reflection of it on the ground was more than the eye could endure; great forked ribbons of fire darting into the very bosom of the city and its crowded dwellings, or zigzagging through the air to an accompaniment of short, sharp, crackling thunder, succeeded by endless, deep, full-toned rolls that made the whole air shake and vibrate with the heavy concussion; pelting and pouring rain, a perfect tornado of wind. Heaven and earth are all, while I write, one livid, violet-colored flame, and the thunder resounds through the wild frenzy of the elements like the voice of "the Ruler of the spirits." My eyes ache with the incessant glare, and I must close my letter, for it is past eleven o'clock, and I have to rehearse to-morrow morning.... I have seen Mr. Wallack since our arrival, whom I never saw in England, either on or off the stage. I went the other night to see him in one of his favorite pieces, "The Rent-Day," which made me cry dreadfully, but chiefly, I believe, because, when they are ruined, he asks his wife if she will go with him to America. You see I am taking to play-going in my old age. The theater is very pretty, of the best possible dimensions for me, and tolerably good for the voice. We leave this place for Philadelphia on the 10th of October, and remain there a fortnight, and then go on to Boston....

Last Thursday we crossed the Hudson in one of the steamers constantly plying between the opposite shores and New York, and took a delightful walk along the New Jersey shore to a place called Hoboken, famous once as a dueling-ground, now the favorite resort of a pacific society of bon vivants, who meet once a week to eat turtle, or, as it is expressed on their cards of invitation, for "spoon exercise." The distance from our landing-point to the place where these meetings are held is about five miles, a charming walk through a strip of forest-ground, which crowns the banks of the river, gradually rising to a considerable height above it. We were delighted with the vivid, various, and strange foliage of the trees, the magnificent river, broad and blue as a lake, with its high and richly wooded shore, and the sparkling, glittering town opposite. We looked down to the Narrows, the defile through which the waters of this noble estuary reach the Atlantic, and between whose rocky walls two or three ships stood out against the brilliant sky. The ebbing tide plashed on the rocks far below us, and the warm grass through which we walked was alive with grasshoppers, whose scarlet wings, suddenly unfolded when they flew, made me take them for some strange species of butterfly. It was all indescribably bright and joyous-looking, and the air of a transparent clearness that was one of the most striking characteristics of the whole scene, and one of the most delightful.... [In discussing the relative merits of England and America, Dr. Channing once said to me, "The earth is yours, but the heavens are ours;" and I quite agree with him. I have never seen a sky comparable, for splendor of color or translucent purity, to that of the Northern States.]

I have been reading your favorite book, "Salmonia." ... I am rather surprised at your liking it so very much, because, though the descriptions are beautiful, and the natural history interesting, and the philosophical and moral reflections scattered through it delightful, yet there is so much that is purely technical about fishing and its processes, and addressed only to the hook-and-line fraternity, that I should not have thought it calculated to charm you so greatly. However, you may have some associations connected with it; liking is a very complex and many-motived thing....

We went through the fish and fruit markets the other day; unfortunately it was rather late in the morning, and of course the glory of the market was over, but yet there remained enough to enchant us, with their abundant plenteousness of good things. The fruit-market was beautiful; fruit-baskets half as high as I am, placed in rows of a dozen, filled with peaches, and painted of a bright vermilion color, which throws a ruddy becoming tint over the downy fruit. It looked like something in the "Arabian Nights;" heaps, literally heaps of melons, apples, pears, and wild grapes, in the greatest profusion. I was enchanted with the beautiful forms, bright colors, and fragrant smell, but I saw no flowers, and I have seen hardly any since I have been here, which is rather a grief to me....

Americans are the most extravagant people in the world, and flowers are among them objects of the most lavish expenditure. The prices paid for nosegays, wreaths, baskets, and devices of every sort of hot-house plants, are incredible to any reasonable mind. At parties and balls ladies are laden with costly nosegays which will not even survive the evening's fatigue of carrying them. Dinner and luncheon parties are adorned, not only with masses of exquisite bloom as table ornaments, but by every lady's plate a magnificent nosegay of hot-house flowers is placed; and I knew a lady who, wishing to adorn her ballroom with rather more than usual floral magnificence, had it hung round with garlands of white camellias and myosotis.

At the theater enormously expensive nosegays and huge baskets of forced flowers are handed to the favorite performers from the front of the house, till the ceremony becomes embarrassing, and almost ridiculous for the object of the demonstration. The churches at certain festivals are hung with draperies of costly hot-house flowers; the communion-tables heaped with them. Weddings, of course, are natural occasions for that species of ornament, but in America funerals are as flowery as marriage-feasts; and I have seen there in mid-winter, with the thermometer at fifteen degrees below zero, large crosses, and hearts, and wreaths, made entirely of rosebuds and lilies of the valley, as part of the solemnities of a burial service; and a young girl who died in the flowerless season was not only shrouded in blossoms, but as her coffin was carried to the bosom of the wintry earth, a white pall of the finest material was thrown over it, with a great cross of double forced violets, almost the length of the coffin, laid on it. I have had as many as a dozen huge baskets of camellias, violets, orange-flower, and tuberose, at one time, in my room; perishable tokens of anonymous public and private favor, the cost of which used to fill me with dismay: and on one occasion a table of magnificent hot-house flowers was sent to me, of such dimensions that both sides of the street door had to be opened to admit it. When I have deplored the inordinate amount of money lavished upon that which could only impart pleasure for so brief a time, I have been answered, but not converted from my feeling of disapprobation and regret, that the gardeners profited by this wild extravagance. In New York I have known a guinea paid for a gentleman's button-hole rosebud, and three guineas for half a dozen sprays of lily of the valley.

Good-by, my dearest H——. I pray for you morning and night. Is not that thinking of you, and loving you as best I can?

Your affectionate

F. A. K.

Dearest H——,

... We are all pretty well, but all but devoured by multitudinous and multivarious beasts of prey—birds, I suppose they are: mosquitoes, ants, and flies, by day; and flies, fleas, and worse, by night. The plagues of Egypt were a joke to it. We spend our lives in murdering hecatombs of creeping and jumping things, and vehemently slapping our own faces with intent to kill the flying ones that incessantly buzz about one. It is rather a deplorable existence, and reminds me of one of the most unpleasant circles in Dante's "Hell," which I don't think could have been much worse. My father began his work on Monday last with Hamlet. Dall and I went into a private box to see him; he acted admirably, and looked wonderfully young and handsome. The house was crammed, and the audience, we were assured, was enthusiastic beyond all precedent.

On Tuesday I came out in Bianca; I was rather glad they had appointed that part for my first, because it is one of my best; but had not the genius of theatrical management made such a mere monologue of the play as it has, I verily believe I should have been "swamped" by my helpmate. My Fazio was an unhappy man who played Romeo once with me in London, and failed utterly: moreover, he had studied this part in a hurry, it seems, and did not know three words of it, and was, besides, too frightened to profit by my prompting. The only thing that seemed to occur to him was to go down on his knees, which he did every five minutes. Once when I was on mine, he dropped down suddenly exactly opposite to me, and there we were, looking for all the world like one of those pious conjugal vis-à-vis that adorn antique tombs in our cathedrals. It really was exceedingly absurd. But I looked and acted well, and the play was very successful.... I was not nervous for my first night, till my unhappy partner made me so. My dislike to the stage would really render me indifferent to my own success, but that I am working for my livelihood; my bread depends upon success, and that is a realistic, if not an artistic, view of the case, of which I acknowledge the importance....

Absolute and uncompromising vulgarity is really not very objectionable; it is rather refreshing, indeed, for it is simple, and, in that respect, rare. Vulgarity allied to pretension and the affectation of fine manners is the only real vulgarity, and is an intolerable thing. The plain rusticity, or even coarseness, of what are called the lower classes, is infinitely preferable to the assumption of gentility of those a little above them in the social scale. The artisan, or day-laborer, or common workman, is apt to be a gentleman, compared with a certain well-to-do small shopkeeper....

On Thursday, when I went to rehearse "Romeo and Juliet," I found that the unfortunate Mr. Keppel was, by general desire, taken out of Romeo, which my father was therefore called upon, for the first time, to act with me. I was vexed at this every way. I was sorry for the poor player, whose part, of course, was money to him; and sorry for my father, who has the greatest objection to playing Romeo, for which his age, of course, disqualifies him, however much his excellent acting may tend to make one forget it; and I was sorry for the public, who lost his admirable Mercutio, which I do not think they were compensated for by his taking the other part....

The steward of our ship, a black—a very intelligent, obliging, respectable servant—came here the other morning to ask my father for an order, at the same time adding that it must be for the gallery, as people of color were not allowed to go into any other part of the theater. Qu'en dis-tu? The prejudice against these unfortunate people is, of course, incomprehensible to us. On board ship, after giving that same man some trouble, Dall poured him out a glass of wine, when we were having our dinner, whereupon the captain looked at her with utter amazement, and I thought some little contempt, and said, "Ah! one can tell by that that you are not an American;" which sort of thing makes one feel rather glad that one is not.

[This was in 1832, when slavery literally governed the United States. In 1874, when the Civil War had washed out slavery with the blood of free men, the prejudice engendered by it governed them still to the following degree. Going to the theater in Philadelphia one night, I desired my servant, a perfectly respectable and decorous colored man, to go into the house and see the performance. This, however, he did not succeed in doing, being informed at all the entrance doors that persons of color were not admitted to any part of the theater. At this same time, more than half the State legislature of South Carolina were blacks. Moreover, at this same time, colored children were not received into the public schools of Philadelphia, though colored citizens were eligible, and in some cases acted as members of the board of management of these very schools. I talked of this outrageous inconsistent prejudice with some of my friends; among others, the editor of a popular paper. They were all loud in their condemnation of the state of things, but strongly of opinion that to move at all in the matter would be highly inopportune and injudicious. Time, they said, would settle all these questions; and, without doubt, it will. Charles Sumner, who thought Time could afford to have his elbow jogged about them, had just gone to his grave, leaving, unfortunately, incomplete his bill of rights in behalf of the colored citizens of the United States.

My servant was a citizen of the United States, having a vote, when he was turned from the theater door as a person of color; and negroes had been elected as Members of Congress at that very time. Strangely enough, Philadelphia, once the seat of enthusiastic and self-devoted Quaker abolitionism, the home of that noble and admirable woman, Lucretia Mott, who stood heroically in its vanguard, is now one of the strongholds of the most illiberal prejudice against the blacks.]

On Friday we acted "The School for Scandal." Our houses have been very fine indeed, in spite of the intolerable heat of the weather.... My ill-starred Fazio of Thursday night is making a terrible stir in the papers, appealing to the public, and writing long letters about his having merely studied the part to accommodate me. "Hard case—unjust partiality—superior influence," etc., etc.—in short, an attempt at a little cabal, the effect of which is that he has obtained leave to appear again to-morrow night in Jaffier to my Belvidera. The poor man is under a strong mental delusion, he cannot act in the least; however, we shall see what he will do with "Venice Preserved." ...

Yesterday evening we dined with some English people who are staying in this hotel, and met Dr. Wainwright, rector of the most "fashionable" church in New York; a very agreeable, good, and clever man, who expressed great delight at having an opportunity of meeting us in private, as his congregation are so strait-laced that he can neither call upon us nor invite us to his house, much less set his foot in the theater. The probable consequence of any of these enormities, it seems, would be deserted pews next Sunday, and perhaps eventually the forced resignation of his cure of souls. This is rather narrow minded, I think, for this free and enlightened country. Think of my mother's dear old friend, Dr. Hughes, and Milman, and Harness, and Dyce, and all our excellent reverend friends and intimate acquaintance....

To-morrow we act "Venice Preserved," on Tuesday "Much Ado about Nothing," Wednesday is a holiday, on Thursday, for my benefit, "The Stranger," and on Friday "The Hunchback." On the 10th of next month we act in Philadelphia, where we shall remain for a fortnight, and then return here for a fortnight, after which we go on to Boston. God bless you, dear! It is past twelve at night, and I have a ten-o'clock rehearsal to-morrow morning.

Ever your affectionate

F. A. K.

Part of Letter to Mrs. Jameson.

New York, September 30, 1832.

I am not sure that, upon the whole, our acting is not rather too quiet—tame, I suppose they would call it—for our present public. Ranting and raving in tragedy, and shrieks of unmeaning laughter in comedy, are not, you know, precisely our style, and I am afraid our audiences here may think us flat. I was informed by a friend of mine who heard the remark, that one gentleman observed to another, after seeing my father in "Venice Preserved," "Lord bless you! it's nothing to Cooper's acting—nothing! Why, I've seen the perspiration roll down his face like water when he played Pierre! You didn't see Mr. Kemble put himself to half such pains!" Which reminds me of the Frenchwoman's commendation to her neighbor of a performance of Dupré, the great Paris tenor of his day: "Ah! ce pauvre cher M. Dupré! ce brave homme! quel mal il se donne pour chanter cela! Regardez donc, madame, il est tout en sueur!" But this order of criticism, of course, may be met with anywhere; and the stamp-and-stare-and-start-and-scream-school has had its admirers all the world over since the days of Hamlet the Dane.

I have not seen much of either places or people yet.... This city is picturesque and foreign-looking; trees are much intermixed with the houses, among them a great many fine willows, and these, together with the various colors of the houses, and the irregularity of the streets and buildings, form constantly "little bits" that would gladden the eye of a painter. The sky here is beautiful; I find in it what you have seen in Italy, and I only in Angerstein's Gallery, the orange sunsets of Claude Lorraine.

We leave New York for Philadelphia after next week, and shall remain there three weeks.

I have read and noted much of your pretty book. There are one or two points which shall "serve for sweet discourses" in our time to come. I find great satisfaction in our discussions, for though I may not often confess to being convinced by your arguments in our differences (does any one ever do so?), I derive so much information from them, that they are as profitable as pleasant to me. Are you going to be busy with your pen soon again? Write me how the world is going on yonder, and believe me ever truly yours,

F. A. K.

New York, September 30, 1832.

Dearest H——,

... Perhaps, as you say, it is morbid to dwell as I do upon the unreality of acting, because its tangible reality makes its appearance duly every morning with the "returns" of the preceding night; but I am not sure that it is morbid to consider wants exaggerated and necessities unreal which render insufficient earnings that would be ample for any one's real need. A livelihood, of course, we could make in England.... You speak of all the various strange things I am to see, and the amount of knowledge I shall involuntarily acquire, by this residence in America; but you know I am what Dr. Johnson would have considered disgracefully "incurious," and the lazy intellectual indifference which induced me to live in London by the very spring of the fountain of knowledge without so much as stooping my lips to it, prevails with me here.

[Our house in Great Russell Street, which was the last at the corner of Montague Place, adjoined the British Museum, and has since been taken into, or removed for (I don't know which), the new buildings of that institution. Our friend Panizzi, the learned librarian, lived in the house that stood where ours, formerly my uncle's, did. While we were still living there, however, I was allowed a privileged entrance at all times to the library, and am ashamed to think how seldom I availed myself of so great a favor.]

Then, too, my profession occupies nearly the whole of my time; I have rehearsals every day, and act four times a week; my journalizing takes up a good deal of my leisure. Walking in the heat we still have here fatigues me and hurts my feet very much, especially when I have to stand at the theater all the evening. Although I have been here a month, I have seen but little either of places or people; the latter, you know, I nowhere affect, and my distaste for the society of strangers must, of course, interfere with my deriving information from them. Still, as you say, I must inevitably see and learn much that is new to me, and I take pleasure in the hope that when I return to you I shall be less distressingly ignorant than you must often have found me....

I am very sorry my brother Henry and his men are going to be sent upon so odious an errand as tithe-collecting must be in Ireland. I trust in God he may meet with no mischief while fulfilling his duty; I should be both to think of that comely-looking young thing bruised or broken, maimed or murdered. I hardly think your savage Irishers would have the heart to hurt him, he looks so like, what indeed he is, a mere boy; but then, to be sure, his errand is not one to recommend him to their mercy.

I have read Bryant's poetry, and like it very much. The general spirit of it is admirable; it is all wholesome poetry, and some of it is very beautiful.

I am going to get Graham's "History of the United States," and Smith's "History of Virginia," to beguile my journey to Philadelphia with. I can't fancy a savage woman marrying a civilized man.... I suppose love might bring harmony out of the discords of natures so dissimilar, but I think if I had been a wild she-American, I should not have been tamed by one of the invading race, my hunters. Pocahontas thought differently....

Are you acquainted with any of Daniel Webster's speeches? They are very fine, eloquent, and powerful; and one that he delivered upon the commemoration of the landing of the English exiles at Plymouth, in many parts, magnificent. I was profoundly affected by it when my father read it to us on board ship....

Bad as your mice, of which you complain so bitterly, may be, they are civilized Christian creatures compared with the heathen swarms with which we wage war incessantly here. Every evening, as soon as the sun sets, clouds of mosquitoes begin their war-dance round us; their sting is most venomous, and as my patience is not even skin-deep, I tear myself like a maniac, and then, instead of oil, pour aromatic vinegar into my wounds, and a very pretty species of torture is produced by that means, I assure you. Besides these winged devils, we have swarms of flies, which also bite and sting, with a venomous rancor of which I should have thought their frivolity incapable. Besides these, every cupboard and drawer in our rooms is full of moths. Besides these, we have an army of cantankerous fleas quartered upon us. Besides these, we have one particular closet where we keep—our bugs, and where for the most part, I am truly thankful to say, they keep themselves. Besides these, we have two or three ants' nests in our bedroom, and everything we look upon seems but a moving mass of these red, long-legged, but always exemplary insects. These fellow-creatures make one's life not worth much having, and I do nothing all day long but sing the famous entomological chorus in "Faust;" and if this goes on much longer, I feel as if I should take to buzzing. Do you know that it is hard upon three o'clock in the morning? I must leave off and go to bed, for I rehearse Constance to-morrow at eleven, and act her to-morrow night. On Friday I act Bizarre in "The Inconstant," and think I shall find it great fun.... God bless you, dearest H——.

Ever your affectionate

F. A. K.

Mansion House, Philadelphia, October 10, 1832.

Dearest H——,

Do not let the date of this make any alteration in your way of addressing your letters, which must still be "Park Theater, New York;" for before this reaches you we shall probably have returned thither; but I date particularly that you may follow us with your mind's legs, and know where to find us. My dearest H——, in spite of an often heavy heart, and my distaste for my present surroundings, I have reason to be most grateful, and I trust I am so, for the benefits which we have already derived from a visit to this far world beyond the sea. The first and greatest of these is the wonderful improvement in my dear father's health. He looks full ten years younger than when last you saw him, and besides enjoying better spirits from the absence of the many cares and anxieties and vexations that weighed upon him daily in England, he says that he is conscious since he came away of a great increase of absolute muscular strength and vigor; and when he said this, I felt that my share of the unpleasant duty of coming hither was already amply repaid.... We have finished our first engagement at New York, which was for twelve nights, and have every reason to be satisfied with our financial, as well as professional, success. Living here is not as cheap as we had been led to expect, but our earnings are very considerable, and as we labor for these, it is matter of rejoicing that we labor so satisfactorily.

Dall is very well, except the nuisance of a bad cold. I am very well, without exception. The only unpleasant effect I feel from this climate is a constant tendency to slight relaxation of the throat, but this is nothing more than a trifling inconvenience, very endurable, and which probably a little more seasoning will remove.... I tell you of our health first, for at our distance from each other that is the matter of greatest moment and anxiety....

I must tell you of our future arrangements; and, to begin like an Irishwoman, we arrived here on Monday. My father acts to-night for the first time, Hamlet; and I make my first appearance to-morrow in "Fazio." We shall act here for three weeks, and then return to New York for a month; after which we shall proceed to Boston, whence look to receive volumes from me about Webster, and Channing, and our friends and fellow-passengers, the H——s, who reside there.

I like this place better than New York; it has an air of greater age. It has altogether a rather dull, sober, mellow hue, which is more agreeable than the glaring newness of New York. There are one or two fine public buildings, and the quantity of clean, cool-looking white marble which they use both for their public edifices and for the doorsteps of the private houses has a simple and sumptuous appearance, which is pleasant. It is electioneering time, and all last night the streets resounded with cheers and shouts, and shone with bonfires. The present President, Jackson, appears to be far from popular here, and though his own partisans are determined, of course, to re-elect him if possible, a violent struggle is likely to take place; and here already his opponent, Henry Clay, who is the leader of the aristocratic party in the United States, is said to have obtained the superiority over him.

I have got Graham's and Smith's "Histories," and though my time for reading is anything but abundant, yet every night and morning I do contrive, while brushing the outside of my head, to cram something into the inside of it.

I cannot bear to give up any advantage which I once possessed, and therefore struggle to keep up, in some degree, my music and Italian. These, together with rehearsing every morning, and acting four times a week, besides my journal, which I very seldom neglect, make up a good deal of daily occupation. Then, one must sacrifice a certain amount of time to the conventional waste of society, receiving and returning visits, etc.... I like what I have read of Graham very much; the matter is very interesting, and the spirit in which it is treated; and I am deeply in love with Captain John Smith, and wonder greatly at Pocahontas marrying anybody else. I suppose, however, the savage was not without excuse; for Mary Stuart, who knew something of these matters, says, with a rather satirical glance at her cousin of England, "En ces sortes de choses, la plus sage de nous toutes n'est qu'un peu moins sotte que les autres."

I have been to my first rehearsal here to-day; the theater is small, but pretty enough. The public has high pretensions to considerable critical judgment and literary and dramatic taste, and scouts the idea of being led by the opinion of New York.... It is rather tiresome that fools are cut upon the same pattern all the world over. What is the profit of traveling? Oh dear! I think my Fazio has got St. Vitus's dance!...

Yesterday I tried some horses, which were rather terrible quadrupeds. They were not ill-bred cattle to look at, and I should think of a race that, with care and attention, might be brought to considerable perfection; but they are never properly broken for the saddle. The Americans who have spoken to me about riding say that they do not like a horse to have what we consider proper paces, but prefer a shambling sort of half-trot, half-canter, which they judiciously call a rack, and which is the ugliest pace to behold, and the most difficult to endure, possible. They never use a curb, but ride their horses upon the snaffle entirely, dragging it as tight as they can, and having the appearance of holding on for dear life by it; so that the horse, in addition to the awkward gait I have described, throws his head up, and pokes his nose out, and with open jaws "devours the road" before him....

I acted here last night for the first time. Dall and my father say that I received my reception very ungraciously. I am sure I am very sorry, I did not mean to do so, but I really had not the heart or the face to smile and look as pleased and pleasant as I can at a parcel of strangers.... I was not well, or in spirits, and laboring under a severe cold, which I acquired on board the steamboat that brought down the Delaware.... Neither the Raritan nor the Delaware struck me in any way except by their great width. These vast streams naturally suggest the mighty resources which a country so watered presents to the commercial enterprise of its inhabitants. The breadth of these great rivers dwarfs their shores and makes their banks appear flat and uninteresting, though the large lake-like basins into which they occasionally expand are grand from the mere extent and volume of the sweeping mass of waters.

The colors of the autumnal foliage are rich and beautiful beyond imagination—crimson and gold, like a regal mantle, instead of the sad russet cloak of our fading woods. I think, beautiful as this is, that its gorgeousness takes away from the sweet solemnity that makes the fall of the year pre-eminently the season of thoughtful contemplation. Our autumn at home is mellow and harmonious, though sometimes melancholy; but the brilliancy of this decay strikes one sometimes with a sudden sadness, as if the whole world were dying of consumption, with these glittering gleams and hectic flushes, a mere deception of disease and death.... Good-by, my dearest H——

Philadelphia, October 14, 1832.

Dearest H——,

"Boston is a Yankee town, and so is Philadelphy;" considering which, I assure you I find the latter quite a civilized place. The above quotation is from "Yankee-doodle," the National Anthem of the Americans, which I will sing to you some day when I am within hearing.

We have just returned from church. Dall and I being too late this morning for the service, which begins at half-past ten, sallied forth in search of salvation this afternoon, and after wandering about a little, entered a fine-looking church, which we found was a Presbyterian place of worship.... The preaching to-day was extemporaneous, and extremely feeble and commonplace, occasionally reminding me of your eloquent friend at Skerries.... I shall try, on my return to New York, to settle to some work in earnest, as I hope there that we shall repeat the plays we have already acted, and so need no rehearsals.... To-morrow I act Juliet to my father's Romeo; he does it still most beautifully.... In spite of his acting it with his own child (which puts a manifest absurdity on the very face of it), the perfection of his art makes it more youthful, graceful, ardent, and lover-like—a better Romeo, in short, than the youngest pretender to it nowadays. It is certainly simple truth when he says, "I am the youngest of that name, for lack of a better," when the nurse asks for young Romeo.

Wednesday we act "The School for Scandal," and Friday "Venice Preserved." So there's your play-bill....

At this moment a great political excitement pervades the country; it is the time of the Presidential Election, and the most vehement efforts are being made by the Democratic party to maintain the present President, General Jackson, in his post. The majority, I believe, is in his favor, though we are told that the "better classes" (whatever that may mean where no distinctions of class exist) embrace the cause of his opponent, Henry Clay.

It seems curious, if it is true, as we have been assured, that in this one State of Pennsylvania, eight thousand persons out of fifty who have the right of voting were all who in this last election exercised it; so that the much-vaunted privilege of universal suffrage does not seem to be highly prized where it is possessed.

From all the opinions that I hear expressed upon the subject, it does not seem as though the system of election prevalent here works much better, or is much freer from abuses, than the well-vilified one which England has just been reforming. Bribery and corruption are familiar here as elsewhere, to those who have, and those who wish to have, power; and I have not yet heard a single American speak of our Radical reformers without uplifted hands at what they consider their folly in not "letting well alone," or, as they say, in substituting one set of abuses for another, as they declare we shall do if we adopt their vote by ballot system.

I have now written you a philosophical, moral, and political letter, and beg you will score up my attempt to write rationally against the loads of gibberish I have from time to time discoursed to you. Good bless you, dearest H——! Three thousand miles away, I am still

Always your affectionate

F. A. K.

Philadelphia, October 22, 1832.

Dear H——,

My first news is deplorable, and I beg you will lament over it accordingly. I eat little, drink less, rehearse six mornings and act five nights a week; in spite of all which, and riding a heavy-going, jolting, shambling, hard-pulling horse, I have grown so fat that I really cannot perceive that there is any shape in particular about me. Grotesque things sometimes are melancholy too, and it is so with me, for I am both....

My father and Dall are very well; at this moment he is busy saying, and she hearing him say, the part of Fazio, which he is to act with me to-morrow night. I dread it dreadfully; acting anything painful with him always tries my nerves extremely.

Bianca is a part of terrible excitement in itself, without the addition of having to act it to his Fazio. I cannot get rid of his being he, and it agonizes me really to see his sham agony; however, "'tis my vocation, Hal." It is very well that our audiences should look at us as mere puppets, for could they sometimes see the real feelings of those for whose false miseries their sympathies are excited, I believe sufficiently in their humanity to think they would kindly give us leave to leave off and go home. Ours is a very strange trade, and I am sorry to say that every day increases my distaste for it.... I do not think that during my father's life I shall ever leave the stage; it is very selfish to feel regret at this, I know, but it sometimes seems to me rather dreary to look along my future years, and think that they will be devoted to labor that I dislike and despise.... For many years—ever since I entered upon my first girlhood, indeed—a quiet, lonely life upon a small independence has been the aim of my desires and my notion of happiness. Italy and the south of France formerly constantly solicited my imagination, as offering pleasant places wherein to build a solitary nest.... And now a cottage near Edinburgh, with an income of two hundred a year, seems to me the most desirable of earthly possessions; but, though this is certainly not a very wild vision of wealth or magnificence, I fear it is quite as little within my reach as southern palaces, or villas on the Mediterranean.

My father has hitherto been able to lay by nothing, and my assistance is absolutely necessary to him, ... and as long as I can in any way serve my father's interests by remaining in my profession I shall do so, and must naturally look forward to a prolonged period of my present exertions. It is useless pondering upon this, but I have been led to do so lately from a letter which my father received from Mr. Bartley, the stage manager of Covent Garden, the other day, which contained the plan of a new theatrical speculation, in which he is most anxious to engage us. I know not how my father feels upon this subject.... I, however, am well determined that neither Mr. L——'s opinion, nor that of the whole world besides, should induce me to own the value of a truss of straw in any theater. My father's whole life has been given over to trouble and anxiety in consequence of his proprietorship and involvement in that ruinous concern, Covent Garden; and now, when his remaining health and strength will no more than serve to lay up the means of subsistence when health and strength are gone, the idea of his loading himself with such a burden of bitterness as the proprietorship of a new theater makes me perfectly miserable. For my own part, I am determined to own neither part nor lot in any such venture: I will lend or give anything that I may earn to it, and I will act, at half the price I might get elsewhere, for it, if my father wishes me to do so; but not a demonstrable cent per cent profit should induce me to run such a risk of cursing the day that I was born, as to become owner of a theater. I write you all this (and I have written more than enough about it) because it has been lately a subject of much anxious meditation to me. The matter is at present without settled form or plan, but the proposal of such a scheme has caused me deep regret and anxiety.... I am going to act to-morrow in "The Hunchback;" Thursday, Mrs. Beverley; Friday, Lady Townley; Saturday, Juliet; Monday, Julia again; and Tuesday, Bizarre in "The Inconstant;" which ends our engagement here. This is pretty hard work, is it not? besides always one, and sometimes two rehearsals of a morning.

We begin our second engagement in New York on the 7th of November. Don't forget that the 27th of that month is my birthday, and that if you neglect to drink my health, I shall probably die, for want of your good wishes to keep me alive.

We act in Boston on the 3d of December; "further than that the deponent sayeth not."

I told you in my last letter that Philadelphia was the cleanest place in the world. The country along the banks of the Schuylkill (one of the rivers on which it stands; the other is the Delaware) is wild and beautiful, and the glory of the autumn woods what an eye that hath not seen can by no manner of means conceive. I have for the last week had my room full of the most delicious flowers that could only be seen with us at midsummer, and here, in these last days of autumn, they are as abundant and fragrant, and the sun is as intensely hot and brilliant, as it should be, but never is, with us, in the month of July....

Dall went into a Quaker's shop here the other day, when, after waiting upon her with the utmost attention and kindness, the master of the shop said, "And how doth Fanny? I was in hopes she might have wanted something; we should have great pleasure in attending upon her." Was not that nice? So to-day I went thither, and bought myself a lovely sober-colored gown. This place, as you know, is the headquarters of Quakerdom, and all the enchanting nosegays come from "a Philadelphia friend," the latter word dashed under, as if to indicate a member of the religious fraternity always called by that kindly title here....