Records of Later Life Part 23

The thing having, in my opinion, a very probable existence, possibly a physical force of considerable effect, and not thoroughly ascertained or understood nature, the experiments people practised and lent themselves to appeared to me exactly as wise and as becoming as if they had drunk so much brandy or eaten so much opium or hasheesh, by way of trying the effect of these drugs upon their const.i.tution; with this important difference that the magnetic experiments severely tested the nervous system of both patient and operator, and had, besides, an indefinite element of moral importance, in the attempted control of one human will by another, through physical means, which appeared to me to place all such experiments at once among things forbidden to rational and responsible agents.

I am now speaking only of the early developments of physical phenomena exhibited by the first magnetizers and mesmerizers--the conjurers by pa.s.ses and somnolence and other purely physical processes; the crazy and idiotic performances of their successors, the so-called spiritualists, with their grotesque and disgusting pretence of intercourse with the spirits of the dead through the legs of their tables and chairs, seemed to me the most melancholy testimony to an utter want of faith in things spiritual, of belief in G.o.d and Christ's teaching, and a pitiful craving for such a faith, as well as to the absence of all rational common sense, in the vast numbers of persons deluded by such processes. In this aspect (the total absence of right reason and real religion demonstrated by these ludicrous and blasphemous juggleries in our Christian communities), that which was farcical in the lowest degree became tragical in the highest. I only witnessed this one mesmeric exhibition, on the occasion of this visit paid to us by Mr. Townsend and Alexis, until several years afterwards, in the house of my excellent friend Mr. Combe, in Edinburgh, when I was one of a party called upon to witness some experiments of the same kind. I was staying with Mr. Combe and my cousin Cecilia, when one evening their friend Mrs. Crow, auth.o.r.ess of more than one book, I believe, and of a collection of supernatural horrors, of stories of ghosts, apparitions, etc., etc., called "The Night Side of Nature" (the lady had an evident sympathy for the absurd and awful), came, bringing with her a Dr. Lewis, a negro gentleman, who was creating great excitement in Edinburgh by his advocacy of the theories of mesmerism, and his own powers of magnetizing. Mrs. Crow had threatened Mr. and Mrs. Combe with a visit from this _professor_, and though neither of them had the slightest tendency to belief in any such powers as those Dr. Lewis laid claim to, they received him with kindly courtesy, and consented, with the amused indifference of scepticism, to be spectators of his experiments. Under these circ.u.mstances, great as was my antipathy to the whole thing, I did not like to raise any objection to it or to leave the room, which would have been a still more marked expression of my feeling; so I sat down with the rest of the company round the drawing-room table, Mr. and Mrs. Combe, Dr. Lewis, Mrs. Crow, our friend Professor William Gregory, and Dr. Becker--the latter gentleman a man of science, brother, I think, to Prince Albert's private librarian--who was to be the subject of Dr. Lewis's experiments, having already lent himself for the same purpose to that gentleman, and been p.r.o.nounced highly sensitive to the magnetic influence.

I sat by Dr. Becker, and opposite to Dr. Lewis, with the width of the table between us. What ulterior processes were to be exhibited I do not know, but the first result to be obtained was to throw Dr.

Becker into a mesmeric state of somnolence, under the influence of the operator. The latter presently began his experiment, and, drawing entirely from his coat and s.h.i.+rt sleeve a long, lithe, black hand, the finger-tips of which were of that pale livid tinge so common in the hands of negroes, he directed it across the table towards Dr. Becker, and began slowly making pa.s.ses at him. We were all profoundly still and silent, and, in spite of my disgust, I watched the whole scene with considerable interest. By degrees the pa.s.ses became more rapid, and the hand was stretched nearer and nearer towards its victim, waving and quivering like some black snake, while the face of the operator a.s.sumed an expression of the most concentrated powerful purpose, which, combined with his sable color and the vehement imperative gestures which he aimed at Dr.

Becker, really produced a quasi-diabolical effect. The result, however, was not immediate. Dr. Becker was apparently less susceptible this evening than on previous occasions; but Dr. Lewis renewed and repeated his efforts, each time with a nearer approach and increased vehemence, and at length his patient's eyelids began to quiver, he gasped painfully for breath, and was evidently becoming overpowered by the influence to which he had subjected himself; when, after a few seconds of the most intense efforts on the part of Dr. Lewis, these symptoms pa.s.sed off, and the mesmerizer, with much appearance of exhaustion, declared himself, for some reason or other, unable to produce the desired effect (necessary for the subsequent exhibition of his powers) of compelling Dr. Becker into a state of somnolency--a thing which he had not failed to accomplish on every previous occasion. The trial had to be given up, and much speculation and discussion followed as to the probable cause of the failure, for which neither the magnetizer nor his patient could account. Believing in this strange action of nervous power in one person over another, I am persuaded that I prevented Dr. Lewis's experiment from succeeding. The whole exhibition had from the very beginning aroused in me such a feeling of antagonism, such a mingled horror, disgust, and indignation, that, when my neighbor appeared about to succ.u.mb to the influence operating upon him, my whole nature was roused to such a state of active opposition to the process I was witnessing that I determined, if there was power in human will to make itself felt by mere silent concentrated effort of purpose, I would prevent Dr. Lewis from accomplis.h.i.+ng his end; and it seemed to me, as I looked at him, as if my whole being had become absorbed in my determination to defeat his endeavor to set Dr. Becker to sleep. The nervous tension I experienced is hardly to be described, and I firmly believe that I accomplished my purpose. I was too much exhausted, after we left the table, to speak, and too disagreeably affected by the whole scene to wish to do so.

The next day I told Mr. Combe of my counter-magnetizing, or rather neutralizing, experiment, by which he was greatly amused; but I do not think he cared to enter upon any investigation of the subject, feeling little interested in it, and having been rather surprised into this exhibition of it by Mrs. Crow's bringing Dr. Lewis to his house. That lady being undoubtedly an admirable subject for all such experiments, having what my dear Mr. Combe qualified as "a most preposterous organ of wonder," for which, poor woman, I suppose she paid the penalty in a terrible nervous seizure, a fit of temporary insanity, during which she imagined that she received a visit from the Virgin Mary and our Saviour, both of whom commanded her to go without any clothes on into the streets of Edinburgh, and walk a certain distance in that condition, in reward for which the sins and sufferings of the whole world would be immediately alleviated. Upon her demurring to fulfil this mandate, she received the further a.s.surance that if she took her card-case in her right hand and her pocket-handkerchief in her left, her condition of nudity would be entirely un.o.bserved by any one she met. Under the influence of her diseased fancy, Mrs. Crow accordingly went forth, with nothing on but a pair of boots, and being immediately rescued from the terrible condition of mad exposure, in which she had already made a few paces in the street where she lived, and carried back into her house, she exclaimed, "Oh, I must have taken my card-case and my handkerchief in the wrong hands, otherwise n.o.body would have seen me!" She recovered entirely from this curious attack of hallucination, and I met her in society afterwards, perfectly restored to her senses.

On one occasion I allowed myself to be persuaded into testing my own powers of mesmerizing, by throwing a young friend into a magnetic sleep. I succeeded with considerable difficulty, and the next day experienced great nervous exhaustion, which, I think, was the consequence of her having, as she a.s.sured me she had, resisted with the utmost effort of her will my endeavor to put her to sleep. As I disapproved, however, of all such experiments, this is the only one I ever tried.

My belief in the reality of the influence was a good deal derived from my own experience, which was that of an invariable tendency to sleep in the proximity of certain persons of whom I was particularly fond. I used to sit at Mrs. Harry Siddons's feet, and she had hardly laid her hand upon my head before it fell upon her knees, and I was in a profound slumber. My friend Miss ----'s neighborhood had the same effect upon me, and when we were not engaged in furious discussion, I was very apt to be fast asleep whenever I was near her. E---- S---- relieved me of an intense toothache once by putting me to sleep with a few mesmeric pa.s.ses, and I have, moreover, more than once, immediately after violent nervous excitement, been so overcome with drowsiness as to be unable to move. I remember a most ludicrous instance of this occurring to me in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon, when, standing before Shakespeare's tomb, and looking intensely at his monument, I became so overpowered with sleep that I could hardly rouse myself enough to leave the church, and I begged very hard to be allowed to sleep out my sleep, then and there, upon the stones under which he lay.

After extreme distress of mind, I have sometimes slept a whole day and night without waking; and once, when overcome with anguish, slept, with hardly an hour's interval at a time, the greater part of a week. The drowsiness inspired in me by some of my friends I attribute entirely to physical sympathy; others, of whom I was nearly as fond, never affected me in this manner in the slightest degree. I have often congratulated myself upon the fact that I had by no means an equal tendency to physical antipathy, though, in common with most other people, I have had some experience of that also. My very dear and excellent friend ---- always _m'agacait les nerfs_, as French people say, though I was deeply attached to her and very fond of her society. Mrs. ----, of whose excellence I had the most profound conviction, and who was generally esteemed perfectly charming by her intimates, affected me with such a curious intuitive revulsion that the first time she came and sat down by me I was obliged to get up and leave the room--indeed, the house. Two men of our acquaintance, remarkable for their general attractiveness and powers of pleasing, ---- and ----, were never in the same room ten minutes with me without my becoming perfectly chilled through, as though I had suddenly had the door of an ice-house opened upon me. They were entirely dissimilar men in every respect....

Of the spiritualistic performances of Messrs. Hume, Foster, etc., etc., I never was a witness. An intimate acquaintance of mine, who knew Hume well, a.s.sured me that she knew him to be an impostor, adding at the same time, "But I also know him to be clairvoyant,"

which seemed to me mere tautology.

My sister and Charles Greville, having had their curiosity excited by some of the reports of Mr. Foster's performances, agreed to go together to visit him, and having received an appointment for a _seance_, went to his house. Certainly, if Mr. Foster had taken in either of those two customers of his, it would have gone near converting me. Charles Greville, who was deaf, and spoke rather loud in consequence of that infirmity, said, as he entered, to my sister, "I shall ask him about my mother." Adelaide, quite determined to test the magician's powers to the utmost, replied, with an air of concern, as if shocked at the idea, "Oh, no, don't do that; it is too dreadful." However, this suggestion of course not being thrown away upon Mr. Foster, Charles Greville desired to be put in communication with the spirit of his mother, which was accordingly duly done by the operator, and various messages were delivered, as purporting to come from the spirit of Lady Charlotte Greville to her son. After this farce had gone on for a little while, Charles Greville turned to my sister with perfect composure, and said, "Well, now perhaps you had better ask him to tell you something about your mother, because, you know, mine is not dead." The _seance_ of course proceeded no further. At an earlier period of it, as they were sitting round a table, Mr. Foster desired that written names might be furnished him of the persons with whose spirits communication might be desired. Among the names written down for this purpose by my sister were several foreign, Italian and German, names, with which she felt very sure Mr. Foster could not possibly have any acquaintance; indeed, it was beyond all question that he never could have heard of them. Adelaide was sitting next to him, watching his operations with extreme attention, and presently observed him very dexterously convey several of these foreign names into his sleeve, and from thence to the ground under the table.

After a little while, Mr. Foster observed that, singularly enough, several of the names he had received were now missing, and by some extraordinary means had disappeared entirely from among the rest.

"Oh yes," said my sister very quietly, "but they are only under the table, just where you put them a little while ago." With such subjects of course Mr. Foster performed no miracles.

Some years ago a new form of these objectionable practices came into vogue, and one summer, going up into Ma.s.sachusetts, I found the two little mountain villages of Lenox and Stockbridge possessed, in the proper sense of the term, by a devil of their own making, called "Planchette." A little heart-shaped piece of wood, running upon castors, and that could almost be moved with a breath, and carrying along a sheet of paper, over which it was placed, a pencil was supposed to write, on its own inspiration, communications in reply to the person's thoughts whose finger-tips were to rest above, without giving any impulse to the board. Of course a hand held in this constrained att.i.tude is presently compelled to rest itself by some slight pressure; the effort to steady it, and the nervous effort not to press upon the machine, producing inevitably in the wrist aching weariness, and in the fingers every conceivable tendency to nervous twitching. Add to this the intense conviction of the foolish folk, half of them hysterical women, that their concentrated effort of will was, in combination with a mysterious supernatural agency, to move the board; and the board naturally not only moved but, carrying the pencil along with it, wrote the answers required and desired by the credulous consulters of the wooden oracle.

The thing would have been indescribably ludicrous but for the terrible effect it was having upon the poor people who were practising upon themselves with it. Excitable young girls of fifteen and sixteen, half hysterical with their wonderment; ignorant, afflicted women, who had lost dear relations and friends by death; superst.i.tious lads, and men too incapable of consecutive reasoning to perceive the necessary connection between cause and effect; the whole community, in short, seemed to me catching the credulous infection one from another, and to be in a state bordering upon insanity or idiocy.

A young lady-friend of mine, a miserable invalid, was so possessed with faith in this wooden demon that, after resisting repeated entreaties on her part to witness some of its performances, I at length, at her earnest request, saw her operate upon it. The writing was almost unintelligible, and undoubtedly produced by the vibrating impulse given to the machine by her nervous, feeble, diaphanous hands. Finding my scepticism invincible by these means, my friend implored me to think in my own mind a question, and see if Planchette would not answer it. I yielded at last to her all but hysterical importunity, and thought of an heraldic question concerning the crest on a ring which I wore, which I felt was quite beyond Planchette's penetration; but while we sat in quiet expectation of the reply, which of course did not come, my friend's mother--a sober, middle-aged lady, habitually behaving herself with perfect reasonableness, and, moreover, without a spark of imagination (but that, indeed, was rather of course; belief in such supernatural agencies betokening, in my opinion, an absence of poetical imagination, as well as of spiritual faith), practical, sensible, commonplace, without a touch of nonsense of any kind about her, as I had always supposed--sat opposite the _machine infernale_, over which her daughter's fingers hung suspended, and as the answer did not come, broke out for all the world like one of Baal's prophets of old: "Now, Planchette, now, Planchette, behave; do your duty. Now, Planchette, write at once," etc.; and I felt as if I were in Bedlam. One thing is certain, that if Planchette's answer had approached in the remotest degree the answer to the question of my thought, I would then and there have broken Planchette in half, and left my friends in the possession of their remaining brains until they had procured another.

The strangest experience, however, that I met with in connection with this absurd delusion occurred during a visit that I received from Mrs. B---- S----. That lady was staying with her daughter in Stockbridge, and did me the honor to call on me at Lenox with that young lady. Among other things spoken of I asked my distinguished visitor some questions about this superst.i.tious folly, Planchette, nothing doubting that I should hear from her an eloquent condemnation of all the absurd proceedings going on in the two villages. The lady's face a.s.sumed a decided expression of grave disapprobation, certainly, and she spoke to this effect: "Planchette! Oh dear, yes, we are perfectly familiar with Planchette, and, indeed, have been in the habit of consulting it quite often." "Oh, indeed," quoth I, and I felt my own face growing longer with amazement as I spoke. "Yes," continued my celebrated visitor, with much deliberation, "we have; but I think it will no longer be possible for us to do so. No, we must certainly give up having anything to do with it." "Dear me!" said I, almost breathless, and with a queer quaver in my voice, that I could hardly command, "may I ask why, pray?" "The language it uses----"

"It!--the language _it_ uses!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed I. "Yes," she pursued, with increasing solemnity, "the language it uses is so reprehensible that it will be quite impossible for us to consult or have anything further to do with it." "Really," said I, hardly able to utter for suppressed laughter; "and may I ask, may I inquire what language it does use?" "Why," returned Mrs. S----, with some decorous hesitation and reluctance to utter the words that followed, "the last time we consulted it, it told us we were all a pack of d.a.m.ned fools." "Oh!"

exploded I, "I believe in Planchette, I believe in Planchette!" Mrs.

S---- drew herself up with an air of such offended surprise at my burst of irrepressible merriment that I suddenly stopped, and letting what was boiling below my laughter come to the surface, I exclaimed, in language far more shocking to ears polite than Planchette's own: "And do you really think that Satan, the great devil of h.e.l.l, in whom you believe, is amusing himself with telling you such truths as those, through a bit of board on wheels?"

"Really," replied the woman of genius, in a tone of lofty dignity, "I cannot pretend to say whether or not it is _the_ devil; of one thing I am very certain, the influence by which it speaks is undoubtedly devilish." I turned in boundless amazement to the younger lady, whose mischievous countenance, with a broad grin upon it, at once settled all my doubts as to the devilish influence under which Planchette had spoken such home truths to her family circle, and I let the subject drop, remaining much astonished, as I often am, at the degree to which _les gens d'esprit sont betes_.

I once attended some young friends to a lecture, as it called itself, upon electro-biology. It was tedious, stupid, and ridiculous; the only thing that struck me was the curious condition of bewildered imbecility into which two or three young men, who presented themselves to be operated upon, fell, under the influence of the lecturer. I had reason to believe that there was no collusion in the case, and therefore was surprised at the evident state of stupor and mental confusion (even to the not being able to p.r.o.nounce their own name) which they exhibited when, after looking intently and without moving at a coin placed in their hand for some time, their faculties appeared entirely bewildered, and though they were not asleep, they seemed hardly conscious, and opposed not the slightest resistance to the orders they received to sit down, stand up, to try to remember their names,--which they were a.s.sured they could not, and did not,--and their general submission, of course in very trifling matters, to the sort of bullying directions addressed to them in a loud peremptory tone; to which they replied with the sort of stupefied languor of persons half asleep or under the influence of opium. I did not quite understand how they were thrown into this curious condition by the mere a.s.sumption of an immovable att.i.tude and fixed gazing at a piece of coin; an experience of my own, however, subsequently enlightened me as to the possible nervous effect of such immobility and strained attention.

My friend Sir Frederick Leighton, despairing of finding a model to a.s.sume a sufficiently dramatic expression of wickedness for a picture he was painting of Jezebel, was deploring his difficulty one day, when Henry Greville, who was standing by, said to him, "Why don't you ask her"--pointing to me--"to do it for you?" Leighton expressed some kindly reluctance to put my countenance to such a use; but I had not the slightest objection to stand for Jezebel, if by so doing I could help him out of his dilemma. So to his studio I went, ascended his platform, and having been duly placed in the att.i.tude required, and instructed on what precise point of the wall opposite to me to fix my eyes, I fell to thinking of the scene the picture represented, of the meeting between Ahab and his wicked queen with Elijah on the threshold of Naboth's vineyard, endeavoring, after my old stage fas.h.i.+on, to a.s.sume as thoroughly as possible the character which I was representing. Before I had retained the constrained att.i.tude and fixed immovable gaze for more than a short time, my eyes grew dim, the wall I was glaring at seemed to waver about before me, I turned sick, a cold perspiration broke out on my forehead, my ears buzzed, my knees trembled, my heart throbbed, and I suppose I was not far from a fainting fit. I sat abruptly down on the platform, and called my friendly artist to my a.s.sistance, describing to him my sensations, and asking if he could explain what had occasioned them. He expressed remorseful distress at having subjected me to such annoyance, saying, however, that my condition was not an uncommon one for painters' models to be thrown into by the nervous strain of the fixed look and attention, and rigid immobility of position, required of them; that he had known men succ.u.mb to it on a first experiment, but had thought me so strong, and so little liable to any purely nervous affection, that it had never occurred to him for a moment that there was any danger of my being thus overcome.

I recovered almost immediately, the nervous strain being taken off, and resumed my duty as a model, taking care to vary my expression and att.i.tude whenever I felt at all weary, and resting myself by sitting down and lending another aspect of my face to my friend for his Elijah.

I found, after this experience, no difficulty in understanding the state of bewildered stupefaction into which the lecturer on electro-biology had thrown his patients by demanding of them a fixed attention of mind, look, and att.i.tude to a given point of contemplation. I think, just before I quite broke down, I could neither have said where I was, nor who I was, nor contradicted Sir Frederick Leighton if he had a.s.sured me that my name was Polly and that I was putting the kettle on.]

CLARGES STREET, June, 1844.

DEAREST HARRIET,

I have not a morsel of letter-paper in my writing-book; do not, therefore, let your first glance take offence at the poor narrow note-paper, on which our dear friend Emily is forever writing to me, and which throws me into a small fury every time I get an affectionate communication from her on it. Our drawing-room has only this instant emptied itself of a throng of morning visitors, among whom my brother John and his wife, Mary Anne Thackeray, d.i.c.k Pigott, Sydney Smith, and A---- C----....

My letter has suffered an interruption, dear Harriet; I had to go out and return all manner of visits, took a walk with Adelaide in Kensington Gardens, went and dined quietly with M---- M----, and came back at half-past ten, to find Mr. C---- very quietly established here with my father and sister....

This is to-morrow, my dear Harriet, and we are all engaged sitting to Lane, who is making medallion likenesses of us all. John and his wife together in one sphere, their two little children in another, ---- and I in one eternity, and our chicks in another, their two little profiles looking so funny and so pretty, one just behind the other; my father, my sister, and Henry have each their world to themselves in single blessedness. The likenesses are all good, and charmingly executed. I should like to be able to send you mine and my children's, but as he will accept no remuneration for them, and as time and trouble are the daily bread of an artist----

Here I was interrupted again, and obliged to put by my letter, which was begun last Thursday, and it is now Sunday afternoon. Our drawing-room has just emptied itself of A---- M---- and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Grote, Mr. H----, young Mr. K---- of Frankfort, and Chorley. Mrs. Grote brought with her f.a.n.n.y Ellsler's little girl, a lovely child about seven years old....

I must tell you something of our event of yesterday. A concert was given for the benefit of the Poles, the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland condescending to lend Stafford House, provided the a.s.semblage was quite select and limited to four hundred people; to accomplish which desirable point, and at the same time make the thing answer its charitable purpose, the tickets were sold at first at two guineas apiece, and on the morning itself of the concert at five guineas. Rachel was to recite, Liszt to play, and my sister was requested to sing, which she agreed to do, the occasion being semi-public and private, so to speak. A large a.s.sembly of our finest (and bluntest) people was not a bad audience, in a worldly sense, for her _debut_. She sang beautifully, and looked beautiful, and was extremely admired and praised and petted.

The whole scene was one of the gayest and most splendid possible, the entertainment and a.s.sembly taking place in the great hall and staircase of Stafford House, with its scarlet floor-cloths, and marble stairs and bal.u.s.trades, and pillars of scagliola, and fretted roof of gold and white, and skylight surrounded and supported by gigantic gilt caryatides.

The wide n.o.ble flights of steps and long broad galleries, filled with brilliantly dressed groups; with the sunlight raining down in streams on the panels and pillars of the magnificent hall, on the beautiful faces of the women, and the soft sheen and brilliant varied coloring of their clothes, and on perfect ma.s.ses of flowers, piled in great pyramids of every form and hue in every niche and corner, or single plants covered with an exquisite profusion of perfect bloom, standing here and there in great precious china vases stolen from the Arabian Nights; it really was one of the grandest and gayest shows you can imagine, more beautiful than Paul Veronese's most splendid pictures, which it reminded one of.

My sister's singing overcame me dreadfully....

I must close this letter, my dear; my head is in such a state of confusion that I scarcely know what I write; and if I keep it longer, you will never get it.

Yours ever truly----

(I don't know what I am saying; I love you affectionately, but I am almost beside myself with--everything.)

Yours ever, f.a.n.n.y.

CLARGES STREET, Sunday, June 20th, 1841.

You know, dearest Harriet, my aversion to writing short letters; I have something of the same feeling about that hateful little note-paper on which I have lately written to you. The sight of these fair large squares laid on my table, and of at least six unanswered letters of yours, prompts me to use this quiet half-hour--quiet by comparison only, for ----, Adelaide, and little F---- are shouting all round me, and a distracting bra.s.s band, that I dote upon, is playing tunes to which I am literally writing in time; nevertheless, in this house, this may be called a moment of profoundest quiet.

I do not believe that you will have quarrelled much with the note-paper, because I certainly filled it as well as I could; but I always feel insulted when anybody that I really care for writes to me on those frivolous, insufficient-looking sheets. I suppose, if you have missed Emily's Boswellian records of our sayings and doings here, you have received from her instead epistles redolent of the sweetness of the country, whole nosegays of words, that have made me gasp again for the gra.s.s and trees, and the natural enjoyments of life. Her affectionate remembrance reaches me every day by penny post, a little envelope full of delicious orange-blossoms, with which my clothes and everything about me are perfumed for the rest of the day.

You have not said much to me about the daguerreotype, nor did you ask me anything about the process; but that, I suppose, is because Emily furnished you with so many more details than I probably should, and with much more scientific knowledge to make her description clear. I found it better looking than I had expected, but altogether different, which surprised me, because I thought I knew my own face. It was less thick in the outlines than I had thought it would be, but also older looking than I fancied myself, and it gave me a heavy jaw, which I was not conscious of possessing. The process was wonderfully rapid; I think certainly not above two minutes. I have seen several of Charles Young, which are admirable, and do not appear to me exaggerated in any respect....

My father and Adelaide dined with the Macdonalds on Sunday; and Sir John, who, you know, is adjutant-general, made her a kind of half promise that he would give Henry leave to come over from Ireland and see her.

I believe the first time that S---- heard her aunt sing was one night after she was in bed (she sleeps in my room, where one does not lose a note of the music below). When I went up, I found her wide awake, and she started up in her bed, exclaiming, "Well, how many angels have you got down there, I should like to know?"

I wrote thus much this morning, dear Harriet; this evening I have another quiet season in which to resume my pen.... I have been obliged to give up my dinner engagement for to-day, and I sat down by the failing light of half-past seven o'clock to eat a cold dinner alone, with a book in my hand: which combination of circ.u.mstances reminded me so forcibly of my American home, that I could hardly make out whether I was here or there.

So far yesterday, Thursday evening; it is now Friday morning. Adelaide has gone out with Mary Anne Thackeray to buy cheap gowns at a bankrupt shop in Regent Street; the piano is silent, and I can hear myself think, and have some consciousness of what I am writing about....

Dearest Harriet, it is now Sunday morning; there is a most stupendous row at the pianoforte, and, luckily, there is no more s.p.a.ce in this paper for my addled brains to testify to the effect of this musical tempest. G.o.d bless you.

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

CLARGES STREET, Wednesday, June 23rd, 1841.

MY DEAREST HARRIET,

You asked me some time ago some questions about Rachel, which I never answered, in the first place because I had not seen her then, and since I have seen her I have had other things I wanted to say. Everybody here is now raving about her. I have only seen her once on the stage, and heard her declaim at Stafford House, the morning of the concert for the Poles. Her appearance is very striking: she is of a very good height; too thin for beauty, but not for dignity or grace; her want of chest and breadth indeed almost suggest a tendency to pulmonary disease, coupled with her pallor and her youth (she is only just twenty). Her voice is the most remarkable of her natural qualifications for her vocation, being the deepest and most sonorous voice I ever heard from a woman's lips: it wants brilliancy, variety, and tenderness; but it is like a fine, deep-toned bell, and expresses admirably the pa.s.sions in the delineation of which she excels--scorn, hatred, revenge, vitriolic irony, concentrated rage, seething jealousy, and a fierce love which seems in its excess allied to all the evil which sometimes springs from that bittersweet root. [I shall never forget the first time I ever heard Mademoiselle Rachel speak. I was acting my old part of Julia, in "The Hunchback," at Lady Ellesmere's, where the play was got up for an audience of her friends, and for her especial gratification. The room was darkened, with the exception of our stage, and I had no means of discriminating anybody among my audience, which was, as became an a.s.sembly of such distinguished persons, decorously quiet and undemonstrative. But in one of the scenes, where the foolish heroine, in the midst of her vulgar triumph at the Earl of Rochdale's proposal, is suddenly overcome by the remorseful recollection of her love for Clifford, and almost lets the earl's letter fall from her trembling hands, I heard a voice out of the darkness, and it appeared to me almost close to my feet, exclaiming, in a tone the vibrating depth of which I shall never forget, "_Ah, bien, bien, tres bien!_"] Mademoiselle Rachel's face is very expressive and dramatically fine, though not absolutely beautiful. It is a long oval, with a head of cla.s.sical and very graceful contour; the forehead rather narrow and not very high; the eyes small, dark, deep-set, and terribly powerful; the brow straight, n.o.ble, and fine in form, though not very flexible.

I was immensely struck and carried away with her performance of "Hermione," though I am not sure that some of the parts did not seem to me finer than the whole, as a whole conception. That in which she is unrivalled by any actor or actress I ever saw is the expression of a certain combined and concentrated hatred and scorn. Her reply to Andromaque's appeal to her, in that play, was one of the most perfect things I have ever seen on the stage: the cold, cruel, acrid enjoyment of her rival's humiliation,--the quiet, bitter, unmerciful exercise of the power of torture, was certainly, in its keen incisiveness, quite incomparable. It is singular that so young a woman should so especially excel in delineations and expressions of this order of emotion, while in the utterance of tenderness, whether in love or sorrow, she appears comparatively less successful; I am not, however, perhaps competent to p.r.o.nounce upon this point, for Hermione and Emilie, in Corneille's "Cinna," are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M---- saw her the other day in "Marie Stuart," and cried her eyes almost out, so she must have some pathetic power. ---- was so enchanted with her, both on and off the stage, that he took me to call upon her, on her arrival in London, and I was very much pleased with the quiet grace and dignity, the excellent _bon ton_ of her manners and deportment. The other morning too, at Stafford House, I was extremely overcome at my sister's first public exhibition in England, and was endeavoring, while I screened myself behind a pillar, to hide my emotion and talk with some composure to Rachel; she saw, however, how it was with me, and with great kindness allowed me to go into a room that had been appropriated to her use between her declamations, and was very amiable and courteous to me.

She is completely the rage in London now; all the fine ladies and gentlemen crazy after her, the Queen throwing her roses on the stage out of her own bouquet, and viscountesses and marchionesses driving her about, _a l'envie l'une de l'autre_, to show her all the lions of the town. She is miserably supported on the stage, poor thing, the _corps dramatique_ engaged to act with her being not only bad, but some of them (the princ.i.p.al hero, princ.i.p.ally) irresistibly ludicrous.