Records of Later Life Part 35

We went the other night to see "As You Like It" at Drury Lane. It was _painfully_ acted, but the scenery, etc., were charming; and though we had neither the caustic humor nor poetical melancholy of Jacques, nor the brilliant wit and despotical fancifulness of the princess shepherd-boy duly given, we _had_ the warbling of birds, and sheep-bells tinkling in the distance, to comfort us. I hope it is not profanation to say, "These should ye have done, and not have left the others undone."

Nevertheless, and in spite of all, the enchantment of Shakespeare's inventions is such to me that they cannot be marred, let what will be done to them. As long as those words of profoundest wisdom and those images of exquisite beauty are but uttered, their own perfection swallows up all other considerations and impressions with me, and I bear indifferent and even bad acting of Shakespeare better than most people.

Why did you not make _him_, instead of the stage, the subject of our discussions together? For his works my enthusiasm grows every year of my life into a profounder and more wondering love and admiration.

I am grateful for Lord Dacre's offer, though it was not made to me; and, had it been so, should have closed with it eagerly. To correspond with one who has seen and known and _thought_ so much is a rare privilege.

Good-bye, dear Granny. Give my love to the girls, and my "duty" to my lord, and believe me

Your affectionate f.a.n.n.y BUTLER.

HARLEY STREET, Friday, 23rd, 1842.

MY DEAR GRANNY,

That last half-hour before we got off from "The Hoo" the other day was a severe trial to my self-command; but I was anxious not to afflict you, and I was willing, if possible, to begin the bitter series of partings, of which the next month will be one succession, with something like fort.i.tude, however I may end it. Thank you for writing to me, and thank you for all your kindness to me through these many years, now that you have _persevered_ in being fond of me....

Do not be anxious about my happiness, my dear friend, but pray for me, that I maybe enabled to do what is right under all circ.u.mstances; and then it cannot fail to be well with me, whether to outward observation I am what the world calls happy or not.

Give my affectionate love to Lord Dacre, and thank him for all his goodness to me and mine. I send my blessing to the girls. I have written to B----. G.o.d bless you all, my kind friends, and make life and its vicissitudes minister to your happiness hereafter.

You will hear of me, dear Granny, for the girls will write to me, and I shall answer them, and you will remember, whenever you think of me, how gratefully and affectionately I must

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

[Lady Dacre saw much trouble in store for me in my intemperate expression of feeling on the subject of slavery in America, and repeatedly warned me with affectionate solicitude to moderate, if not my opinions, the vehement proclamation of them. She was wise and right, as well as kind in her advice.]

[Extract from a letter of Miss Sedgwick's.]

STOCKBRIDGE, October 26th, 1842.

You have no doubt heard and lamented the death of our dear friend, Dr.

Channing. Dead he is not; he lives, and will live in the widespreading life he has communicated. He pa.s.sed the summer at Lenox, occupying with his family your rooms at the hotel. We pa.s.sed some hours of every day together. He enjoyed our lovely hill country with the freshness of youth, his health was invigorated, and his mind freer, and his spirits more buoyant than I ever knew them; he endured more fatigue than he had been able to encounter since he travelled in Switzerland fifteen years ago. His affectionateness, purity, simplicity--a simplicity so perfect that it seemed divine--surrounded his greatness with an atmosphere of light and beauty. His life has been a most prosperous one, no storms without, and a heavenly calm within. His last work in his office was a discourse which he delivered in our village church on the 1st of August, on the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves in the British West Indies. I shall send it to you, and pray mark the prophetic invocation with which it concludes. You should have seen the inspired expression of his intellectual brow, and the earnest, spiritual look that seemed to penetrate the clouds that hang over the eternal world and to reflect its light. On the Sundays of his sojourn with us he had domestic wors.h.i.+p in our houses, and his last service was in that apartment where his beloved friend Follen officiated....

Eliza Follen is recovering the elasticity of her mind. Time can, I think, do all things, since it has dissipated that horrible image of the burning steamer in which her husband perished, that was ever before her.

She is publis.h.i.+ng his Memoirs, and, among other things, she read me some patriotic songs which he wrote in Sand's time in Germany; they were in the boldest tone of insurrection, and were, of course, proscribed and suppressed. She had heard her husband occasionally hum a stanza or two of them, and he had once written out a single one for her which she found in her work-basket. This she transmitted to his mother in Germany, and with this clue alone the mother obtained the rest; and eloquent outbreakings they are of a spirit glowing with freedom and humanity....

I have pa.s.sed lately a day at our State Lunatic Asylum. On my first going there, in the evening the physician invited me into the dancing-hall, where some sixty of the patients were a.s.sembled. The two musicians were patients, one utterly _demented_, incapable of any reasonable act except playing a tune on his violin, which he did with accuracy. Except the doctor's children (as beautiful as cherubs, and ministering angels they are), there were no sane persons among the dancers. "There," said the physician, "is a homicide; there, a poor girl who went crazy the day after her brother drowned himself, and who fancies herself that brother; there, the King of England," etc. They were all dancing with the utmost decorum and regularity. They attend chapel on a Sunday without disturbance; they were all (among them maniacs who had been for half a score of years chained in dungeons of our common gaols) "clothed," and, if "not in their right mind,"

comfortable and cheerful; they _all_ had plants in their rooms and books on their tables. Much depends on individual character, and the physician is, as you would expect, a man of the highest moral power, and the very embodiment of the spirit of benevolence, and if poetry and painting had laid their heads together to give him a fitting form, they could have done nothing better than nature has. My heart was ready to burst with grat.i.tude. Who can say the world does not move some forward steps?

CLARENDON HOTEL, November 6th, 1842.

DEAR GRANNY,

You know that it is now determined that we do not sail by the next steamer....

Dearest Granny, do not you, any more than I do, reckon which love is best worth having, of young or old love; for all love is _inestimable_, and should be gratefully rendered thanks for. There is something charming and _pathetic_ in the _profusion_ with which the young love; it is touching, as one of the magnificent superabundances, one of the generous extravagances, of their prodigal time of life. But the love of the old is as precious as the beggared widow's mite; and in bestowing it they know what they give, from a store that day by day diminishes. The affections of the young are as sudden and soft, as bright and bounteous, as copious and capricious as the showers of spring; the love of the old is the one drop in the cruse, which outlasts the journey through the desert.

You may perhaps see in the papers a statement of the disastrous winding up of the season at Covent Garden, or rather its still more disastrous abrupt termination. After our all protesting and remonstrating with all our might against my father's again being involved in that Heaven-forsaken concern, and receiving the most positive and solemn a.s.surances from those who advised him into it for the sake of having his name at the head of it that _no_ responsibility or liability whatever should rest upon or be incurred by him; and that if the thing did not turn out prosperously, it should be put an end to, and the theatre immediately closed;--they have gone on, in spite of night after night of receipts below the expenses, and now are obliged suddenly to shut up shop, my poor father being, as it turns out, personally involved for a considerable sum.

This, as you will well believe, is no medicine for his malady. I spend every evening with him, and generally see him in the morning besides.

These last few days he suffers less acute pain, but complains more of debility, and hardly leaves his sofa, where he lies silent, with his eyes closed, apparently absorbed in painful sensations and reflections.

Yet, though he neither speaks to nor looks at me, he likes to have me there; and, as Horace Twiss said, "to hear the scissors fall" now and then, by way of companions.h.i.+p; and certainly derives some comfort from the mere consciousness of my presence.

My sister has gone to Brighton for a few days, her health having quite given way, what with hard work and harder worry. She returns on Monday, but it is extremely doubtful whether she will resume her performances at all, so that I fear the expectations of the clan Cavendish will be disappointed.

She did act most charmingly in the "Matrimonio Segreto." In point of fact, her comic acting is more perfect than her tragic, although there are not in it, and naturally cannot be, the same striking exhibitions of dramatic power; but it is smoother, more even, better finished.

You must get Lady Callcott's "Scripture Herbal." Lady Grey lent it me, and I read it with great pleasure. It is an interesting, graceful, and learned work, which she has ill.u.s.trated very exquisitely. There is something very sweet and soothing in the idea of last thoughts having been thus devoted to what is loveliest in nature and holiest in religion.

G.o.d bless you, dear Granny. Give my love to the la.s.ses, and my affectionate "duty" to my lord; and believe me

Your loving grandchild, F. A. B.

[Our departure for America was indefinitely postponed, and the American nurse I had brought to England with my children left me and returned home alone.]

THE CLARENDON, Monday, November 28th, 1842.

MY DEAREST GRANNY,

I duly delivered your message, and am desired to tell you that a house is being looked for for us in your neighborhood, and that, as soon as one is found that we think you will approve of, it will be taken.

Moreover, I am desired to add that the expensive reputation of the Clarendon is very much exaggerated.... We have been here a fortnight to-day, and I think there is every probability of our being here at least a fortnight longer, even if we get away then.... My father suffers less acutely these last few days, but his debility appears to increase with the decrease of his positive pain....

My sister returned from Brighton to-day, completely set up again; she is to go on with her performances till Christmas, when the whole concern pa.s.ses into the hands of Mr. Bunn, who perhaps is qualified to manage it.

I think I should like to _act_ with my sister during this month, in order to secure their salaries to the actors, to make up the deficit which now lies at the door of my father's management, to put a good benefit into his poor pocket, to give rather a more cheerful ending to my sister's theatrical career, and, though last, not least, for the pleasure and _fun_ of acting with her. Don't you think we should have good houses? and wouldn't _you_ come and see us?...

G.o.d bless you, dear Granny.

Ever your affectionate F. A. B.

THE CLARENDON, December 1st, 1842.

MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Lord t.i.tchfield, who was here yesterday, begged me to ascertain from you whether it is only _my_ bust that you desire, or whether you would like to have casts from my father's and from the two of Adelaide. Write me word, dear, that the magnificent marquis may fulfil your wishes, which he is only waiting to know in order to send the one or the four heads to you in Ireland....

My sister returned from Brighton on Monday, apparently quite recovered; in good looks, good voice, and good spirits. The horrible mess in which everybody is mixed up who has anything to do with Covent Garden, and in which she is so deeply involved, renewed her annoyances and vexations immediately on her arrival in town; but I pa.s.sed the evening with her yesterday, and she did not seem the worse for work or worry, for she sang, for her own pleasure and that of her guests, the whole evening....

Give my kind remembrances to all your people, and believe me

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

[The Marquis of t.i.tchfield was employing the French sculptor Dantan to make busts of my father, my sister, and myself, for him; and most kindly gave me casts of them all, and sent my friend Miss St. Leger a cast of mine.]

THE CLARENDON, January 5th, 1843.

DEAREST HAL,

I have sent your wishes to Lord t.i.tchfield, and I am sure they will be quickly complied with. I have no idea that he means otherwise than to _give_ you my bust; any other species of transaction being apparently quite out of his line, and _giving_ his especial gift. I have, nevertheless, taken pains to make clear to him your intentions in the matter; I have desired him to have the bust forwarded to the care of Mr.

Green, because I thought you would easily find means of transporting it thence to Ardgillan. Was this right?

The houses at Covent Garden are quite full on my sister's nights, but deplorably empty on the others, I believe. I speak from hearsay, for I have not been into the theatre since the terrible business of the late break-up there, and do not think I shall even see her last performances, for I have no means of doing so; I can no longer ask for private boxes, as during my father's management, of course, nor indeed would it be right for me to do so on her nights, because they all let very well; and as for paying for one, or even for a seat in the public ones, I have not a single farthing in the world to apply to such a purpose.... So you see, my dear, I am in no case to treat myself to seats at the play, either private or public.