Records of Later Life Part 67

29, KING STREET, Sunday, 5th.

I am afraid my pretty plot of coming to you is at an end, and I am afraid all my chances of coming to you are at an end. I wrote you yesterday that I was beginning to be doubtful about my further engagements in London, and was indeed discouraged and troubled at the aspect of my affairs. This morning, however, comes an express from M----, beginning a new negotiation with me, and wanting me to open with Macready at his theatre on the 21st of this month, to act four weeks, and then renew the engagement for four weeks more.... I do not wish to depart from the terms I have asked, but am extremely glad of the offer, and hope he will agree to them. I think it probable that he will, because my engagement with Macready has been so much talked about, and he has himself applied to me three several times about it. This puts an end to all visiting prospects, for Brighton or St. Leonard's, and in March you will be leaving the latter place. This is a sad disappointment, but perhaps Mr. M---- will not, after all, give me my terms, and I ought to be sorrier for that, but I shan't....

I had a visit the other morning from Mr. Blackett--John Blackett. I don't know if I have spoken of him to you. I met him at Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l's in Scotland, while I was staying with her at Carolside, and liked him very much. He is a great friend of Dr. Hampden's and of Stanley, Arnold's biographer. He brought me, the other day, a volume of sermons by Stanley, of which I have just read the first, and have been delighted with it. How surely does such a spirit as Arnold's beget its own fit successors!... I think I have not read anything, since his own Life, that has given me the same deep satisfaction that these sermons of his pupil have....

That music of Mendelssohn's had a horrid effect upon my nerves; I mean the emotion and distress it caused me. I suffered a great deal of pain, and was quite unwell for several days after it. Will it not be a pity if I can't come and be spoilt any more by you and Dorothy at St. Leonard's?

It was so pleasant and good for you.

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

KING STREET, Monday, 7th.

I do very, very well this morning, my dear Hal: this is in answer to your affectionate inquiry of the 1st; but if you wanted to know then, of course you will want to know just as much now....

My time at the Beeches was not very pleasant to me. The weather was horrible, cold, wet, and dismal; the house is wretchedly uncomfortable; and Mrs. Grote always keeps me in a rather nervous state of breathless apprehension as to what she may say or do next. I cannot talk much, either to her or Charles Greville; neither of them understands a word that I say. Her utter _unusualness_ perplexes me, and his ingrain worldliness provokes me; but I listened with great pleasure to some political talk between Charles Greville, Mr. Grote, and the Italian patriot, Prandi. You know that, fond as I am of talking, I like listening better, when I can hear what I think worth listening to. I was delighted with their clear, practical, comprehensive, and liberal views of the whole state of Europe, especially Italy, so interesting in her present half-roused att.i.tude of returning national vitality. They talked a great deal, too, upon the West India sugar question; and I listened with interest to all they said, struck the whole time with their entirely ignoring the deepest sources whence national troubles and their remedies flow, of which the wisest working politicians and statesmen take apparently (very foolishly) little heed; I suppose they do not acknowledge them, which is why their government and statescraft is so apt to be mere temporary empirical expediency.

I had a very full and lively audience at Cambridge, and remarked with especial satisfaction a young man sitting in the stage box with one of the sweetest countenances I ever saw. I sincerely hope, for his beauty's sake, that he was amused. He reminded me of the line in King John, describing the young gentlemen in the English army--the lads "with ladies' faces and fierce dragons' spleens." They were very attentive, and very enthusiastic, and I was very well pleased with them, and I hope they were with me....

There is nothing in the supernatural part of "Jane Eyre" that disturbs me at all; on the contrary, I believe in it. I mean, there is nothing in my mode of thinking and feeling that denies the possibility of such a circ.u.mstance as Jane Eyre hearing her distant lover call upon her name.

I have often thought that the power of intense love might very well work just such a miracle as that. G.o.d bless you, dear. Kiss dearest Dorothy for me, and believe me

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

29, KING STREET, Tuesday, 8th.

Yesterday I had plenty of questions to answer in my letter to you; to-day I have not one.... My beloved friend, I know that if your power to serve me equalled your desire to do so, I should be borne in the arms of angels, "lest at any time I struck my foot against a stone." But do not, my dearest Harriet, let your love for me forget that faith without which we could neither bear our own trials nor the trials of those we love. "In the great hand of G.o.d we all stand," and are fitly cared for by Him, our Father. I should be much ashamed of the sudden flood of cowardice that overwhelmed me two days ago at the difficult and cheerless prospect before me, but that it was, I am sure, the result of nervous disorder, and the jarring I got the other day from that dreadful Antigone.

You know I seldom waste time in blaming myself, and tarry but a brief s.p.a.ce in the idle disconsolateness of repentance. I must try to be less weak, and less troubled about my prospects. I wrote you yesterday of the proposal I had received from Mr. Maddox. He made no offer of terms. I have heard nothing further from him, and augur ill from his silence. I suppose he will not pay me what I ask, and thinks it useless to offer me less. I shall be very sorry for this; but if I find it so, will apply to Mr. Webster, or some other manager, for employment; and if I fail with them, must make a desperate effort about my readings.

But for my sister's entreaty that I would remain here till she returns from Italy, and my own great desire to see her again, I would _confront_ the winter pa.s.sage across the Atlantic, in hopes of finding work in America, and living without using up the little I have already gathered together. But I cannot bear to go before she comes to England.... I was surprised by a visit from Lord Hardwicke yesterday; it is years since I have seen him. I knew and liked him formerly, as Captain Yorke. He is as blunt and plain-spoken as ever, and retains his sailor-like manner in spite of his earldom, which he hadn't when I met him last.... Henry Greville is coming to tea with me this evening, and I promised to read him my translation of "Mary Stuart." I hope he may like it as well as you did. Lady Dacre was here this afternoon; she has been dreadfully ill, and looks an old woman now, for the first time, at eighty--that is not too soon to begin.

I think I shall take Mr. Maddox's last offer, and if so, dear Hal, farewell to my visit to St. Leonard's. But I am of the poor author's mind, "Qu'il faut bien qu'on vive," and do not suppose that you will answer me _a la Voltaire_, "Ma foi, je n'en vois pas la necessite."

It is very odd that it should seem so natural to one to live, and so strange to die, since it is what everybody does. The fact is, habit is the strongest thing in the world; and living is simply the oldest habit we have, and so the strongest.

Good-bye, my dear, and believe me

Respectfully yours, f.a.n.n.y.

KING STREET, St. James's, Thursday, 10th.

... Mr. Maddox comes here, and worries my life out with haggling and bargaining, but has not yet agreed to any terms, and I am half distracted with all the various advice tendered me.... In the mean time, I am much comforted about my readings; for I received yesterday morning a very courteous letter from the Secretary of the Collegiate Inst.i.tution at Liverpool, offering me twenty guineas a night if I would go down and read there six nights at the end of March. This I shall be thankful to do, if my engagement at the Princess's Theatre falls through, and if it does not I shall hope to be able to accept the Liverpool invitation later in the season. I have had a visit, too, from one of the directors of the Highgate Inst.i.tute, to beg I would go and read there. They cannot afford to give me more than ten guineas a night, the inst.i.tute being a small and not very rich one; but of course I do not expect to be paid for reading as I am for acting, and therefore, whenever I can, shall accept the Highgate offer.

These various proposals have put me in heart once more about the possible success of this reading experiment, and I am altogether much comforted at seeing that employment is not likely to fail me, which I was beginning to fear it might.... Of course, if I apply for engagements to managers, I must expect to take their terms, not to make my own--for beggars must not be choosers, as I learnt long ago; and when I solicit an engagement, I must be prepared to sell myself cheap--and I will. If Maddox won't pay me what I ask, and Webster won't have me at any price, I shall come to you and Dorothy, who, I "reckon," will take me on my own terms: which in these my days of professional humiliation (not personal humility, you know), is quite kind of you.

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

KING STREET, Friday, 28th.

MY DEAREST HAL,

You will be glad to hear that Mr. Maddox has at length come into my terms.... For the next two months this is some anxiety off my mind, and I trust will be off yours for me; and the last two days have shown me that my chance of getting employment, either acting or reading, is likely to last--at any rate till my sister returns, when I shall probably stay with her till my departure for America.... I am most thankful that the depression and discouragement under which I succ.u.mbed for a while has been thus speedily relieved. It is a curious sensation to have a certain consciousness of power (which I have, though perhaps it is quite a mistaken notion), and at the same time of absolute helplessness. It seems to me as if I had some sort of strength, and yet I feel totally incapable of coping with the small difficulties of circ.u.mstance under which it is oppressed; it's like a sort of wide-awake nightmare. I suppose it's because I am a woman that I am so idiotic and incompetent to help myself.

But when one thinks of it, what a piteous page in the history of human experience is the baffling and defeat of real genius by the mere weight of necessity, the bare exigencies of existence, the need to live from day to day. Think of Beethoven dying, and saying to Hummel, with that most wonderful a.s.sertion of his own great gifts, "Pourtant, Hummel, j'avois du genie!"--such transcendent genius as it was too! such pure and perfect and high and deep inspiration! which had, nevertheless, not defended him from the tyranny of poverty, and the petty cares of living, all his life.

Is it not well that people of great genius are always _proud as well as humble_, and that the consciousness of their own n.o.bility spreads, as it were, the wings of an angel between them and all the baseness and barrenness through which they are often compelled to wade up to the lips? Whenever I think of Burns, my heart tightens itself, to use a French expression, for a most painful _physical emotion_. Do you know Schiller's exquisite poem of the "Division of the Earth"? I will send you a translation, if you do not--a rough one I made of it when it was one of my German lessons. My version is harsh and poor enough, but the thoughts are preserved, and _the_ thought is worthy of that n.o.ble poet....

29, KING STREET, Sat.u.r.day, 12th.

MY DEAREST HAL,

How many pleasant things I might lament over _if_ I might! I shall not see St. Leonard's again with you. Emily has misunderstood in saying that my engagement at the Princess Theatre does not begin till the 27th; it begins on the 21st, next Monday week, and I shall only just have time to get my wardrobe ready and study Desdemona and Cordelia, which I am asked to play, and re-learn the music of Ophelia, which I have quite forgotten....

I have an engagement offered me in Dublin, and it is rather provoking that I cannot accept it now, for this, I believe, is the height of the gay season there. As it is, I fear I shall not be able to go over there till May; but perhaps then you will go with me, or be there, and that will be some compensation for the less money I shall make.

It's curious all these engagements offering now within these few days: to be sure, it never rains but it pours, so that accounts for it philosophically.

Did I tell you what a nice long visit I had from Thackeray the other day? Oh, have you read that "Vanity Fair" of his? It is wonderful! He was a schoolfellow of my brother John's, you know, and is a very old friend of mine, but I had not seen him for some time. I wrote to ask him for his autograph for Henry Greville, and he wrote me an extremely kind note, and came himself after it, and sat with me a very long time, and was delightful.

Lady Charlotte Greville, who has just removed into a beautiful new house she has arranged for herself, wrote to say she was coming to town immediately, and hoped I would give my first London reading in her drawing-room. Was not that nice and kind and good-natured of her, dear old lady? But of course I declined, at any rate for the present, as I mean to exhaust my natural enemies, the managers, before I have recourse to my friends, in any way whatever. Kiss Dorothy for me, and don't let her break your spirit with inquisitorial and vexatious supervision of your actions. A timely resistance to friendly tyranny is a great saving of trouble.

Good-bye, you bad dear.

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

[I wish to record a slight anecdote of my friend William Thackeray, which ill.u.s.trates his great kindness and amiability, his _sweetness_ of temper and disposition.

I met him at Miss Berry's at dinner, a few days before he began his course of lectures on the English essayists, and he asked me to come and hear him, and told me he was so nervous about it, that he was afraid he should break down.

I had an engagement which prevented my hearing his first lecture, but I promised him to go and see him at his room before he began it, to cheer him.

He was to lecture at Willis Rooms, in the same room where I read, and going thither before the time for his beginning, found him standing like a forlorn disconsolate giant in the middle of the room, gazing about him. "Oh, Lord," he exclaimed, as he shook hands with me, "I'm sick at my stomach with fright." I spoke some words of encouragement to him, and was going away, but he held my hand, like a scared child, crying, "Oh, don't leave me!" "But," said I, "Thackeray, you mustn't stand here. Your audience are beginning to come in," and I drew him from the middle of his chairs and benches, which were beginning to be occupied, into the retiring-room adjoining the lecture-room, my own readings having made me perfectly familiar with both. Here he began pacing up and down, literally wringing his hands in nervous distress. "Now," said I, "what shall I do? Shall I stay with you till you begin, or shall I go, and leave you alone to collect yourself?" "Oh," he said, "if I could only get at that confounded thing" (his lecture), "to have a last look at it!" "Where is it?" said I. "Oh, in the next room on the reading-desk." "Well," said I, "if you don't like to go in and get it, I'll fetch it for you." And remembering well the position of my reading-table, which had been close to the door of the retiring-room, I darted in, hoping to s.n.a.t.c.h the ma.n.u.script without attracting the attention of the audience, with which the room was already nearly full. I had been used to deliver my reading seated, at a very low table, but my friend Thackeray gave his lectures standing, and had had a reading-desk placed on the platform, adapted to his own very tall stature, so that when I came to get his ma.n.u.script it was almost above my head. Though rather disconcerted, I was determined not to go back without it, and so made a half jump, and a clutch at the book, when every leaf of it (they were not fastened together), came fluttering separately down about me. I hardly know what I did, but I think I must have gone nearly on all-fours, in my agony to gather up the scattered leaves, and retreating with them, held them out in dismay to poor Thackeray, crying, "Oh, look, look, what a dreadful thing I have done!" "My dear soul," said he, "you couldn't have done better for me. I have just a quarter of an hour to wait here, and it will take me about that to page this again, and it's the best thing in the world that could have happened." With which infinite kindness he comforted me, for I was all but crying, at having, as I thought, increased his distress and troubles. So I left him, to give the first of that brilliant course of literary historical essays with which he enchanted and instructed countless audiences in England and America.

The last time I saw Thackeray, was at a dinner at my dear friend, Mr. Harness'. As we were about to seat ourselves at table, I being between Mr. Harness and Thackeray, his daughter Annie (now Mrs.

Ritchie) was going to place herself on the other side of her father.

"No, no," said our dear host, "that will not do. I cannot have the daughter next the father." And Miss Thackeray was invited to take another place. She had just published her story, "The History of Elizabeth," in which she showed herself to have inherited some of the fine elements of her father's literary genius. As we sat down, I said to him, "But it appears very evident, I think, that the daughter _is_ to be _next_ to the father." He looked at me for a moment with a beaming face, and then said, "Do you know, I have never read a word of that thing?" "Oh," cried I, "Thackeray! Why don't you? It is excellent! It would give you so much pleasure!" "My dear lady, I couldn't, I couldn't!" said he with tears in his eyes.

"It would _tear my guts out_!"--which powerful English description of extreme emotion would have startled me less in French or Italian; "Cela m'arracherait les entrailles," or "mi sois-cerelbero."

In the evening, he talked back to our early times, and my coming out at Covent Garden, and how, "We all of us," said he (and what a n.o.ble company of young brains and hearts they were!), "were in love with you, and had your portrait by Lawrence in our rooms"--which made me laugh and cry, and abuse him for tantalizing me with the ghost of a declaration at that late hour of both our days. And so we parted, and I never met him again. On his way home that evening, his daughter told me that he had spoken kind compa.s.sionate words of commendation of me. I have kept them in grateful remembrance. Fine genius! and tender gentle heart! the cla.s.sic writer of the keenest and truest satire of the social vices of our day; the master of English style, as powerful and pure as that of the best models, whose works he has so admirably ill.u.s.trated.

"Vanity Fair" will, I suppose, be always considered Thackeray's masterpiece--though everybody loves, beyond all his other portraits, the exquisite one of Colonel Newcome--but it seems to me that "Esmond" is a more extraordinary literary feat than any other of his works--except, indeed, "Lyndon of Barry Lyndon," which is even a more remarkable production of the same order.]

KING STREET, Monday, 14th.

If you begin your letter with such questions as "What do you think of me?" I do not know any reason in life why my answer should ever have an end, even within the liberal limits of the two pages which you extort from me daily. That is a question I cannot answer; although, I must say, I should have expected from you rather more of that constancy and consistency (a male rather than a female quality, however), which, having determined on a certain course as best, does not lament having abided by it when the issue appears unprosperous. I think women are seldom of a sufficiently determined mind to make their opinion or resolution itself their consolation under defeat. They are more liable to mental as well as moral misgivings and regrets than men, and an unfortunate result easily induces them to repent a course they deliberately adopted.

_Sole vales Veritas_ is the motto upon a little pencil-case contained in the small work-case Emily has given me. She had it engraved on the seal, and though it is not altogether so congenial a motto to me as Arnold and Robertson's Christian device "Forward!" (and is moreover axiomatic rather than hortatory), I use it partly for her sake, and partly because it is undeniable.

Pilate wished to know what is truth--or rather pretended that he did--and I have a very general conviction that "What is truth?" is the speech of Pilate to this day; _i.e._, of those who know, but will not do, what they know to be right. It is very seldom, indeed, that the mind earnestly desires a conviction, strives for one, prays for one, and labors to attain one, that it does not acquire what, to all intents and purposes, _is_ truth for that individual soul.