Records of a Girlhood

Friday, August 19th.– … It sometimes occurs to me that our spirits, when dwelling with the utmost intensity of longing upon those who are distant from us, must create in them some perception, some consciousness of our spiritual presence, so that not by the absent whom I love thinking of me, but by my thinking of them, they must receive some intimation of the vividness with which my soul sees and feels them. It seems to me as if my earnest desire and thought must not bring those they dwell on to me, but render me in some way perceptible, if not absolutely visible, to them.

"Though thou see me not pass by,Thou shalt feel me with thine eye."

I fancy I must create my own image to their senses by the clinging passion with which my thoughts dwell on them. And yet it would be rather fearful if one were thus subject, not only to the disordered action of one's own imagination, but to the ungoverned imaginations of others; and so, upon the whole, I don't believe people would be allowed to pester other people with their presence only by dint of thinking hard enough and long enough about them. It would be intolerable, and yet I have sometimes fancied I was thinking myself visible to some one.... In the evening, at the theater, the house was very good; the play was "The Gamester," and I played very ill. I felt fagged to death; my work tires me, and I am growing old.

Saturday, 20th.—At Bannisters all the morning. Emily gave me two charming Italian songlets, and then they drove us down to Southampton. At the theater this evening the house was all but empty, owing to some stupid blunder in the advertisement. The play was "The School for Scandal," and I played well.... To-morrow I shall be at home once more in smoky London.

Southampton, August 19, 1831.

My dearest H–,

I do not like to defer answering you any longer, though I am not very fit to write, for I am half blind with crying, and have a torturing side-ache, the results of bodily fatigue and nervous anxiety; but if I do not write to you to-night I know not when I shall be able to do so, for I shall have to rehearse every morning and to act every night, and I expect the intermediate hours will be spent on the road to and from Bannisters, the Fitzhughs' place near here. I have been traveling ever since half-past eight to-day, and, have hardly been three hours out of the coach which brought us from Weymouth, where we have been acting for the last week. Your letter followed me from Plymouth, and right glad I was to get it.... I do not know what I can write you of if not myself, and I dare say, after all, my thoughts are more amusing to you, or rather, perhaps, more useful, in your processes of observing and studying human nature in general, through my individual case, than if I wrote you word what plays we had been acting, etc., etc.... To meet pain, no matter how severe, the mind girds up its loins, and finds a sort of strength of resistance in its endurance, which is a species of activity. To endure helplessly prolonged suspense is another matter quite, and a far heavier demand upon all patient power than is in one....

So you have seen the railroad; I am so glad you have seen that magnificent invention. I wish I had been on it with you. I wish you had seen Stephenson; you would have delighted in him, I am sure. The hope of meeting him again is one of the greatest pleasures Liverpool holds out to me.... With regard to what are called "fine people," and liking their society better than that of "not fine people," I suppose a good many tolerable reasons might be adduced by persons who have that preference. They do not often say very wise or very witty things, I dare say; but neither do they tread on one's feet or poke their elbows into one's side (figuratively speaking) in their conversation, or commit the numerous solecisms of manner of less well-bred people. For myself, my social position does not entitle me to mix with the superior class of human beings generally designated as "fine people." My father's indolence renders their society an irksome exertion to him, and my mother's pride always induces her to hang back rather than to make advances to anybody. We are none of us, therefore, inclined to be very keen tuft-hunters. But for these very reasons, if "fine people" seek me, it is a decided compliment, by which my vanity is flattered. A person with less of that quality might be quite indifferent to their notice, but I think their society, as far as I have had any opportunity of observing it, has certain positive merits, which attract me irrespectively of the gratification of my vanity. Genius and pre-eminent power of intellect, of course, belong to no class, and one would naturally prefer the society of any individual who possessed these to that of the King of England (who, by the by, is not, I believe, particularly brilliant). I would rather pass a day with Stephenson than with Lord Alvanley, though the one is a coal-digger by birth, who occasionally murders the king's English, and the other is the keenest wit and one of the finest gentlemen about town. But Stephenson's attributes of genius, industry, mental power, and perseverance are his individually, while Lord Alvanley's gifts and graces (his wit, indeed, excepted) are, in good measure, those of his whole social set. Moreover, in the common superficial intercourse of society, the minds and morals of those you meet are really not what you come in contact with half the time, while from their manners there is, of course, no escape; and therefore those persons may well be preferred as temporary associates whose manners are most refined, easy, and unconstrained, as I think those of so-called "fine people" are. Originality and power of intellect belong to no class, but with information, cultivation, and the mental advantages derived from education, "fine people" are perhaps rather better endowed, as a class, than others. Their lavish means for obtaining instruction, and their facilities for traveling, if they are but moderately endowed by nature and moderately inclined to profit by them, certainly enable them to see, hear, and know more of the surface of things than others. This is, no doubt, a merely superficial superiority; but I suppose that there are not many people, and certainly no class of people, high, low, or of any degree, who go much below surfaces.... If you knew how, long after I have passed it, the color of a tuft of heather, or the smell of a branch of honeysuckle by the roadside, haunts my imagination, and how many suggestions of beauty and sensations of pleasure flow from this small spring of memory, even after the lapse of weeks and months, you would understand what I am going to say, which perhaps may appear rather absurd without such a knowledge of my impressions. I think I like fine places better than "fine people;" but then one accepts, as it were, the latter for the former, and the effect of the one, to a certain degree, affects one's impressions of the other. A great ball at Devonshire House, for instance, with its splendor, its brilliancy, its beauty, and magnificence of all sorts, remains in one's mind with the enchantment of a live chapter of the "Arabian Nights;" and I think one's imagination is still more impressed with the fine residences of "fine people" in the country, where historical and poetical associations combine with all the refinements of luxurious civilization and all the most exquisitely cultivated beauties of nature to produce an effect which, to a certain degree, frames their possessors to great advantage, and invests them with a charm which is really not theirs; and if they are only tolerably in harmony with the places where they live, they appear charming too. I believe the pleasure and delight I take in the music, the lights, the wreaths, and mirrors of a splendid ball-room, and the love I have for the smooth lawns, bright waters, and lordly oaks of a fine domain, would disgracefully influence my impressions of the people I met amongst them. Still, I humbly trust I do not like any of my friends, fine or coarse, only for their belongings, though my intercourse with the first gratifies my love of luxury and excites what my Edinburgh friends call my ideality. I don't think, however. I ever could like anybody, of any kind whatever, that I could not heartily respect, let their intellectual gifts, elegance, or refinement of manners be what they might. Good-by, dearest H–.

Ever your affectionateF. A. K.Great Russell Street, October 3, 1831.

My dearest H–,

I received your last letter on Thursday morning, and as I read it exclaimed, "We shall be able to go to her!" and passed it to Dall, who seemed to think there was no reason why we should not, when my father said he was afraid it could not be managed, as the theater, upon second arrangements, would require me before this month was over. It seems to me that, instead of one disappointment, I have had twenty about coming to you, dear H–, and the last has fairly broken the poor camel's back. My father promised to see what could be done for me, and to get me spared as long as possible; but the final arrangement is, that on the 24th I shall have to act Queen Katharine, for which, certainly, a week of daily rehearsals will be barely sufficient preparation. This, you see, will leave me hardly time enough to stay at Ardgillan to warrant the fatigue and expense of the journey. I am afraid it would be neither reasonable nor right to spend nearly a week in traveling and the money it must cost, to pass a fortnight with you.... Give my love to your sister, and tell her how willingly I would have accepted her hospitality had circumstances permitted it; but "circumstances," of which we are so apt to complain, may, perhaps, at some future time, allow me to be once more her guest. The course of events is, after all, far more impartial than, in moments of disappointment, we are apt to admit, and quite as often procures us unexpected and unthought-of pleasures as defeats those we had proposed for ourselves. Pazienza! Dear Dall, who, I see, has produced her invariable impression upon your mind, bids me thank you for the kind things you say of her, at the same time that she says, "though they are undeserved, she is thankful for the affection that dictates them." She is excellent. You bid me tell you of my father, and how his health and spirits continue to struggle against his exertions and anxieties: tolerably well, thank God! I sometimes think they have the properties of that palm tree which is said to grow under the pressure of immense weights. He looks very well, and, except the annoyances of his position in the theater, has rather less cause for depression than for some time past. Though we have not yet obtained our "decree," we understand that the Lord Chancellor says openly that we shall get it, so that uncertainty of the issue no longer aggravates the wearisome delays of this unlucky appeal.... I need not tell you what my feeling about acting Queen Katharine is; you, who know how conscious I am of my own deficiencies for such an undertaking, will easily conceive my distress at having such a task assigned me. Dall, who entirely agrees with me about it, wishes me to remonstrate upon the subject, but that I will not do. I am in that theater to earn my living by serving its interests, and if I was desired to act Harlequin, for those two purposes, should feel bound to do so. But I cannot help thinking the management short-sighted. I think their real interest, as far as I am concerned, which they overlook for some immediate tangible advantage, is not to destroy my popularity by putting me into parts which I must play ill, and not to take from my future career characters which require physical as well as mental maturity, and which would be my natural resources when I no longer become Juliet and her youthful sisters of the drama. But of course they know their own affairs, and I am not the manager of the theater. Those who have its direction, I suppose, make the best use they can of their instruments.

[My performance of Queen Katharine was not condemned as an absolute failure only because the public in general didn't care about it, and the friends and well-wishers of the theater were determined not to consider it one. But as I myself remember it, it deserved to be called nothing else; it was a school-girl's performance, tame, feeble, and ineffective, entirely wanting in the weight and dignity indispensable for the part, and must sorely have tried the patience and forbearance of such of my spectators as were fortunate and unfortunate enough to remember my aunt; one of whom, her enthusiastic admirer, and my excellent friend, Mr. Harness, said that seeing me in that dress was like looking at Mrs. Siddons through the diminishing end of an opera-glass: I should think my acting of the part must have borne much the same proportion to hers. I was dressed for the trial scene in imitation of the famous picture by Harlow, and of course must have recalled, in the most provoking and absurd manner, the great actress whom I resembled so little and so much. In truth, I could hardly sustain the weight of velvet and ermine in which I was robed, and to which my small girlish figure was as little adapted as my dramatic powers were to the matronly dignity of the character. I cannot but think that if I might have dressed the part as Queen Katharine really dressed herself, and been allowed to look as like as I could to the little dark, hard-favored woman Holbein painted, it would have been better than to challenge such a physical as well as dramatic comparison by the imitation of my aunt's costume in the part. Englishmen of her day will never believe that Katharine of Arragon could have looked otherwise than Mrs. Siddons did in Shakespeare's play of "Henry VIII.;" but nothing could in truth be more unlike the historical woman than the tall, large, bare-armed, white-necked, Juno-eyed, ermine-robed ideal of queenship of the English stage. That quintessence of religious, conscientious bigotry and royal Spanish pride is given, both in the portraits of contemporary painters and in Shakespeare's delineation of her; the splendid magnificence of my aunt's person and dress, as delineated in Harlow's picture, has no affinity whatever to the real woman's figure, or costume, or character.]

Great Russell Street, October 12, 1831.

Dearest H–,

I received my book and your letter very safely about a week ago, and would have written to say so sooner, but have been much occupied with one thing and another that has prevented me. So you are beaten, vieilles perukes that you are! not by one or two, but by forty-one; and your bones are all the likelier to ache, and I am not at all sorry. Think of Brougham going down on his marrow-bones (there can be none in them, though), and adjuring the Lords, con quella voce! e quel viso! to pass the Bill, like good boys, and remember the schoolmaster, who surely, when he is at home, cannot be said to be abroad. A good coup de théâtre is not an easy thing, and requires a good deal of tact and skill. I cannot help thinking there must have been something grotesque in this performance of Brougham's, as when Liston turned tragedian and recited Collins's "Ode to the Passions" in a green coat and top boots. The excitement, however, was tremendous; the House thronged to suffocation; as many people crammed into impossible space as the angels in the famous Needle-point controversy. Lady Glengall declares that she sat for four hours on an iron bar. I think this universal political effervescence has got into my head. And what will you do now? You cannot create forty-one Peers; the whole Book of Genesis affords no precedent. I suppose Parliament will be prorogued, ministers will go out, a "cloth of gold" and "cloth of frieze" Government, with Brougham and Wellington brought together into it, will be cobbled, and a new Bill, which will set the teeth of the Lords so badly on edge, will be concocted, which the people will accept rather than nothing, if they are taken in the right way. That, I suppose, is what you Whigs will do; for an adverse majority of forty-one must be turned somehow or other, as it can hardly be gone straight at by folks who mean to keep on the box, or hold the reins, or carry the coach to the end of the journey....

I do not know at all how I should like to live in a palace; I am furiously fond of magnificence and splendor, and not unreasonably, seeing that I was born in a palace, with a sapphire ceiling hung with golden lamps, and velvet floors all embroidered with sweet-smelling, lovely-colored flowers, and walls of veined marble and precious, sparkling stones. I almost doubt if any mere royal palace would be good enough for me, or answer my turn. I should like all the people in the world to be as beautiful as angels, and go about crowned with glory and clothed with light (dear me, how very different they are!); but failing all that I should like in the way of enormously beautiful things, I pick up and treasure like a baby all the little broken bits of splendor and sumptuousness, and thank Heaven that their number and gradations are infinite, from the rainbow that the sun spans the heavens with, to the fine, small jewel drawn from the bowels of the earth to glitter on a lady's neck....

My dearest H–, I wish I were with you with all my heart, but, as if to diminish my regret by putting the thing still further beyond the region of possibility, I act next Monday the 17th, instead of the 24th. (They say "a miss is as good as a mile;" why does it always seem so much worse, then?) I begin with Belvidera, and have already begun my cares and woes and tribulations about lilac satins and silver tissues, etc., etc. Young is engaged with us, and plays Pierre, and my father Giaffir, which will be very dreadful for me; I do not know how I shall be able to bear all his wretchedness as well as my own. To be a good politician one ought to have, as it were, only one eye for truth; I do not at all mean to be single-eyed in the good sense of the word, but to be incapable of seeing more than one side of every question: one sees a part so much more strongly when one does not see the whole of a matter, and though a statesman may need a hundred eyes, I maintain that a party politician is the better for having only one. Restricted vision is good for work, too; people who see far and wide can seldom be very hopeful, I should think, and hope is the very essence of working courage. The matter in hand should always, if possible, be the great matter to those who have to carry it through, and though broad brains may be the best for conceiving, narrow ones are, perhaps, the best for working with.

Thank you for your quotation from Sir Humphry Davy; it did me good, and even made me better for five minutes; and your Irish letter, which interested me extremely. "Walking the world." What a sad and touching expression; and how well it describes a broken and desponding spirit! And yet what else are we all doing, in soul if not in body? Is not that solitary, wandering feeling the very essence of our existence here?

You ask if the interests of the theater and mine are not identical? No, I think not. The management seems to me like our Governments for some time past, to be actuated by mere considerations of temporary expediency; that which serves a momentary purpose is all they consider. But it stands to reason that if they make me play parts in which I must fail, my London popularity must decrease, and with it my provincial profits; and that, of course, is a serious thing. In short, dear H–, where success means bread and butter, failure means dry bread, or none; and I hate the last, I believe, less than the first, though, as I never tried starvation, perhaps dry bread is nicer....

The excitement about the Bill is rising instead of subsiding. The shops are all shut, and the people meeting in every direction; the windows of Apsley House have been smashed, and Wellington's statue (the Achilles in the Park) pelted and threatened to be pulled down. They say that Nottingham and Belvoir Castles are burnt down. All this is bad, and bodes, I fear, worse. Good-by, dear.

Your affectionateF. A. K.

Thursday, August 22d.—I read some of "Cibber's Lives." I should like to read a well-written French life of Alin Chartier, Louis XI.'s ugly secretary, whose mouth Queen Margaret kissed while he was sleeping, "parce qu'elle avait dit de si belles choses." In the life, or rather the death, of Sackville, he notes his sitting up till eleven at night as a manifest waste of human existence. It is near two in the morning as I am now writing, but people's notions change as to time as well as other things. We don't dine at twelve any more. Macdonald, the sculptor, dined with us; I like him for dear Scotland's sake, and the blessed time I passed there. After the gentlemen came up into the drawing-room, Nourrit, the great French tenor, sang delightfully for us; Adelaide sang and played, and Nourrit made her try a charming duet from the "Dame Blanche," which I accompanied, and was frightened to death for self and sister. Macdonald wants to make a statue of me in "The Grecian Daughter," at the moment of veiling the face: he is right. An interval of some time elapsed, in which I did not keep my journal regularly. I had a long visit from my friend Miss S–. The lawsuit about the theater continued, the affairs of the concern becoming more and more involved in difficulties every day; and my father, worried almost to death with anxiety, vexation, and hard work, had a serious illness.

Saturday, November 25th.—My father was not quite so well this morning. I took Dr. Wilson home in the carriage; he talked a great deal about this horrible burking business (a series of atrocious murders committed by two wretches of the names of Burk and Bishop, for the purpose of obtaining, for the corpses of their victims, the price paid by the Edinburgh surgeons for subjects for dissection; the mode of death inflicted by these men came to be designated by the name of the more hardened murderer as burking).

I called at Fozzard's for the boys, and set them down at Angelo's (a famous school for fencing, boxing, and single-stick, where my brothers took lessons in those polite exercises). In the evening, at the theater, dear Charles Young played "The Stranger" for the last time; the house was very full, and I played very ill. After the play Young was enthusiastically called for. I have finished "Tennant's Tour in Greece," which I rather liked. I have been reading "Bonaparte's Letters to Joséphine;" the vague and doubting spirit which once or twice throws its wavering shadow across his thoughts, startles one in contrast with the habitual tone of the mind, which assuredly ne doubtait de rien, especially of what his own power of will could accomplish. The affection he expresses for his wife is sometimes almost poetical from its intensity, in spite of the grossness of his language. He seems to have believed in nothing but volition, and that volition is in itself, perhaps, a mere form of faith. It's a dangerous worship, for the devil in that shape does obey so long and so well before he claims his due; so much is achieved precisely by that belief in what can be achieved; the last round of the ladder, somehow or other, however, always seems to break down at last, and then I doubt if the people who fall from it can all declare, as Holcroft did when he fell from his horse, and, as his surgeon assured him, broke his ribs, that he was positive he had not, because in falling he had exerted the energy of will, and could not therefore have broken his bones.

Sunday, 29th.—The great good fortune of a good sermon at church. After church Mrs. Jameson, John Mason, and Mr. Loudham called; the latter said he had good news about that fatal theater of ours, for that Mr. Harris seemed to be inclined to come into some accommodation, and so perhaps this cancer of a Chancery suit may stop eating our lives away. Oh dear! I am afraid this is too good news to be true. I went to my father's room and sat by him for a long time, and talked about the horse I had bought for him; and there he lies in his bed, and God knows when he will even be able to walk again.

Monday, 30th.—I went to rehearsal. It seems that the managers and proprietors (of course not my poor father) had summoned a meeting of all the actors to try and induce them to accept for the present a reduced rate of salary till the theater can be in some measure relieved of its most pressing difficulties. I knew nothing of this, and, finding them all very solemnly assembled in the greenroom, asked them cheerfully why they were all there, which must have struck them strangely enough. I dare say they do not know how little I know, or wish to know, about this disastrous concern. On my return home, I heard that Dr. Watson had seen my father, and requested that Dr. Wilson might be sent for. They fear inflammation of the lungs; he has gone to the very limit of his tether, for had he continued fagging a night or two longer the effects might have been fatal. Poor, poor father!…