CHAPTER IV
.
1807-1812.
In the spring of 1807 the long-sought-for permission to return to England was at last obtained. As I have no intention of writing a Memoir, but record only the events of my Mother’s life so far as is necessary for making these _Remains_ intelligible, I shall at once proceed with my selection of these. They will for the most part, if I mistake not, with only here and there a brief elucidation, sufficiently explain themselves.
* * * * *
_June 7, 1807._—There seems to be a physical as well as a moral effect in the return of the season, the month, the day, the hour on which a beloved object has been torn away from us. We know that many disorders of the body are periodical. Why may not the violent pains of the mind bear some analogy to them—those tempests of sorrow which tear up every pleasure by the root, and sweep away the very soil whence new ones might have sprung, leaving nothing but the bare old rock behind?
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
Dublin, Dec., 1807.
I send your map, though late, and _Corinne_. Do not you think d’Erfeuil drawn with uncommon skill, and in point of _character_, the best of the book? It is a slight sketch, but, as far as it goes, perfect. Oswald and Corinne are ‘beauteous monsters’ like Darwin’s rose-nightingale; and are made to exhibit qualities, to commit actions, not merely opposite and unnatural, but contradictory. No man could unite such weakness and such energy; and, with such superabundance of the former, he would never attach any woman whatever. No woman could be pedantic, disserting, ambitious of the public applause of the mob, and emulating the tricks of a mountebank, with the character and feelings she is represented to possess, wherever her affections are engaged. Besides, I am provoked all through with the absolute necessity of changing their dress, and giving him the petticoat and her the Scotch plaid.
* * * * *
Among my Mother’s papers I have found the notes which she took of more than one of Kirwan’s sermons; but immense, and, I believe, deserved, as was his reputation as a preacher,—I do not say as a divine, for his statements of Christian doctrine are most inadequate and defective—these, like everything of his which has seen the light of day since his death, are quite insufficient to explain to the reader the marvellous effects which his eloquence produced on those who actually heard it. More interesting than these is the following sketch of his character as a sacred orator. It leaves on me the impression of having been prepared for publication; but I am ignorant whether it has been published or not. It may be needful to observe that the posthumous volume of Kirwan’s sermons was not published till many years later, in 1814. I do not know when this sketch was written; but as Kirwan had died during the writer’s absence in France, in 1805, I think very probably soon after her return to Ireland, and I place it here.
Kirwan, in the language of Grattan, ‘disturbed the repose of the pulpit, and discovered a mine of charity in the breasts of his countrymen with which the owners were unacquainted.’ He taught the passions to move at the command of Virtue; his eloquence could with equal facility melt and subdue, or animate and inflame, terrify the libertine in his mid career, or relax the purse-strings of the usurer. Time seemed concentrated to a point while his lightnings flashed or his thunders rolled; and when he ended, a sensation of regret and privation preceded the vivid and animating glow of high and just applause. In his charitable discourses (most difficult branch of pulpit oratory), he never failed to discover some untrodden path; and the tears and gifts of his hearers bore equal testimony to his power. Year after year has he pleaded the cause of the same institutions with increasing effect, and still surprised his audience with new motives for their liberality. He had the art of discovering analogies new but not fantastical, unexpected but not overstrained, between the passing events of the times and the necessary subjects of his discourse; and from these events he often deduced arguments the most forcible, or imaged scenes the most pathetic. When his thoughts were condensed, their brevity was never affected, and, when most expanded, lost none of their force; for, if he repeated the same idea in hope to impress it more firmly on a popular audience, he dressed it in such vivid colours and such breadth of light and shade, that his repetition had all the charm of novelty. His hearers were often reminded of Burke, often of Grattan; for, though he disdained all imitation, apparent similarity to great models must arise from variety of excellence. His eloquence appeared like inspiration, yet his sermons were not, in fact, extemporaneous. It is said that he wrote them, like Pope, on scraps of paper, committed them to memory, and then—for Genius is ever careless of her Sybil leaves—condemned them to the flames. Perhaps he feared their being less admired when read in the closet than from the pulpit. Was this an excess of modesty, or of vanity? Whatever may have been the cause, deeply is the effect regretted by all his hearers, and great the loss to the morals and literature of his country.
I have seldom seen him in mixed society. He was serious, silent, and reserved; and, when he did speak, his remarks were occasionally tinctured with somewhat of sharpness and severity. The affection of his amiable wife, and his habit, when absent, of writing to her daily, give a most favourable impression of his domestic character.
* * * * *
Sir Francis Hutchinson, of whose virtues the following lines contain a slight record, was an uncle of my father’s by marriage. He died full of years and full of good works, at the close of the year 1807. The death of his wife, to which there will be found references a little further on, was only divided from his by about three months.
_Dec. 1807._—Lines on the Death of Sir Francis Hutchinson:—
Thy useful labours, Hutchinson, are o’er, And heaven has gained one kindred spirit more. Wise, cheerful, pious, active, and humane, Acknowledged lord of learning’s wide domain, Thy path was graced with all that blesses life. Cheered and illumined by a tender wife; Honour was thine, health, virtue, length of days, And thine the soul whose undiminished rays, Bright to the last, with living lustre burned, Then to the Fountain of all light returned.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
Hounslow, March 6, 1808.
After you left me, I passed Hounslow Heath in a state of moderate fear and alert disquietude. I will tell you, because it will give ease to your mind, that I am at this moment less alarmed and distressed at your absence than I was before it really began. I would not say this perhaps, if you were not what you are, as I might apprehend that it would make you less sensitive to my fears and sorrows on another occasion; but such apprehensions on my part would be as mean as ungrateful.
On Hounslow Heath I made an address _improvviso_ to a gander. You say I have the power _d’improvvisare_, and I thought I could not make my first essay to a less formidable object, but one whom I had _in fact_ mistaken for a highway robber. I imitated the style of some modern sonneteers, with what success you will tell me.
TO A GANDER ON HOUNSLOW HEATH.
Poor Gander, on this wide and lonely waste, Patient of ill, and hopeless of all good, Thou seek’st with toilsome industry thy food, Hardly obtained, and bitter to the taste. Yet here, thou careworn fowl, thy lot is cast, By selfish pride and callous wealth debarred From all the comforts of the farmer’s yard, Vile yard, by gates and bolts and bars disgraced! While distant yet, thy mild and drooping form Like some bold robber to these eyes appeared; My purse prepared, I watched the coming storm, And much I trembled, Gander, much I feared: From fools exalted in a chaise and pair Such insults virtuous poverty must bear.
I own that a ludicrous imitation of the style I have chosen, seems _now_ like giving a blow to a man who is down; or, _they_ might say, my blow is the Ass’s kick to the expiring Lion; for the whining pity for things not pitiable, the contempt and hatred of all who are comfortable as to this world’s goods, and of all institutions calculated to keep them so, as well as addresses to frogs, fleas, donkeys, and spiders, are equally out of fashion.
I have been reading _Cymbeline_, and find five pages of admiring criticism on the song, ‘Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings.’ Pray read it, and then tell me whether you do not agree with me in thinking Shakespeare wrote it to ridicule some compositions of the time, now forgotten; as he often has done in other pieces, particularly as it is introduced with praise by his fool, Cloten. The language is so forced and unnatural, the imagery so far-fetched and overstrained, the grammar so bad, and the sacrifice of sense to rhyme so evident, that I cannot view it in any other light, and am surprised it has not been so considered. You see how I am obliged to keep thought at bay by every help I can pick up.
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
London, March 10, 1808.
Your kind letter found me safely deposited in London with my babes. A heavy cold, in consequence of travelling through roads dug out of snow, combined with other circumstances to delay my answer. We set out in the softest, finest weather possible; and the same day our journey began, the snow began also, and locked us up in a small and solitary inn in the wildest part of Wales during four days, which, however, I passed very pleasantly. I _need_ not explain this to you, and to many I _could_ not explain it; for I assure you the excess of pity which has been lavished on my husband and me, for having been four days wholly dependant on each other’s society for amusement, has raised in me many an inward smile, as being (while intended for politeness) the very essence of rudeness. ‘Dear me, so you were four days in that terrible way. How you must have suffered from _ennui_, &c. &c.’ In vain I tell people that I am not subject to _ennui_, &c. &c.; they will continue to pity, till I am more tired _of them_ than they could be of retirement.
Your idea of the motive for writing _The Butterfly’s Ball_ is so ingenious, one inclines to suppose it just. My dread of some insects was long troublesome to myself and others. Your favourites, the bees, formerly excited in me a degree of terror and disgust never entirely removed till I was once or twice stung. Many would say this was a strange method of cure, but _you_ know enough of imagination to feel the advantage of correcting her caricatures by comparison with reality. My children, on the contrary, are pleased with everything that has life and motion; and I find some exertion necessary, when they insist on my admiring the beauties of a huge beetle or the labours of an enormous spider.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
London, March 15, 1808.
I am just returned from performing the most solemn act of our religion, which, as you know, I had much too long deferred. As I feared, those thoughts I wished to silence _would_ arise, and those tears which ought to have proceeded from devotion, sprung, in fact, from recollections of my lost darling. I never saw a stronger proof that London is a religious town, than in the numbers and the respectful awe of those who remained to-day to receive. This, you know, was a common Sunday, no festival, no charity sermon, no good singing, no popular preacher, and the weather was intolerably cold; yet I dare say more than a hundred stayed in this private chapel; and these persons, of whom a great part were young _men_ and women, and whose dress announced at the least opulence. _More_ solemnity and attention, both in administering and receiving, I have never seen. What a contrast to the manners we have left, where no one ever thought of giving more to Heaven than _les restes du diable_.
I was so low last night, yet so unwilling and unfit for company, that I persuaded Mrs. Arabin to go to Walker’s Orrery and lecture. It is very interesting, but I must go again before I find it very improving. However, something remains; and at all events, it is equal (from the feelings it inspires) to the finest sermon of Blair or Porteus. I was much better all night from having given my mind this magnificent subject for awe, wonder, and self-abasement. The fulness of the pit and gallery gave a strong proof of the knowledge disseminated in the middle classes. Women who, from their appearance, you would think never turned their thoughts beyond their kitchen or laundry, were there, numerous and attentive listeners. I think if I had a female to educate of a scientific turn, I should lead her to astronomy in preference to the more fashionable studies of botany, chemistry, &c. It elevates the mind much more, and it is less easy, I should imagine, in that science to dazzle the multitude with a little knowledge than in most others; and it seems more like a commencement of those floods of knowledge we shall gain in another existence, than anything relating to the material world, which can be learned here.
TO THE SAME.
London, March 17, 1808.
I have just seen Lady ——, who is, as usual, entertaining. She exercised some of her powers on me. First, ‘London is too dear for anybody to live in,’ leaving me to draw my own conclusions how I could exist, if she found it so. Next, a little quizzing of the old-womanish style of my dress, _through_ Mrs. ——’s, which she described as exactly what I wore, and then said she was always dressed like a person of a hundred. Next, a discovery that —— (though _en gros_, she says they are both beautiful) is very like the print of my grandfather in Lord Chesterfield’s _Letters_. This, to be sure, I should be glad of. She pressed me much to go there continually to dinner, while you were away; and said, with tears in her eyes, that ‘her heart was once _all_ my own.’ But the knowledge of what she has said of me appeared too plainly, I fear, in the total insensibility with which I received this declaration; I promised, however, to go sometimes in the evening. People think I have lost my memory, because I do not appear to remember what I do not think they desire I should. You must not allow me, even if hereafter I am so inclined, to renew my intimacy with Lady ——, for her conversation is of the kind which always leaves little stings; and she chooses, I know not why, always to try and lower all those I esteem and love, or whom she thinks I esteem and love; while my happiness depends almost entirely on raising them. Those constant complaints of her poverty, intended to prove to others by the Rule of Three that they are _paupers_, may perhaps help to keep one at a distance. I do not allow that this flows from any false shame one would have of being _poor_, if it was really the case. But it is a rule in polished society not to remind one of being ugly, or old, or poor, or low born; and though one would not blush at any of these circumstances, one thinks oneself not treated with sufficient respect, when they are constantly hinted at as having fallen to one’s lot.
Mrs. —— dined with me on Wednesday. She _likes_ me for being attentive to her; but she _respects_ Lady —— for being what she calls ‘too much engrossed with the great world to take any notice of such an old woman, &c. &c.’ If one had no higher motive than standing well in the opinion of the old and retired, one would treat them with _hauteur_ and neglect; for except a Lady Hutchinson and one or two more, they all respect you for it.
TO THE SAME.
London, March 18, 1808.
I have this instant heard of Lady Hutchinson’s illness. I did not think I could have fretted so much about anyone out of my own circle of _possessed_ treasures. Her conversation, her letters, above all, the silent lesson of her life, are inestimable, and can ill be spared. She is the only person I have associated with for many years from whose society I always feel better and wiser. Many others are so superior to myself that they _might_ have that effect, but it is only with her I am _sensible_ of it. Perhaps she is already happy, has seen my Frederick, knows everything I am now saying, and smiles at the vanity and shortsightedness of a mortal, whose faults may now be all laid open to her, stript of that veil with which we naturally seek to conceal them from those we respect and love. I think _that_ a painful reflection on losing a friend. She will, however, see that I loved her much. My eyes fill so fast that I can hardly see what I am writing; but at the same time, without any painful emotion that is not more than counterbalanced by the consoling and elevating thoughts with which the close of such a life is contemplated. I begin to think that she left us on the night before last. This is superstition, because I had a splendid vision on that night; but why may she not have been allowed for a moment to undraw the curtains of some of our future habitations? My dream was merely that I saw a prospect before me of such exquisite beauty as this earth owns not, in which was united the softness of moonlight with the splendour of sunshine, and _shaded_, if I may so express it, with different degrees of golden brightness.
TO THE SAME.
March 19, 1808.
Your conversation or your letters alone animate my existence enough to prevent me from fixing my eyes steadily on the misfortune from which I date my second life, as different, certainly, from the former, as two separate modes of being. Why cannot I interest myself in what interests so many wiser and better people? I know not, and I feel I cannot walk in their path. _Là-haut, là-haut_—if I can but follow the bright track which may conduct me thither, little does it signify how devious or how absurd my steps appear in the eyes of mortals. I awakened this morning with an impression of _him_ as powerful as any I felt in the beginnings of that melancholy tranquillity which followed my first distress, and it has accompanied me all day. I shall, however, struggle to divert my mind from it, and will send for some musical person in a day or two, not, like Saul, to drive away the evil spirit, but to detach my thoughts from the angelic spirit that hovers about them.
I have been very attentive to Mrs. ——. Poor woman! her old age is but melancholy. Too unsteady to fix in a place where she had friends, or indeed in any place—not _deeply_ attached to any one, finding no pleasure in books, in intellectual conversation, nor in acts of charity, she can think of nothing but self, and at eighty, what a melancholy prospect; indeed, at what age is it not so? I have been obliged _to rest from her_ (as poor Breteuil called it) to-day. Talking much, without going deeper than the mere dust of the earth, but just scratching the surface, fatigues me more than labour or application. I think people are not sufficiently pitied, who, with a taste for intellectual pleasures, are married to mere _materialists_, if you will allow me to use the word in a new sense. Everyone pities those who marry a person extremely disagreeable in externals, and surely the other misfortune is far greater, as minds come into contact at every moment of existence; and yet the world always think and talk of it as a kind of jest, when people are greatly mismatched as to understanding. I reproach myself for having done so a thousand times.
TO LADY HUTCHINSON.
London, March 19, 1808.
I shall not attempt to tell you, my dear Lady Hutchinson, with what pleasure I heard to-day that you were in progress of recovery. Your illness was only made known to me yesterday, and indeed my feelings were more proportioned to my quick sense of your perfections, and of your kindness to me and mine, than to the date of our intimacy. For our sakes, and for the sake of the many to whom you are dear, and who benefit by your example, your influence, and your protection, apply, I beseech you, a little of your prudence to the case of yourself—the only point in which I think it fails.
I think Mrs. ——’s bearing with so much temper the disappointment of not going to a birth-night ball, when ready dressed, as you mention, shows she is superior to at least half the petty subjects of fretting which diminish female happiness. Really I have seen more peevishness wasted on the disappointments about public places, during the short time that mine was a dissipated life, than was excited by any other cause, and you know Hayley has chosen a similar mishap as one of the most severe trials of his heroine. However, I am sorry she had the opportunity of this ‘Triumph of Temper,’ and think her husband deserved a curtain lecture, if he did not exert himself to the utmost to prevent it.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
London, March 26, 1808.
As this was a day of low spirits and indisposition, I indulged myself with a novel, and one fell into my hands which I beg you will read, if in any country town you are compelled to such an amusement. It is called _The Hungarian Brothers_, and is written by Miss Porter. Nothing, perhaps, shows the superiority of English literature more than our novels. This is really almost equal to any of Mad. Cottin’s, which make such a noise in France, yet is lost here in the crowd of others, _as_ excellent in principle, taste, and feeling. It describes what few novelists have touched on, the closing scene of a valuable and beloved _old woman_. Alas! why have you men made this almost a term of reproach? It is _very_ ungrateful. Mrs. Arabin sent it to me when I asked _au hazard for a book_. You know how I plague people sometimes in that way. This, however, quieted me a whole morning.
... But how foolish these weak, faint flashes of ambition and cupidity in my mind. After _what I have seen_, I am surprised such thoughts can ever rise in a mind so constantly aware of the fragility of every earthly good. Certainly I do not limit the power Heaven has over our hearts; but I think when I forget the angel whose loss first made me sensible of this plain and evident truth, or cease to lament him, it will prove, not that I am consoled, but that some decay has taken place in my feelings and faculties. Till then—
‘Each lovely scene must him restore, For him the tears he duly shed, _Beloved_, till life can charm no more, And _mourned_, till Pity’s self be dead.’
You know I have no weak, vain pride in being inconsolable; on the contrary, no sooner did anything divert my thoughts, than I adopted and cherished it. Neither do I profess at all moments to feel the wound, although I always feel its general effects on my mind. I need not apologize for the last page, you well know I cannot love you as I do without speaking to you of what lies nearest my heart, my master passion.
What you say of Lady Hutchinson not feeling that confidence which is so often remarked in those far her inferiors in piety and virtue, does not surprise me. We do not expect that _any one_ temporal reward should be uniformly extended to the good, and certainly that of a happy exit appears to be the greatest of all. But I am sure, ‘he that goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall _doubtless_ come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him.’ We know that the Author and Finisher of our faith was not exempt from mortal pains, as appears by His pathetic exclamation; and, therefore, I am astonished that so many divines dwell on the certainty that the righteous will be distinguished by the serenity of their closing scene.
TO THE SAME.
London, April 4, 1808.
I sat yesterday at Mrs. Dawson’s between Baron Montalembert and a young man about two and twenty, who, hearing me speak French fluently to my neighbour who knew not English, and seeing I was applied to on Continental matters, was suddenly seized with such a desire to dazzle and enchant me from the idea that I was a foreigner or professed traveller, as was very amusing to everybody. He began immediately to talk French, to say he would go to Paris the hour there was a peace, to sigh over the charms of archduchesses and the fascinating manners of Poles, to call foreign princes by their names—the Radziwills, the Mecklenburgs—to say what pleasant houses they kept, and to repeat such French _bon-mots_ as are in every collection of anecdotes, at the same time trying to talk over such parts of Germany as I only had seen, and this not in a whisper, but so as to preclude the conversation of others. Mrs. D. says it was a _Continental fit_, assumed entirely for poor me.
By the bye, I saw a curious instance of the sameness of French character in a _marchande de toilette_ whom Miss A. employs. She came from a provincial town, has been fifteen years out of France, and yet is precisely a second-hand inferior Mad. Canot. After Miss A. had given her three guineas for two little quizzical things, bought at one of the worst shops in the Palais Royal for a _petit écu_, she packed up, saying, ‘_Pour moi je serai toujours pauvre, car je déteste les gains excessifs. Je ne puis pas souffrir les grands profits._’
Now I am wound up for letter-writing, I am going to _compose_ one to Mrs. ——. You know, some letters _we write_; some _write themselves_ (as ours to each other); and others _we compose_. Thank heaven, there are none which _we invent_, though I fear this last branch is in several hands.
TO THE SAME.
London, April 6, 1808.
I have read Mrs. Grant’s _Letters_,[44] and am charmed with them, but they were very unfit for me, as we were both wounded in the same vital part. I am now certain that my wound will never close, though it only throbs and pains at intervals. But every agitation revives in me the sense of my loss; even those of a pleasurable kind. I am like a man who bears in his breast the weapon which has wounded him, and who, when quite still, does not always feel it, but the least movement makes it a torment. I think if I could have seen my angel’s vivid smile to-day it would have calmed all my anxiety. He was certainly sent to give me an idea of celestial happiness. There is a source of bitterness in my love for you; for one of us must survive the other; but I used to think with a certain satisfaction of _his_ closing my eyes and living _happily_ afterwards, which I can scarcely hope for you. Then ‘Hope waits upon the flowery prime,’ and _that_ which we think we shall see improving for years acquires almost a kind of immortality in our eyes. I give up all idea of being more consoled than I am, though I will not oppose the designs of Providence; but as my feelings interfere with no duty, and assist in giving me that indifference we ought to have for the pomps, and vanities, and follies of the world, I rather think it would be wrong to try and repress what I know has made me less faulty than I am by nature. When our Saviour said ‘Weep not’ (which is the text I most often recollect) to the widow who had lost her son, He intended to restore him to her once more in this life, as He afterwards did. Besides, I cannot possibly in any way hope you will never be absent from me; and I expected to have enjoyed his constant company and constant happiness for ten long years, of which only four and a half would have now expired. Adieu! I know I grieve you a little; but I trust it does your mind no injury to recall it now and then to what it is useful sometimes to think on; and I prefer your feeling a momentary pang, to the least chance of your forgetting him, which I should think a faint shadow of losing him again.
* * * * *
_April, 1808._—On receiving Lady Hutchinson’s watch, after her decease:—
This watch, uncouth to modern eyes, My care shall rescue from neglect; Its sculpture rude, its antique size, Diminish nought my fond respect.
It marked her well-divided hours, The faithful friend, the matchless wife; Whose gifted mind, of various powers, In virtue found the charm of life.
Oft has it seen her summer day, When nature blushed with brightest glow, In calm attendance pass away On heirs of sickness, want, and woe.
Oft has it seen her winter eve Glide on, absorbed in tender cares, How best their sorrows to relieve, Their garments while her hand prepares.
Oft has it pointed to the time For grateful praise and humble prayer, Reclaiming vice, preventing crime, And softening tearless pale despair.
Undazzled, she beheld the blaze Of earthly pleasure, earthly pride; ’Twas thus she numbered well her days, To wisdom thus her heart applied.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
Bognor, Aug. 25, 1808.
I continue my early rising, and have overcome my reluctance to visit _sick_ poor, which I felt to a great degree of weakness; and as the command is positive, ‘Visit the sick,’ no Christian should indulge it.
As to society, the two B——s do not afford me much resource. The maiden lady is very good, and sees clearly all that is _very_ near her; but her circumference is so small, that conversation dies for want of aliment. The married one is too much studied to bear a close inspection, stage effect being her principal object; therefore intimacy destroys her charm, and every step one makes behind the scenes, lessens one’s admiration. She, too, is _good_ in all main points.
... Do not think I am _sniffing_ at your franks. On the contrary, I am learning properly to value 1_s._ 3_d._, by seeing at once how hardly-earned, and how useful, money is in the country. In towns it appears contemptible, because one has always in view the baubles for which it is exchanged—the useless and fatiguing ball or assembly, the cadence of the public singer, the bill for frippery at the milliner’s, the trinket which it is more troublesome to keep than gratifying to show; but in the country, where one sees how much hard labour is necessary to realize a shilling, one is more ready to part with it for the relief of indigence, and less willing to throw it away on vanity and self-indulgence.
TO THE SAME.
Bognor, Sept. 15, 1808.
To amuse Miss Agar, I went yesterday to see Goodwood. Fine undulating lawns, and a luxuriant growth of trees, give it that degree of beauty which few large places in England are without; and the pheasantry is a little spot of great charms. This is a little _dip_, nearly oval, almost on the top of a high hill, and thickly fenced all round with trees and shrubs. The ground rises from it abruptly, opposite the entrance, and more gradually on either side. In the bottom lies the neat cottage of the protector and guide of the most beautiful race of gold and silver pheasants, which wander about _apparently_ free from restraint, but alas! a few unseen feathers have been clipped, which completely rob them of the liberty of quitting the little circuit allotted to them. There is a total want of water, for which your being able by an effort to see the sea, and your discovering the Isle of Wight with difficulty, when you have mounted to a particular spot, can by no means compensate. The house is unfinished, and the windows seem too small for a building of such extent and magnificence as it is intended to be. You may be sure we did not go to see the dog-kennel, which is the grand curiosity of the place, and of such magnificence as makes one blush; but we were persuaded to pick our way through an ugly, gloomy, damp collection of little rocks and moss and tombstones, to which you descend by a short flight of steps; and this, forsooth, is the dogs’ burial-ground!
TO THE SAME.
Jan., 1809.
I have been reading Petrarch lately, not his sonnets _before_, but _after_, the loss of Laura. He is not a true mourner. His genius enabled him to guess at the workings of grief, and to clothe them in beautiful and appropriate expressions; but oh! how different from the deep sorrows of the truth. Yet many passages brought my own loss home to my mind,
## particularly his delight in her loveliness of form, of manners, and of
voice; and his sense of his own privation from these being no more.
Probably the fair unknown is amiable, since her person is so attractive. I have ever found more talents, sense, and, above all, _gentleness_, amongst handsome young women than plain ones. Indeed, the highest kind of beauty, expression, is essentially indicative of softness, or intelligence, or sensibility; as the lower kinds give proof of that perfect health and organization which is always favourable to good-humour and vivacity. If handsome women do not shine so often in mature life as artists or authoresses, it is from having generally had a wider choice in marriage, and therefore becoming wives and mothers; while the others, remaining single, have had leisure for improvement.
TO THE SAME.
London, March, 1809.
I brought to my box last night Mr. and Mrs. Langham. No party is so comfortable to me as a happy married pair. They are usually satisfied and amused with the spectacle: the lady is neither looking askant at the door, nor regretting that my box conceals her from the public eye, nor hinting at the number of men that are in other boxes, nor wanting to go into The Room; while the gentleman takes care of me out, without expecting to be repaid by my chatting and being on the _qui vive_, in return for the favour. I was particularly pleased at taking _them_. She is the favourite niece of Lady Jones, and he the son of Lady Langham, two excellent women, who loaded me with attentions, invitations, and tickets for concerts, &c., on the delightful first winter I passed in London, when (deprived of my birthright by a concurrence of circumstances one would think could hardly have occurred to one whose infancy and girlhood was so hedged round by precautions, and by all the foresight of provident affection) I appeared in this great town literally as a _desolate orphan_, without one appendage of affluence, ignorant, when the fifty pounds in my last draft were gone, where to get another; in short, exactly like the birds, with nothing to recommend me among strangers but my plumage and my song (insignificant as they were), and, like them also, ‘content and careless of to-morrow’s fare.’ Excuse this egotism; you encourage it when it tends to cheerful reflections; and I cannot look back on that winter, the kindness shown me, and the protecting hand of Providence in throwing me not merely among affectionate, but _moral_ and _good_ people, without infinite gratitude to that Power which brought me happily through a situation so dangerous in every point of view. What might have become of me in the world’s eye, if at that age I had fallen into the intimacies which it was unfortunate to make at any time; but which were of so much less consequence when youth, bloom, and novelty no longer made me conspicuous; when poverty no longer threatened to be my companion; and when I was quietly _domiciliée_? However, Providence has brought me now to the haven where I would be, as far as this life goes: and I wish and pray for nothing but a continuance of my present blessings. _For nothing!_ a strange-sounding phrase, when I possess _everything_ I can desire.
* * * * *
_April, 1809._—On reading Lord Byron’s _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_:—
Here wit and humour willing smiles excite, Yet who can read the volume with delight? Or, pleased, behold a youthful censor rise, Disdain and anger flashing from his eyes; Who tears the silken rose to show the thorn, Bids Genius quaff the bitter draught of scorn, Spurns the soft charities of social life, And rends the veil that hid domestic strife? Prompt with misguided hand, and zeal misplaced, The keen, bright shafts of ridicule to waste.
Pope, brilliant star of our Augustan age, For dulness and for guilt reserved his rage. The mighty master of the Northern lyre, Dowered with a painter’s eye, a poet’s fire, Scott, spirit-stirring bard to Fancy dear, Had ne’er endured from him the cutting sneer. Well had _he_ marked the beauties that belong To the wild melody of Southey’s song, (Though strangely destitute of taste and rule); Nor given this cordial to each rhyming fool, That if he fall, the same unsparing blow Had purposed to lay Scott and Southey low.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
London, April 29, 1809.
I dined at the Grattans with Catalani and her husband. They spoiled the party, as professors always do, when made of the company; and Valabrègue got a convenient _colique_; and they went off as soon as he came up from dinner, without her singing. She did not choose to open her mouth for fine speeches, and a good dinner, as was expected; and to prove that Mrs. Grattan might subscribe and come to the concerts of Catalani, they said at dinner that _vingt estropiés s’y faisoient porter_ both in London and Bath, also in Dublin. It was a curious day. She is coarse in person and manner in private; nay, even in voice, which is extraordinary. He is presumption and impudence double-distilled.
Lady —— is really a firebrand. I hear the two younger brothers of her husband are not very cordial, which I can easily conceive with such a person in the family. Her husband does not attempt to make the slightest reply to any insult she offers him, either in his own person or that of his relations. Is this love, philosophy, Christianity, or what? Love, I think, though it bears much violence and passion from its object, is easily roused to anger by _insult_, especially before a third person. Philosophy would probably teach a line of conduct that might reclaim by dignified firmness. And Christianity, which says, ‘Wives, _submit_ yourselves to your husbands,’ should, I think, instruct a man to keep his place. ‘Honouring her as the _weaker_ vessel,’ is not allowing her vessel to shove his out of its place, and scatter it in fragments in the dust.
TO THE SAME.
July 7, 1809.
As I always fall on something melancholy when my guardian is absent, I this morning have happened to read a wife’s adieu in _Gertrude of Wyoming_, and a beautiful passage on the loss of a child in Morehead’s _Sermons_, which were both particularly calculated to affect me. All Gertrude says of the topics of consolation left to her husband, with the exception of the stanza complaining of her not leaving a child, I beg you to apply to yourself, if ever you happen to want them. The words are few, but so true to nature, that they will suit ours as well as any fancied situation.
Mrs. —— seems an excellent woman, and wholly without background. I have seen few more estimable as a wife and mother, or more easy and safe as an acquaintance. As to _friendships_, no married woman can really _form_ one. The most she can do is to _continue_ one or two made when single. The intimacies made afterwards may be ‘confederacies in pleasure,’ but nothing more.
* * * * *
_July 9, 1809._—There is a strong resemblance between St. Pierre’s _Paul et Virginie_ and _Gertrude of Wyoming_. Perhaps the one may have elicited the other. I am far from detracting from the merit of one of the most beautiful poems in the English language by this remark. It is not the resemblance of plagiarism, but a species of likeness independent of imitation, which the admirers of both will find pleasure in tracing; and it is not uninteresting to observe what a different character may be stamped on events and situations nearly similar. In each we are presented with exquisite pictures of the lonely smiles of nature in a remote clime, where we suppose an almighty hand to have scattered with ‘boon profusion’ those beauties we endeavour to obtain by the slow progress of art and industry. In each the mind reposes on the idea of primeval innocence, and of lovers whose pure affections are guarded by their situation from any ills that may spring from intercourse with the world: who not only derive from each other their chief felicity, but to whom inconstancy, and even jealousy, are happily impossible. In each the hero is bowed to earth by the premature and sudden death of the woman he loves, who meets her fate with courage and sensibility before his eyes. In each a friend of mature age and high endowments endeavours to ‘minister to a mind diseased,’ and to soften that grief ‘which knows not consolation’s name.’ These beautiful tales have also this in common, that we conclude them with regret, wish we had been _so_ pained a little longer, feel our hearts raised and ameliorated, our sense of domestic happiness more lively, our interest in the fate of our fellow wanderers in the path of human life more strong and tender, than before. Such ought to be the effect of every work of imagination that bears the stamp of genius, and such effects alone give immortality to its productions.
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Sept., 1809.
I was greatly disappointed in _Madoc_, which I have just read, though, I believe, it is not very new. What a strange delight Southey takes in wounds and tortures! I would almost as soon visit the Inquisition, or witness a boxing-match, as read it again.
I have seen an interesting letter from Hannah More on the subject of _Cœlebs_, and was greatly pleased with the candour and simplicity of her sentiments and style. She says it has gone through ten large editions, and has been the means of sending many readers to ‘the best of books;’ but she apologizes for the marks it bears of having been written when her health and spirits were somewhat impaired; and she owns _that_ lady may have been right who said ‘it was a bad novel and a bad sermon.’
Your admiration of _Gertrude of Wyoming_ is not greater than my own. There is an exquisite sensibility in some passages, and a pomp of poetical diction, united with apparent truth of descriptive painting, in others, which cover all the faults of its meagre, disjointed, improbable narrative, and its occasional obscurity of expression. Its condensed beauties are numerous, and particularly to be admired at present, when the art of saying much in few words seems almost forgotten.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
London, April, 1810.
I find myself lonely and low and alarmed and anxious and uncomfortable to an uncommon degree. The strangeness of this house and of all the faces round me, makes me very nervous. Cornwall, you know, wanders round me like something between an old Irish mourner, a troubled spirit, and an undertaker’s assistant. In short, I am miserable, and every forgotten spectre of past sorrow gathers round me. I cannot express to you what I feel at finding myself here to-night with only this melancholy woman. What a witch is Imagination, and how she can darken, as well as brighten, the same groundwork, so as to make it appear perfectly a different picture!
I met an old acquaintance to-day. She told me she would not have known me had she met me anywhere; but added, as a consolation, that I was grown very ‘stout and jolly.’ ‘Stout and jolly;’ charming epithets! But, indeed, I am very indifferent about this. Nobody has gone so far in speaking of my change as the looking-glass; so I am still much in debt to the politeness of my friends.
I was amused by ——’s apprehension of meeting with ‘a careful wife.’ I never found any of the fears my friends entertained relative to their fate in marriage realized. Though the hydra-headed monster of matrimony may have produced to them ‘Gorgons and Chimæras dire,’ these have never been precisely of the kind they apprehended. A notable wife was often troublesome in the last age, when the feudal hospitality and profusion of some families were contrasted in others with a species of narrow bustling husbandry that has long bustled its last, and subsided into the temperate and well-regulated economy of our time; which requires not the sacrifice of more than the daily half-hour, and will amply repay it in a consciousness of utility and of fulfilling the claims made on us by children, friends, servants, the community, and the poor, all of whom must be injured, more or less, by every species of waste.
TO THE SAME.
Dec. 17, 1810.
There is no party at present here except Mr. —— and his wife, who is just the person formed to distress me, by always talking to me of _my_self and _her_self—two topics on which a fair easy dialogue is impossible, as I cannot possibly say exactly what I think of either of us. Her compliments to me are very strong, but _now_ such compliments give me pain. Though in the exuberance of youth and spirits I could once bear a powerful light, I am now scorched by what used only to warm me. She is quite miserable at her husband being ‘so stupid a thing’ as a clergyman. I thought this opinion was extinct, and was quite surprised to hear of its revival. I own it appears to me a particularly happy fate, if one likes one’s husband, to have married a clergyman. He is safe not merely from the dangers of a profession, but of a duel, and his wife has _un gage de plus_ for his moral conduct and his leading a domestic stationary life. Add to this an eternal comparison with poor me—my garnets, my shawl, my house in Hampshire, all wished for; and finally, she assured me, when we were alone, she would be very glad we could exchange husbands, that she heard you were very much to be liked, and I should have ——, and welcome. Now, you think I exaggerate, and upon my word I soften the picture. I have written a whole page of gossip. I hope we shall continue to associate but little with those who give materials for it.
TO THE SAME.
Bursledon Lodge, Dec., 1810.
None of us have been out of the house since Monday, and there was a fresh fall of snow to-day. How I thank my _young_ self for having cultivated such a taste for occupation that my _old_ self never knows _ennui_. That I prefer society to loneliness, is quite another thing; and I am glad to see clearly that I do so, and no longer to be cheated by the false ideas a warm imagination picks up on the subject from books, or an impatient spirit from the momentary disgust inspired by unpleasant company.
... I think to be excellent as a husband a man must be excellent in many other points; and if women were more convinced of this than they are in general, there would be fewer marriages, and perhaps more happiness; or else, in hope of pleasing us, men would improve themselves. The greatest fault our sex can be accused of, is being too easily pleased by yours; who seem to take an unfair advantage of it in being as much _over_, as we often are _under_, nice; since the smallest fault of temper, manners, or even person, is thought a sufficient apology for your breaking loose; while _poor we_——; but this is too copious a subject, and my poor baby is crying. I hope Buonaparte may have a sick child, as I think the cry of an infant, whose pain one cannot know or assuage, would make him feel his want of power, though nothing else has done it.
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Jan. 2, 1811.
I have never seen Miss Edgeworth, which I do not very much regret, having invariably been disappointed whenever I have greatly admired a book, on being introduced to its author. This may partly be my own fault, but I believe it is so common a feeling that those to whom admiration gives pleasure, ought rather to wish to retain their idea of a favourite writer than to exchange it for reality. You might say this was ‘sour grapes,’ if I did not also acknowledge that, if an opportunity offered of making acquaintance with a person so distinguished, and of such eminent talents, as Miss Edgeworth, I should certainly embrace it; so my little theory will never deprive me of any positive pleasure, and only serve to save me from unavailing wishes.
(_Bursledon Lodge, Feb. 26._)—You will be pleased at knowing we are all well; and that I, who for many, many years, have never seen the country, but when visiting at other peoples’ houses, and of course under some constraint, feel a childish delight at watching the first crocuses, snowdrops, and the gradual unfolding of the honeysuckles and other creepers. My children are equally entertained, and find a great difference between the liberty and variety of a garden, and the formal pacing up and down town flags, ever either damp or dusty. Indeed, as to education, being in the country lops off half the difficulties which attend it in town.
TO THE SAME.
London, May 1, 1811.
The letter on the _strenuous idleness_ of those who devote their whole leisure to needlework, I imagine to be Mr. Lefanu’s. Am I right? My grandfather was more averse from this employment than even the writer of that letter, and could never bear to see a needle in my hands. Your friend does not go so far, and argues not against the _use_ of the needle, but the _abuse_ of it. I think he is right. But in general I own myself a friend to what we females call _work_. It fills up the _interstices_ of time, if I may use the expression. It accords with most of the indoor employments of men, who, if they care for us at all, do not much like to see us engaged in anything which abstracts us too much from _them_. It lessens the _ennui_ of hearing children read the same story five hundred times. It can be brought into the sick room without diminishing our attention to an invalid, while it seems to release the sufferer from any obligation of conversing with _us_. It is a sort of composer, a _calmant_ peculiarly useful, I believe, to the delicate and irritable spirits of women. Those who can use the pen so well as the friend whom I have the pleasure of addressing, are, I think, entitled to lay aside the ‘shining store,’ but they are so few as to be considered merely as exceptions.
I am glad you like Mrs. Carter’s _Letters_. I know they are heavy, yet I _do_ like them, and read them with great pleasure, and am angry when I hear them called dull, which has happened to me very often. I love the turn of her mind; and though she may be a little tedious, it is to me like the tediousness of a friend. If you have a mind for brilliancy and flippancy, and some sense and wit, mixed up with a certain hardness and insensibility and vanity very unpleasing in a youthful female, turn to Mrs. Montagu’s _Letters_. They are vastly more entertaining for once reading, but you do not love the writer half so well, nor am I sure you would be so apt to _return_ to the volume. Besides, there are a few great truths which Mrs. Carter places in so many lights, and impresses so strongly, that I think her _Letters_ are highly useful in a moral view, and an excellent book for the library of a young girl.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
London, May, 1811.
I have _guttered_ about through the rain, shut up in a long shawl and thick veil, and have seen West’s picture. Beautiful it certainly is, though we are perhaps a little too national if we prefer it to the ‘Descent from the Cross,’ and the ‘Transfiguration.’ Our Saviour’s face disappointed me extremely; it is not nature, and it does not strike me as sufficiently noble for Divinity. But we cannot too much admire his figure, drapery, and hands. As a composition, it seems to be admirable; and its _clearness_ and _distinctness_, those great charms to an unlearned eye, do not seem to injure its effect as a whole. The expression of sensibility in the principal female faces is beautiful, and does not disturb the harmony of their countenances; but they are all three too much alike.
The —— always leave me in doubt by their manner, whether I have not done something to offend them, and really have an expression between distracted and _distrait_, that one knows not how to comprehend. In general, it is a great misfortune to be rich without being well educated. People expect from fortune they know not what, and are angry if it does not command _all_ the different kinds of respect and attention, which are due to such a variety of circumstances. In a small circle it will have its weight; but when people step into general society, the effect of mere money is immediately neutralized, and ‘Nabob’ or ‘Nay, Bob’ comes to much the same thing.
I am glad Mrs. C. is so cross, as I like you should now and then see that the innocents who never have seen the world, nor heard a civil thing, are worse than us poor decayed toasts, against whom you wise ones so often declaim as unfit for domestic life. A race-horse draws as well in the family coach as if he had never been on the turf.
TO THE SAME.
London, May, 1811.
I heard excellent music last night, and the last public notes of the sweetest singer I have ever heard, or probably shall ever hear—I mean combined with so much power; for I have heard many moderately strong voices _still_ sweeter, according to the usual equalization of Heaven’s gifts. Mrs. Billington professedly sang for the last time; but as I saw Mara’s resurrection about six different times in ten years, I am not without hope of hearing her again. Her last Italian air was that which Tarchi taught me, _Sarah’s Lamentation_; it was marked MS., and everyone is wishing for it. Harrison, Catalani, a delightful ballad singer, Mrs. Ashe, and almost everything else that was good, sang there. Harrison’s singing was like a lover’s whisper by moonlight.
Mr. A—— has inflicted on me the task of reading his _Journey through France_—on lazy _me_, who would not read the admired poem of _Psyche_, because it was in manuscript. I catch a word now and then about a ‘church and altarpiece,’ a ‘capital picture,’ ‘charges _moderate_ in the _extreme_’ (is not that a bull?), ‘the lively chit-chat of a beautiful _petite_ brunette,’ &c. &c., and so I hope to persuade myself I have read it. Mr. Hastings, in a note which accompanied the book, gets out of the scrape of giving an opinion with admirable dexterity; for he says it ‘is _as_ interesting from the authority from which it proceeds, as from its own intrinsic merit.’ There are not so many _froms_ in his phrase, but this is the idea.... I have finished Mr. A——’s book. He talks of the mildness of the present French Government, and is enchanted with everything Parisian; makes Mad. Frémont a fourth Grace; the _Hôtel du Cercle_ the Palace of Armida; and, finally, he makes me sick.
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Bursledon Lodge, July 30, 1811.
Pray indulge me with the characters of the youthful part of your family. I once heard Lady Yarmouth say, to justify herself for liking a disagreeable young man better than a sensible old one—‘I have a decided taste for youth.’ Now, though this is not my case, in her sense of the phrase, yet I certainly have particular pleasure in contemplating the characters and actions of those who are fresh from the hand of nature, and alive to all the enjoyments she so liberally bestows: ‘Hope waits upon the flowery prime.’
Your _Good Nature_ appears to me a beautiful poem, and I strongly recommend its publication. It will be a valuable addition to the small number of those one may put into the hands of youth, without feeling any secret wish to expunge even a line. Thanks for your eulogium on Clarkson. He is not enough praised by the world. The _first_ promoter of every good work is always less valued than he ought. Like the foundation stone, like the precious seed, his fame too often lies buried.
The opening of your book on old age, reminds me of an anecdote of the late Duke of Queensberry, which I had from an earwitness. Leaning over the balcony of his beautiful villa near Richmond, where every pleasure was collected which wealth could purchase or luxury devise, he followed with his eyes the majestic Thames, winding through groves and buildings of various loveliness, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, that wearisome river, will it never cease running, running, and I so tired of it!’ To me this anecdote conveys a strong moral lesson, connected with the well-known character of the speaker, a professed voluptuary, who passed his youth in pursuit of selfish pleasures, and his age in vain attempts to elude the relentless grasp of _ennui_.
* * * * *
I gather from the following, evidently the sketch of a preface, that it was my Mother’s intention to edit a selection from the correspondence of the two honoured friends of her youth, one a connexion by her first marriage, whose names are mentioned at its close. It has a further value to me, as expressive of her sentiments in respect of the posthumous publication of letters.
_Sept. 1811._—Many letters and fragments never intended for publication, have lately been drawn from the shade, and exhibited in the glare of day, without any prominent merit to entitle them to notice; yet all have been widely read; and the fastidious critic, who exclaims against the vanity of editors, and the folly of obtruding private letters on the public, is not always the last to peruse the decried volume. Is it not unfair that works which contribute so largely to general entertainment, should meet with general censure? Where nothing is published that the dead would have wished to conceal, or that can hurt the feelings of the living, it is a blameless gratification to diffuse and prolong the remembrance of those we have loved, to place all that remains of them on earth beyond the reach of those accidents to which MSS. are liable, and to enlarge through their means the stock of innocent amusement. It may even be added, that the curiosity excited by anecdote and private letters turns to general good, by substituting sketches from nature for the monstrous fictions and insipid ravings of modern novels.
Will the editor be excused for adding another volume to the class in question? The characters of those who wrote the following letters were of no common order. Many will recollect having been exhilarated by the wit and humour of Edward Tighe; some, too, will read with interest the ardent expressions of the eccentric but highly gifted Mansergh St. George, whose talents, sensibility, quick sense of honour, and high courage, commanded admiration; though by some strange fatality they never reached the end for which they seemed designed by Providence, and were buried in an untimely grave.
Of the latter of those named above, I find another and fuller portrait; see also in the later part of this volume, a letter of date Nov. 9, 1826.
Few men were more highly endowed by nature than Mansergh St. George—rich in the elementary qualities most essential to the formation of the poet, the painter, or the hero; warm affections, a lively imagination, powers of conception equally quick and strong, deep sensibility, undaunted courage, unaffected indifference to the common objects of ambition, and exquisite skill in the transmitting his impressions, either by the pen or pencil. Shakespeare has said that ‘spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues;’ and he is surely right, if we take a future existence into calculation. Did we look to this world alone, we should say the talents of Mansergh St. George were splendid and useless gifts;—‘their memorial is perished with them.’ In fulfilling the duties of his profession as a soldier, he received in the American war a frightful wound, which carried away a portion of the skull; and, though it clouded not the brightness of his intellect, it deprived him of health and vigour, except in those moments of enthusiasm when his body seemed to borrow strength from his mind, moments ever followed by increased debility and depression. He was eccentric, but his singularities were not such as derogated from the respect and affection claimed by his sensibility and genius. He was conscious of them, and sometimes attributed them to a defective system of education, but they were certainly increased by the sedentary and retired life to which ill-health condemned him, and by the attention to his own sensations it enforced.
I find only two or three letters of him who is thus praised among my Mother’s papers; though, doubtless, she must have possessed many more, when meditating this publication. In one, of date Aug. 1792, written soon after the loss of his wife at Clifton, there is a passage which I am well pleased to preserve. ‘I would shake hands with Sir —— ——, but grief communicates with grief like madness, and we are both too apt to dress our sorrows in idle weeds and fumitory. Affliction is a curious thing. Her threatening aspect becomes mild on a near approach. Her snakes become lambent, and lick our wounds. She has an _agreeable_ ugliness. But perhaps I am partial; for we have long been playfellows.... I have suffered the _worst_; in due time, my present agony will be mellowed into those sweet regrets, that delicious _desiderium_, the balm which the mind naturally produces for its own cure.’
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Oct. 12, 1811.
I am sorry I cannot answer your query about the Duchess of York. I know she has several dogs, but I suspect the number of 170 to be an exaggeration. I remember ten years since hearing Col. ——, a man nicely attentive to his own convenience, lament that eight or ten of them usurped every good place near the fire, and made the drawing-room extremely offensive. She passes for being what is called ‘a good sort of woman;’ person of whom nothing can be cited remarkable enough to merit praise or blame. I was presented to her at her first drawing-room, when her manner was uncommonly gentle, and her appearance pleasing.
How often I have thought of the affecting circumstances of Miss Keatinge’s bequest. It is a most beneficent dispensation of Providence that sickness and sorrow so often prove the seeds of charity and sympathy. In consequence of _one_ pang felt, how often are a thousand relieved or prevented. And as to the sufferers, I believe there is none of us who cannot say, ‘It is good for me that I was in trouble.’ If we perceive _that_ now, how much more clearly shall we see it when in another state of existence, if we are then endowed with a faculty of looking back on those springs of action which gave an impulse to our earthly life.
TO THE SAME.
Nov., 1811.
I have been much interested by your _Tobit_; and, as you desired, have not yet read the original, which I have nearly forgot. This, however, is not a work which would have much chance of pleasing the public; as a Scripture story is a millstone which, I believe, would now sink any poem. Strange it is, and unaccountable. Mr. Sotheby has struggled nobly against this prejudice in his _Saul_; but scarcely anyone has read this charming poem. In the whole circle of my acquaintance I never met one who had; nor could I ever prevail on any person, even among Mr. Sotheby’s friends and relations, to do so, except my second self; yet it had the advantage of being introduced, in an extract of considerable length, in the _Annual Register_ ten or a dozen years since. I think Johnson did some injury in declaring religious subjects unfit for poetry.
You will have great pleasure in conversing with Lancaster, who is communicative and fluent. He has given a great stimulus to the public mind, and awakened those to a sense of duty who were too long dormant on the great subject of education. That he appears not to have been able to resist that temptation ‘by which angels fell,’ and that he has been so far intoxicated by praise as to claim the _entire_ merit of an invention, which certainly he adopted and published and fostered with more energy and success than the real parent, is to me a matter of regret rather than surprise—perfection and human nature being incompatible. The _bitterness_ of the controversy is indeed to be deplored; it is clear that the controversy itself has already been of use.
* * * * *
The following was written as a contribution to a miscellaneous volume projected by a literary friend. I am ignorant whether the volume was ever published; or, if so, under what name.
THE ENVIOUS MAN: IN IMITATION OF THE PICTURES IN ‘THE MICROCOSM.’[45]
The next picture is distinguished by the peculiar expression of the countenance. Mark that painful smile. It inflicts on the spectator a slight tincture of the uneasiness it bespeaks. This is an Envious Man—sworn foe to Excellence, Eminence, Enjoyment. United, these form a triple cord, in which he would willingly hang himself; and separate, any one of the three suffices to wring his heart.
The man who rejoices in the success of those who tread the same path to distinction with himself, has conquered some of the strongest foes to happiness and virtue. He who feels a slight difficulty in doing justice to a competitor is touched by human infirmity. But what shall we say of this man, who is Envious _in the abstract_; to whom all happiness is baneful, all beauty deformity, all music discord, all virtue hypocrisy or weakness? In vain you think yourself safe, because you can never be his competitor; your ages are dissimilar, your pursuits opposite, your situations remote. Mistaken man! In your life ‘if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,’ there will he cross you, like a basilisk, in your path. Even though you possess no splendid gifts, no social charm, nor riches, nor honours, nor domestic joys,—still, if content be yours, there you sin against his creed, and incur his anathema.
A youth speaks of a lovely woman with admiration. The Original of this portrait points out, as a counterpoise to all her graces, that slight blemish in person or manners, which is but the stamp of humanity. Tell him a witticism, he has heard it before: a splendid act of beneficence, ’tis ostentation: an instance of family affection, ‘Dear Sir, this may be so, but who can peep behind the curtain?’ When the length of a young lady’s raven tresses was pointed out to him as remarkable, he whispered, ‘False, depend on it; I know where they are sold.’ ‘Sir,’ said a friend of the young lady’s, ‘the hair must have grown on some human head, why not where we see it?’ ‘No, no,’ says the sceptic; ‘be assured, hair of such a length never grew from any head whatever. False, false, depend on it.’
This is the only man whose wishes are ever crowned with final success. Vigour declines, beauty decays, wit is extinguished, the tenderest ties at last are broken, the noblest monument crumbles to dust. So far, time alone insures the accomplishment of his desires. Folly, vice, and natural evils, accelerate the work. All the ministers of darkness are his allies. ‘Shadow him with laurel,’ ye spirits at enmity with man. He is already one of your fraternity; he has enlisted in the service of your master, _without a bribe_.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
Bath, Feb., 1812.
Your gleanings are very entertaining. Why is it that one appears to hear more odd and comical sayings in the first twenty-four hours after an Irish arrival, than in many following days? I suppose the novelty of the accent excites attention in the beginning.
I was last night at Lady Newcomen’s. I cannot tell you how kind people are. I meet more _bienveillance_ than when I was younger; and to _me_ this more than compensates for that mixture of flattery, nonsense, and spite, of which what is foolishly called admiration is compounded. No one affronted me by saying I looked as well as ever, or even simply well.
Your friend seems quite uneasy under the present fashion of not flirting, and looks as if he was saying ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ For my part, I think the present ‘sabbath’ much pleasanter than the former ‘laborious idleness.’ If everyone told the truth, they would own that fishing for _agreeable_ chat often tired them as much as more strenuous employment; and to some the double duty of talking well, and looking well, in all humours and under all circumstances, was really fatiguing.
This is my day of moving. The servants are very angry at my leaving this house, and the domestic machinery creaks in every wheel.
TO THE SAME.
Bath, Feb. 20, 1812.
I am just returned from seeing Betty, and greatly disappointed. His figure and face are ignoble, his voice not pleasing, his gesticulations vulgar, and his manner in general high rant. Yet in the last act of _The Earl of Essex_ he showed feeling and a just conception of his part. I know not how he pleased others; as to me, he made no impression, and I never desire to see him again. _The pair_ by my side were as much in a state of performance as he was. There is no love on either part. She wishes to marry him as a _bon parti_; and he wishes, whether he intends to marry her or not, to make her violently in love with him. In this he fancies he has in part succeeded, and so did I till this evening; but he is much mistaken. I could almost fancy she will carry her point; one is generally safe in deciding for the woman. As we were a _quartetto_, I thought it right, on quitting the box half an hour before the play was over, to offer to take her home, as it appeared to me unfeminine to leave her shut up in a little cage with him; but she refused me under a very ingenious pretence, and much will depend on the use she makes of that time. She was in a state of high romance and affected suffering; and it was painful to hear on each side the language of high-wrought affection used for selfish or worldly purposes and in a theatrical tone; and also to see love played at like a game of chess, each party advancing and retreating according to a premeditated scheme. She has a thoroughly foreign manner, and admirable French accent, having past much of her life in France; shows great _sharpness_ both of intellect and temper; but patches it over now and then with a sentiment of softness and self-devotion, borrowed from Claire d’Albe, or Malvina, or Corinne. Heaven help him and his daughter, if he marries her!
TO THE SAME.
Bath, Feb. 22, 1812.
No letter from you yet, and it is now a week since I have heard; but I will continue to write, and heap coals of fire on your head. All Bath is much more interested at present in Mrs. Williams’, late Mrs. Bristow’s, dancing than in the change of Ministry. She announced her intention of making up a French country-dance last Thursday, and it attracted several hundreds—partly from the reputation of her beauty and dancing, partly from the singularity of seeing a woman past fifty, and a grandmother, still so handsome, and able to perform in a _cotillon_. She danced, I hear, not in the theatrical indelicate manner of the present day, but with the flowing gracefulness of the preceding, and is to perform again next Thursday, when a much greater crowd is expected, as those who came to ridicule her stayed to admire, except a few inflexible Bath Cats. I fear I must not venture that evening, as, without going very early, no art or good luck could secure a place where I could see her. Her husband danced in the same dance as her _vis-à-vis_ (which, you know, is not her partner), and performed also remarkably well; but he is a youngish man.
I have wanted you to protect me from a person who has taken possession of me—not a man. She began by humility and falling in love with me and mine—not by admiration, which I know how to resist, but by affection, which I shall never resist; and she ends by _exigeance_ and assumption, and, without being distinguished in any way, by an extraordinary display of vanity, which is always interrupting the common course of things.
I am giving —— —— something very like regular lessons in singing; and I have the vanity to think I have improved her. She has powers, and has had an immensity of instruction; but I think her instructors have made a job of her, and have hid from her, or at least not shown her, some of the simplest principles in singing.
TO THE SAME.
Bath, Feb. 26, 1812.
I heard so often that Betty acted ill the first night from _mauvaise honte_, that I was seduced to see him again to-night, and fell upon _Alexander the Great_, fancying I was going to see _Tancred and Sigismunda_. He certainly pleased me much better; and I shall not be surprised if the strength of his genius and intelligence conquers the impression made by his physical defects. At the same time, I shall regret it, for the ‘stock of harmless pleasure’ is much diminished when external grace is not united on the stage to superior talent: and if he is borne to the head of his profession, _manœuvring_ will keep down all his competitors as long as my life lasts; and I shall be compelled to see as Hamlet, Romeo, and Coriolanus, a clumsy, short-necked, large-stomached hero, with a red dumpling as a face, an obstructed articulation, and an audible manner of recovering breath, like what one hears on board the packets. I foresee this is likely to be our fate, for he has great energy, pathos, and a complete conception of his part. In short, he _has_ every mental, and _wants_ every physical requisite. Lady —— is his great patroness, and I hope I never shall forget her manner of applauding, for it makes me laugh whenever it rises to my mind. It was not with her eyes, it was not with her hands; it was an undulating motion of her whole person, and all its appendages. In a pathetic part, the only time when a tear was forced from me, it was instantly dried as I turned my eye on her (it was ‘Said a tear to a smile’). I have tried to do it, but I want her
## activity.
At Lady Cosby’s affectionate request I sang at her house last Monday, and her thanks and praises were far above what my performance could deserve. I heard a lady behind me to-night say I sang quite in the style of Braham. It is of all others the style of which I should like to catch the least shadow. When I hear a lady sings like Catalani, I am always alarmed, for I dread anything approaching to her _powers_ being let loose upon me without an equal proportion of her science and skill; and if it is a young untaught lady, who is ‘quite a natural genius,’ I am very anxious to run out of the room.
I hope you remember me affectionately to the kind friends you are surrounded with. You know how much I love many amongst them, and how completely the _second_ circle in my heart (for the first contains but six souls) is filled by the friends and relations you have given me;—I will not say _relatives_; ‘relations’ was good enough for Milton and Thomson, and shall be good enough for me, spite of modern refinement. It is a word _set_ in the gold of two of their best passages, and therefore I will not change it.
TO THE SAME.
Bath, March 1, 1812.
I passed Monday evening with an old friend, Mrs. Morgan, who has known me from the time I was six years old. She has a mind most pregnant and original, and a superior flow of conversation, but is not generally liked. She is so indifferent to common forms, visits only those she prefers and approves, never goes to assemblies, and is perhaps _a little_ more candid than is necessary. Her lamentations over me at my having lost what, as Clarissa always says, ‘she was pleased to call’ ‘the prettiest and lightest figure she ever saw,’ were really entertaining, from their contrast to the fibs one is in the habit of hearing; adding, ‘Ah, my dear’ (for she has some Irish phraseology), ‘what a beautiful creature I remember you, and now, even your face is grown fat and broad. Well, you will always be delightful _to listen to_.’ I am very much obliged to her for remembering what she once thought me, but I had the weakness to feel a little involuntary melancholy. In spite of _broad_, Mrs. Morgan is a delightful woman, so delightful, that, though dressed to go to Mrs. Lemon’s, I sent an excuse, and spent the whole evening _tête-à-tête_ with her. She illuminated the past for me, and gave me an infinity of anecdotes from the fountain-head, relative to Mrs. Bowdler (her intimate friend), that prodigy, Miss Smith, the Edgeworths, who live near her daughter, and other equally interesting people. Mr. Edgeworth’s present wife goes with all her children to the parish church, has introduced the Bible, and has added to the whole family the charm of religious feelings and principles.
Mrs. Williams will put some hundreds into King’s pocket, such crowds attend the rooms to see her dance. I have not ventured to go since she has performed; for you cannot get a place near enough to see her without going at eight o’clock. She has taught her husband to dance; he is always her _vis-à-vis_; and he said to an old maid whom he heard abusing her for _exhibiting_, as they call everything they cannot do themselves, ‘Ma’am, _if you had a husband_ that liked you should dance as well as I do that Mrs. Williams should dance, I dare say you would do it too. She is my wife, and I hope she will dance as long as she is able.’ The consternation of the old maid was great. Certainly it is a foolish thing to be so anxious to see a woman perform, because she is a grandmother, whom nobody came particularly to see when she was sixteen years younger and a good many more pounds lighter; for she is very large; but the folly is in the spectators, not in her.
* * * * *
_August, 1812._—The paucity of French works fit for young women is remarkable. From Mad. de Genlis they learn to overrate worldly pursuits, externals, accomplishments, and all the frippery of life; for though there are charming passages and delightful stories, and she disavows this doctrine, yet such is _the general impression_ her writings leave. Besides, they have a tendency to foster duplicity, and a species of address which requires to be discouraged in females, as experience proves that most of us have too much of it without any superadded cultivation. A mother, as in _Adèle et Théodore_, is to form her daughter’s heart by a series of little _plots_ and _falsehoods_, which she calls _scenes_; and all these are to be acknowledged to the daughter on her day of marriage, in order to increase the respect for truth necessary for the happiness of that connexion. From _Télémaque_ girls may learn abstract principles of politics and the art of governing kingdoms; or rather, as they cannot understand these topics, they learn to be unable ever to read with pleasure a very fine work, from the recollection of the _ennui_ it inspired as an exercise. From _Gil Blas_, which was once at least a school book (perhaps it may be so no longer), they will learn what are the habits and manners of gamesters, pickpockets, kept mistresses, robbers, &c., and they _only lose_ the attic salt and exquisite humour that form the whole merit of the book; as, to relish these, some knowledge of the world is absolutely necessary. Mad. de Sévigné is delightful to a cultivated mind, well read in the anecdotes and history of her period, and versed in the conversation-idiom of the French language; but she is so full of allusions, so like a speaker, and so sure her daughter has read the same books and knows the same people as herself, that a poor girl is quite in the dark, who has no store of information about Louis XIV. and his Court, who has never heard of Racine or Descartes, who knows nothing of the tenets of the Roman Catholic religion, &c. Besides, as Mad. de Sévigné writes to a married daughter, whom she endeavours to amuse by all the anecdotes of Versailles without selection, her _Letters_ are more suitable to female maturity than to early youth. When a very young girl has professed to me great pleasure in this work, I have usually found she talked from _hearsay_.
TO MAD. DE LA GARDIE, SWEDEN.
By favour of Admiral Bertie.[46]
Bursledon Lodge, Sept., 1812.
L’interressante, l’aimable Comtesse de la Cardie, a-t-elle oublieé une amie dont le séjour à Vienne a été embelli par des prouves continuelles de son amitié,—Melesina, qui a changé son nom de _St. George_ pour celui de _Trench_, par un mariage des plus heureux, n’oubliera jamais les heures qui ont coulées dans la société d’une famille où tout se réunissoit pour plaire à l’esprit et le cœur. Je ne puis pas exprimer les sensations avec lesquelles j’ai trouvé hier dans le portefeuille de l’Amiral Bertie, une gravure qui avoit sur l’envelope deux lignes qui prouvoient que cela venoit de votre main. Il me donne de vos nouvelles avec tout l’empressement de son caractère, animé par le plaisir qu’il trouvoit à rendre justice aux qualités de ses amis. Il parle avec beaucoup de reconnoissance de vos bontés, et de celles de Monsieur le Comte de la Gardie, et il m’a dépeint le château hospitalier où vous m’avez invité avec tant de grâce; et dont j’ai tant desiré de voir les beautés pittoresques. C’est avec un plaisir trés-vif que j’ai su par lui que votre santé, et celle de ceux qui vous sont chers, est telle que vous pourriez la désirer, et que l’enfant que vous attendiez quand je suis
## partie de Vienne est actuellement à cette époque, où une mère commence de
trouver dans son fils, un ami aussi sûr que tendre.
Je possède à present _cinq_ amis de cette espèce. Mon fils ainé fait ses études à Cambridge; les autres animent la retraite charmante où nous nous consacrons à leur education pour la plus grande partie de l’année; et je possède aussi une fille de quatre mois, qui promet de jouir d’une santé et d’une vivacité pareille à celles de ses frères.
Puis-je me flatter que votre réponse m’assurera que vous me continuez vos bontés, et me parlera en détail d’une amie qui me sera toujours chère. Veuillez bien assurer Monsieur le Comte des sentiments d’amitié et d’estime qu’il m’a inspiré.
TO A FRIEND.
Cheltenham, Sept. 20, 1812.
Before you can read this letter, I earnestly hope the stream of your domestic happiness will have returned to its own clear and unruffled course. That any circumstance has disturbed it, I much lament; but I am sure it is not necessary to remind you how often an event which has approached us under an unpleasing form, has become afterwards one of the primary sources of our happiness; and it is only to the _form_, to the _dress_, if I may so express myself, of what has occurred, that your maternal heart can object. Virtuous love, that great blessing of human existence—I should say great_est_, if I were not a mother—always appears in my eyes still more virtuous when it is founded on an intimacy and knowledge of each other commenced in childhood or early youth. One is sure in this case that intellectual and moral qualities have had the principal share in producing it; for such an intercourse precludes all illusion, all deception from the imagination; and none but the truly amiable and excellent are likely in this situation to feel a mutual passion. Allow me, then, my dear friend, to offer you my congratulations. I am not surprised that —— should feel herself pained, because every point in the manner of ——’s marriage is not exactly what you could desire. At that age one expects all the occurrences of life to accord _perfectly_ with one’s wishes, and the lightest deviation from these discomposes the youthful mind; but when experience has shown that there is no light without shade, that the brightest summer has its passing clouds, one scarcely bestows a thought on slight and transient mortifications, which only remind one that earth is not heaven.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
Cheltenham, Sept. 22, 1812.
I pay nine guineas a week, which I see is three too much; but I must submit to the law of necessity, and the inconvenience attendant on having been taught, for more than the first half of my life, that it was a disgrace to know how to make a bargain—as silly an idea as can be grafted on the mind of youth, and one I will take care my children shall not be encumbered with. Indeed, they will see that one of the most liberal and dignified of men is perfectly well qualified to do himself the same justice he would do to another, which is all that is necessary. It is not generosity that ever prevented any sensible person from making a bargain, but timidity, want of _aplomb_, false shame, and a desire to please by facility and yielding.
There are much the same set of people here as last year—Mrs. Fitzherbert among them, who was _judiciously_ invited to a _fête_ by Col. —— in honour of the Princess Charlotte’s birthday. He first treated Mrs. F. as Regentess, by leading her into the supper-room before all the women of rank, and then gave toasts and made orations upon the merits of the Prince and Princess, _and the lovely fruit of their union_. Was ever such folly, inconsistency, and want of feeling? On the whole, the society here is bad, but the walks, air, and water are delightful. I long to see my own coronet of jewels once more on its emerald ground; above all, to assure myself that the last little pearl is as round and perfect as when I left her.
TO THE SAME.
Cheltenham, Sept. 24, 1812.
I passed yesterday evening at Col. ——’s. Under the _régime_ of _Madame_, he is far less ridiculous than when allowed to go alone. A map or survey of his Jamaica estate was ostentatiously displayed on a flower-stand. After having so lately read John Woolman,[47] I felt a little awkward in sharing a _recherché_ supper, and seeing so plainly the source whence it flowed. ‘Negroes-land,’ ‘Sugar canes,’ were marked in different parts of this melancholy map. John Woolman, you know, was ‘_not free_ to share in even the necessaries of life,’ when obtained by the labour of slaves. How would his mild spirit have been afflicted by seeing this ostentatious display of our shame! Yet I supped upon turkey _piqué au lard_, as if I never had read John Woolman.
ON A REPORT OF THE DEATH OF BUONAPARTE.
_Nov., 1812._
Quenched is thy light In endless night, Thou flaming minister of wrath; Struck from thy lofty and eccentric path; Where, like a comet, through the troubled air, Impelled by some unknown mysterious law, Shining with lurid wild disastrous glare, Thou didst impress intolerable awe: And though thy light, as the volcanic fire, Brought death, brought terror,—who but must admire (E’en while they fear, condemn, or hate,) Thy steadfast mind, as fixed as fate, Thy keen and penetrating soul, Tempered to conquer and control, Thy powerful glance, that measured earth As thine inheritance by birth. Thy scornful smile,—thy searching eyes,— We might detest, but not despise.
Thou prodigal of human life! Nor only in the battle’s strife:— Behold a captive Turkish band; Indignant, pale, and mute they stand. Inclosed by living walls, they view The features of thy dreadful crew, And see the mark of Cain imprest— Clouds and darkness shroud the rest.
Appalling scene—but not the worst! Another rises more accurst; For thine, in every danger tried, (Thou most ungrateful homicide!) Feeble and wounded as they lie, But taste thy venomed cup—and die!
Why glare these torches in the rifted earth, Deepening the midnight gloom of upper air? Does Nature teem with some disastrous birth, Or fiends abhorred their secret rites prepare? No! ’tis thy death-winged thunder flies, Speeds its detested course, and D’Enghien dies!
Successive phantoms fill the mind, Dark, terrific, undefined; Torture in a dungeon’s gloom— A noble captive!—secret doom! And starting, vengeful, from her sleep, The offended Genius of the deep; Who vows to thee relentless hate, Deploring Wright’s mysterious fate.
But dimly seen, these visions fade, Like flitting shadows of a shade.
Thy stubborn will, when once impelled, Its onward impulse keenly held. Like the Eastern idol’s car it rushed, Heedless what victims may be crushed: Or, writhing underneath the wheel, What tortures may those victims feel. Ages of penitence in vain Would struggle to efface that stain.— Yet shall thy story loudly preach An awful lesson to mankind: Through future ages it shall teach The great supremacy of mind.
’Twas not, as modern sages tell, A compact with the powers of Hell: Nor yet a soldier’s happy chance, Due to the faulchion or the lance; Nor chain of circumstance alone, That placed thee on the imperial throne. No! it was courage, promptness, skill, The soul resolved, the steadfast will, Nor sensual bliss, nor trivial aim, Could e’er seduce, could e’er inflame: Ardour that glowed in polar snows, And energy that feared repose. Had these not mingled with thy crimes, The tragic theme of future times, Nor diadem had bound thy brows, Nor Austria’s daughter heard thy vows, Nor had thy hand that sceptre swayed, Which half the astonished world obeyed.
A MOTHER TO HER INFANT DAUGHTER.
Silent pleader! living flower! Shining proof of beauty’s power! Little gem of brightest ray! My Child, how poorly words essay The mixed emotions to define That spring from loveliness like thine. Mysterious are the charms we trace In a beauteous infant’s face; Celestial secrets seem to lie Within thy dark and dazzling eye; The flame of pure affection glows In thy refreshing cheek of rose; And on that polished lip of thine Love, and hope, and pleasure shine; There, in fragrant coral cell, Enamoured silence loves to dwell; No articulated sound Has ever passed that ruby bound: But in thy sweet and Sybil face Each rising thought I clearly trace; Language may blush, when looks so well Can every shade of feeling tell. In the clear mirror of thine eye To read thy fate I sometimes try; And musing o’er thy future years, Dim the fantastic scene with tears.
Thou wilt be Woman! that alone Echoes to Compassion’s throne; Man may his destiny create, Woman is the slave of fate. Thou mayst be lovely!—in that word Ten thousand sorrows are inferred; Adored when young, neglected old, By passion bought, by parents sold! Seduction masked in friendship’s guise, Envy with sharp malignant eyes, Satire with poisoned poignant dart, Shall all conspire to pierce thine heart; And, in thy short and brilliant reign, These fiends may give thee bitter pain: Yet when the sober evening grey Of life steals on, and charms decay, When Time detaches, one by one, The blossoms of thy floral crown, Oft shalt thou sigh for youth again With all its peril, all its pain.
But hark! a long-lost voice[48] I hear, Like distant music, soft and clear; It bears the tone of mild rebuke, Yet such as pride itself might brook: ‘Cease, wayward mourner, to complain, And learn a wiser, purer strain; Weave not the web of fancied woes, But bless the gift high Heaven bestows: Thy Cherub, in a woman’s form, Shall sheltered rest from many a storm, By which the bark of man is tost, Till virtue, peace, and heaven are lost. Act rightly thou the mother’s part, From vanity preserve her heart— Small creeping weed, yet strong in power To check the fruit and blast the flower. Then will she see her charms decay, As calmly as she views the ray Of summer’s suns whose soft decline Inspires tranquillity divine.’
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