all events, he is one of the glories of your most glorious part of great America. Tell me, too, what is become of Mr. Cooper, that other great novelist? I think I heard from you, or from some other Transatlantic friend, that he was less genial and less beloved than so many other of your notabilities have been. Indeed, one sees that in many of his recent works; but I have been reading many of his earlier books again, with ever-increased admiration, especially I should say “The Pioneers”; and one cannot help hoping that the mind that has given so much pleasure to so many readers will adjust itself so as to admit of its own happiness,–for very clearly the discomfort was his own fault, and he is too clever a person for one not to wish him well.
I think that the most distinguished of our own _young_ writers are, the one a dear friend of mine, John Ruskin; the other, one who will shortly be so near a neighbor that we must know each other. It is quite wonderful that we don’t now, for we are only twelve miles apart, and have scores of friends in common. This last is the Rev. Charles Kingsley, author of “Alton Locke” and “Yeast” and “The Saint’s Tragedy.” All these books are full of world-wide truths, and yet, taken as a whole, they are unsatisfactory and inconclusive, knocking down without building up. Perhaps that is the fault of the social system that he lays bare, perhaps of the organization of the man, perhaps a little of both. You will have heard probably that he, with other benevolent persons, established a sort of socialist community (Christian socialism) for journeymen tailors, he himself being their chaplain. The evil was very great, for of twenty-one thousand of that class in London, fifteen thousand were ill-paid and only half-employed. For a while, that is, as long as the subscription lasted, all went well; but I fear this week that the money has come to an end, and so very likely will the experiment. Have you republished “Alton Locke” in America? It has one character, an old Scotchman, equal to anything in Scott. The writer is still quite a young man, but out of health. I have heard (but this is between ourselves) that —-‘s brain is suffering,–the terrible malady by which so many of our great mental laborers (Scott and Southey, above all) have fallen. Dr. Buckland is now dying of it. I am afraid —- may be so lost to the world and his friends, not merely because his health is going, but because certain peculiarities have come to my knowledge which look like it. A brother clergyman saw him the other day, upon a common near his own house, spouting, singing, and reciting verse at the top of his voice at one o’clock in the morning. Upon inquiring what was the matter, the poet said that he never went to bed till two or three o’clock, and frequently went out in that way to exercise his lungs. My informant, an orderly person of a very different stamp, set him down for mad at once; but he is much beloved among his parishioners, and if the escapade above mentioned do not indicate disease of the brain, I can only say it would be good for the country if we had more madmen of the same sort. As to John Ruskin, I would not answer for quiet people not taking him for crazy too. He is an enthusiast in art, often right, often wrong,–“in the right very stark, in the wrong very sturdy,”–bigoted, perverse, provoking, as ever man was; but good and kind and charming beyond the common lot of mortals. There are some pages of his prose that seem to me more eloquent than anything out of Jeremy Taylor, and I should think a selection of his works would answer to reprint. Their sale here is something wonderful, considering their dearness, in this age of cheap literature, and the want of attraction in the subject, although the illustrations of the “Stones of Venice,” executed by himself from his own drawings, are almost as exquisite as the writings. By the way, he does not say what I heard the other day from another friend, just returned from the city of the sea, that Taglioni has purchased four of the finest palaces, and is restoring them with great taste, by way of investment, intending to let them to Russian and English noblemen. She was a very graceful dancer once, was Taglioni; but still it rather depoetizes the place, which of all others was richest in associations.
Mrs. Browning has got as near to England as Paris, and holds out enough of hope of coming to London to keep me from visiting it until I know her decision. I have not seen the great Exhibition, and, unless she arrives, most probably shall not see it. My lameness, which has now lasted five months, is the reason I give to myself for not going, chairs being only admitted for an hour or two on Saturday mornings. But I suspect that my curiosity has hardly reached the fever-heat needful to encounter the crowd and the fatigue. It is amusing to find how people are cooling down about it. We always were a nation of idolaters, and always had the trick of avenging ourselves upon our poor idols for the sin of our own idolatry. Many an overrated, and then underrated, poet can bear witness to this. I remember when my friend Mr. Milnes was called _the_ poet, although Scott and Byron were in their glory, and Wordsworth had written all of his works that will live. We make gods of wood and stone, and then we knock them to pieces; and so figuratively, if not literally, shall we do by the Exhibition. Next month I am going to move to a cottage at Swallowfield,–so called, I suppose, because those migratory birds meet by millions every autumn in the park there, now belonging to some friends of mine, and still famous as the place where Lord Clarendon wrote his history. That place is still almost a palace; mine an humble but very prettily placed cottage. O, how proud and glad I should be, if ever I could receive Mr. and Mrs. Fields within its walls for more than a poor hour! I shall have tired you with this long letter, but you have made me reckon you among my friends,–ay, one of the best and kindest,–and must take the consequence.
Ever yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, Saturday Night.
I write you two notes at once, my dear friend, whilst the recollection of your conversation is still in my head and the feeling of your kindness warm on my heart. To write, to thank you for a visit which has given me so much pleasure, is an impulse not to be resisted. Pray tell Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch how delighted I am to make their acquaintance and how earnestly I hope we may meet often. They are charming people.
Another motive that I had for writing at once is to tell you that the more I think of the title of the forthcoming book, the less I like it; and I care more for it, now that you are concerned in the matter, than I did before. “Personal Reminiscences” sounds like a bad title for an autobiography. Now this is nothing of the sort. It is literally a book made up of favorite scraps of poetry and prose; the bits of my own writing are partly critical, and partly have been interwoven to please Henry Chorley and give something of novelty, and as it were individuality, to a mere selection, to take off the dryness and triteness of extracts, and give the pen something to say in the work as well as the scissors. Still, it is a book founded on other books, and since it pleased Mr. Bentley to object to “Readings of Poetry,” because he said nobody in England bought poetry, why “Recollections of Books,” as suggested by Mr. Bennett, approved by me, and as I believed (till this very day) adopted by Mr. Bentley, seemed to meet exactly the truth of the case, and to be quite concession enough to the exigencies of the trade. By the other title we exposed ourselves, in my mind, to all manner of danger. I shall write this by this same post to Mr. Bennett, and get the announcement changed, if possible; for it seems to me a trick of the worst sort. I shall write a list of the subjects, and I only wish that I had duplicates, and I would send you the articles, for I am most uncomfortable at the notion of your being taken in to purchase a book that may, through this misnomer, lose its reputation in England; for of course it will be attacked as an unworthy attempt to make it pass for what it is not….
Now if you dislike it, or if Mr. Bentley keep that odious title, why, give it up at once. Don’t pray, pray lose money by me. It would grieve me far more than it would you. A good many of these are about books quite forgotten, as the “Pleader’s Guide” (an exquisite pleasantry), “Holcroft’s Memoirs,” and “Richardson’s Correspondence.” Much on Darley and the Irish Poets, unknown in England; and I think myself that the book will contain, as in the last article, much exquisite poetry and curious prose, as in the forgotten murder (of Toole, the author’s uncle) in the State Trials. But it should be called by its right name, as everything should in this world. God bless you!
Ever faithfully yours,
M.R.M.
P.S. First will come the Preface, then the story of the book (without Henry Chorley’s name; it is to be dedicated to him), noticing the coincidence of “Our Village” having first appeared in the Lady’s Magazine, and saying something like what I wrote to you last night. I think this will take off the danger of provoking apprehension on one side and disappointment on the other; because after all, although anecdote be not the style of the book, it does contain some.
May I put in the story of Washington’s ghost? without your name, of course; it would be very interesting, and I am ten times more desirous of making the book as good as I can, since I have reason to believe you will be interested in it. Pray, forgive me for having worried you last night and now again. I am a terribly nervous person, and hate and dread literary scrapes, or indeed disputes of any sort. But I ought not to have worried you. Just tell me if you think this sort of preface will take the sting from the title, for I dare say Mr. Bentley won’t change it.
Adieu, dear friend. All peace and comfort to you in your journey; amusement you are sure of. I write also to dear Mr. Bennett, whom I fear I have also worried.
Ever most faithfully yours,
M.R.M.
1852.
January 5.
Mr. Bennoch has just had the very great kindness, dear Mr. Fields, to let me know of your safe arrival at Genoa, and of your enjoyment of your journey. Thank God for it! We heard so much about commotions in the South of France that I had become fidgety about you, the rather that it is the best who go, and that I for one cannot afford to lose you.
Now let me thank you for all your munificence,–that beautiful Longfellow with the hundred illustrations, and that other book of Professor Longfellow’s, beautiful in another way, the “Golden Legend.” I hope I shall be only one among the multitude who think this the greatest and best thing he has done yet, so racy, so full of character, of what the French call local color, so, in its best and highest sense, original. Moreover, I like the happy ending. Then those charming volumes of De Quincey and Sprague and Grace Greenwood. (Is that her real name?) And dear Mr. Hawthorne, and the two new poets, who, if also young poets, will be fresh glories for America. How can I thank you enough for all these enjoyments? And you must come back to England, and add to my obligations by giving me as much as you can of your company in the merry month of May. I have fallen in with Mr. Kingsley, and a most charming person he is, certainly the least like an Englishman of letters, and the most like an accomplished, high-toned English gentleman, that I have ever met with. You must know Mr. Kingsley. He is very young too, really young, for it is characteristic of our “young poets” that they generally turn out middle-aged and very often elderly. My book is out at last, hurried through the press in a fortnight,–a process which half killed me, and has left the volumes, no doubt, full of errata,–and you, I mean your house, have not got it. I am keeping a copy for you personally. People say that they like it. I think you will, because it will remind you of this pretty country, and of an old Englishwoman who loves you well. Mrs. Browning was delighted with your visit. She is a Bonapartiste; so am I. I always adored the Emperor, and I think his nephew is a great man, full of ability, energy, and courage, who put an end to an untenable situation and got quit of a set of unrepresenting representatives. The Times newspaper, right as it seems to me about Kossuth, is dangerously wrong about Louis Napoleon, since it is trying to stimulate the nation to a war for which France is more than prepared, is ready, and England is not. London might be taken with far less trouble and fewer men than it took to accomplish the _coup d’etat_. Ah! I suspect very different politics will enclose this wee bit notie, if dear Mr. Bennoch contrives to fold it up in a letter of his own; but to agree to differ is part of the privileges of friendship; besides, I think you and I generally agree.
Ever yours,
M.R.M.
P.S. All this time I have not said a word of “The Wonder Book.” Thanks again and again. Who was the Mr. Blackstone mentioned in “The Scarlet Letter” as riding like a myth in New England History, and what his arms? A grandson of Judge Blackstone, a friend of mine, wishes to know.
(March, 1852.)
I can never enough thank you, dearest Mr. Fields, for your kind recollection of me in such a place as the Eternal City. But you never forget any whom you make happy in your friendship, for that is the word; and therefore here in Europe or across the Atlantic, you will always remain…. Your anecdote of the —- is most characteristic. I am very much afraid that he is only a poet, and although I fear the last person in the world to deny that that is much, I think that to be a really great man needs something more. I am sure that you would not have sympathized with Wordsworth. I do hope that you will see Beranger when in Paris. He is the one man in France (always excepting Louis Napoleon, to whom I confess the interest that all women feel in strength and courage) whom I should earnestly desire to know well. In the first place, I think him by far the greatest of living poets, the one who unites most completely those two rare things, impulse and finish. In the next, I admire his admirable independence and consistency, and his generous feeling for fallen greatness. Ah, what a truth he told, when he said that Napoleon was the greatest poet of modern days! I should like to have the description of Beranger from your lips. Mrs. Browning … has made acquaintance with Madame Sand, of whom her account is most striking and interesting. But George Sand is George Sand, and Beranger is Beranger.
Thank you, dear friend, for your kind interest in my book. It has found far more favor than I expected, and I think, ever since the week after its publication, I have received a dozen of letters daily about it, from friends and strangers,–mostly strangers,–some of very high accomplishments, who will certainly be friends. This is encouragement to write again, and we will have a talk about it when you come. I should like your advice. One thing is certain, that this work has succeeded, and that the people who like it best are precisely those whom one wishes to like it best, the lovers of literature. Amongst other things, I have received countless volumes of poetry and prose,–one little volume of poetry written under the name of Mary Maynard, of the greatest beauty, with the vividness and picturesqueness of the new school, combined with infinite correctness and clearness, that rarest of all merits nowadays. Her real name I don’t know, she has only thought it right to tell me that Mary Maynard was not the true appellation (this is between ourselves). Her own family know nothing of the publication, which seems to have been suggested by her and my friend, John Ruskin. Of course, she must have her probation, but I know of no young writer so likely to rival your new American school. I sent your gift-books of Hawthorne, yesterday, to the Walters of Bearwood, who had never heard of them! Tell him that I have had the honor of poking him into the den of the Times, the only civilized place in England where they were barbarous enough not to be acquainted with “The Scarlet Letter.” I wonder what they’ll think of it. It will make them stare. They come to see me, for it is full two months since I have been in the pony-chaise. I was low, if you remember, when you were here, but thought myself getting better, was getting better. About Christmas, very damp weather came on, or rather very wet weather, and the damp seized my knee and ankles and brought back such an attack of rheumatism that I cannot stand upright, walk quite double, and am often obliged to be lifted from step to step up stairs. My medical adviser (a very clever man) says that I shall get much better when warm weather comes, but for weeks and weeks we have had east-winds and frost. No violets, no primroses, no token of spring. A little flock of ewes and lambs, with a pretty boy commonly holding a lamb in his arms, who drives his flock to water at the pond opposite my window, is the only thing that gives token of the season. I am quite mortified at this on your account, for April, in general a month of great beauty here, will be as desolate as winter. Nevertheless you must come and see me, you and Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch, and perhaps you can continue to stay a day or two, or to come more than once. I want to see as much of you as I can, and I must change much, if I be in any condition to go to London, even upon the only condition on which I ever do go, that is, into lodgings, for I never stay anywhere; and if I were to go, even to one dear and warm-hearted friend, I should affront the very many other friends whose invitations I have refused for so many years. I hope to get at Mr. Kingsley; but I have seen little of him this winter. We are five miles asunder; his wife has been ill; and my fear of an open carriage, or rather the medical injunction not to enter one, has been a most insuperable objection. We are, as we both said, summer neighbors. However, I will try that you should see him. He is well worth knowing. Thank you about Mr. Blackstone. He is worth knowing too, in a different way, a very learned and very clever man (you will find half Dr. Arnold’s letters addressed to him), as full of crotchets as an egg is full of meat, fond of disputing and contradicting, a clergyman living in the house where Mrs. Trollope _was raised_, and very kind after his own fashion. One thing that I should especially like would be that you should see your first nightingale amongst our woody lanes. To be sure, these winds can never last till then. Mr. —- is coming here on Sunday. He always brings rain or snow, and that will change the weather. You are a person who ought to bring sunshine, and I suppose you do more than metaphorically; for I remember that both times I have had the happiness to see you–a summer day and a winter day–were glorious. Heaven bless you, dear friend! May all the pleasure … return upon your own head! Even my little world is charmed at the prospect of seeing you again. If you come to Reading by the Great Western you could return later and make a longer day, and yet be no longer from home.
Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, April 27, 1852.
How can I thank you half enough, dearest Mr. Fields, for all your goodness! To write to me the very day after reaching Paris, to think of me so kindly! It is what I never can repay. I write now not to trouble you for another letter, but to remind you that, as soon as possible after your return to England, I hope to see you and Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch here. Heaven grant the spring may come to meet you! At present I am writing in an east-wind, which has continued two months and gives no sign of cessation. Professor Airy says it will continue five weeks longer. Not a drop of rain has fallen in all that time. We have frosts every night, the hedges are as bare as at Christmas, flowers forget to blow, or if they put forth miserable, infrequent, reluctant blossoms, have no heart, and I have only once heard the nightingale in this place where they abound, and not yet seen a swallow in the spot which takes name from their gatherings. It follows, of course, that the rheumatism, covered by a glut of wet weather, just upon the coming in of the new year, is fifty times increased by the bitter season,–a season which has no parallel in my recollection. I can hardly sit down when standing, or rise from my chair without assistance, walk quite double, and am lifted up stairs step by step by my man-servant. I thought, two years ago, I could walk fifteen or sixteen miles a day! O, I was too proud of my activity! I am sure we are smitten in our vanities. However, you will bring the summer, which is, they say, to do me good; and even if that should fail, it will do me some good to see you, that is quite certain. Thank you for telling me about the Galignani, and about the kind American reception of my book; some one sent me a New York paper (the Tribune, I think), full of kindness, and I do assure you that to be so heartily greeted by my kinsmen across the Atlantic is very precious to me. From the first American has there come nothing but good-will. However, the general kindness here has taken me quite by surprise. The only fault found was with the title, which, as you know, was no doing of mine; and the number of private letters, books, verses, (commendatory verses, as the old poets have it), and tributes of all sorts, and from all manner of persons, that I receive every day is something quite astonishing.
Our great portrait-painter, John Lucas, certainly the first painter of female portraits now alive, has been down here to take a portrait for engraving. He has been most successful. It is looking better, I suppose, than I ever do look; but not better than under certain circumstances–listening to a favorite friend, for example–I perhaps might look. The picture is to go to-morrow into the engraver’s hands, and I hope the print will be completed before your departure; also they are engraving, or are about to engrave, a miniature taken of me when I was a little girl between three and four years old. They are to be placed side by side, the young child and the old withered woman, —- a skull and cross-bones could hardly be a more significant _memento mori_! I have lost my near neighbor and most accomplished friend, Sir Henry Russell, and many other friends, for Death has been very busy this winter, and Mr. Ware is gone! He had sent me his “Zenobia,” “from the author,” and for that very reason, I suppose, some one had stolen it; but I had replaced both that and the letters from Rome, and sent them to Mr. Kingsley as models for his “Hypatia.” He has them still. He had never heard of them till I named them to him. They seem to me very fine and classical, just like the best translations from some great Latin writer. And I have been most struck with Edgar Poe, who has been republished, prose and poetry, in a shilling volume called “Readable Books.” What a deplorable history it was!–I mean his own,–the most unredeemed vice that I have met with in the annals of genius. But he was a very remarkable writer, and must have a niche if I write again; so must your two poets, Stoddard and Taylor. I am very sorry you missed Mrs. Trollope; she is a most remarkable woman, and you would have liked her, I am sure, for her warm heart and her many accomplishments. I had a sure way to Beranger, one of my dear friends being a dear friend of his; but on inquiring for him last week, that friend also is gone to heaven. Do pick up for me all you can about Louis Napoleon, my one real abiding enthusiasm,–the enthusiasm of my whole life,–for it began with the Emperor and has passed quite undiminished to the present great, bold, and able ruler of France. Mrs. Browning shares it, I think; only she calls herself cool, which I don’t; and another still more remarkable co-religionist in the L.N. faith is old Lady Shirley (of Alderley), the writer of that most interesting letter to Gibbon, dated 1792, published by her father, Lord Sheffield, in his edition of the great historian’s posthumous works. She is eighty-two now, and as active and vigorous in body and mind, as sixty years ago.
Make my most affectionate love to my friend in the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and believe me ever, my dear Mr. Fields, most gratefully and affectionately yours,
M.R.M.
(No date)
Ah, my dearest Mr. Fields, how inimitably good and kind you are to me! Your account of Rachel is most delightful, the rather that it confirms a preconceived notion which two of my friends had taken pains to change. Henry Chorley, not only by his own opinion, but by that of Scribe, who told him that there was no comparison between her and Viardot. Now if Viardot, even in that one famous part of Fides, excels Rachel, she must be much the finer actress, having the horrible drawback of the music to get over. My other friend told me a story of her, in the modern play of Virginie; she declared that when in her father’s arms she pointed to the butcher’s knife, telling him what to do, and completely reversing that loveliest story; but I hold to your version of her genius, even admitting that she did commit the Virginie iniquity, which would be intensely characteristic of her calling,–all actors and actresses having a desire to play the whole play themselves, speaking every speech, producing every effect in their own person. No doubt she is a great actress, and still more assuredly is Louis Napoleon a great man, a man of genius, which includes in my mind both sensibility and charm. There are little bits of his writing from Ham, one where he speaks of “le repos de ma prison,” another long and most eloquent passage on exile, which ends (I forget the exact words) with a sentiment full of truth and sensibility. He is speaking of the treatment shown to an exile in a foreign land, of the mistiness and coldness of some, of the blandness and smoothness of others, and he goes on to say, “He must be a man of ten thousand who behaves to an exile just as he would behave to another person.” If I could trust you to perform a commission for me, and let me pay you the money you spent upon it, I would ask you to bring me a cheap but comprehensive life of him, with his works and speeches, and a portrait as like him as possible. I asked an English friend to do this for me, and fancy his sending me a book dated on the outside 1847!!!! Did I ever tell you a pretty story of him, when he was in England after Strasburg and before Boulogne, and which I know to be true? He spent a twelvemonth at Leamington, living in the quietest manner. One of the principal persons there is Mr. Hampden, a descendant of John Hampden, and the elder brother of the Bishop. Mr. Hampden, himself a very liberal and accomplished man, made a point of showing every attention in his power to the Prince, and they soon became very intimate. There was in the town an old officer of the Emperor’s Polish Legion who, compelled to leave France after Waterloo, had taken refuge in England, and, having the national talent for languages, maintained himself by teaching French, Italian, and German in different families. The old exile and the young one found each other out, and the language master was soon an habitual guest at the Prince’s table, and treated by him with the most affectionate attention. At last Louis Napoleon wearied of a country town and repaired to London; but before he went he called on Mr. Hampden to take leave. After warm thanks for all the pleasure he had experienced in his society, he said: “I am about to prove to you my entire reliance upon your unfailing kindness by leaving you a legacy. I want to ask you to transfer to my poor old friend the goodness you have lavished upon me. His health is failing, his means are small. Will you call upon him sometimes? and will you see that those lodging-house people do not neglect him? and will you, above all, do for him what he will not do for himself, draw upon me for what may be wanting for his needs or for his comforts?” Mr. Hampden promised. The prophecy proved true; the poor old man grew worse and worse, and finally died. Mr. Hampden, as he had promised, replaced the Prince in his kind attentions to his old friend, and finally defrayed the charges of his illness and of his funeral. “I would willingly have paid them myself,” said he, “but I knew that that would have offended and grieved the Prince, so I honestly divided the expenses with him, and I found that full provision had been made at his banker’s to answer my drafts to a much larger amount.” Now I have full faith in such a nature. Let me add that he never forgot Mr. Hampden’s kindness, sending him his different brochures and the kindest messages, both from Ham and the Elysee. If one did not not admire Louis Napoleon, I should like to know upon whom one could, as a public man, fix one’s admiration! Just look at our English statesmen! And see the state to which self-government brings everything! Look at London with all its sanitary questions just in the same state as ten years ago; look at all our acts of Parliament, one half of a session passed in amending the mismanagement of the other. For my own part, I really believe that there is nothing like one mind, one wise and good ruler; and I verily believe that the President of France is that man. My only doubt being whether the people are worthy of him, fickle as they are, like all great masses,–the French people, in particular. By the way, if a most vilely translated book, called the “Prisoner of Ham,” be extant in French, I should like to possess it. The account of the escape looks true, and is most interesting.
I have been exceedingly struck, since I last wrote to you, by some extracts from Edgar Poe’s writings; I mean a book called “The Readable Library,” composed of selections from his works, prose and verse. The famous ones are, I find, The Maelstrom and The Raven; without denying their high merits, I prefer that fine poem on The Bells, quite as fine as Schiller’s, and those remarkable bits of stories on circumstantial evidence. I am lower, dear friend, than ever, and what is worse, in supporting myself on my hand I have strained my right side and can hardly turn in bed. But if we cannot walk round Swallowfield, we can drive, and the very sight of you will do me good. If Mr. Bentley send me only one copy of that engraving, it shall be for you. You know I have a copy for you of the book. There are no words to tell the letters and books I receive about it, so I suppose it is popular. I have lost, as you know, my most accomplished and admirable neighbor, Sir Henry Russell, the worthy successor of the great Lord Clarendon. His eldest daughter is my favorite young friend, a most lovely creature, the ideal of a poet. I hope you will see Beranger. Heaven bless you!
Ever yours, M.R.M.
Saturday Night.
Ah, my very dear friend, how can I ever thank you? But I don’t want to thank you. There are some persons (very few, though) to whom it is a happiness to be indebted, and you are one of them. The books and the busts are arrived. Poor dear Louis Napoleon with his head off–Heaven avert the omen! Of course _that_ head can be replaced, I mean stuck on again upon its proper shoulders. Beranger is a beautiful old man, just what one fancies him and loves to fancy him. I hope you saw him. To my mind, he is the very greatest poet now alive, perhaps the greatest man, the truest and best type of perfect independence. Thanks a thousand and a thousand times for those charming busts and for the books. Mrs. Browning had mentioned to me Mr. Read. If I live to write another book, I shall put him and Mr. Taylor and Mr. Stoddard together, and try to do justice to Poe. I have a good right to love America and the Americans. My Mr. Lucas tells me to go, and says he has a mind to go. I want you to know John Lucas, not only the finest portrait-painter, but about the very finest mind that I know in the world. He might be…. for talent and manner and heart; and, if you like, you shall, when I am dead, have the portrait he has just taken of me. I make the reserve, instead of giving it to you now, because it is possible that he might wish (I know he does) to paint one for himself, and if I be dead before sitting to him again, the present one would serve him to copy. Mr. Bentley wanted to purchase it, and many have wanted it, but it shall be for you.
Now, my very dear friend, I am afraid that Mr. —- has said or done something that would make you rather come here alone. His last letter to me, after a month’s silence, was _odd_. There was no fixing upon line or word; still it was not like his other letters, and I suppose the air of —- is not genial, and yet dear Mr. Bennoch breathes it often! You must know that I never could have meant for one instant to impose him upon you as a companion. Only in the autumn there had been a talk of his joining your party. He knows Mr. Bennoch…. He has been very kind and attentive to me, and is, I verily believe, an excellent and true-hearted person; and so I was willing that, if all fell out well, he should have the pleasure of your society here,–the rather that I am sometimes so poorly, and always so helpless now, that one who knows the place might be of use. But to think that for one moment I would make your time or your wishes bend to his is out of the question. Come at your own time, as soon and as often as you can. I should say this to any one going away three thousand miles off, much more to you, and forgive my having even hinted at his coming too. I only did it thinking it might fix you and suit you. In this view I wrote to him yesterday, to tell him that on Wednesday next there would be a cricket-match at Bramshill, one of the finest old mansions in England, a Tudor Manor House, altered by Inigo Jones, and formerly the residence of Prince Henry, the elder son of James the First. In the grand old park belonging to that grand old place, there will be on that afternoon a cricket-match. I thought you would like to see our national game in a scene so perfectly well adapted to show it to advantage. Being in Mr. Kingsley’s parish, and he very intimate with the owner, it is most likely, too, that he will be there; so that altogether it seemed to me something that you and dear Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch might like to see. My poor little pony could take you from hence; but not to fetch or carry you, and if the dear Bennochs come, it would be advisable to let the flymen know the place of destination, because, Sir William Cope being a new-comer, I am not sure whether he (like his predecessor, whom I knew) allows horses and carriages to be put up there. I should like you to look on for half an hour at a cricket-match in Bramshill Park, and to be with you at a scene so English and so beautiful. We could dine here afterwards, the Great Western allowing till a quarter before nine in the evening. Contrive this if you can, and let me know by return of post, and forgive my _mal addresse_ about Mr. —-. There certainly has something come across him,–not about you, but about me; one thing is, I think, his extreme politics. I always find these violent Radicals very unwilling to allow in others the unlimited freedom of thought that they claim for themselves. He can’t forgive my love for the President. Now I must tell you a story I know to be true. A lady of rank was placed next the Prince a year or two ago. He was very gentle and courteous, but very silent, and she wanted to make him talk. At last she remembered that, having been in Switzerland twenty years before, she had received some kindness from the Queen Hortense, and had spent a day at Arenenburg. She told him so, speaking with warm admiration of the Queen. “Ah, madame, vous avez connu ma mere!” exclaimed Louis Napoleon, turning to her eagerly and talking of the place and the people as a school-boy talks of home. She spent some months in Paris, receiving from the Prince every attention which his position enabled him to show; and when she thanked him for such kindness, his answer was always: “Ah, madame, vous avez connu ma mere!” Is it in woman’s heart not to love such a man? And then look at the purchase of the Murillo the other day, and the thousand really great things that he is doing. Mr. —- is a goose.
I send this letter to the post to-morrow, when I send other letters,–a vile, puritanical post-office arrangement not permitting us to send letters in the afternoon, unless we send straight to Reading (six miles) on purpose,–so perhaps this may cross an answer from Mr. —- or from you about Bramshill; perhaps, on the other hand, I may have to write again. At all events, you will understand that this is written on Saturday night. God bless you, my very dear and kind friend.
Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.
May 24, 1852.
Ah, dearest Mr. Fields, how much too good and kind you are to me always! … I wish I were better, that I might go to town and see more of you; but I am more lame than ever, and having, in my weight and my shortness and my extreme helplessness, caught at tables and chairs and dragged myself along that fashion, I have now so strained the upper part of the body that I cannot turn in bed, and am full of muscular pains which are worse than the rheumatism and more disabling, so that I seem to cumber the earth. They say that summer, when it comes, will do me good. How much more sure that the sight of you will do me good, and I trust that, when your business will let you, you will give me that happiness. In the mean while will you take the trouble to send the enclosed and my answer, if it be fit and proper and properly addressed? I give you this office, because really the kindness seems so large and unlimited, that, if the letter had not come enclosed in one from Mr. Kenyon, one could hardly have believed it to be serious, and yet I am well used to kindness, too. I thank over and over again your glorious poets for their kindness, and tell Mr. Hawthorne I shall prize a letter from him beyond all the worlds one has to give. I rejoice to hear of the new work, and can answer for its excellence.
I trust that the English edition of Dr. Holmes will contain the “Astraea,” and the “Morning Visit,” and the “Cambridge Address.” I am not sure, in my secret soul, that I do not prefer him to any American poet. Besides his inimitable word-painting, the charity is so large and the scale so fine. How kind in you to like my book,–some people do like it. I am afraid to tell you what John Ruskin says of it from Venice, and I get letters, from ten to twenty a day. You know how little I dreamt of this! Mrs. Trollope has sent me a most affectionate letter, bemoaning her ill-fortune in missing you. I thank you for the Galignani edition, and the presidential kindness, and all your goodness of every sort. I have nothing to give you but as large a share of my poor affection as I think any human being has. You know a copy of the book from me has been waiting for you these three months. Adieu, my dear friend.
Ever yours,
M.R.M.
(July 6, 1852.) Monday Night, or, rather, 2 o’clock Tuesday Morning.
Having just finished Mr. Hawthorne’s book, dear Mr. Fields, I shall get K—- to put it up and direct it so that it may be ready the first time Sam has occasion to go to Reading, at which time this letter will be put in the post; so that when you read this, you may be assured that the precious volumes are arrived at the Paddington Station, whence I hope they may be immediately transmitted to you. If not, send for them. They will have your full direction, carriage paid. I say this, because the much vaunted Great Western is like all other railways, most uncertain and irregular, and we have lost a packet of plants this very week, sent to us, announced by letter and never arrived. Thank you heartily for the perusal of the book. I shall not name it in a letter which I mean to enclose to Mr. Hawthorne, not knowing that you mean to tell him, and having plenty of other things to say to him besides. To you, and only to you, I shall speak quite frankly what I think. It is full of beauty and of power, but I agree with —- that it would not have made a reputation as the other two books did, and I have some doubts whether it will not be a disappointment, but one that will soon be redeemed by a fresh and happier effort. It seems to me too long, too slow, and the personages are to my mind ill chosen. Zenobia puts one in mind of Fanny Wright and Margaret Fuller and other unsexed authorities, and Hollingsworth will, I fear, recall, to English people at least, a most horrible man who went about preaching peace. I heard him lecture once, and shall never forget his presumption, his ignorance, or his vulgarity. He is said to know many languages. I can answer for his not knowing his own, for I never, even upon the platform, the native home of bad English, heard so much in so short a time. The mesmeric lecturer and the sickly girl are almost equally disagreeable. In short, the only likeable person in the book is honest Silas Foster, who alone gives one the notion of a man of flesh and blood. In my mind, dear Mr. Hawthorne mistakes exceedingly when he thinks that fiction should be based upon, or rather seen through, some ideal medium. The greatest fictions of the world are the truest. Look at the “Vicar of Wakefield,” look at the “Simple Story,” look at Scott, look at Jane Austen, greater because truer than all, look at the best works of your own Cooper. It is precisely the want of reality in his smaller stories which has delayed Mr. Hawthorne’s fame so long, and will prevent its extension if he do not resolutely throw himself into truth, which is as great a thing in my mind in art as in morals, the foundation of all excellence in both. The fine parts of this book, at least the finest, are the truest,–that magnificent search for the body, which is as perfect as the search for the exciseman in Guy Mannering, and the burst of passion in Eliot’s pulpit. The plot, too, is very finely constructed, and doubtless I have been a too critical reader, because, from the moment you and I parted, I have been suffering from fever, and have never left the bed, in which I am now writing. Don’t fancy, dear friend, that you had anything to do with this. The complaint had fixed itself and would have run its course, even although your … society has not roused and excited the good spirits, which will, I think, fail only with my life. I think I am going to get better. Love to all.
Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.
Tuesday. (No date.)
My Dear Friend: Being fit for nothing but lying in bed and reading novels, I have just finished Mr. Field’s and Mr. Jones’s “Adrien,” and as you certainly will not have time to look at it, and may like to hear my opinion, I will tell it to you. Mr. Field, from the Preface, is of New York. The thing that has diverted me most is the love-plot of the book. A young gentleman, whose father came and settled in America and made a competence there, is third or fourth cousin to an English lord. He falls in love with a fisherman’s daughter (the story appears to be about fifty years back). This fisherman’s daughter is a most ethereal personage, speaking and reading Italian, and possessing in the fishing-cottage a pianoforte and a collection of books; nevertheless, she one day hears her husband say something about a person being “well born and well bred,” and forthwith goes away from him, in order to set him free from the misery entailed upon him, as she supposes, by a disproportionate marriage. Is not this curious in your republic? We in England certainly should not play such pranks. A man having married a wife, his wife stays by him. This dilemma is got over by the fisherman’s turning out to be himself fifth or sixth cousin of another English lord. But, having lived really as a fisherman ever since his daughter’s birth, he knew nothing of his aristocratic descent. I think this is the most remarkable thing in the book. There are certain flings at the New England character (the scene is laid beside the waters of your Bay) which seem to foretell a not very remote migration on the part of Mr. Jones, though they may come from his partner; nothing very bad, only such hits as this: “He was simple, humble, affectionate, three qualities rare anywhere, but perhaps more rare in that part of the world than anywhere else.” For the rest the book is far inferior to the best even of Mr. James’s recent productions, such as “Henry Smeaton.” These two authors speak of the corpse of a drowned man as beautified by death, and retaining all the look of life. You remember what Mr. Hawthorne says of the appearance of his drowned heroine,–which is right? I have had the most delightful letter possible (you shall see it when you come) from dear Dr. Holmes, and venture to trouble you with the enclosed answer. Yesterday, Mr. Harness, who had heard a bad account of me (for I have been very ill, and, although much better now, I gather from everybody that I am thought to be breaking down fast), so like the dear kind old friend that he is, came to see me. It was a great pleasure. We talked much of you, and I think he will call upon you. Whether he call or not, do go to see him. He is fully prepared for you as Mr. Dyce’s friend and Mr. Rogers’s friend, and my very dear friend. Do go; you will find him charming, so different from the author people that Mr. Kenyon collects. I am sure of your liking each other. Surely by next week I may be well enough to see you. You and Mrs. W—- would do me nothing but good. Say everything to her, and to our dear kind friends, the Bennochs. I ought to have written to them, but I get as much scolded for writing as talking.
Ever yours, M.R.M.
(No date.)
How good and kind you are to me, dearest Mr. Fields! kindest of all, I think, in writing me those…. One comfort is, that if London lose you this year I do think you will not suffer many to elapse before revisiting it. Ah, you will hardly find your poor old friend next time! Not that I expect to die just now, but there is such a want of strength, of the power that shakes off disease, which is no good sign for the constitution. Yesterday I got up for a little while, for the first time since I saw you; but, having let in too many people, the fever came on again at night, and I am only just now shaking off the attack, and feel that I must submit to perfect quietness for the present. Still the attack was less violent than the last, and unattended by sickness, so that I am really better and hope in a week or so to be able to get out with you under the trees, perhaps as far as Upton.
One of my yesterday’s visitors was a glorious old lady of seventy-six, who has lived in Paris for the last thirty years, and I do believe came to England very much for the purpose of seeing me. She had known my father before his marriage. He had taken her in his hand (he was always fond of children) one day to see my mother; she had been present at their wedding, and remembered the old housekeeper and the pretty nursery-maid and the great dog too, and had won with great difficulty (she being then eleven years old) the privilege of having the baby to hold. Her descriptions of all these things and places were most graphic, and you may imagine how much she must have been struck with my book when it met her eye in Paris, and how much I (knowing all about her family) was struck on my part by all these details, given with the spirit and fire of an enthusiastic woman of twenty. We had certainly never met. I left Alresford at three years old. She made an appointment to spend a day here next year, having with her a daughter, apparently by a first husband. Also she had the same host of recollections of Louis Napoleon, remembered the Emperor, as Premier Consul, and La Reine Hortense as Mlle. de Beauharnais. Her account of the Prince is favorable. She says that it is a most real popularity, and that, if anything like durability can ever be predicated of the French, it will prove a lasting one. I had a letter from Mrs. Browning to-day, talking of the “Facts of the Times,” of which she said some gentlemen were speaking with the same supreme contempt and disbelief that I profess for every paragraph in that collection of falsehoods. For my own part, I hold a wise despotism, like the Prince President’s, the only rule to live under. Only look at the figure our _soi-disant_ statesmen cut,–Whig and Tory,–and then glance your eye across the Atlantic to your “own dear people,” as Dr. Holmes says, and their doings in the Presidential line. Apropos to Dr. Holmes you’ll see him read and quoted when–and his doings are as dead as Henry the Eighth.–has no feeling for finish or polish or delicacy, and doubtless dismisses Pope and Goldsmith with supreme contempt. She never mentions that horrid trial, to my great comfort. Did I tell you that I had been reading Louis Napoleon’s most charming three volumes full?
Among my visitors yesterday was Miss Percy, the heiress of Guy’s Cliff, one of the richest in England, and, what is odd, the translator of “Emilie Carlen’s Birthright,” the only Swedish novel I have ever got fairly through, because Miss Percy really does her work well, and I can’t read —-‘s English. Miss Percy, who, besides being very clever and agreeable, is also pretty, has refused some scores of offers, and declares she’ll never marry; she has a dread of being sought for her money…..
God bless you, dearest, kindest friend. Say everything for me to your companions.
Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.
(No date)
Yes, dearest Mr. Fields, I continue to get better and better, and shall be delighted to see you and Mr. and Mrs. W—- on Friday. I even went in to surprise Mr. May on Saturday, so, weather permitting, we shall get up to Upton together. I want you to see that relique of Protestant bigotry. No doubt many of my dear countrymen would play just the same pranks now, if the spirit of the age would permit; the will is not wanting, witness our courts of law.
I have been reading the “Life of Margaret Fuller.” What a tragedy from first to last! She must have been odious in Boston in spite of her power and her strong sense of duty, with which I always sympathize; but at New York, where she dwindled from a sibyl to a “lionne,” one begins to like her better, and in England and Paris, where she was not even that, better still; so that one is prepared for the deep interest of the last half-volume. Of course her example must have done much injury to the girls of her train. Of course, also, she is the Zenobia of dear Mr Hawthorne. One wonders what her book would have been like.
Mr. Bennett has sent me the “Nile Notes.” We must talk about that, which I have not read yet, not delighting much in Eastern travels, or, rather, being tired of them. Ah, how sad it will be when I cannot say “We will talk”! Surely Mr. Webster does not mean to get up a dispute with England! That would be an affliction; for what nations should be friends if ours should not? What our ministers mean, nobody can tell,–hardly, I suppose, themselves. My hope was in Mr. Webster. Well, this is for talking. God bless you, dear friend.
Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.
August 7, 1852.
Hurrah! dear and kind friend, I have found the line without any other person’s aid or suggestion. Last night it occurred to me that it was in some prologue or epilogue, and my little book-room being very rich in the drama, I have looked through many hundreds of those bits of rhyme, and at last made a discovery which, if it have no other good effect, will at least have “emptied my head of Corsica,” as Johnson said to Boswell; for never was the great biographer more haunted by the thought of Paoli than I by that line. It occurs in an epilogue by Garrick on quitting the stage, June, 1776, when the performance was for the benefit of sick and aged actors.
A veteran see! whose last act on the stage Entreats your smiles for sickness and for age; Their cause I plead, plead it in heart and mind, _A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind_.
Not finding it quoted in Johnson convinced me that it would probably have been written after the publication of the Dictionary, and ultimately guided me to the right place. It is singular that epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of my plays, “Foscari,” and prologues at another, “Rienzi.”
I have but a moment to answer your most kind letter, because I have been engaged with company, or rather interrupted by company, ever since I got up, but you will pardon me. Nothing ever did me so much good as your visit. My only comfort is the hope of your return in the spring. Then I hope to be well enough to show Mr Hawthorne all the holes and corners my own self. Tell him so. I am already about to study the State Trials, and make myself perfect in all that can assist the romance. It will be a labor of love to do for him the small and humble part of collecting facts and books, and making ready the palette for the great painter.
Talking of _artists_, one was here on Sunday who was going to Upton yesterday. His object was to sketch every place mentioned in my book. Many of the places (as those round Taplow) he had taken, and K—- says he took this house and the stick and Fanchon and probably herself. I was unluckily gone to take home the dear visitors who cheer me daily and whom I so wish you to see.
God bless you all, dear friends.
Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, September 24, 1852
My Very Dear Mr. Fields: I am beginning to get very fidgety about you, and thinking rather too often, not only of the breadth of the Atlantic, but of its dangers. However I must hear soon, and I write now because I am expecting a fellow-townsman of yours, Mr. Thompson, an American artist, who expected to find you still in England, and who is welcomed, as I suppose all Boston would be … People do not love you the less, dear friend, for missing you.
I write to you this morning, because I have something to say and something to ask. In the first place, I am better. Mr. Harness, who, God bless him, left that Temple of Art, the Deepdene, and Mr. Hope’s delightful conversation, to come and take care of me, stayed at Swallowfield three weeks. He found out a tidy lodging, which he has retained, and he promises to come back in November; at present he is again at the Deepdene. Nothing could be so judicious as his way of going on; he came at two o’clock to my cottage and we drove out together; then he went to his lodgings to dinner, to give me three hours of perfect quiet; at eight he and the Russells met here to tea, and he read Shakespeare (there is no such reader in the world) till bedtime. Under his treatment no wonder that I improved, but the low-fever is not far off; doing a little too much, I fell back even before his departure, and have been worse since. However, on the whole, I am much better.
Now to my request. You perhaps remember my speaking to you of a copy of my “Recollections,” which was in course of illustration in the winter. Mr. Holloway, a great print-seller of Bedford Street, Covent Garden, has been engaged upon it ever since, and brought me the first volume to look at on Tuesday. It would have rejoiced the soul of dear Dr. Holmes. My book is to be set into six or seven or eight volumes, quarto, as the case may be; and although not unfamiliar with the luxuries of the library, I could not have believed in the number and richness of the pearls which have been strung upon so slender a thread. The rarest and finest portraits, often many of one person and always the choicest and the best,–ranging from magnificent heads of the great old poets, from the Charleses and Cromwells, to Sprat and George Faulkner of Dublin, of whom it was thought none existed, until this print turned up unexpectedly in a supplementary volume of Lord Chesterfield; nothing is too odd for Mr. Holloway. There is a colored print of George the Third,–a full length which really brings the old king to life again, so striking is the resemblance, and quantities of theatrical people, Munden and Elliston and the Kembles. There are two portraits of “glorious John” in Penruddock. Then the curious old prints of old houses. They have not only one two hundred years old of Dorrington Castle, but the actual drawing from which that engraving was made; and they are rich beyond anything in exquisite drawings of scenery by modern artists sent on purpose to the different spots mentioned. Besides which there are all sorts of characteristic autographs (a capital one of Pope); in short, nothing is wanting that the most unlimited expense (Mr. Holloway told me that his employer, a great city merchant of unbounded riches, constantly urged him to spare no expense to procure everything that money would buy), added to taste, skill, and experience, could accomplish. Of course the number of proper names and names of places have been one motive for conferring upon my book an honor of which I never dreamt; but there is, besides, an enthusiasm for my writings on the part of Mrs. Dillon, the lady of the possessor, for whom it is destined as a birthday gift. Now what I have to ask of you is to procure for Mr. Holloway as many autographs and portraits as you can of the American writers whom I have named,–dear Dr. Holmes, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Prescott, Ticknor. If any of them would add a line or two of their writing to their names, it would be a favor, and if; being about it, they would send two other plain autographs, for I have heard of two other copies in course of illustration, and expect to be applied to by their proprietors every day. Mr. Holloway wrote to some trade connection in Philadelphia, but probably because he applied to the wrong place and the wrong person, and because he limited his correspondent to time, obtained no results. If there be a print of Professor Longfellow’s house, so much the better, or any other autographs of Americans named in my book. Forgive this trouble, dear friend. You will probably see the work when you come to London in the spring, and then you will understand the interest that I take in it as a great book of art. Also my dear old friend, Lady Morley (Gibbon’s correspondent), who at the age of eighty-three is caught by new books and is as enthusiastic as a girl, has commissioned me to inquire about your new authoress, the writer of —-, who she is and all about her. For my part, I have not finished the book yet, and never shall. Besides my own utter dislike to its painfulness, its one-sidedness, and its exaggeration, I observe that the sort of popularity which it has obtained in England, and probably in America, is decidedly _bad_, of the sort which cannot and does not last,–a cry which is always essentially one-sided and commonly wrong….
Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours,
M.R.M.
October 5, 1852.
DEAREST MR. FIELDS: You will think that I persecute you, but I find that Mr. Dillon, for whom Mr. Holloway is illustrating my Recollections so splendidly, means to send the volumes to the binder on the 1st of November. I write therefore to beg, in case of your not having yet sent off the American autographs and portraits, that they may be forwarded direct to Mr. Holloway, 25 Bedford Street, Covent Garden, London. It is very foolish not to wait until all the materials are collected, but it is meant as an offering to Mrs. Dillon, and I suppose there is some anniversary in the way. Mr. Dillon is a great lover and preserver of fine engravings; his collection, one of the finest private collections in the world, is estimated at sixty thousand pounds. He is a friend of dear Mr. Bennoch’s, who, when I told him the compliment that had been paid to my work by a great city man, immediately said it could be nobody but Mr. Dillon. I have twice seen Mr. Bennoch within the last ten days, once with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thompson, your own Boston artist, whom I liked much, and who gave me the great pleasure of talking of you and of dear Mr. and Mrs. W—-, last time with his own good and charming wife and —-. Only think of —-‘s saying that Shakespeare, if he had lived now, would have been thought nothing of, and this rather as a compliment to the age than not! But, if you remember, he printed amended words to the air of “Drink to me only.” Ah, dear me, I suspect that both William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson will survive him; don’t you? Nevertheless he is better than might be predicated from that observation.
All my domestic news is bad enough. My poor pretty pony keeps his bed in the stable, with a violent attack of influenza, and Sam and Fanchon spend three parts of their time in nursing him. Moreover we have had such rains here that the Lodden has overflowed its banks, and is now covering the water meadows, and almost covering the lower parts of the lanes. Adieu, dearest friend.
Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, October 13, 1852.
More than one letter of mine, dearest friend, crossed yours, for which I cannot sufficiently thank you. Nobody can better understand than I do, how very, very glad your own people, and all the good city, must feel to get you back again,–I trust not to keep; for in spite of sea-sickness, that misery which during the summer I have contrived to feel on land, I still hope that we shall have you here again in the spring. I am impatiently waiting the arrival of portraits and autographs, and if they do not come in time to bind, I shall charge Mr. Holloway to contrive that they may be pasted with the copy of my Recollections to which Mr. Dillon is paying so high and so costly a compliment. Now I must tell you some news.
First let me say that there is an admirable criticism in one of the numbers of the Nonconformist, edited by Edward Miall, one of the new members of Parliament, and certainly the most able of the dissenting organs, on our favorite poet, Dr. Holmes. Also I have a letter from Dr. Robert Dickson, of Hertford Street, May Fair, one of the highest and most fashionable London physicians, respecting my book, liking Dr. Holmes better than anybody for the very qualities for which he would himself choose to be preferred, originality and justness of thought, admirable fineness and propriety of diction, and a power of painting by words, very rare in any age, and rarest of the rare in _this_, when vagueness and obscurity mar so much that is high and pure. I shall keep this letter to _show_ Dr. Holmes, tell him with my affectionate love. If it were not written on the thickest paper ever seen, and as huge as it is thick, I would send it; but I’ll keep it for him against he comes to claim it. The description of spring is, Dr. Dickson says, remarkable for originality and truth. He thanks me for those poems of Dr. Holmes as if I had written them. Now be free to tell him all this. Of course you have told Mr. Hawthorne of the highly eulogistic critique on the “Blithedale Romance” in the Times, written, I believe, by Mr. Willmott, to whom I lent the veritable copy received from the author. Another thing let me say, that I have been reading with the greatest pleasure some letters on African trees copied from the New York Tribune into Bentley’s Miscellany, and no doubt by Mr. Bayard Taylor. Our chief London news is that Mrs. Browning’s cough came on so violently, in consequence of the sudden setting in of cold weather, that they are off for a week or two to Paris, then to Florence, Rome, and Naples, and back here in the summer. Her father still refuses to open a letter or to hear her name. Mrs. Southey, suffering also from chest-complaint, has shut herself up till June. Poor Anne Hatton, who was betrothed to Thomas Davis, and was supposed to be in a consumption, is recovering, they say, under the advice of a clairvoyante. Most likely a broken vessel has healed on the lungs, or perhaps an abscess. Be what it may, the consequence is happy, for she is a lovely creature and the only joy of a fond mother. Alfred Tennyson’s boy was christened the other day by the name of Hallam Tennyson, Mr. Hallam standing to it in person. This is just as it should be on all sides, only that Arthur Hallam would have been a prettier name. You know that Arthur Hallam was the lost friend of the “In Memoriam,” and engaged to Tennyson’s sister, and that after his death, and even after her marrying another man, Mr. Hallam makes her a large allowance.
We have just escaped a signal misfortune; my dear pretty pony has been upon the point of death with influenza. Would not you have been sorry if that pony had died? He has, however, recovered under Sam’s care and skill, and the first symptom of convalescence was his neighing to Sam through the window. You will have found out that I too am better. I trust to be stronger when you come again, well enough to introduce you to Mr. Harness, whom we are expecting here next month. God bless you, my dear and kind friend. I send this through dear Mr Bennoch, whom I like better and better; so I do Mrs. Bennoch, and everybody who knows and loves you. Ever, my dear Mr. Fields,
Your faithful and affectionate friend, M.R.M.
P.S.–October 17. I have kept this letter open till now, and I am glad I did so. Acting upon the hint you gave of Mr. De Quincey’s kind feeling, I wrote to him, and yesterday I had a charming letter from his daughter, saying how much her father was gratified by mine, that he had already written an answer, amounting to a good-sized pamphlet, but that when it would be finished was doubtful, so she sent hers as a precursor.
Swallowfield, November 11, 1852.
I write, dearest friend, and although the packet which you had the infinite goodness to send, has not reached me yet, and may not possibly before my letter goes,–so uncertain is our railway,–yet I will write because our excellent friend, Mr. Bennoch, says that he has sent it off…. You will understand that I am even more obliged by your goodness about Mr. Dillon’s book than by any of the thousand obligations to myself only. Besides my personal interest, as so great a compliment to my own work, Mr. Dillon appears to be a most interesting person. He is a friend of Mr. Bennoch’s, from whom I had his history, one most honorable to him, and he has written to me since I wrote to you and proposes to come and see me. _You_ must see him when you come to England, and must see his collection of engravings. Would not dear Dr. Holmes have a sympathy with Mr. Dillon? Have you such fancies in America? They are not common even here; but Miss Skerrett (the Queen’s factotum) tells me that the most remarkable book in Windsor Castle is a De Grammont most richly and expensively illustrated by George the Fourth, who, with all his sins as a monarch, was the only sovereign since the Stuarts of any literary taste.
Here is your packet! O my dear, dear friend, how shall I thank you half enough! I shall send the parcels to-morrow morning, the very first thing, to Mr. Holloway. The work is at the binder’s, but fly-leaves have been left for the American packet of which I felt so sure, although even I could hardly foresee its value. One or two duplicates I have kept. Tell Mr. Hawthorne that I shall make a dozen people rich and happy by his autograph, and tell Dr. Holmes I could not find it in my heart to part with the “Mary” stanza. Never was a writer who possessed more perfectly the art of doing great things greatly and small things gracefully. Love to Mr. Hawthorne and to him.
Poor Daniel Webster! or rather poor America! Rich as she is, she cannot afford the loss, the greatest the world has known since our Sir Robert. But what a death-bed, and what a funeral! How noble an end of that noble life! I feel it the more, hearing and reading so much about the Duke’s funeral, which by dint of the delay will not cause the slightest real feeling, but will be attended just like every show, and yet as a show will be gloomy and poor. How much better to have laid him simply here at Strathfieldsaye, and left it as a place of pilgrimage,–as Strathfield will be,–although between the two men, in my mind, there was no comparison; the one was a genius, the other mere soldier,–pure physical force measured with intellect the richest and the proudest. I have twenty letters speaking of him as one of the greatest among the statesmen of the age. The Times only refuses to do him justice. But when did the Times do justice to any one? Look how it talks of our Emperor.
Your friend Bayard Taylor came to see me a fortnight ago, just before he sailed on his tour round the world. I told him the first of Bentley’s reprinting his letters from the New York Tribune; he had not heard a word of it. He seemed an admirable person, and it is good to have such travellers to follow with one’s heart and one’s earnest good wishes.
Also I have had two packets,–one from Mrs. Sparks, with a nice letter, and some fresh and glorious autumnal flowers, and a collection of autumn leaves from your glorious forests. I have written to thank her. She seems full of heart, and she says that she drove into Boston on purpose to see you, but missed you. When you do meet, tell me about her. Also, I have through you, dear friend, a most interesting book from Mr. Ware. To him, also, I have written, but tell him how much I feel and prize his kindness, all the more welcome for coming from a kinsman of dear Mrs. W—-. Tell her and her excellent husband that they cannot think of us oftener or more warmly than we think of them. O, how I should like to visit you at Boston! But I should have your malady by the way, and not your strength to stand it….
God bless you, my dear and excellent friend! I seem to have a thousand things to say to you, but the post is going, and a whole sheet of paper would not hold my thanks.
Ever yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, November 25, 1852.
My Dear Friend: Your most kind and welcome letter arrived to-day, two days after the papers, for which I thank you much. Still more do I thank you for that kind and charming letter, and for its enclosures. The anonymous poem [it was by Dr. T.W. Parsons] is far finer than anything that has been written on the death of the Duke of Wellington, as indeed it was a far finer subject. May I inquire the name of the writer? Mr. Everett’s speech also is superb, and how very much I prefer the Marshfield funeral in its sublime simplicity to the tawdry pageantry here! I have had fifty letters from persons who saw the funeral in St. Paul’s, and seen as many who saw that or the procession, and it is strange that the papers have omitted alike the great successes and the great failures. My young neighbor, a captain in the Grenadier Guards (the Duke’s regiment), saw the uncovering the car which had been hidden by the drapery, and was to have been a great effect, and he says it was exactly what is sometimes seen in a theatre when one scene is drawn up too soon and the other is not ready. Carpenters and undertaker’s men were on all parts of the car, and the draperies and ornaments were everywhere but in their places. Again, the procession waited upwards of an hour at the cathedral door, because the same people had made no provision for taking the coffin from the car; again, the sunlight was let into St. Paul’s, mingling most discordantly with the gas, and the naked wood of screens and benches and board beams disfigured the grand entrance. In three months’ interval they had not time! On the other hand, the strong points were the music, the effect of which is said to have been unrivalled; the actual performance of the service,–my friend Dean Milman is renowned for his manner of reading the funeral service, he officiated at the burial of Mrs. Lockhart (Sir Walter’s favorite daughter),–and none who were present could speak of it without tears; the clerical part of the procession, which was a real and visible mourning pageant in its flowing robes of white with black bands and sashes; the living branches of laurel and cypress amongst the mere finery; and, above all, the hushed silence of the people, always most and best impressed by anything that appeals to the imagination or the heart.
I suppose you will have seen how England is flooded, and you will like to hear that this tiny speck has escaped. The Lodden is over the park, and turns the beautiful water meadows down to Strathfieldsaye into a no less beautiful lake, two or three times a week; but then it subsides as quickly as it rises, so there is none of the lying under water which results in all sorts of pestilential exhalations, and this cottage is lifted out of every bad influence, nay, a kind neighbor having had my lane scraped, I walk dry-shod every afternoon a mile and a half, which is more than I ever expected to compass again, and for which I am most thankful. But we have had our own troubles. K—- has lost her father. He was seized with paralysis and knew nobody, so they desired her not to come, and Sam went alone to the funeral. After all, _this_ is her home, and she has pretty well got over her affliction, and the pony is well again, and strong enough to draw you and me in the spring,–for I am looking forward to good and happy days again when you shall return to England.
Your magnificent present for Mr. Dillon’s book was quite in time, dear friend. I had warned them to leave room, and Mr. Holloway and the binders contrived it admirably. They are most grateful for your kindness, and most gratefully shall I receive the promised volumes. I have not yet got “the pamphlet,” and am much afraid it is buried in what Miss De Quincey calls her “father’s chaos”; but I have charming letters from her, and am heartily glad that I wrote. You have the way (like Mr. Bennoch) of making friends still better friends, and bringing together those who, without you, would have had no intercourse. It is the very finest of all the fine arts. Tell dear Dr. Holmes that the more I hear of him, the more I feel how inadequate has been all that I have said to express my own feelings; and tell President Sparks that his charming wife ought to have received a long letter from me at the same moment with yourself. Mr. Hawthorne’s new work will be a real treat. Tell me if Mr. Bennoch has sent you some stanzas on Ireland, which have more of the very highest qualities of Beranger than I have ever seen in English verse. We who love him shall have to be very proud of dear Mr. Bennoch. Tell me, too, if our solution of the line, “A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind,” was the first; and why the new President is at once called General and talked of as a civilian. The other President goes on nobly, does he not?
Say everything for me to dear Mr. and Mrs. W—- and all friends.
Ever yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, December 14, 1852.
O my very dear friend, how much too kind you are to me, who have nothing to give you in return but affection and gratitude! Mr. Bennett brought me your beautiful book on Saturday, and you may think how heartily we wished that you had been here also. But you will come this spring, will you not? I earnestly hope nothing will come in the way of that happiness. Before leaving the subject of our good little friend, let me say that, talking over our own best authors and your De Quincey (N.B. The pamphlet has not arrived yet, I fear it is forever buried in De Quincey’s “chaos”),–talking of these things, we both agreed that there was another author, probably little known in America, who would be quite worthy of a reprint, William Hazlitt. Is there any complete edition of his Lectures and Essays? I should think they would come out well, now that Thackeray is giving his Lectures. I know that Charles Lamb and Talfourd thought Hazlitt not only the most brilliant, but the soundest of all critics. Then his Life of Napoleon is capital, that is, capital for an English life; the only way really to know the great man is to read him in the _memoires_ of his own ministers, lieutenants, and servants; for _he was_ a hero to his _valet de chambre_, the greatness was so real that it would bear close looking into. And our Emperor, I have just had a letter from Osborne, from Marianne Skerrett, describing the arrival of Count Walewski under a royal salute to receive the Queen’s recognition of Napoleon III. She, Marianne, says, “How great a man that, is, and how like a fairy tale the whole story!” She adds, that, seeing much of Louis Philippe, she never could abide him, he was so cunning and so false, not cunning enough to hide the falseness! Were not you charmed with the bits of sentiment and feeling that come out all through our hero’s Southern progress? Always one finds in him traits of a gracious and graceful nature, far too frequent and too spontaneous to be the effect of calculation. It is a comfort to find, in spite of our delectable press, ministers are wise enough to understand that our policy is peace, and not only peace but cordiality. To quarrel with France would be almost as great a sin as to quarrel with America. What a set of fools our great ladies are! I had hoped better things of Lord Carlisle, but to find that long list at Stafford House in female parliament assembled, echoing the absurdities of Exeter Hall, leaving their own duties and the reserve which is the happy privilege of our sex to dictate to a great nation on a point which all the world knows to be its chief difficulty, is enough to make one ashamed of the title of Englishwoman. I know a great many of these committee ladies, and in most of them I trace that desire to follow the fashion, and concert with duchesses, which is one of the besetting sins of the literary circles in London. One name did surprise me, —-, considering that one of her husband’s happiest bits, in the book of his that will live, was the subscription for sending flannel waistcoats to the negroes in the West Indies; and that in this present book a certain Mrs. Jellyby is doing just what his wife is doing at Stafford House!
Even if I had not had my earnest thanks to send you, I should have written this week to beg you to convey a message to Mr. Hawthorne. Mr. Chorley writes to me, “You will be interested to hear that a Russian literary man of eminence was so much attracted to the ‘House of the Seven Gables’ by the review in the Athenaeum, as to have translated it into Russian and published it feuilletonwise in a newspaper.” I know you will have the goodness to tell Mr. Hawthorne this, with my love. Mr. Chorley saw the entrance of the Empereur into the Tuileries. He looked radiant. The more I read that elegy on the death of Daniel Webster, the more I find to admire. It is as grand as a dirge upon an organ. Love to the dear W—-s and to Dr. Holmes.
Ever, dearest Mr. Fields, most gratefully yours, M.R.M.
1853
Swallowfield, January 5, 1853.
Your most welcome letter, my very dear friend, arrived to-day, and I write not only to acknowledge that, and your constant kindness, but because, if, as I believe, Mr. Bennoch has told you of my mischance, you will be glad to hear from my own hand that I am going on well. Last Monday fortnight I was thrown violently from my own pony-chaise upon the hard road in Lady Russell’s park. No bones were broken, but the nerves of one side were so terribly bruised and lacerated, and the shock to the system was so great, that even at the end of ten days Mr. May could not satisfy himself, without a most minute re-examination, that neither fracture nor dislocation had taken place, and I am writing to you at this moment with my left arm bound tightly to my body and no power whatever of raising either foot from the ground. The only parts of me that have escaped uninjured are my head and my right hand, and this is much. Moreover Mr. May says that, although the cure will be tedious, he sees no cause to doubt my recovering altogether my former condition, so that we may still hope to drive about together when you come back to England….
I wrote I think, dearest friend, to thank you heartily for the beautiful and interesting book called “The Homes of American Authors.” How comfortably they are housed, and how glad I am to find that, owing to Mr. Hawthorne’s being so near the new President, and therefore keeping up the habit of friendship and intercourse, the want of which habit so frequently brings college friendship to an end, he is likely to enter into public life. It will be an excellent thing for his future books,–the fault of all his writings, in spite of their great beauty, being a want of reality, of the actual, healthy, every-day life which is a necessary element in literature. All the great poets have it,–Homer, Shakespeare, Scott. It will be the very best school for our pet poet.
Nobody under the sun has so much right as you have to see Mr. Dillon’s book, which is in six quarto volumes, not one. Our dear friend Mr. Bennoch knows him, and tells me to-day that Mr. Dillon has invited him to go and look at it. He has just received it from the binders. Of course Mr. Bennoch will introduce you. I was so glad to read what looked like a renewed pledge of your return to England.
Mr. Bentley has sent me three several applications for a second series. At present Mr. May forbids all composition, but I suppose the thing will be done. I shall introduce some chapters on French poetry and literature. At this moment I am in full chase of Casimer Delavigne’s _ballads_. He thought so little of them that he published very few in his Poesies,–one in a note,–and several of the very finest not at all. They are scattered about here and there. —- has reproduced two (which I had) in his Memories; but I want all that can be found, especially one of which the refrain is, “Chez l’Ambassadere de France.” I was such a fool, when I read it six or seven years ago, as not to take a copy. Do you think Mr. Hector Bossange could help me to that, or to any others not printed in the Memories? …Of course I shall devote one chapter to _our_ Emperor. Ah, how much better is such a government as his than one which every four years causes a sort of moral earthquake; or one like ours, where whole sessions are passed in squabbling! The loss of his place has saved Disraeli’s life, for everybody said he could not have survived three months’ badgering in the House. A very intimate friend of his (Mr. Henry Drummond, the very odd, very clever member for Surrey) says that he had certainly broken a bloodvessel. One piece of news I have heard to-day from Miss Goldsmid, that the Jews are certain now to gain their point and be admitted to the House of Commons; for my part, I hold that every one has a claim to his civil rights, were he Mahometan or Hindoo, and I rejoice that poor old Sir Isaac, the real author of the movement, will probably live to see it accomplished. The thought of succeeding at last in the pursuit to which he has devoted half his life has quite revived him.
And now Heaven bless you, my very dear friend. None of the poems on Wellington are to be compared to that dirge on Webster. I rejoice that my article should have pleased his family. The only bit of my new book that I have written is a paper on Taylor and Stoddard. Say everything for me to the Ticknors and Nortons and your own people, the W—-s.
Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, February 1, 1853.
Ah, my dear friend! ask Dr. Holmes what these severe bruises and lacerations of the nerves of the principal joints are, and he will tell you that they are much more slow and difficult of cure, as well as more painful, than half a dozen broken bones. It is now above six weeks since that accident, and although the shoulder is going on favorably, there is still a total loss of muscular power in the lower limbs. I am just lifted out of bed and wheeled to the fireside, and then at night wheeled back and lifted into bed,–without the power of standing for a moment, or of putting one foot before the other, or of turning in bed. Mr. May says that warm weather will probably do much for me, but that till then I must be a prisoner to my room, for that if rheumatism supervenes upon my present inability, there will be no chance of getting rid of it. So “patience and shuffle the cards,” as a good man, much in my state, the contented Marquess, says in Don Quixote…. I assure you I am not out of spirits; indeed, people are so kind to me that it would be the basest of all ingratitude if I were not cheerful as well as thankful. I think that in a letter which you must have received by this time, I told you how it came about, and thanked you for the comely book which shows how cosily America lodges my brethren of the quill. Dr. Holmes ought to have been there, and Dr. Parsons, but their time will come and must. Nothing gratifies me more than to find how many strangers, writing to me of my Recollections, mention Dr. Holmes, classing him sometimes with Thomas Davis, sometimes with Praed. If I write another series of Recollections, as, when Mr. May will let me, I suppose I must, I shall certainly include Dr. Parsons….
Has anybody told you the terrible story of that boy, Lord Ockham, Lord Byron’s grandson? I had it from Mr. Noel, Lady Byron’s cousin-german and intimate friend. While his poor mother was dying her death of martyrdom from an inward cancer,–Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble), who went to sing to her, saw her through the door, which was left open, crouching on a floor covered with mattresses, on her hands and knees, the only posture she could bear,–whilst she with the patience of an angel was enduring her long agony, her husband, engrossed by her, left this lad of seventeen to his sister and the governess. It was a dull life, and he ran away. Mr. Noel (my friend’s brother, from whom he had the story) knew most of the youth, who had been for a long time staying at his house, and they begged him to undertake the search. Lord Ockham had sent a carpet-bag containing his gentleman’s clothes to his father, Lord Lovelace, in London; he was therefore disguised, and from certain things he had said Mr. Noel suspected that he intended to go to America. Accordingly he went first to Bristol, then to Liverpool, leaving his description, a sort of written portrait of him, with the police at both places. At Liverpool he was found before long, and when Mr. Noel, summoned by the electric telegraph, reached that town, he found him dressed as a sailor-boy at a low public-house, surrounded by seamen of both nations, and enjoying, as much as possible, their sailor yarns. He had given his money, L36, to the landlord to keep; had desired him to inquire for a ship where he might be received as cabin-boy; and had entered into a shrewd bargain for his board, stipulating that he should have over and above his ordinary rations a pint of beer with his Sunday dinner. The landlord did not cheat him, but he postponed all engagements under the expectation–seeing that he was clearly a gentleman’s son–that money would be offered for his recovery. The worst is that he (Lord Ockham) showed no regret for the sorrow and disgrace that he had brought upon his family at such a time. He has two tastes not often seen combined,–the love of money and of low company. One wonders how he will turn out. He is now in Paris, after which he is to re-enter in Green’s ship (he had served in one before) for a twelvemonth, and to leave the service or remain in it as he may decide then. This is perfectly true; Mr. Noel had it from his brother the very day before he wrote it to me. He says that Lady Lovelace’s funeral was too ostentatious. Escutcheons and silver coronals everywhere. Lord Lovelace’s taste that, and not Lady Byron’s, which is perfectly simple. You know that she was buried in the same vault with her father, whose coffin and the box containing his heart were in perfect preservation. Scott’s only grandson, too, is just dead of sheer debauchery. Strange! As if one generation paid in vice and folly for the genius of the past. By the way, are you not charmed at the Emperor’s marriage? To restore to princes honest love and healthy preference, instead of the conventional intermarriages which have brought epilepsy and idiotism and madness into half the royal families of Christendom! And then the beauty of that speech, with its fine appeals to the best sympathies of our common nature! I am proud of him. What a sad, sad catastrophe was that of young Pierce! I won’t call his father general, and I hope he will leave it off. With us it is a real offence to give any man a higher rank than belongs to him,–to say captain, for instance, to a lieutenant,–and that is one of our usages which it would be well to copy. But we have follies enough, God knows; that duchess address, with all its tuft-hunting signatures, is a thing to make Englishwomen ashamed. Well, they caught it deservedly in an address from American women, written probably by some very clever American man. No, I have not seen Longfellow’s lines on the Duke. One gets sick of the very name. Henry is exceedingly fond of his little sister. I remember that when he first saw the snow fall in large flakes, he would have it that it was a shower of white feathers. Love to all my dear friends, the W—-s, Mrs. Sparks, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Hawthorne. Ever, dearest friend, most affectionately yours,
M.R.M.
(1st March, 1853.)
The numbers for the election of President of France in favor of Louis Napoleon were for against 7119791 1119
Look through the back of this against the candle, or the fire, or any light.
My Very Dear Friend: Having a note to send to Mrs. Sparks, who has sent me, or rather whose husband has sent me, two answers to Lord Mahon, which, coming through a country bookseller, have, I suspect, been some months on the way, I cannot help sending it enclosed to you, that I may have a chat with you _en passant_,–the last, I hope, before your arrival. If you have not seen the above curious instance of figures forming into a word, and that word into a prophecy, I think it will amuse you, and I want besides to tell you some of the _on-dits_ about the Empress. A Mr. Huddlestone, the head of one of our great Catholic houses, is in despair at the marriage. He had been desperately in love with her for two years in Spain,–had followed her to Paris,–was called back to England by his father’s illness, and was on the point of crossing the Channel, after that father’s death, to lay himself and L30,000 or L40,000 a year at her feet, when the Emperor stepped in and carried off the prize. To comfort himself he has got a portrait of her on horseback, which a friend of mine saw the other day at his house. Mrs. Browning writes me from Florence: “I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part, I approve altogether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by the mode of announcement. Every cut of the whip on the face of Austria is an especial compliment to me, or so I feel it. Let him heed the democracy, and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his great opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the peace societies are pleasing me infinitely just now in making head against the immorality–that’s the word–of the English press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral in the highest degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were not something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from high authority, is charming and good at heart. She was brought up at a respectable school at Clifton, and is very English, which does not prevent her from shooting with pistols, leaping gates, driving four in hand, and upsetting the carriage if the frolic requires it,–as brave as a lion and as true as a dog. Her complexion is like marble, white, pale, and pure,–the hair light, rather sandy, they say, and she powders it with gold dust for effect; but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is generally attributed to her. She is a woman of very decided opinions. I like all that, don’t you? and I like her letter to the press, as everybody must.” Besides this, I have to-day a letter from a friend in Paris, who says that “everybody feels her charm,” and that “the Emperor, when presenting her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with happiness.” My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is amongst the people arrested for libel,–a thorough _mauvais sujet_. Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was always, I believe, expensive, like all those French _litterateurs_. You don’t happen to have in Boston–have you?–a copy of “Les Memoires de Lally Tollendal”? I think they are different publications in defence of his father, published, some in London during the Emigration, some in Paris after the Restoration. What I want is an account of the retreat from Pondicherie. I’ll tell you why some day here. Mrs. Browning is most curious about your rappings,–of which I suppose you believe as much as I do of the Cock Lane Ghost, whose doings, by the way, they much resemble.
I liked Mrs. Tyler’s letter; at least I liked it much better than the one to which it was an answer, although I hold it one of our best female privileges to have no act or part in such matters.
Now you will be sorry to have a very bad account of me. Three weeks ago frost and snow set in here, and ever since I have been unable to rise or stand, or put one foot before another, and the pain is much worse than at first. I suppose rheumatism has supervened upon the injured nerve. God bless you. Love to all.
Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, March 17, 1853
My Dear Friend: I cannot enough thank you for your most kind and charming letter. Your letters, and the thoughts of you, and the hope that you will coax your partners into the hazardous experiment of letting you come to England, help to console me under this long confinement; for here I am at near Easter still a close prisoner from the consequences of the accident that took place before Christmas. I have only once left my room, and that only to the opposite chamber to have this cleaned, and I got such a chill that it brought back all the pain and increased all the weakness. But when fine weather–warm, genial, sunny weather–comes, I will get down in some way or other, and trust myself to that which never hurts any one, the honest open air. Spring, and even the approach of spring, has upon me something the effect that England has upon you. It sets me dreaming,–I see leafy hedges in my dreams, and flowery banks, and then I long to make the vision a reality. I remember that Fanchon’s father, Flush, who was a famous sporting dog, used, at the approach of the covering season, to quest in his sleep, doubtless by the same instinct that works in me. So, as soon as the sun tells the same story with the primroses I shall make a descent after some fashion, and no doubt, aided by Sam’s stalwart arm, successfully. In the mean while I have one great pleasure in store, be the weather what it may; for next Saturday or the Saturday after I shall see dear Mr. Bennoch. We have not met since November, although he has written to me again and again. He will take this letter, and I trouble you with a note to kind Mrs. Sparks, who is about to send me, or rather who has sent me, some American cracknels, which have not yet arrived. To-day, too, I had a charming letter from Lasswade,–not _the_ letter, the pamphlet one, but one full of kindness from father and daughter, written by Miss Margaret to ask after me with a reality of interest which one feels at once. It gave me pleasure in another way too; Mr. De Quincey is of my faith and delight in the Emperor! Is not that delightful? Also he holds in great abomination that blackest of iniquities —-, my heresy as to which nearly cost me an idolator t’other day, a lady from Essex, who came here to take a house in my neighborhood to be near me. She was so shocked that, if we had not met afterwards, when I regained my ground a little by certain congenialities she certainly would have abjured me forever. Well! no offence to Mrs. —-. I had rather in a literary question agree with Thomas De Quincey than with her and Queen Victoria, who, always fond of strong not to say coarse excitements, is amongst —-‘s warm admirers. I knew you would like the Emperor’s marriage. I heard last week from a stiff English lady, who had been visiting one of the Empress’s ladies of honor, that one day at St. Cloud she shot thirteen brace of partridges; “but,” added the narrator, “she is so sweet and charming a creature that any man might fall in love with her notwithstanding.” To be sure Mr. Thackeray liked you. How could he help it? Did not he also like Dr. Holmes? I hope so. How glad I should be to see him in England, and how glad I shall be to see Mr. Hawthorne! He will find all the best judges of English writing admiring him to his heart’s content, warmly and discriminatingly; and a consulship in a bustling town will give him the cheerful reality, the healthy air of every-day life, which is his only want. Will you tell all these dear friends, especially Mr. and Mrs. W—-, how deeply I feel their affectionate sympathy, and thank Mr. Whittier and Professor Longfellow over and over again for their kind condolence? Tell Mr. Whittier how much I shall prize his book. He has an earnest admirer in Buckingham Palace, Marianne Skerrett, known as the Queen’s Miss Skerrett, the lady chiefly about her, and the only one to whom she talks of books. Miss Skerrett is herself a very clever woman, and holds Mr. Whittier to be not only the greatest, but the _one_ poet of America; which last assertion the poet himself would, I suspect, be the very first to deny. Your promise of Dr. Parsons’s poem is very delightful to me. I hold firm to my admiration of those stanzas on Webster. Nothing written on the Duke came within miles of it, and I have no doubt that the poem on Dante’s bust is equally fine…. Mr. Justice Talfourd has just printed a new tragedy. He sent it to me from Oxford, not from Reading, where he had passed four days and never gave a copy to any mortal, and told me, in a very affectionate letter which accompanied it, that “it was at present a very private sin, he having only given eight or ten copies in all.” I suppose that it will be published, for I observe that the “not published” is written, not printed, and that Moxon’s name is on the title-page. It is called “The Castilian,”–is on the story of a revolt headed by Don John de Padilla in the early part of Charles the Fifth’s reign, and is more like Ion than either of his other tragedies. I have just been reading a most interesting little book in manuscript, called “The Heart of Montrose.” It is a versification in three ballads of a very striking letter in Napier’s “Life and Times of Montrose,” by the young lady who calls herself Mary Maynard. It is really a little book that ought to make a noise, not too long, full of grace and of interest, and she has adhered to the true story with excellent taste, that story being a very remarkable union of the romantic and the domestic. I am afraid that my other young poet, —-, is dying of consumption; those fine spirits often fall in that way. I have just corrected my book for a cheaper edition. Mr. Bentley is very urgent for a second series, and I suppose I must try. I shall get you to write for me to Mr. Hector Bossange when you come, for come you must. My eyes begin to feel the effects of this long confinement to one smoky and dusty room.
So far had I written, dearest friend, when this day (March 26) brought me your most kind and welcome letter enclosed in another from dear Mr. Bennoch. Am I to return Dr. Parsons’s? or shall I keep it till you come to fetch it? Tell the writer how very much I prize his kindness, none the less that he likes (as I do) my tragedies, that is, one of them, the best of my poor doings. The lines on the Duchess are capital, and quite what she deserves; but I think those the worst who, in so true a spirit of what Carlyle would call flunkeyism, consent to sign any nonsense that their names may figure side by side with that of a duchess, and they themselves find (for once) an admittance to the gilded saloons of Stafford House. For my part, I well-nigh lost an admirer the other day by taking a common-sense view of the question. A lady (whose name I never heard till a week ago) came here to take a house to be near me. (N.B. There was none to be had.) Well, she was so provoked to find that I had stopped short of the one hundredth page of —-, and never intended to read another, that I do think, if we had not discovered some sympathies to counterbalance that grand difference–As I live, I have told you that story before! Ah! I am sixty-six, and I get older every day! So does little Henry, who is at home just now, and longing to put the clock forward that he may go to America. He is a boy of great promise, full of sound sense, and as good as good can be. I suppose that he never in his life told an untruth, or broke a promise, or disobeyed a command. He is very fond of his little sister; and not at all jealous either–to the great praise of that four-footed lady be it said–is Fanchon, who watches over the cradle, and is as fond of the baby in her way as Henry in his.
So far from paying me copyright money, all that I ever received from Mr. B—- was two copies of his edition of “Our Village,” one of which I gave away, and of the other some chance visitor has taken one of the volumes. I really do think I shall ask him for a copy or two. How can I ever thank you enough for your infinite kindness in sending me books! Thank you again and again. Dear Mr. Bennoch has been making an admirable speech, in moving to present the thanks of the city to Mr. Layard. How one likes to feel proud of one’s friends! God bless you!
Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.
Kind Mrs. Sparks’s biscuits arrived quite safe. How droll some of the cookery is in “The Wide, Wide World”! It would try English stomachs by its over-richness. I wonder you are not all dead, if such be your _cuisine_.
Swallowfield, May 3, 1853.
How shall I thank you enough, dear and kind friend, for the copy of —- that arrived here yesterday! Very like; only it wanted what that great painter, the sun, will never arrive at giving, the actual look of life which is the one great charm of the human countenance. Strange that the very source of light should fail in giving that light of the face, the smile. However, all that can be given by that branch of art has been given. I never before saw so good a photographic portrait, and for one that gives more I must wait until John Lucas, or some American John Lucas, shall coax you into sitting. I sent you, ten days ago, a batch of notes, and a most unworthy letter of thanks for one of your parcels of gift-books; and I write the rather now to tell you I am better than then, and hope to be in a still better plight before July or August, when a most welcome letter from Mr. Tuckerman has bidden us to expect you to officiate as Master of the Ceremonies to Mr. Hawthorne, who, welcome for himself, will be trebly welcome for such an introducer.
Now let me say how much I like De Quincey’s new volumes. The “Wreck of a Household” shows great power of narrative, if he would but take the trouble to be right as to details; the least and lowest part of the art, that of interesting you in his people, he has. And those “Last Days of Kant,” how affecting they are, and how thoroughly in every line and in every thought, agree with him or not, (and in all that relates to Napoleon I differ from him, as in his overestimate of Wordsworth and of Coleridge), one always feels how thoroughly and completely he is a gentleman as well as a great writer; and so much has _that_ to do with my admiration, that I have come to tracing personal character in books almost as a test of literary merit: Charles Boner’s “Chamois-Hunting,” for instance, owes a great part of its charm to the resolute truth of the writer, and a great drawback from the attraction of “My Novel” seems to me to be derived from the _blase_ feeling, the unclean mind from whence it springs, felt most when trying after moralities.
Amongst your bounties I was much amused with the New York magazines, the curious turning up of a new claimant to the Louis-the-Seventeenth pretension amongst the Red Indians, and the rappings and pencil-writings of the new Spiritualists. One should wonder most at the believers in these two branches of faith, if that particular class did not always seem to be provided most abundantly whenever a demand occurs. Only think of Mrs. Browning giving the most unlimited credence to every “rapping” story which anybody can tell her! Did I tell you that the work on which she is engaged is a fictitious autobiography in blank verse, the heroine a woman artist (I suppose singer or actress), and the tone intensely modern? You will see that “Colombe’s Birthday” has been brought out at the Haymarket. Mr. Chorley (Robert Browning’s most intimate friend) writes me word that Mrs. Martin (Helen Faucit, at whose persuasion it was acted) told him that it had gone off “better than she expected.” Have you seen Alexander Smith’s book, which is all the rage just now? I saw some extracts from his poems a year and a half ago, and the whole book is like a quantity of extracts put together without any sort of connection, a mass of powerful metaphor with scarce any lattice-work for the honeysuckles to climb upon. Keats was too much like this; but then Keats was the first. Now this book, admitting its merit in a certain way, is but the imitation of a school, and, in my mind, a bad school. One such poem as that on the bust of Dante is worth a whole wilderness of these new writers, the very best of them. Certainly nothing better than those two pages ever crossed the Atlantic.
God bless you, dear friend. Say everything for me to dear Mr. and Mrs. W—-, to Dr. Holmes, to Dr. Parsons, to Mr. Whittier, (how powerful his new volume is!) to Mr. Stoddard, to Mrs. Sparks, to all my friends.
Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.
I am writing on the 8th of May, but where is the May of the poets? Half the morning yesterday it snowed, at night there was ice as thick as a shilling, and to-day it is absolutely as cold as Christmas. Of course the leaves refuse to unfold, the nightingales can hardly be said to sing, even the hateful cuckoo holds his peace. I am hoping to see dear Mr. Bennoch soon to supply some glow and warmth.
Swallowfield, June 4, 1853.
I write at once, dearest friend, to acknowledge your most kind and welcome letter. I am better than when I wrote last, and get out almost every day for a very slow and quiet drive round our lovely lanes; far more lovely than last year, since the foliage is quite as thick again, and all the flowery trees, aloes, laburnums, horse-chestnuts, acacias, honeysuckles, azalias, rhododendrons, hawthorns, are one mass of blossoms,–literally the leaves are hardly visible, so that the color, whenever we come upon park, shrubbery, or plantation, is such as should be seen to be imagined. In my long life I never knew such a season of flowers; so the wet winter and the cold spring have their compensation. I get out in this way with Sam and K—- and the baby, and it gives me exquisite pleasure, and if you were here the pleasure would be multiplied a thousand fold by your society; but I do not gain strength in the least. Attempting to do a little more and take some young people to the gates of Whiteknights, which, without my presence, would be closed, proved too far and too rapid a movement, and for two days I could not stir for excessive soreness all over the body. I am still lifted down stairs step by step, and it is an operation of such time (it takes half an hour to get me down that one flight of cottage stairs), such pain, such fatigue, and such difficulty, that, unless to get out in the pony-chaise, I do not attempt to leave my room. I am still lifted into bed, and can neither turn nor move in any way when there, am wheeled from the stairs to the pony-carriage, cannot walk three steps, can hardly stand a moment, and in rising from my chair am sometimes ten minutes, often longer. So you see that I am very, very feeble and infirm. Still I feel sound at heart and clear in head, am quite as cheerful as ever, and, except that I get very much sooner exhausted, enjoy society as much as ever, so you must come if only to make me well. I do verily believe your coming would do me more good than anything.
I was much interested by your account of the poor English stage coachman. Ah, these are bad days for stage coachmen on both sides the Atlantic! Do you remember his name? and do you know whether he drove between London and Reading, or between Reading and Basingstoke?–a most useless branch railroad between the two latter places, constructed by the Great Western simply out of spite to the Southwestern, which I am happy to state has never yet paid its daily expenses, to say nothing of the cost of construction, and has taken everything off our road, which before abounded in coaches, carriers, and conveyances of all sorts. The vile railway does us no earthly good, we being above four miles from the nearest station, and you may imagine how much inconvenience the absence of stated communication with a market town causes to our small family, especially now that I can neither spare Sam nor the pony to go twelve miles. You must come to England and come often to see me, just to prove that there is any good whatever in railways,–a fact I am often inclined to doubt.
I shall send this letter to be forwarded to Mr. Bennett, and desire him to write to you himself. He is, as you say, an “excellent youth,” although it is very generous in me to say so, for I do believe that you came to see me since he has been. Dear Mr. Bennoch, with all his multifarious business, has been again and again. God bless him! …To return to Mr Bennett. He has been engaged in a grand battle with the trustees of an old charity school, principally the vicar. His two brothers helped in the fight. They won a notable victory. They were quite right in the matter in dispute and the “excellent youth” came out well in various letters. His opponent, the vicar, was Senior Wrangler at our Cambridge, the very highest University honor in England, and tutor to the present Lord Grey.
By the way, Mr. —- wrote to me the other day to ask that I would let him be here when Mr. Hawthorne comes to see me. I only answered this request by asking whether he did not intend to come to see _me_ before that time, for certainly he might come to visit an old friend, especially a sick one, for her own sake, and not merely to meet a notability, and I am by no means sure that Mr. Hawthorne might not prefer to come alone or with dear Mr. Bennoch; at all events it ought to be left to _his_ choice, and besides I have not lost the hope of your being the introducer of the great romancer, and then how little should I want anybody to come between us. Begin as they may, all my paragraphs slide into that refrain of Pray, pray come!
I have written to you about other kindnesses since that note full of hopes, but I do not think that I did write to thank you for dear Dr. Holmes’s “Lecture on English Poetesses,” or rather the analysis of a lecture which sins only by over-gallantry. Ah, there is a difference between the sexes, and the difference is the reverse way to that in which he puts it! Tell him I sent his charming stanzas on Moore to a leading member of the Irish committee for raising a monument to his memory, and that they were received with enthusiasm by the Irish friends of the poet. I have sent them to many persons in England worthy to be so honored, and the very cleverest woman whom I have ever known (Miss Goldsmid) wrote to me only yesterday to thank me for sending her that exquisite poem, adding, “I think the stanza ‘If on his cheek, etc.,’ contains one of the most beautiful similes to be found in the whole domain of poetry.” I also told Mrs. Browning what dear Dr. Holmes said of her. The American poets whom she prefers are Lowell and Emerson. Now I know something of Lowell and of Emerson, but I hold that those lines on Dante’s bust are amongst the finest ever written in the language, whether by American or Englishman; don’t you? And what a grand Dead March is the poem on Webster! …Also Mrs. Browning believes in spirit-rapping stories,–all,–and tells me that Robert Owen has been converted by them to a belief in a future state. Everybody everywhere is turning tables. The young Russells, who are surcharged with electricity, set them spinning in ten minutes. In general, you know, it is usual to take off all articles of metal. They, the other night, took a fancy to remove their rings and bracelets, and, having done so, the table, which had paused for a moment, began whirling again as fast as ever the contrary way. This is a fact, and a curious one.
I have lent three volumes of your “De Quincey” to my young friend, James Payn, a poet of very high promise, who has verified the Green story, and taken the books with him to the Lakes. God grant, my dear friend, that you may not lose by “Our Village”; that is what I care for.
Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.
Swallowfield, June 23, 1853.
Ah, my very dear friend, we shall not see you this summer, I am sure. For the first time I clearly perceive the obstacle, and I feel that unless some chance should detain Mr. Ticknor, we must give up the great happiness of seeing you till next year. I wonder whether your poor old friend will be alive to greet you then! Well, that is as God pleases; in the mean time be assured that you have been one of the chief comforts and blessings of these latter years of my life, not only in your own friendship and your thousand kindnesses, but in the kindness and friendship of dear Mr. Bennoch, which, in the first instance, I mainly owe to you. I am in somewhat better trim, although the getting out of doors and into the pony-carriage, from which Mr. May hoped such great things, has hardly answered his expectations. I am not stronger, and I am so nervous that I can only bear to be driven, or more ignominiously still to be led, at a foot’s pace through the lanes. I am still unable to stand or walk, unless supported by Sam’s strong hands lifting me up on each side, still obliged to be lifted into bed, and unable to turn or move when there, the worst grievance of all. However, I am in as good spirits as ever, and just at this moment most comfortably seated under the acacia-tree at the corner of my house,–the beautiful acacia literally loaded with its snowy chains (the flowering trees this summer, lilacs, laburnums, rhododendrons, azalias, have been one mass of blossoms, and none are so graceful as this waving acacia); on one side a syringa, smelling and looking like an orange-tree; a jar of roses on the table before me,–fresh-gathered roses, the pride of Sam’s heart; and little Fanchon at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her,–biscuits from Boston, sent to me by Mrs. Sparks, whose kindness is really indefatigable, and which Fanchon ought to like upon that principle if upon no other, but you know her laziness of old, and she improves in it every day. Well that is a picture of the Swallowfield cottage at this moment, and I wish that you and the Bennochs and the W—-s and Mr. Whipple were here to add to its life and comfort. You must come next year and come in May, that you and dear Mr. Bennoch may hear the nightingales together. He has never heard them, and this year they have been faint and feeble (as indeed they were last) compared with their usual song. Now they are over, and although I expect him next week, it will be too late.
Precious fooling that has been at Stafford House! And our —- who delights in strong, not to say worse, emotions, whose chief pleasure it was to see the lions fed in Van Amburgh’s time, who went seven times to see the Ghost in the “Corsican Brothers,” and has every sort of natural curiosity (not to say wonder) brought to her at Buckingham Palace, was in a state of exceeding misery because she could not, consistently with her amicable relations with the United States, receive Mrs. —- there. (Ah! our dear Emperor has better taste. Heaven bless him!) From Lord Shaftesbury one looks for unmitigated cant, but I did expect better things of Lord Carlisle. How many names that both you and I know went there merely because