Chapter 23
... Dearest Harriet, whatever may be the evils which may spring from the amazing facilities of intercourse daily developing between distant countries (and with so great good, how should there not be some evil?), think of those whose lots are cast far from their early homes and friends; think of the deathlike separation that going to America has been to thousands who left England, and friends there, but a few years ago; the uncertainty of intercourse by letter, the interminable intervals of suspense, the impossibility of making known or understood by hearts that yearned for such information the new and strange circumstances of the exile's existence; the gradual dying out of friendships, and cooling of warm regard, from the impossibility of sufficient intercourse to keep interest alive; and sympathy, after endeavoring in vain to picture the distant home and surroundings and daily occupations of the absent friend, dwindling and withering away for want of necessary aliment, in spite of all the efforts which imagination could make to satisfy the affectionate desire and longing loving inquiries of the heart. Think of all that those two _existences_ as you call them (existences no more--but mere ideas), Time and Space, have caused of misery and suspense and heart-wearing anxiety, and rejoice that so much has been done to make parting less bitter, and absence endurable, through hope that now amounts almost to certainty.
My own plans, which I thought so thoroughly settled a short time ago, have again become extremely indefinite. It is now considered inexpedient that I should travel on the Continent, though there is no objection to my remaining in England until my father's return, which I understand is expected soon after Easter. As, however, my motive in leaving America is to be with my father and sister, I have no idea of going to London to remain there three months, without any expectation of seeing them. This consideration would incline me to put off my visit to England till the spring, but it is not yet determined who, or whether any of us, will go to Georgia for the winter. My being taken thither is entirely uncertain; but should the contrary be decided upon, I might perhaps come to England immediately, as I would rather pass the winter in London, among my friends, if I am to spend it alone, than here, where the severe weather suspends all out-of-door exercise, interests, and occupations, and where the absolute solitude is a terrible trial to my nerves and spirits.
At present, however, I have not a notion what will be determined about it, but as soon as I have any positive idea upon the subject I will let you know.
We returned from Massachusetts a few days ago, and I find a profusion of flowers and almost summer heat here, though the golden showers that every now and then flicker from the trees, and the rustling sound of fallen leaves, and the autumnal smell of mignonette, and other "fall" flowers, whisper of the coming winter; still all here at present is bright and sweet, with that peculiar combination of softness and brilliancy which belongs to the autumn in this part of America. It is the pleasantest season of the year here, and indescribably beautiful....
Good-bye, dearest Harriet; I had hoped to have joined you and Emily at Bannisters, but that pretty plan is all rubbed out now, and I do not know when I shall see you; but, thanks to those blessed beings--the steam-ships, those Atlantic angels of speed and certainty, it now seems as if I could do so "at any moment." God bless you.
Yours ever, F. A. B.
BUTLER PLACE, October 26th.
I beg you will not stop short, as in your last letter, received the day before yesterday, dearest Harriet, with "but I will not overwhelm you with questions:" it is particularly agreeable to me to have specific questions to answer in the letters I receive from you, and I hope you perceive that I do religiously reply to anything in the shape of a query. It is pleasant to me to know upon what particular points of my doing, being, and suffering you desire to be enlightened; because although I know everything I write to you interests you, I like to be able to satisfy even a few of those "I wonders" that are perpetually rising up in our imaginations with respect to those we love and who are absent from us.
You ask me if I ever write any journal, or anything else now. The time that I passed in the South was so crowded with daily and hourly occupations that, though I kept a regular journal, it was hastily written, and received constant additional notes of things that occurred, and that I wished to remember, inserted in a very irregular fashion in it.... I think I should like to carry this journal down to Georgia with me this winter; to revise, correct, and add whatever my second experience might furnish to the chronicle. It has been suggested to me that such an account of a Southern plantation might be worth publishing; but I think such a publication would be a breach of confidence, an advantage taken on my part of the situation of trust, which I held on the estate. As my condemnation of the whole system is unequivocal, and all my illustrations of its evils must be drawn from our own plantation, I do not think I have a right to exhibit the interior management and economy of that property to the world at large, as a sample of Southern slavery, especially as I did not go thither with any such purpose. This winter I think I shall mention my desire upon the subject before going to the South, and of course any such publication must then depend on the acquiescence of the owners of the estate. I am sure that no book of mine on the subject could be of as much use to the poor people on Butler's Island as my residence among them; and I should, therefore, be very unwilling to do anything that was likely to interfere with that: although I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it was an imperative duty, knowing what I know, and having seen what I have seen, to do all that lies in my power to show the dangers and evils of this frightful institution. And the testimony of a planter's wife, whose experience has all been gathered from estates where the slaves are universally admitted to be well treated, should carry with it some authority. So I am occupying myself, from time to time, as my leisure allows, in making a fair copy of my Georgia Journal.
I occasionally make very copious extracts from what I read, and also write critical analyses of the books that please or displease me, in the language--French or Italian--in which they are written; but these are fragmentary, and do not, I think, entitle me to say that I am writing anything. No one here is interested in anything that I write, and I have too little serious habit of study, too little application, and too much vanity and desire for the encouragement of praise, to achieve much in my condition of absolute intellectual solitude....
Here are two of your questions answered; the third is--whether I let the slave question rest more than I did? Oh yes; for I have come to the conclusion that no words of mine could be powerful enough to dispel the clouds of prejudice which early habits of thought, and the general opinion of society upon this subject have gathered round the minds of the people I live among. I do not know whether they ever think or read about it, and my arguments, though founded in this case on pretty sound reason, are apt to degenerate into passionate appeals, the violence of which is not calculated to do much good in the way of producing convictions in the minds of others....
Even if the property were mine, I could exercise no power over it; nor could our children, after our death, do anything for those wretched slaves, under the present laws of Georgia. All that any one could do, would be to refrain from using the income derived from the estates, and return it to the rightful owners--that is, the earners of it. Had I such a property, I think I would put my slaves at once quietly upon the footing of free laborers, paying them wages, and making them pay me rent and take care of themselves. Of course I should be shot by my next neighbor (against whom no verdict would be found except "Serve her right!") in the first week of my experiment; but _if I wasn't_, I think, reckoning only the meanest profit to be derived from the measure, I should double the income of the estate in less than three years.... I am more than ever satisfied that God and Mammon would be equally propitiated by emancipation.
You ask me whether I take any interest in the Presidential election. Yes, though I have not room left for my reasons--and I have some, besides that best woman's reason, sympathy with the politics of the man I belong to. The party coming into power are, I believe, at heart less democratic than the other; and while the natural advantages of this wonderful country remain unexhausted (and they are apparently inexhaustible), I am sure the Republican Government is by far the best for the people themselves, besides thinking it the best in the abstract, as you know I do.
God bless you, my dearest Harriet.
I am ever yours most affectionately, F. A. B.
[The question of my spending the winter in Georgia was finally determined by Mr. J---- B---- 's decided opposition to my doing so. He was part proprietor of the plantation, and positively stipulated that I should not again be taken thither, considering my presence there as a mere source of distress to myself, annoyance to others, and danger to the property.
I question the validity of the latter objection, but not at all that of the two first; and am sure that, upon the whole, his opposition to my residence among his slaves was not only justifiable but perfectly reasonable.
My Georgia journal was not published until thirty years after it was written, during the civil war in the United States. I was then passing some time in England, and the people among whom I lived were, like most well-educated members of the upper classes of English society, Southern sympathizers. The ignorant and mischievous nonsense I was continually compelled to hear upon the subject of slavery in the seceding States determined me to publish my own observation of it--not, certainly, that I had in those latter years of my life any fallacious expectation of making converts on the subject, but that I felt constrained at that juncture to bear my testimony to the miserable nature and results of the system, of which so many of my countrymen and women were becoming the sentimental apologists.
It being now settled that I was not to return to the plantation, my thoughts had hardly reverted to the prospect of a winter in England when I received the news of my father's return from the Continent, and dangerous illness in London; so that, I was told, unless I could go to him immediately, there was but little probability of my ever seeing him again. The misfortune I had so often anticipated now seemed to have overtaken me, and instant preparation for my leaving America being made, and an elderly lady, with whom I had become connected by my marriage, having exerted her influence in my behalf, I was not allowed, under such painful circumstances, again to cross the Atlantic alone, but returned with a very heavy heart to my own country, but with the comfort of being accompanied by my whole family.
The news that met me on my arrival was that my father was at the point of death, that he would not probably survive twenty-four hours, and that it was altogether inexpedient that he should see me, as, if he recognized me, which was doubtful, my unexpected appearance, it having been impossible to prepare him for it, might only be the means of causing him a violent and perhaps painful shock of nervous agitation. This terrible verdict, pronounced by three of the most eminent medical men of the day, Bright, Liston, and Wilson, was a dreadful close to all the anxious days and hours of the sea voyage, during which I had hoped and prayed to be again permitted to embrace my father. But in my deep distress, I could not help remembering that, after all, his physicians, able as they were, had not the keys of life and death. And so it proved: my father made an almost miraculous rally, recovered, and survived the sentence pronounced against him for many years.
Not many days after our arrival, his improved condition admitted of his being told of my return, and allowed to see me. Cadaverous is the only word that describes the appearance to which acute suffering and subsequent prostration had reduced him; he looked, indeed, like one returned from the dead, and, in his joy at seeing me again, declared that I had restored him to life, and that my arrival, though he had not known of it, had called him back to existence--a sympathetic theory of convalescence, to which I do not think his doctors gave in their adhesion.
We now took up our abode in London; first at the Clarendon Hotel, and afterwards in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, where my father, as soon as he could be moved, came to reside with us, and where my sister joined us on her return from Italy. My friend Miss S----, coming from Ireland to stay with me soon after my arrival in England, added to my happiness in finding myself once more with my own family, and in my own country.]
CLARGES STREET, March 21st.
You will, ere this, dearest H----, have received my answer to your first letter. You ask me, in your second, what we think about the chances of a war with America. Our wishes prompt us to the belief that a war between the two countries is _impossible_, though the tone of the newspapers, within the last few days, has been horribly pugnacious. A letter was received the day before yesterday, from our Liverpool factor, asking us what is to be done about some cotton which had just come to them from the plantation, in the event of war breaking out: a supposition which he had treated as an utter impossibility when he was last in London, but which he confessed in this letter did not seem to him quite so impossible now. I do not, for my own part, see very well how either party is to get out of its present attitude towards the other peaceably and, at the same time, without some compromise of dignity. But I pray God that the hearts of the two nations may be inclined to peace, and then, doubtless, some cunning device will be found to save their _honor_. The virtuous "_if_" of Touchstone is, I am afraid, not as valid in national as individual quarrels.
Tell Mr. H---- W----, with my love, that it is all a hoax about Niagara Falls having _fallen_ down; and that they are still _falling_ down, according to their custom; but if you should find this intelligence affect him with too painful a disappointment, you may comfort him by assuring him that they inevitably must and will fall down one of these days, and, what is more, stay fallen, and precisely in the manner they are now said to have begun their career--by the gradual wearing away of the rock between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
We were at the opera the Saturday after you left us; but it was a mediocre performance, both music and dancing, and gave me but little pleasure. I went last night again with my father, and was enchanted with the opera, which was an old favorite, "Tancredi," in which I heard Persiani, an admirable artist, with a mere golden wire of voice, of which she made most capital use, and Pauline Garcia, who possesses all the genius of her family; and between them it was a perfect performance. The latter is a sister of Malibran's, and will certainly be one of the finest dramatic singers of these times. But the proximity of people to me in the stalls is so intolerable that I think I shall give mine up; for I am in a state of nervous _crawling_ the whole time, with being pushed and pressed and squeezed and leaned on and breathed on by my fellow-creatures. You remember my old theory, that we are all of us surrounded by an atmosphere proper to ourselves, emanating from each of us,--a separate, sensitive envelope, extending some little distance from our visible persons. I am persuaded that this is the case, and that when my _individual atmosphere_ is invaded by any one, it affects my whole nervous system. The proximity of any _bodies_ but those I love best is unendurable to my body.
My father is much in the same condition as when you went away, suffering a great deal, and complaining frequently; but by his desire we have a dinner-party here on Tuesday, and he has accepted two invitations to dine out himself. My chicks are pretty well....
May God bless you, dear.
I am ever your own F. A. B.
CLARGES STREET.
This letter was begun three days ago, and it is now Thursday, March the 25th. Do not, I beseech you, ever make any appeals to my imagination, or my feelings. I have lost all I ever had of the first, and I never had any at all of the second....
You ask me if I have been riding. Only once or twice, for I may not do what I so fain would, give all the visiting to utter neglect, and ride every day. Yesterday I was on horseback for two hours with Henry, who, having sold his pretty mare, for £65, to the author of the new comedy at Covent Garden, was obliged to bestride one of Mr. Allen's screws, as he calls them. The day was dusty and windy, and very disagreeable, but I was all the better for my shaking, as I always am. I am never in health, looks, or spirits without daily hard exercise on horseback.
My first meeting with Mrs. Grote (I am answering your questions, dearest H----, though you have probably forgotten them) took place after all at Sydney Smith's, at a dinner the very next day after you left us. We did not say a great deal to each other, but upon my saying incidentally (I forget about what) "I, who have always preserved my liberty, at least the small crumb of it that a woman can own anywhere," she faced about, in a most emphatical manner, and said, "Then you've struggled for it." "No, I have not been obliged to do so." "Ah, then you must, or you'll lose it, you'll lose it, depend upon it." I smiled, but did not reply, because I saw that she was not taking into consideration the fact of my living in America; and this was the only truly _Grotesque_ (as Sydney Smith says) passage between us. Since then we have again ineffectually exchanged cards, and yesterday I received an invitation to her house, so that I suppose we shall finally become acquainted with each other.
[Mrs. Grote, wife of George Grote, the banker, member of Parliament, and historian of Greece, was one of the cleverest and most eccentric women in the London society of my time. No worse a judge than De Tocqueville pronounced her the cleverest woman of his acquaintance; and she was certainly a very remarkable member of the circle of remarkable men among whom she was living when I first knew her. At that time she was the female centre of the Radical party in politics--a sort of not-young-or-handsome feminine oracle among a set of very clever half-heathenish men, in whose drawing-room, Sydney Smith used to say, he always expected to find an altar to Zeus. At this time Mr. Grote was in the House of Commons, and as it was before the publication of his admirable history, his speeches, which were as remarkable for their sound sense and enlightened liberality as for their clear and forcible style, were not unfrequently attributed to his wife, whose considerable conversational powers, joined to a rather dictatorial style of exercising them, sometimes threw her refined and modest husband a little into the shade in general society. When first I made Mrs. Grote's acquaintance, the persons one most frequently met at her house in Eccleston Street were Roebuck, Leader, Byron's quondam associate Trelawney, and Sir William Molesworth; both the first and last mentioned gentlemen were then of an infinitely deeper shade of radicalism in their politics than they subsequently became. The other principal element of Mrs. Grote's society, at this time, consisted of musical composers and performers, who found in her a cordial and hospitable friend and hostess, and an amateur of unusual knowledge and discrimination, as well as much taste and feeling for their beautiful art. Her love of music, and courteous reception of all foreign artists, caused her to be generally sought by eminent professors coming to England; and Liszt, Madame Viardot, Dessauer, Thalberg, Mademoiselle Lind, and Mendelssohn were among the celebrated musicians one frequently met at her house. With the two latter she was very intimate, and it was in her drawing-room that my sister gave her first public concert in London. Mendelssohn used often to visit her at a small country-place she had in the neighborhood of Burnham Beeches.
It was a very small and modest residence, situated on the verge of the magnificent tract of woodland scenery known by that name; a dependence, I believe, of the Dropmore estate, which it adjoined. It was an unenclosed space of considerable extent, of wild, heathy moorland; short turfy strips of common; dingles full of foxglove, harebell, and gnarled old stunted hawthorn bushes; and knolls, covered with waving crests of powerful feathery fern. It was intersected with gravelly paths and roads, whose warm color contrasted and harmonized with the woodland hues of everything about them; and roofed in by dark green vaults of the most magnificent beech foliage I have ever seen anywhere. The trees were of great age and enormous size; and from some accidental influence affecting their growth, the huge trunks were many of them contorted so as to resemble absolutely the twisted Saxon pillars of some old cathedral. In many of them the powerful branches (as large themselves as trunks of common trees) spread out from the main tree, at a height of about six feet from the ground, into a sort of capacious leafy chamber, where eight or ten people could have sat embowered. A more perfectly English woodland scene it would be impossible to imagine, and here, as Mrs. Grote told me, Mendelssohn found the inspiration of much of the music of his "Midsummer Night's Dream." (The overture he had composed, and played to us one evening at my father's house, when first he came to England, before he was one-and-twenty.) At one time Mrs. Grote contemplated erecting some monument in the beautiful wood to his memory, and showed me a copy of verses, not devoid of merit, which she thought of inscribing on it to his honor; but she never carried out the suggestion of her affectionate admiration; and to those who knew and loved Mendelssohn (alas! the expressions are synonymous), the glorious wood itself, where he walked and mused and held converse with the spirit of Shakespeare, forms a solemn sylvan temple, forever consecrated to tender memories of his bright genius and lovely character.