Chapter 27

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 Elysées, 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 Elysée. 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 mère!" 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 mère!" 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.