Chapter 28
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.