Records of a Girlhood

In any event pray accept my best acknowledgments for your kindness, and believe me always

Your very truly obligedF. A. K.

This letter was written in answer to some strictures of Lady Dacre's on what appeared to her coarseness of language in my play of "The Star of Seville," which she thought unbecoming a "young lady." If I remember rightly, too, she said that the introduction of a scene in a bedchamber might be deemed objectionable. I had asked her permission to dedicate the play to her, which she had granted; and though she failed to convince me that a young-lady element had any business whatever in a play, she very kindly allowed her name to adorn the title-page of my un-young ladylike drama.

Soon after this my father and aunt and myself left London for our summer tour in the provinces, which we began at Bristol.

Monday, July 4th, Bristol.—The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and the nurse was a perfect farce in herself; she really was worth any money, and her soliloquy when she found me "up and dressed and down again," very nearly made me scream with laughter in the middle of my trance. Indeed, the whole play was probably considered an "improved version" of Shakespeare's Veronese story, both in the force and delicacy of the text. Sundry wicked words and coarse appellations were decorously dispensed with; many fine passages received judicious additions; not a few were equally judiciously omitted altogether. What a shocking hash!

Tuesday, July 5th.—After breakfast we sallied forth to the market, to my infinite delight and amusement. It is most beautifully clean; the fruit and vegetables look so pretty, and smell so sweet, and give such an idea of plentiful abundance, that it is delightful to walk about among them. Even the meat, which I am generally exceedingly averse to go near, was so beautifully and nicely arranged that it had none of its usual repulsiveness; and the sight of the whole place, and the quaint-looking rustic people, was so pleasantly envious. We stopped to gossip with a bewitching old country dame, whose market stock might have sat, with her in the middle of it, for its picture; the veal and poultry so white and delicate-looking, the bacon like striped pink and white ribbons, the butter so golden, fresh, and sweet, in a great basket trimmed round with bunches of white jasmine, the green leaves and starry blossoms and exquisite perfume making one believe that butter ought always to be served, not in a "lordly dish," but in a bower of jasmine. The good lady told us she had just come up from "the farm," and that the next time she came she would bring us some home-made bread, and that she was going back to brew and to bake. She looked so tidy and rural, and her various avocations sounded so pleasant as she spoke of them, that I felt greatly tempted to beg her to let me go with her to "the farm," which I am sure must be an enchanting place, neat and pretty, and flowery and comfortable, and full of rustic picturesqueness; and while the sun shone, I think I should like a female farmer's life amazingly. Went to the theater and rehearsed "Venice Preserved," which is an entirely different kind of thing. Charles Mason dined with us. After dinner I finished reading Miss Ferrier's novel of "Destiny," which I like very much; besides being very clever, it leaves a pleasant taste, in one's mind's mouth. Went to the theater at six; the play was "Venice Preserved," and I certainly have seldom seen a more shameful exhibition. In the first place C– did not even know his words, and that was bad enough; but when he was out, instead of coming to a stop decently, and finishing at least with his cue, he went on extemporizing line after line, and speech after speech, of his own, by way of mending matters. I think I never saw such a performance. He stamps and bellows low down in his throat like an ill-suppressed bull; he rolls his eyes till I feel as if they were flying out of their sockets at me, and I must try and catch them. He quivers and quavers in his speech, and pulls and wrenches me so inhumanly, that what with inward laughter and extreme rage and pain, I was really all but dead in earnest at the end of the play. I acted very ill myself till the last scene, when my Jaffier having been done justice to by the Venetian Government, I was able to do justice to myself, and having gone mad, and no wonder, died rather better than I had lived through the piece.

July 6th, Bristol.—Walked out to order the horses, and afterwards went on to look at the Abbey Church. We examined one or two interesting old monuments; but were obliged to curtail our explorings, as the doors were about to be closed. We have been talking much lately of a remote possibility of going to America; and as I left this old brown pile to-day, it seemed to me curious to think of a country which has no cathedrals, no monuments of the Old Faith. How venerable, in spite of its superstitions and abuses; for its long undisputed sway over all civilized lands; for the great and good men who honored it by their lives and works—the religion of Augustine, of Bruno, Benedict, Francis d'Assisi, Francis de Sales, Fénelon, and how many more—the Christianity of Europe in its feudal, chivalrous times, those days of noble, good, as well as fierce, evil deeds and lives, the faith that kings and warriors bowed to when sovereignty was absolute and military power supreme. America has no gray abbeys, no ruined cloisters, to tell of monastic brotherhoods—the preserves of ancient historic chronicles, the guardians of the early wells and springs of classic learning and genius. In America there are no great, old, time-stained, weather-beaten, ivy-mantled churches full of tombs, such as we saw to-day, with curious carvings and quaint effigies, and where the early rulers of the land embraced the faith and received the baptism of Christ. That must be a very strange country. But they have Plymouth Rock, on the shore where the Protestant Pilgrims landed.

The horses having come to the door, we set off for our ride; our steeds were but indifferent hacks, but the road was charming, and the evening serene and pure, and I was with my father, a circumstance of enjoyment to me always. The characteristic feature of the scenery of this region is the vivid, deep-toned foliage of the hanging woods, through whose dense tufts of green, masses of gray rock and long scars of warm-colored red-brown earth appear every now and then with the most striking effect. The deep-sunk river wound itself drowsily to a silver thread at the base of steep cliffs, to the summit of which we climbed, reaching a fine level land of open downs carpeted with close, elastic turf. On we rode, up hill and down dale, through shady lanes full of the smell of lime-blossom, skirting meadows fragrant with the ripe mellow hay and honey-sweet clover, and then between plantations of aromatic, spicy fir and pine, all exhaling their perfumes under the influence of the warm sunset. At last we made a halt where the road, winding through Lord de Clifford's property, commanded an enchanting view. On our right, rolling ground rising gradually into hills, clothed to their summits with flourishing evergreens, firs, larches, laurel, arbutus—a charming variety in the monotony of green. On the farthest of these heights Blaise Castle, with two gray towers, well defined against the sky, looked from its bosky eminence over the whole domain, which spread on our left in sloping lawns, where single oaks and elms of noble size threw their shadows on the sunlit sward, which looked as if none but fairies' feet had ever pressed it. Beyond this, through breaks and frames, and arches made by the trees, the broad Severn glittered in the wavy light. It was a beautiful landscape in every direction. We returned home by sea wall and the shore of the Severn, which seemed rather bare and bleak after the soft loveliness we had just left....

Thursday, July 7th.—Went to the theater to rehearse "The Gamester." In the afternoon strolled down to the river with my father and Dall. We took boat and rowed toward the cliffs. Our time, however, was limited; and just as we reached the loveliest part of the river, we were obliged to turn home again.... At dinner, as we were talking about America, and I was expressing my disinclination ever to go thither, my father said: "If my cause (our Chancery suit) goes ill before the Lords, I think the best thing I can do will be to take ship from Liverpool and sail to the United States." I choked a little at this, but presently found voice to say, "Ebben son pronta;" but he replied, "No, that he should go alone." That you never should, my own dear father!… But I do hate the very thought of America.

Saturday, July 9th. … In the afternoon drove out in an open carriage with Dall to Shirehampton, by the same road my father and I took in our ride the other day.

Bristol, July 10th, 1831.

My dear Mrs. Jameson,

I can neither bid you confirm nor deny any "reports you may hear," for I am in utter ignorance, I am happy to say, of the world's surmisings on my behalf, and had indeed supposed that my time for being honored by its notice in any way was pretty well past and over.

I am glad you are having rest, as you speak of it with the enjoyment which those alone who work hard are entitled to. I trust, too, that in the instance of your eyes no news is good news, for you say nothing of them, and I therefore like to hope that they have suffered you to forget them.

I'm disappointed about your Shakespeare book. I should like to have had it by my next birthday, which is the 27th of November, and to which I look forward with unusually mingled feelings. However, it cannot be helped; and I have no doubt the booksellers are right in point of fact, for we are embarked on board too troublous times to carry mere passe temps literature with us. "We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns," I am afraid, and shall find small public taste or leisure for polite letters.

I like this place very well; it is very quiet, and my life is always a happy one with my father. He always spoils me, and that is always pleasant, you know.

The Bristol people are rather in a bad state just now for our purposes, for trade here is in a very unprosperous condition; and the recent failure of many of their great mercantile houses does no good to our theatrical ones. The audiences are very pleasant, however, and the company by no means bad. We are here another week, and then take ship for Ilfracombe, and thence by land to Exeter; after that Plymouth and Southampton.... I wish I could be in London for "Anna Bolena." I cannot adequately express my admiration for Madame Pasta; I saw her in Desdemona the Saturday night on which I scrawled those few lines to you. I think if you knew how every look and tone and gesture of hers affects me, you would be satisfied. She is almost equal to an imagination; more than that I cannot say. If you rate "imagination" as I think you must, I need say nothing more. We shall certainly be back in London by the end of September, if not before. In the mean time believe me ever yours most truly,

F. A. K.

Sunday, July 10th.—My father wickedly dawdled about till we were nearly late for church, and had to scamper along the quays and up the steep street, to poor dear Dall's infinite discomfiture, who grumbled and puffed, and shuffled and shambled along, while I plunged on, breathlessly ejaculating, "It is so hateful to be late for church!" The cathedral (which I believe it is not) was quite full, but we obtained seats in the organ gallery, where we could not hear very well, but had a very fine view of the coup d'œil presented by the choir and church below us. The numerous and many-colored congregation, the white surpliced choristers, the charity-school children in their uniforms surrounding the altar, all framed in by the dark old oak screens with their quaint readings, and partially vividly illuminated by occasional gleams of strong sunlight which poured suddenly through the colored windows, presented a beautiful picture. The service was very well performed: the organ is a remarkably good one, and one or two of the boys' voices were exquisitely soft and clear. It is a fine service, and yet I do not like it by way of religious worship. It does not make me devout, in the proper form of the term; it appeals too much to my senses and my imagination; it is religion set to music and painting, and artistic religion does not suit me. The incessant passing of people through the church, too, disturbs one, and gives an unpleasant air of irreverence to the whole.... I think I might like to go to a cathedral for afternoon service, much as I like to spend my Sunday leisure in reading Milton, though I should not be satisfied to make my whole devotional exercises consist in reading "Paradise Lost." A wretchedly weak, poor sermon; how strange that such a theme should inspire nothing better than such a discourse! However, I suppose this sort of ministering is the inevitable result of a "ministry" embraced merely as a means of subsistence. No one could paint pictures or compose music, only because they wanted bread, so I do not see why any one should preach sermons fit to be heard, only because they want bread. If I was a despot, I would suppress hebdomadal writing of sermons, and people should be forbidden instead of bidden to talk nonsense upon sacred subjects.

Monday, 11th.—At night the theater was very full, and the audience pleasant. During supper my father, Charles Mason, and I had a long discussion about Kean. I cannot help thinking my father wrong about him. Kean is a man of decided genius, no matter how he neglects or abuses nature's good gift. He has it. He has the first element of all greatness—power. No taste, perhaps, and no industry, perhaps; but let his deficiencies be what they may, his faults however obvious, his conceptions however erroneous, and his characters, each considered as a whole, however imperfect, he has the one atoning faculty that compensates for everything else, that seizes, rivets, electrifies all who see and hear him, and stirs down to their very springs the passionate elements of our nature. Genius alone can do this.

As an actor, one whose efforts are the result of study, of mental research, reflection, and combination; as an intellectual anatomist, whose knowledge must dissect, and then re-form and reproduce again in beauty and harmony the image he has taken to pieces; as an artist, who is bound to conceal both the first and last processes, the dismembering of the parts and the reuniting them in a whole, and whose business is to make the most deliberate mental labor and the most studied personal effects appear the spontaneous result of unpremeditated passion and emotion (feigned passion and emotion, which are to appear real)—in capacity for all this Kean may be defective. He may not be an actor, he may not be an artist, but he is a man of genius, and instinctively with a word, a look, a gesture, tears away the veil from the heart of our common humanity, and lays it bare as it beats in every human heart, and as it throbs in his own. Kean speaks with his whole living frame to us, and every fiber of ours answers his appeal.

I do not know that I ever saw him in any character which impressed me as a whole work of art; he never seems to me to intend to be any one of his parts, but I think he intends that all his parts should be him. So it is not Othello who is driven frantic by doubt and jealousy, nor Shylock who is buying human flesh by its weight in gold, nor Sir Giles Overreach who is selling his child to hell for a few years of wealth and power; it is Kean, and in every one of his characters there is an intense personality of his own that, while one is under its influence, defies all criticism—moments of such overpowering passion, accents of such tremendous power, looks and gestures of such thrilling, piercing meaning, that the excellence of those parts of his performances more than atones for the want of greater unity in conception and smoothness in the entire execution of them.

The discussion about Kean led naturally to some talk about his most famous parts, particularly Shylock. My father's conception of Shylock seems to me less the right one than Kean's; but then, if my father took what I think the right view of the part, he would have to give up acting it. The real Shylock—that is, Shakespeare's—is a creature totally opposite in his whole organization, physical and mental, to my father's; and as my father cannot force his nature in any particular into uniformity with that of Shylock, he endeavors to persuade himself that the theory by which he tries to bring it into harmony with his individuality, and within the compass of his powers, is the right one; but I think him entirely mistaken about it. Kean did with the part exactly what my father wants to do—adapted his conceptions to his means of execution; but Kean's physical constitution was much better suited to express Shylock as Shylock should be expressed than my father's. My father attempts to make Shylock "poetical" (in the superficial sense), because that is the bias of his own mind in matters of art. Classical purity and refinement of taste are his specialties as an actor, and neither power nor intensity.

Shylock's master passion is not revenge, which is a savage, but avarice, which is a sordid motive. His hatred is inspired more by defeated hope of gain and positive losses and threatened ventures, than by the personal insults and contumely he has received.

Avarice is an absolutely base passion, and a grand poetical character cannot consistently be raised upon such a foundation, nor can a nature be at once groveling and majestic. Besides, Shakespeare has not made Shylock "poetical." The concentrated venom of his passion is prosaic in its vehement utterance—close, concise, vigorous, logical, but not imaginative; and in the scenes where his evil nature escapes the web of his cunning caution, and he is stung to fury by his complicated losses, there is intense passion but no elevation in his language.

There is a vein of humor in Shylock. A grim, bitter, sardonic flavor pervades the part, that blends naturally with the sordid thrift and shrewd, watchful, eager vigilance of the miser. It infuses a terrible grotesqueness into his rage, and curdles one's blood in the piercing, keen irony of his mocking humility to Antonio, and adds poignancy to the ferocity of his hideous revenge. This Kean rendered admirably, and in this my father entirely fails, but it is an important element of the character.

My father is hard upon Kean's defects because they are especially antagonistic to his artistic taste and tendency, but I think, too, there is a slight infusion of the vexation of unappreciated labor in my father's criticism of Kean. He forgets that power is universally felt and understood, and refinement seldom the one or the other, and for a thousand who applaud Kean's "What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?" probably not ten people are aware of his exquisite "nevertheless" in the reading of Antonio's letter. Most eyes can "see a church by daylight;" not many stop to look at the lights and shadows that are forever varying and adding to the beauty of its aspect. I wonder how, being as well aware as my father is of all the fine work that escapes the eyes of the public, he can care for this kind of thing as he does.

Tuesday, 12th.—We are having events at the theater, and not of a pleasant sort. Mr. Brunton, the manager, is in "difficulties" (civilized plural for debt), and it seems that last night during the play one of his creditors put an execution into the theater, and laid violent hands upon the receipts, which, as it was my father's benefit, rather dismayed us. So after breakfast this morning, having put out my dresses for my favorite Portia for to-night, I went to the theater to ascertain if there was to be a rehearsal or not. My father had gone in search of Mr. Brunton to see how matters could be arranged, and at all events to represent that we could not go on acting unless our money was secured to us. Charles Mason, Dall, and I in the mean time found the poor actors in the theater very much at a loss how to proceed, as it seemed extremely doubtful whether there would be any performance; so we returned home, where we found my father, who said that at all events there must be a rehearsal, for it was absolutely necessary if we did act to-night, and could do us no harm if we did not; so we repaired again to the theater, where the scattered and scared corps dramatique having been got together again, we proceeded to business.

Wednesday, 13th.—Mr. K– called and told us that some arrangement had been made with the truculent creditor of our poor manager by which we shall not lose any more in this unlucky business. My father will be quit for about a hundred pounds. I am very sorry for Mr. Brunton, but he should not have placed us in such an uncomfortable position. My father has offered to act one night beyond our engagement for the sake, if possible, of making up to the actors the arrears of salary Mr. Brunton owes them. They are all poor, hard-working people, earning no more than the means of subsistence, and this withholding of their due falls very heavily on them.

Thursday, 14th.– … At the theater the house was very good, and the audience very pleasant. The play was "The Provoked Husband," and I'm sure I play his provoking wife badly enough to provoke anybody; but she's not a person to my mind, which is an artistic view of the case.

[My modes of dealing with my professional duties at this very unripe stage of my career irresistibly remind me of a not very highly educated female painter who had taken it into her head to make an historical picture of Cleopatra. Sending to a friend for a few "references" upon the subject of that imperial gypsy's character and career, she sent them hastily back, saying she had relinquished her purpose, "having really no idea Cleopatra was that sort of person."]

Friday, July 15th.—Miserrima! I have broken a looking-glass! and on Friday, too! What do I think will happen to me! Had a long talk this morning with dear Dall about my dislike to the stage. I do not think it is the acting itself that is so disagreeable to me, but the public personal exhibition, the violence done (as it seems to me) to womanly dignity and decorum in thus becoming the gaze of every eye and theme of every tongue. If my audience was reduced to my intimates and associates I should not mind it so much, I think; but I am not quite sure that I should like it then.

At the theater the house was very full, and the audience particularly amiable. In the interval between the fourth and fifth acts Charles Mason made a speech to them, informing them of Mr. Brunton's distress, and our intention of acting for him on Monday. They applauded very much, and I hope they will do more, and come. My part of the charity is certainly not small; to be pulled and pushed and dragged hither and thither, and generally "knocked about," as the miserable Belvidera, for three mortal hours, is a sacrifice of self which my conscience bears me witness is laudable. I would much rather pay with my purse than my person in this case. Unfortunately, je n'ai pas de quoi.

Sunday, July 17th.—To Redcliffe Church with my father and Dall. What a beautiful old building it is!… What a sermon! Has the truth, as our Church holds it, no fitter expounders than such a preacher? Are these its stays, props, and pillars—teachers to guide, enlighten, and instruct people as cultivated and intelligent as the people of this country on the most momentous of all subjects? Are these the sort of adversaries to oppose to men like Channing? As for not going to church because of bad or foolish sermons, that is quite another matter, though I not unfrequently hear that reason assigned for staying away. One goes to church to say one's prayers, and not to hear more or less fine discourses; one goes because it is one's duty, and a delight and comfort, and a quite distinct duty and delight from that of private prayer. A good sermon, Heaven knows, is a rare blessing to be thankful for, but if one went to church only in the expectation of that blessing, one might stay away most Sundays in the year.

[My youthful scorn of "poor preaching" reminds me of what I once heard Edward Everett say, who, before becoming his country's "Minister," in the diplomatic sense of the word, had been a powerful and eloquent Unitarian preacher: "I hear a good deal of criticism upon sermons which are supposed to be religious or moral exhortations, not intellectual exercises. I dare say many sermons are not first rate, but moderate good preaching is not a bad thing, and pretty poor preaching is better than most men's practice."]