Records of a Girlhood

Saturday, 7th.—Miserable day of parting! of tearing away and wrenching asunder!… At eleven we were obliged to go to rehearsal, and when we returned found my mother busy with her packing.... When she was gone, I sat down beside my father with a book in my hand, not reading, but listening to his stifled sobbing; and every now and then, in spite of my determination not to do it, looking up to see how far the ship had moved. (Our windows looked over the Forth.) But the white column of steam was rising steadily from close under Newhaven, and for upward of half an hour continued to do so. I had resolved not to raise my eyes again from my book, when a sudden exclamation from my father made me spring up, and I saw the steamer had left the shore, and was moving fast toward Inchkeith, the dark smoky wake that lingered behind it showing how far it had already gone from us, and warning us how soon it would be beyond the ken of our aching eyes.... The carriage was announced, and with a heavy heart and aching head, I drove to the theater.... The play was "Francis I.," for the first time. The house was very fine; I acted abominably, but that was not much to be wondered at. However, I always have acted this part of my own vilely; the language is not natural—mere stilted declamation from first to last, most fatiguing to the chest, and impossible for me to do anything with, as it excites no emotion in me whatever....

Edinburgh, July 8, 1832.

My dearest H–,

I had just left my father at the window that overlooks the Forth, watching my poor mother's ship sailing away to England, when I received your letter; and it is impossible to imagine a sorer, sadder heart than that with which I greeted it.... Thank you for the pains you are taking about your picture for me; crammed with occupation as my time is here, I would have done the same for you, but that I think in Lawrence's print you have the best and likest thing you can have of me.... I cannot tell you at what hour we shall reach Liverpool, but it will be very early on Monday morning.... I am glad you have not deferred sitting for your picture till you came to Liverpool, for it would have encroached much upon our time together. I remember when I returned from abroad, a school-girl, I thought I had forgotten my mother's face. This copy of yours will save me from that nonsensical morbid feeling, and you will surely not forget mine.... You bid me, if anything should go ill with me, summon you across the Atlantic. Alas! dear H–, you forget that before a letter from that other world can reach this, more than a month must have elapsed, and the writer may no longer be in either. You say you hope I may return a new being; and I have no doubt my health will be benefited, and my spirits revived by change of external objects; but oh, how dreary it all is now! You bid me cheer my father when my mother shall have left us, without knowing that she is already gone. I make every exertion that duty and affection can prompt; but, you know, it is my nature rather to absorb the sorrow of others than to assist them in throwing it off; and when one's own heart is all but frozen, one knows not where to find warmth to impart to those who are shivering with misery beside one.... I have left myself scarcely any room to tell you of my present life. I work very hard, rehearsing every morning and acting every night, and spending the intervening time in long farewell rides round this most beautiful and beloved Edinburgh. Mr. Combe says I am wearing myself out, body and mind; but I am already looking better, and less thin, than when I left London; and besides, I shall presently have a longer rest—holiday I cannot call it—on board ship than I have had for the last three years. We acted "Francis I." here last night, for the first time; and I am sure that, mingled with the applause, I heard very distinct hissing; whether addressed to the acting, which was some of it execrable, or to the play itself, which I think quite deserving of such a demonstration, I know not.... You know my opinion of the piece; and as, with the exception of the two parts of De Bourbon and the Friar, and not excepting my own, it really was vilely acted, hissing did not appear to me an unnatural proceeding, though perhaps, under the circumstances, not altogether a courteous one on the part of the modern Athenians. I tell you this, because what else have I to tell you, but that I am your ever affectionate

F. A. K.

Tuesday, 10th.—At half-past twelve rode out with Liston and his daughter, Mr. Murray, and Allen (since Sir William, the celebrated artist, friend, and painter, of Walter Scott and his family).... In the evening, at the theater, the house was very full, and I acted very well, though I was so tired that I could hardly stand, and every bone in my body ached with my hard morning's ride. While I was sitting in the greenroom, Mr. Wilson came in, and it warmed my heart to see a Covent Garden face. He tells me Laporte is giving concerts in the poor old playhouse: well, good luck attend him, poor man (though I know it won't, for "there's nae luck about that house, there's nae luck at a'"). Walter Scott has reached Edinburgh, and starts for Abbotsford to-morrow: I am glad he has come back to die in his own country, in his own home, surrounded by the familiar objects his eyes have loved to look upon, and by the hearts of his countrymen, and the prayers, the blessings, the gratitude, and the love they owe him. All Europe will mourn his death; and for years to come every man born on this soil will be proud, for his sake, to call himself a Scotchman.

Wednesday, 11th.– … At half-past twelve met Mr. Murray, Mr. Allen, and Mr. Byrne.... As we started for our ride, and were "cavalcading" leisurely along York Place, that most enchanting old sweetheart of mine, Baron Hume, came out of a house. I rode toward him, and he met me with his usual hearty, kind cordiality, and a world of old-fashioned stately courtesy, ending our conference by devoutly kissing the tip of my little finger, to the infinite edification of my party, upon whose minds I duly impressed the vast superiority of this respectful style of gallantry to the flippant, easy familiarity of the present day. These old beaux beat the young ones hollow in the theory of courtship, and it is only a pity that their time for practice is over. Commend me to this bowing and finger-kissing! it is at any rate more dignified than the nodding, bobbing, and hand-shaking of the present fashion. The be-Madaming, too, has in it something singularly pleasing to my taste; there's a hoop and six yards of brocade in each of its two syllables.... At the theater the play was "Francis I." I acted well, and the play went off very well. Mr. Allen came and sat in the greenroom, telling me all about Constantinople and the Crimea, and the beautiful countries he has seen, and where his memory and his wishes are forever wandering; a rather sad comment upon the perfect vision of content his charming home at Laurieston had suggested to me.

Thursday, 12th.– … At the theater the play was "The Hunchback." The house was very good, and I acted very well. Dear Mr. Allen came into the greenroom, and had a long gossip with me.

Friday, 13th.– … Went with Mr. Combe to the Phrenological Museum, and spent two hours listening to some very interesting details on the anatomy of the brain, which certainly tended to make the science more credible to my ignorance, though the general theory has never appeared to me as impossible and extravagant as some people think it. The insuperable point where I stick fast is a doubt of the practically beneficial result which its general acceptance would produce. I think they overrate the reforming power of their system, though Mr. Combe's account of the numbers who attend his lectures, and of the improvement of their bodily and mental conditions which he has himself witnessed, must, of course, make me feel diffident of my own judgment in the matter. Their own experience can alone test the utility of their system, and whether it does or does not answer their expectations. I thought of Hamlet as I sat on the ground, with my arms and lap full of skulls. It is curious enough to grasp the empty, worthless, unsightly case in which once dwelt the thinking faculty of a man. One of the best specimens of the human skull, it seems, is Raphael's; a cast of whose head I held lovingly in my hands, wishing it had been the very house where once abode that spirit of immortal beauty. [The phrenological authorities were mistaken, it seems, in attributing this skull to Raphael. I believe that it has been ascertained to be that of his friend, the engraver, Marc Antonio.] At the theater the play was "The Hunchback;" the house very good, and I played very well.

Saturday, 14th.—My last day in Edinburgh for two years; and who can tell for how many more? At eleven o'clock, Mr. Murray, Mr. Allen, Mr. Byrne, and myself sallied forth on horseback toward the Pentlands, having obtained half an hour's grace off dinner-time, in order to get to Habbies How. We went out by the Links, and up steep rises over a white and dusty road, with a flaring stone dyke on each side, and neither tree nor bush to shelter us from the scorching sunlight till we came to Woodhouseleigh, the haunted walk of a white specter, who, it seems, was fond of the shade, for her favorite promenade was an avenue overarched with the green arms of noble old elm trees; and we blessed the welcome shelter of the Ghost's Haunt.... A cloud fell over all our spirits as we rode away from this enchanting spot, and Mr. Murray, pointing to the sprig of heather I had put in my habit, said they would establish an Order of Knighthood, of which the badge should be a heather spray, and they three the members, and I the patroness; that they would meet and drink my health on the 14th of July, and on my birthday, every year till I returned; and a solemn agreement was made by all parties that whenever I did return and summoned my worthies, we should again adjourn together to the glen in the Pentlands. When we reached home, Mr. Allen, who cannot endure a formal parting, shook hands with me and bade me good-by as I dismounted, as if we were to ride again to-morrow. [And I never saw him again. Peace be with him! He was a most amiable and charming companion, and during these days of friendly intimacy, his conversation interested and instructed me, and his poetical feeling of Nature, and placid, unruffled serenity, added much to the pleasure of those delightful rides.] … At the theater the play was "The Provoked Husband," for my benefit; the house was very fine, and I played pretty well. After it was over, the audience shouted and clamored for my father, who came and said a few words of our sorrow to leave their beautiful city.... Mrs. Harry, Lizzie, and I were in my dressing-room, crying in sad silence, and vainly endeavoring to control our emotion. Presently my father came hurriedly in, and folding them both in his arms, just uttered in a broken voice, "Good-by! God bless you!" and I, embracing my dear friends for the last time, followed him out of the room. It is not the time only that must elapse before I can see her again, it is the terrible distance, the slowness and uncertainty of communication; it is that dreadful America.

Thursday, 19th, Liverpool.– … At eleven went to the theater for rehearsal; it was very slovenly. I wonder what the performance will be? In the evening to the theater; the play was "Francis I.," and the house was very good, which was almost to be wondered at in this plague-stricken city. [The cholera was raging in Liverpool.] I was frightened, as I always am at a new part, even in my own play, though glad enough to resign that odious dignity, the queen-mother. [The part of Louisa of Savoy had been given to me when first the piece was brought out at Covent Garden; I was now playing the younger heroine, Françoise de Foix.] I played pretty well, though there is nothing to be done with the part. She is perfectly uninteresting and ineffective; but it is better for the cast of the play that I should act her instead of Louisa. And when one can have such a specimen of a queen as we had to-night, it would be a thousand pities the audience should be put off with my inferior views of royalty. Such bouncing, frowning, growling, and snarling might have challenged a whole zoological garden full of wild beasts to surpass. It's a comfort to see that it is possible to play that part worse than I did.

Friday, 20th.—Went to rehearsal.... Received a letter from Lizzie, giving me an account of my dear old Newhaven fish-wife, poor body! to whom I had sent a farewell present by her. I received also a long copy of anonymous verses, in which I was rather pathetically remonstrated with for seeking fame and fortune out of my own country. The author is slightly mistaken; neither the love of money nor notoriety would carry me away from England, but the love of my father constrains me.... The American Consul and Mr. Arnold called. After dinner I read Combe's "Constitution of Man," which interested me very much, though it fails to convince me that phrenology can alone bestow this insight into human nature. At the theater "The School for Scandal;" I played pretty well, though the actors were all dreadfully imperfect, and some of them so nervous and quick, and some so nervous and slow, that it was hardly possible to keep pace with them.

Saturday, 21st.—From Liverpool to Manchester. After all, this Liverpool, with all its important wealth and industry, is a dismal-looking place, a swarming world of dingy red houses and dirty streets.... How well I remember the opening of this railway!… They have placed a marble tablet in the side of the road to commemorate the spot where poor Huskisson fell; I remembered it by the pools of dark-green water that, as we passed them then, made a dismal impression on me; they looked like stony basins of verdigris. How glad I was to see Chatmoss—that villainous, treacherous, ugly, useless bog—trenched and ditched in process of draining and reclaiming, with the fair, holy, healthy grain waving in bright green patches over the brown peaty soil! Next to moral conversion, and the reclaiming to their noble uses the perverted powers of human nature, there is nothing does one's heart so much good as the sight of waste and barren land reclaimed to the uses and wants of man; to see vegetation clothe the idle space, and the cursed and profitless soil teeming with the means of life and bringing forth abundant produce to requite the toil that fertilized it; to see the wilderness crowned with bounteous increase, and the blessing of God rising from the earth to reward the labor of His creatures. It forcibly reminds one of all that is left undone, and might be done, with that far more precious waste land, those multitudes of our ignorant poor, whose minds and spirits are as dark, as profitless, as barren, as dreary, and as dangerous, as this wild bog was formerly, and who were never ordained to live and die like so many human morasses.... In the evening to the theater, which was crammed from the floor to the ceiling; they are a pleasant audience, too, and make a delightful quantity of sympathetic noise. I did not play well, which was a pity and a shame, because they really deserved that one should do so; but my coadjutors were too much for me.

Sunday, 22d, Liverpool.—I did not think there was such another day in store for me as this. I thought all was past and over, and had forgotten the last drop in the bitter cup.... The day was bitter cold, and we were obliged to have a fire.

Liverpool, July 22.

My dear Mrs. Jameson,

I fear you are either anxious or vexed, or perhaps both, about the arrival of your books, and my non-acknowledgment of them. They reached me in all safety, and but for the many occupations which swallow up my time would have been duly receipted ere this. Thank you very much for them, for they are very elegant outside, and the dedication page, with which I should have been most ungracious to find any fault. The little sketch on that leaf differs from the design you had described to me some time ago, and I felt the full meaning of the difference. I read through your preface all in a breath; there are many parts of it which have often been matters of discussion between us, and I believe you know how cordially I coincide with most of the views expressed in it. The only point in your preliminary chapter on which I do not agree with you is the passage in which you say that humor is, of necessity and in its very essence, vulgar. I differ entirely with you here. I think humor is very often closely allied to poetry; not only a large element in highly poetic minds, which surely refutes your position, but kindred to the highest and deepest order of imagination, and frequently eminently fanciful and graceful in its peculiar manifestations. However, I cannot now make leisure to write about this, but while I read it I scored the passage as one from which I dissented. That, however, of course does not establish its fallacy; but I think, had I time, I could convince you of it. I acted Juliet on Wednesday, and read your analysis of it before doing so. Oh, could you but have seen and heard my Romeo!… I am sure it is just as well that an actress on the English stage at the present day should not have too distinct a vision of the beings Shakespeare intended to realize, or she might be induced, like the unfortunate heroine of the song, to "hang herself in her garters." To be sure there is always my expedient to resort to, of acting to a wooden vase; you know I had one put upon my balcony, in "Romeo and Juliet," at Covent Garden, to assist Mr. Abbott in drawing forth the expression of my sentiments. I have been reading over Portia to-day; she is still my dream of ladies, my pearl of womanhood.... I must close this letter, for I have many more to write to-night, and it is already late. Once more, thank you very much for your book, and believe me,

Ever yours very truly,F. A. K.

August 1st.—Sailed for America.

The book referred to in this letter was Mrs. Jameson's "Analysis of Shakespeare's Female Characters," which she very kindly dedicated to me. The etching in the title-page was changed from the one she at first intended to have put in it, and represented a female figure in an attitude of despondency, sitting by the sea, and watching a ship sailing toward the setting sun; a design which I know she meant to have reference to my departure. I believe she subsequently changed it again to the one she had first executed, and which was of a less personal significance.... I exchanged no more letters with my friend Miss S–, who joined me at Liverpool, and remained with me till I sailed for America.... "A trip," as it is now called, to Europe or America, is one of the commonest of experiences, involving, apparently, so little danger, difficulty, or delay, that the feelings with which I made my first voyage across the Atlantic must seem almost incomprehensible to the pleasure-seeking or business-absorbed crowds who throng the great watery highway between the two continents.

But when I first went to America, steam had not shortened the passage of that formidable barrier between world and world. A month, and not a week, was the shortest and most favorable voyage that could be looked for. Few men, and hardly any women, undertook it as a mere matter of pleasure or curiosity; and though affairs of importance, of course, drew people from one shore to the other, and the stream of emigration had already set steadily westward, American and European tourists had not begun to cross each other by thousands on the high seas in search of health or amusement.

I was leaving my mother, my brothers and sister, my friends and my country, for two years, and could only hear from them at monthly intervals. I was going to work very hard, in a distasteful vocation, among strangers, from whom I had no right to expect the invariable kindness and indulgence my own people had favored me with. My spirits were depressed by my father's troubled fortunes, and I had just received the first sharp, smarting strokes in the battle of life; those gashes from which poor "unbruised youth," in its infinite self-compassion, fancies its very life-blood must all pour away; little imagining under what gangrened, festering wounds brave life will still hold on its way, and urge to the hopeless end its warfare with unconquerable sorrow. There is nothing more pathetic than the terrified impatience of youth under its first experience of grief, and its vehement appeal of "Behold, and see if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow!" to the patient adepts in suffering such as it has not yet begun to conceive of. Orlando's adjuration to the exiled duke in "As You Like It," and the wise Prince's reply, seem to me one of the most exquisite illustrations of the comparative griefs of youth and age.

Off Sandy Hook, Monday, September 5.

My dearest H–,

We are within three hours' sail of New York, having greeted the first corner of Long Island (the first land we saw) yesterday morning; but we are becalmed, and the sun shines so bright, and the air is so warm and breathless, that we seem to have every chance of lying here for the next—Heaven knows how long! In point of time, you see, our voyage has been very prosperous, and I am surprised that we have made such good progress, for the weather has been squally, with constant head-winds. I do not think we have had, in all, six days of fair wind, so that we have no reason whatever to complain of our advance, having come thus far in thirty-two days. You bade me write to you by ships passing us, but though we have encountered several bound eastward, we only hailed them without lying to; notwithstanding which, about a fortnight ago, on hearing that a vessel was about to pass us, I wrote you a scrawl, which none but you could have made out (so the fishes won't profit much by it), and a kind fellow-passenger undertook to throw it from our ship to the other as it passed us. She came alongside very rapidly, and though he flung with great force and good aim, the distance was too great, and my poor little missive fell into the black sea within twenty feet of its destination. I could not help crying to think that those words from my heart, that would have gladdened yours, should go down into that cold, inky water.... I pray to God that we may return to England, but I am possessed with a dread that I never shall....

I have been called away from this letter by one of those little incidents which Heaven in its mercy sends to break the monotony of a sea-voyage. Ever since daybreak this morning an English brig has been standing at a considerable distance behind us. About an hour ago we went on deck to watch the approach of a boat which they were sending off in our direction. The distance was about five miles, and the men had a hard pull in the broiling heat. When they came on board, you should have seen how we all clustered about them. The ship was a merchantman from Bristol, bound to New York; she had been out eleven weeks, her provisions were beginning to run short, and the crew was on allowance. Our captain, who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, eggs, etc., etc. The men remained about half an hour on board, and as they were remanning their boat we saw a whole cargo of eatables carried to it from our steerage passengers. You know that these are always poor people, who are often barely supplied themselves with necessaries for their voyage. The poor are almost invariably kind and compassionate to one another, and Gaffer Gray is half right when he says—

"The poor man alone,When he hears the poor moan,Of his morsel one morsel will give."

They (the men from the brig) gave us news from Halifax, where they had put in. The cholera had been in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York; the latter town was almost deserted, and the people flying in numbers from the others. This was rather bad news to us, who were going thither to find audiences (if possible not few, whether fit or not), but it was awful to such as were going back to their homes and families. I looked at the anxious faces gathered round our informer, and thought how the poor hearts were flying, in terrible anticipation of the worst, to the nests where they had left their dear ones, and eagerly counting every precious head in the homes over which so black a cloud of doom had gathered in their absence.... My father, though a bad sailor, and suffering occasionally a good deal, has, upon the whole, borne the voyage well. Poor dear Dall has been the greatest wretch on board; she has been perfectly miserable the whole time. It has made me very unhappy, for she has come away from those she loves very dearly on my account, and I cannot but feel sad to see that most excellent creature now, in what should be the quiet time of her life, leaving home and all its accustomed ways, habits, and comforts, and dear A–, who is her darling, to come wandering to the ends of the earth after me.... These distant and prolonged separations seem like foretastes of death.... We have seen an American sun, and an American moon, and American stars, and we think they "get up these things better than we do." We have had several fresh squalls, and one heavy gale; we have shipped sundry seas; we have had rat-hunting and harpooning of porpoises; we have caught several hake and dogfish.