Records of a Girlhood

I have not seen much of either places or people yet.... This city is picturesque and foreign-looking; trees are much intermixed with the houses, among them a great many fine willows, and these, together with the various colors of the houses, and the irregularity of the streets and buildings, form constantly "little bits" that would gladden the eye of a painter. The sky here is beautiful; I find in it what you have seen in Italy, and I only in Angerstein's Gallery, the orange sunsets of Claude Lorraine.

We leave New York for Philadelphia after next week, and shall remain there three weeks.

I have read and noted much of your pretty book. There are one or two points which shall "serve for sweet discourses" in our time to come. I find great satisfaction in our discussions, for though I may not often confess to being convinced by your arguments in our differences (does any one ever do so?), I derive so much information from them, that they are as profitable as pleasant to me. Are you going to be busy with your pen soon again? Write me how the world is going on yonder, and believe me ever truly yours,

F. A. K.New York, September 30, 1832.

Dearest H–,

… Perhaps, as you say, it is morbid to dwell as I do upon the unreality of acting, because its tangible reality makes its appearance duly every morning with the "returns" of the preceding night; but I am not sure that it is morbid to consider wants exaggerated and necessities unreal which render insufficient earnings that would be ample for any one's real need. A livelihood, of course, we could make in England.... You speak of all the various strange things I am to see, and the amount of knowledge I shall involuntarily acquire, by this residence in America; but you know I am what Dr. Johnson would have considered disgracefully "incurious," and the lazy intellectual indifference which induced me to live in London by the very spring of the fountain of knowledge without so much as stooping my lips to it, prevails with me here.

[Our house in Great Russell Street, which was the last at the corner of Montague Place, adjoined the British Museum, and has since been taken into, or removed for (I don't know which), the new buildings of that institution. Our friend Panizzi, the learned librarian, lived in the house that stood where ours, formerly my uncle's, did. While we were still living there, however, I was allowed a privileged entrance at all times to the library, and am ashamed to think how seldom I availed myself of so great a favor.]

Then, too, my profession occupies nearly the whole of my time; I have rehearsals every day, and act four times a week; my journalizing takes up a good deal of my leisure. Walking in the heat we still have here fatigues me and hurts my feet very much, especially when I have to stand at the theater all the evening. Although I have been here a month, I have seen but little either of places or people; the latter, you know, I nowhere affect, and my distaste for the society of strangers must, of course, interfere with my deriving information from them. Still, as you say, I must inevitably see and learn much that is new to me, and I take pleasure in the hope that when I return to you I shall be less distressingly ignorant than you must often have found me....

I am very sorry my brother Henry and his men are going to be sent upon so odious an errand as tithe-collecting must be in Ireland. I trust in God he may meet with no mischief while fulfilling his duty; I should be both to think of that comely-looking young thing bruised or broken, maimed or murdered. I hardly think your savage Irishers would have the heart to hurt him, he looks so like, what indeed he is, a mere boy; but then, to be sure, his errand is not one to recommend him to their mercy.

I have read Bryant's poetry, and like it very much. The general spirit of it is admirable; it is all wholesome poetry, and some of it is very beautiful.

I am going to get Graham's "History of the United States," and Smith's "History of Virginia," to beguile my journey to Philadelphia with. I can't fancy a savage woman marrying a civilized man.... I suppose love might bring harmony out of the discords of natures so dissimilar, but I think if I had been a wild she-American, I should not have been tamed by one of the invading race, my hunters. Pocahontas thought differently....

Are you acquainted with any of Daniel Webster's speeches? They are very fine, eloquent, and powerful; and one that he delivered upon the commemoration of the landing of the English exiles at Plymouth, in many parts, magnificent. I was profoundly affected by it when my father read it to us on board ship....

Bad as your mice, of which you complain so bitterly, may be, they are civilized Christian creatures compared with the heathen swarms with which we wage war incessantly here. Every evening, as soon as the sun sets, clouds of mosquitoes begin their war-dance round us; their sting is most venomous, and as my patience is not even skin-deep, I tear myself like a maniac, and then, instead of oil, pour aromatic vinegar into my wounds, and a very pretty species of torture is produced by that means, I assure you. Besides these winged devils, we have swarms of flies, which also bite and sting, with a venomous rancor of which I should have thought their frivolity incapable. Besides these, every cupboard and drawer in our rooms is full of moths. Besides these, we have an army of cantankerous fleas quartered upon us. Besides these, we have one particular closet where we keep—our bugs, and where for the most part, I am truly thankful to say, they keep themselves. Besides these, we have two or three ants' nests in our bedroom, and everything we look upon seems but a moving mass of these red, long-legged, but always exemplary insects. These fellow-creatures make one's life not worth much having, and I do nothing all day long but sing the famous entomological chorus in "Faust;" and if this goes on much longer, I feel as if I should take to buzzing. Do you know that it is hard upon three o'clock in the morning? I must leave off and go to bed, for I rehearse Constance to-morrow at eleven, and act her to-morrow night. On Friday I act Bizarre in "The Inconstant," and think I shall find it great fun.... God bless you, dearest H–.

Ever your affectionateF. A. K.Mansion House, Philadelphia, October 10, 1832.

Dearest H–,

Do not let the date of this make any alteration in your way of addressing your letters, which must still be "Park Theater, New York;" for before this reaches you we shall probably have returned thither; but I date particularly that you may follow us with your mind's legs, and know where to find us. My dearest H–, in spite of an often heavy heart, and my distaste for my present surroundings, I have reason to be most grateful, and I trust I am so, for the benefits which we have already derived from a visit to this far world beyond the sea. The first and greatest of these is the wonderful improvement in my dear father's health. He looks full ten years younger than when last you saw him, and besides enjoying better spirits from the absence of the many cares and anxieties and vexations that weighed upon him daily in England, he says that he is conscious since he came away of a great increase of absolute muscular strength and vigor; and when he said this, I felt that my share of the unpleasant duty of coming hither was already amply repaid.... We have finished our first engagement at New York, which was for twelve nights, and have every reason to be satisfied with our financial, as well as professional, success. Living here is not as cheap as we had been led to expect, but our earnings are very considerable, and as we labor for these, it is matter of rejoicing that we labor so satisfactorily.

Dall is very well, except the nuisance of a bad cold. I am very well, without exception. The only unpleasant effect I feel from this climate is a constant tendency to slight relaxation of the throat, but this is nothing more than a trifling inconvenience, very endurable, and which probably a little more seasoning will remove.... I tell you of our health first, for at our distance from each other that is the matter of greatest moment and anxiety....

I must tell you of our future arrangements; and, to begin like an Irishwoman, we arrived here on Monday. My father acts to-night for the first time, Hamlet; and I make my first appearance to-morrow in "Fazio." We shall act here for three weeks, and then return to New York for a month; after which we shall proceed to Boston, whence look to receive volumes from me about Webster, and Channing, and our friends and fellow-passengers, the H–s, who reside there.

I like this place better than New York; it has an air of greater age. It has altogether a rather dull, sober, mellow hue, which is more agreeable than the glaring newness of New York. There are one or two fine public buildings, and the quantity of clean, cool-looking white marble which they use both for their public edifices and for the doorsteps of the private houses has a simple and sumptuous appearance, which is pleasant. It is electioneering time, and all last night the streets resounded with cheers and shouts, and shone with bonfires. The present President, Jackson, appears to be far from popular here, and though his own partisans are determined, of course, to re-elect him if possible, a violent struggle is likely to take place; and here already his opponent, Henry Clay, who is the leader of the aristocratic party in the United States, is said to have obtained the superiority over him.

I have got Graham's and Smith's "Histories," and though my time for reading is anything but abundant, yet every night and morning I do contrive, while brushing the outside of my head, to cram something into the inside of it.

I cannot bear to give up any advantage which I once possessed, and therefore struggle to keep up, in some degree, my music and Italian. These, together with rehearsing every morning, and acting four times a week, besides my journal, which I very seldom neglect, make up a good deal of daily occupation. Then, one must sacrifice a certain amount of time to the conventional waste of society, receiving and returning visits, etc.... I like what I have read of Graham very much; the matter is very interesting, and the spirit in which it is treated; and I am deeply in love with Captain John Smith, and wonder greatly at Pocahontas marrying anybody else. I suppose, however, the savage was not without excuse; for Mary Stuart, who knew something of these matters, says, with a rather satirical glance at her cousin of England, "En ces sortes de choses, la plus sage de nous toutes n'est qu'un peu moins sotte que les autres."

I have been to my first rehearsal here to-day; the theater is small, but pretty enough. The public has high pretensions to considerable critical judgment and literary and dramatic taste, and scouts the idea of being led by the opinion of New York.... It is rather tiresome that fools are cut upon the same pattern all the world over. What is the profit of traveling? Oh dear! I think my Fazio has got St. Vitus's dance!…

Yesterday I tried some horses, which were rather terrible quadrupeds. They were not ill-bred cattle to look at, and I should think of a race that, with care and attention, might be brought to considerable perfection; but they are never properly broken for the saddle. The Americans who have spoken to me about riding say that they do not like a horse to have what we consider proper paces, but prefer a shambling sort of half-trot, half-canter, which they judiciously call a rack, and which is the ugliest pace to behold, and the most difficult to endure, possible. They never use a curb, but ride their horses upon the snaffle entirely, dragging it as tight as they can, and having the appearance of holding on for dear life by it; so that the horse, in addition to the awkward gait I have described, throws his head up, and pokes his nose out, and with open jaws "devours the road" before him....

I acted here last night for the first time. Dall and my father say that I received my reception very ungraciously. I am sure I am very sorry, I did not mean to do so, but I really had not the heart or the face to smile and look as pleased and pleasant as I can at a parcel of strangers.... I was not well, or in spirits, and laboring under a severe cold, which I acquired on board the steamboat that brought down the Delaware.... Neither the Raritan nor the Delaware struck me in any way except by their great width. These vast streams naturally suggest the mighty resources which a country so watered presents to the commercial enterprise of its inhabitants. The breadth of these great rivers dwarfs their shores and makes their banks appear flat and uninteresting, though the large lake-like basins into which they occasionally expand are grand from the mere extent and volume of the sweeping mass of waters.

The colors of the autumnal foliage are rich and beautiful beyond imagination—crimson and gold, like a regal mantle, instead of the sad russet cloak of our fading woods. I think, beautiful as this is, that its gorgeousness takes away from the sweet solemnity that makes the fall of the year pre-eminently the season of thoughtful contemplation. Our autumn at home is mellow and harmonious, though sometimes melancholy; but the brilliancy of this decay strikes one sometimes with a sudden sadness, as if the whole world were dying of consumption, with these glittering gleams and hectic flushes, a mere deception of disease and death.... Good-by, my dearest H–

Philadelphia, October 14, 1832.

Dearest H–,

"Boston is a Yankee town, and so is Philadelphy;" considering which, I assure you I find the latter quite a civilized place. The above quotation is from "Yankee-doodle," the National Anthem of the Americans, which I will sing to you some day when I am within hearing.

We have just returned from church. Dall and I being too late this morning for the service, which begins at half-past ten, sallied forth in search of salvation this afternoon, and after wandering about a little, entered a fine-looking church, which we found was a Presbyterian place of worship.... The preaching to-day was extemporaneous, and extremely feeble and commonplace, occasionally reminding me of your eloquent friend at Skerries.... I shall try, on my return to New York, to settle to some work in earnest, as I hope there that we shall repeat the plays we have already acted, and so need no rehearsals.... To-morrow I act Juliet to my father's Romeo; he does it still most beautifully.... In spite of his acting it with his own child (which puts a manifest absurdity on the very face of it), the perfection of his art makes it more youthful, graceful, ardent, and lover-like—a better Romeo, in short, than the youngest pretender to it nowadays. It is certainly simple truth when he says, "I am the youngest of that name, for lack of a better," when the nurse asks for young Romeo.

Wednesday we act "The School for Scandal," and Friday "Venice Preserved." So there's your play-bill....

At this moment a great political excitement pervades the country; it is the time of the Presidential Election, and the most vehement efforts are being made by the Democratic party to maintain the present President, General Jackson, in his post. The majority, I believe, is in his favor, though we are told that the "better classes" (whatever that may mean where no distinctions of class exist) embrace the cause of his opponent, Henry Clay.

It seems curious, if it is true, as we have been assured, that in this one State of Pennsylvania, eight thousand persons out of fifty who have the right of voting were all who in this last election exercised it; so that the much-vaunted privilege of universal suffrage does not seem to be highly prized where it is possessed.

From all the opinions that I hear expressed upon the subject, it does not seem as though the system of election prevalent here works much better, or is much freer from abuses, than the well-vilified one which England has just been reforming. Bribery and corruption are familiar here as elsewhere, to those who have, and those who wish to have, power; and I have not yet heard a single American speak of our Radical reformers without uplifted hands at what they consider their folly in not "letting well alone," or, as they say, in substituting one set of abuses for another, as they declare we shall do if we adopt their vote by ballot system.

I have now written you a philosophical, moral, and political letter, and beg you will score up my attempt to write rationally against the loads of gibberish I have from time to time discoursed to you. Good bless you, dearest H–! Three thousand miles away, I am still

Always your affectionateF. A. K.Philadelphia, October 22, 1832.

Dear H–,

My first news is deplorable, and I beg you will lament over it accordingly. I eat little, drink less, rehearse six mornings and act five nights a week; in spite of all which, and riding a heavy-going, jolting, shambling, hard-pulling horse, I have grown so fat that I really cannot perceive that there is any shape in particular about me. Grotesque things sometimes are melancholy too, and it is so with me, for I am both....

My father and Dall are very well; at this moment he is busy saying, and she hearing him say, the part of Fazio, which he is to act with me to-morrow night. I dread it dreadfully; acting anything painful with him always tries my nerves extremely.

Bianca is a part of terrible excitement in itself, without the addition of having to act it to his Fazio. I cannot get rid of his being he, and it agonizes me really to see his sham agony; however, "'tis my vocation, Hal." It is very well that our audiences should look at us as mere puppets, for could they sometimes see the real feelings of those for whose false miseries their sympathies are excited, I believe sufficiently in their humanity to think they would kindly give us leave to leave off and go home. Ours is a very strange trade, and I am sorry to say that every day increases my distaste for it.... I do not think that during my father's life I shall ever leave the stage; it is very selfish to feel regret at this, I know, but it sometimes seems to me rather dreary to look along my future years, and think that they will be devoted to labor that I dislike and despise.... For many years—ever since I entered upon my first girlhood, indeed—a quiet, lonely life upon a small independence has been the aim of my desires and my notion of happiness. Italy and the south of France formerly constantly solicited my imagination, as offering pleasant places wherein to build a solitary nest.... And now a cottage near Edinburgh, with an income of two hundred a year, seems to me the most desirable of earthly possessions; but, though this is certainly not a very wild vision of wealth or magnificence, I fear it is quite as little within my reach as southern palaces, or villas on the Mediterranean.

My father has hitherto been able to lay by nothing, and my assistance is absolutely necessary to him, … and as long as I can in any way serve my father's interests by remaining in my profession I shall do so, and must naturally look forward to a prolonged period of my present exertions. It is useless pondering upon this, but I have been led to do so lately from a letter which my father received from Mr. Bartley, the stage manager of Covent Garden, the other day, which contained the plan of a new theatrical speculation, in which he is most anxious to engage us. I know not how my father feels upon this subject.... I, however, am well determined that neither Mr. L–'s opinion, nor that of the whole world besides, should induce me to own the value of a truss of straw in any theater. My father's whole life has been given over to trouble and anxiety in consequence of his proprietorship and involvement in that ruinous concern, Covent Garden; and now, when his remaining health and strength will no more than serve to lay up the means of subsistence when health and strength are gone, the idea of his loading himself with such a burden of bitterness as the proprietorship of a new theater makes me perfectly miserable. For my own part, I am determined to own neither part nor lot in any such venture: I will lend or give anything that I may earn to it, and I will act, at half the price I might get elsewhere, for it, if my father wishes me to do so; but not a demonstrable cent per cent profit should induce me to run such a risk of cursing the day that I was born, as to become owner of a theater. I write you all this (and I have written more than enough about it) because it has been lately a subject of much anxious meditation to me. The matter is at present without settled form or plan, but the proposal of such a scheme has caused me deep regret and anxiety.... I am going to act to-morrow in "The Hunchback;" Thursday, Mrs. Beverley; Friday, Lady Townley; Saturday, Juliet; Monday, Julia again; and Tuesday, Bizarre in "The Inconstant;" which ends our engagement here. This is pretty hard work, is it not? besides always one, and sometimes two rehearsals of a morning.

We begin our second engagement in New York on the 7th of November. Don't forget that the 27th of that month is my birthday, and that if you neglect to drink my health, I shall probably die, for want of your good wishes to keep me alive.

We act in Boston on the 3d of December; "further than that the deponent sayeth not."

I told you in my last letter that Philadelphia was the cleanest place in the world. The country along the banks of the Schuylkill (one of the rivers on which it stands; the other is the Delaware) is wild and beautiful, and the glory of the autumn woods what an eye that hath not seen can by no manner of means conceive. I have for the last week had my room full of the most delicious flowers that could only be seen with us at midsummer, and here, in these last days of autumn, they are as abundant and fragrant, and the sun is as intensely hot and brilliant, as it should be, but never is, with us, in the month of July....

Dall went into a Quaker's shop here the other day, when, after waiting upon her with the utmost attention and kindness, the master of the shop said, "And how doth Fanny? I was in hopes she might have wanted something; we should have great pleasure in attending upon her." Was not that nice? So to-day I went thither, and bought myself a lovely sober-colored gown. This place, as you know, is the headquarters of Quakerdom, and all the enchanting nosegays come from "a Philadelphia friend," the latter word dashed under, as if to indicate a member of the religious fraternity always called by that kindly title here....

I think my father has some idea of bringing out "The Star of Seville" here, and if he does I shall break my heart that it was not brought out first in England. Emily always reproaches me with want of patriotism. I have more than helps to make me cheerful here, and leaving England—not home, and not you, but England, England—for two years, seems to me now ridiculous, and fabulous, and preposterous, and disastrous.

I have finished my first volume of Graham, and I have finished this letter. God bless you!

Ever your affectionateF. A. K.Philadelphia, November 2, 1832.

Dearest H–,

I received your fifth letter to-day, and one from Dorothy, and one from Emily Fitzhugh.... My last letter to you was a sad one, and sad in a fashion that does not often occur to me. I was troubled and anxious about my professional labor and its results, and that may be called a small sadness compared with some other with which I have lately become familiar. Of course none of these anxieties have been removed, for some time must elapse before I can know on what plan my father determines with regard to Mr. Bartley's proposal about this new theater. It does not affect me personally, because I am thoroughly determined to take no part in any speculation of the kind; but the possibility of my father entering into any such scheme is care enough to "kill a cat," and make a kitten miserable besides.... In all matters, but especially in matters of business, I hold frankness, straightforwardness, and decision as conducive to success, as consonant with right feeling; but I think men are much more cowardly than women, and believe a great deal more in policy, temporizing, and expediency than we do. "Managing" is supposed to be a feminine tendency; it has no place in my composition; perhaps I might be the better for a little of it—but only perhaps, and only a little.... This letter, as you will perceive by its date, was begun on the banks of the Delaware; here we are, however, once more in New York. It is Monday evening, the 5th of November, and you are firing squibs and burning manikins en action de grâces that the Houses of Parliament were not blown up by the Roman Catholics, instead of living to be reformed by the Whigs, and (peradventure) blowing up the nation.