To tell you the truth, it would be a great pleasure to me that you should come so much sooner than I had reckoned upon having you; and as Emily and I trotted round Portman Square together to-day, we both made out that, if you come into this arrangement, you will be here on Tuesday week, which appears to me in itself delightful. Let me know, dear, what you decide, as I shall not answer the Duke of Rutland until I have heard from you.

I promise myself much pleasure from seeing Belvoir. The place, with which I am familiar through engravings and descriptions, is a fine house in one of the finest situations in England; and the idea of being out of London once more, in the country and on horseback, is superlatively agreeable to me.

And now, my dearest, to answer your letter, which I got this morning. For pity's sake, let Lady Westmoreland rest, for the present; we will take her up again, if expedient, when we meet.... The Duke of Wellington called here the other day, and brought an exceedingly pretty bracelet and amiable note to my sister; both which, as you may suppose, she values highly, as she ought to do.

About the cheering of the Queen on her way to Parliament the other day, I incline to think the silence was universal, for everybody with whom I was observed it, except Charles Greville, who swore she was applauded; but then he is deaf, and therefore hears what no one else can. Moreover, the majority of spectators were by no means well-dressed people; the streets were thronged with pure mobocracy, to a degree unprecedented on any previous occasion of the sort, and, though there was no exhibition of ill-feeling towards the Queen or any of the ministers, there was no demonstration of good will beyond the usual civility of lifting the hats as she passed. Indeed, Horace Wilson told me that, when he was crossing the park at the time of her driving through it, there was some—though not much—decided hissing.

Your lamentation over my want of curiosity reminds me that on this very occasion Charles Greville offered to take me all over the Coldbath Fields Prison, and show me the delights of the treadmill, etc., and expressed great astonishment that I did not enthusiastically accept this opportunity of seeing such a cheerful spectacle, and still more amazement at my general want of enlightened curiosity, which he appeared to consider quite unworthy of so intelligent a person.

I have not read Stephens's book on Central America, but only certain extracts from it in the last Quarterly, with which I was particularly charmed; but I admire your asking me why I did not send for his book from the circulating library instead of Paul de Kock. Do you suppose I sent for Paul de Kock? Don't you know I never send for any book, and never read any book, but such as I am desired, required, lent, or given to read by somebody? being, for the most part, very indifferent what I read, and having the obliging faculty of forgetting immediately what I have read, which is an additional reason for my not caring much what my books are. Still, there is a point at which my indifference will give way to disgust.... —— recommended Paul de Kock's books strongly to me, therefore I read one of them, but found it so very little to my taste that I was obliged, against my usual rule of compliance with my friend's recommendations in these matters, to decline the rest of the author's works. I have begun your "Enfant du Peuple," and many are the heartaches I have had already, though I have read but little of it, over that poor Jean Baptiste's tender and touching love, which reminds one of Jacob's serving seven years for the sake of Rachel, and hardly counting them a day....

Dearest Harriet, if in the matter of your visit to us you cannot alter your plans, which have already been turned topsy-turvy once to suit ours, we will go at some other time to Belvoir, and my sister must e'en give it up, as in my professional days I had to forego Stoke, Chatsworth, and, hardest by far of all, Abbotsford.

God bless you, dearest Harriet. Give my kind love to M——. I rejoice to hear of her convalescence. Remember me affectionately to Dorothy, and believe me,

Ever yours, FANNY.

GRIMSTHORPE, March 27th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Thank God and O'Connell for your smooth passage. I really dreaded the effects of sea-sickness for you, combined with that racking cough....

We left Belvoir yesterday, and came on here, having promised Lady Willoughby to visit them on our way back to London.

I do not know whether you ever saw Belvoir. It is a beautiful place; the situation is noble, and the views from the windows of the castle, and the terraces and gardens hanging on the steep hill crowned by it, are charming. The whole vale of Belvoir, and miles of meadow and woodland, lie stretched below it like a map unrolled to the distant horizon, presenting extensive and varied prospects in every direction, while from the glen which surrounds the castle hill like a deep moat filled with a forest, the spring winds swell up as from a sea of woodland, and the snatches of bird-carolling and cawing rook-discourse float up to one from nests in the topmost branches of tall trees, far below one's feet, as one stands on the battlemented terraces.

The interior of the house is handsome, and in good taste; and the whole mode of life stately and splendid, as well as extremely pleasant and comfortable. The people—I mean the Duke and his family—kind and courteous hosts, and the society very easy and free from stiffness or constraint of any sort; and I have enjoyed my visit very much....

We had a large party at Belvoir. The gentlemen of the hunt were all at the castle; and besides the ladies of the family (one unmarried and two married daughters), we had the Duchess of Richmond and her granddaughter, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Winchelsea, Mademoiselle d'Este, and a whole tribe of others whose names I forget, but which are all duly down in the butler's book.

Every morning the duke's band marched round the castle, playing all sorts of sprightly music, to summon us to breakfast, and we had the same agreeable warning that dinner was ready. As soon as the dessert was placed on the table, singers came in, and performed four pieces of music; two by a very sweet single voice, and two by three or more voices. This, with intervals for conversation, filled up the allotted time before the ladies left the table. In the evening we had music, of course, and one evening we adjourned to the ball-room, where we danced all night, the duke leading down a country-dance, in which his house-maids and men-cooks were vigorously figuring at the same time.

Whenever my sister sang, the servants used all to assemble on a large staircase at one end of the ball-room, where, for the sake of the sound, the piano was placed, and appeared among her most enthusiastic hearers.... The whole family were extremely cordial and kind to us; and when we drove away, they all assembled at an upper window, waving hats and handkerchiefs as long as we could see them. I have no room to tell you anything of Grimsthorpe. God bless you. Good-bye.

Ever yours, Fanny.

[My first introduction to "afternoon tea" took place during this visit to Belvoir, when I received on several occasions private and rather mysterious invitations to the Duchess of Bedford's room, and found her with a "small and select" circle of female guests of the castle, busily employed in brewing and drinking tea, with her grace's own private tea-kettle. I do not believe that now universally honored and observed institution of "five-o'clock tea" dates farther back in the annals of English civilization than this very private and, I think, rather shamefaced practice of it.

Our visit to Grimsthorpe has left but three distinct images on my memory: that of my bedroom, with its furniture of green velvet and regal bed-hangings of white satin and point lace; that of the collection of thrones in the dining-room, the Lords Willoughby de Eresby being hereditary Lord Grand Chamberlains of England, whose perquisite of office was the throne or chair of state used by each sovereign at his or her coronation; and my intercourse with Mademoiselle d'Este, who, like ourselves, came from Belvoir to Grimsthorpe, and with whom I here began an acquaintance that grew into intimacy, and interested me a good deal from her peculiar character and circumstances.]

HARLEY STREET, London, March 31st, 1842. MY DEAR T——,

... My father is in wonderful health, looks, and spirits, considering that in all these items this time last year he was very little better than dead. My sister is working very hard and very successfully, and proposing to herself, after two more years of assiduous labor, to retire on a moderate income to Italy, where she would rather live than anywhere else. But, oh dear me! how well I remember the day when that was my own vision of the future, and only see what a very different thing it has turned out! I think it not at all improbable that she will visit the United States next year, and that we shall find that moment propitious for returning; that is to say, about a twelvemonth from next month.... So much for private interests. As to the public ones: alas! Sir Robert Peel is losing both his health and his temper, they say; and no wonder at it! His modification of the corn laws and new tariff are abominations to his own party, and his income tax an abomination to the nation at large. I cannot conceive a more detestable position than his, except, perhaps indeed, that of the country itself just now. Poverty and discontent in great masses of the people; a pitiless Opposition, snapping up and worrying to pieces every measure proposed by the Ministry, merely for malignant mischeevousness, as the nursemaids say, for I don't believe they—the Whigs—will be trusted again by the people for at least a century to come; a determined, troublesome, and increasing Radical party, whose private and personal views are fairly and dangerously masked by the public grievances of which they advocate the redress; a minister, hated personally by his own party, with hardly an individual of his own political persuasion in either House who follows him cordially, or, rather, who does not feel himself personally aggrieved by one or other of the measures of reform he has proposed,—yet that minister the only man in England at this moment able to stand up at the head of public affairs, and the defeat of whose measures (distasteful as they are to his own party, and little satisfactory to the people in general) would produce instantaneously, I believe, such confusion, disorder, and dismay as England has not seen for many a year, not indeed since the last great Reform crisis;—all this is not pleasant, and makes me pity everybody connected with the present Government, and Sir Robert Peel more than anybody else. I wonder how long he'll be able to stand it.

What have you done with Lord Morpeth? And what are you doing with "Boz"? The first has a most tenderly attached mother and sisters, and really should not, on their account, be killed with kindness; and the latter has several small children, I believe, who, I suppose, will naturally desire that your national admiration should not annihilate their papa.... I wish we were to come back to America soon, but wishes are nonsensical things.... Give my dear love to Catherine and Kate [Miss Sedgwick and her niece], if they are in New York when this reaches you.

Good-bye, my dear T——. I would not have troubled you with this if I had known Mrs. Robert's address; but "Wall Street" will find you, though "Warren Street" knows her no longer.

We have been spending ten days at Belvoir Castle, with all sorts of dukes and duchesses. Don't you perceive it in the nobility of my style? It is well for a foreigner to see these things; they are pretty, pleasant, gay, grand, and, in some of their aspects, good; but I think that who would see them even as they still subsist now had better lose no time about it.

HARLEY STREET, Tuesday, April 12th, 1842.

Did anyone ever say there was not a "soul of good even in things evil"? From your mode of replying to my first letter, dearest Harriet—the one from Belvoir, in which I told you I had been strongly minded to write to you first—you do not seem to me quite to believe in the existence of such an intention. Nor was it a "weak thought," but a very decided purpose, which was frustrated by circumstances for one day, and the next prevented entirely by the arrival of your letter. However, no matter for all that now; hear other things.

You ask after "Figaro" [Mozart's opera of "Le Nozze di Figaro," then being given at Covent Garden, my sister singing the part of Susanna]. It draws very fine houses, and Adelaide's acting in it is very much liked and praised, as it highly deserves to be, for it is capital, very funny, and fine in its fun, which makes good comedy—a charming thing, and a vastly more difficult one, in my opinion, than any tragic acting whatever....

Your boots have been sent safe and sound, my dear, and are in the custody of a person who, I verily believe, thinks me incapable of taking care of anything in the world, and has the same amount of confidence in my understanding that a friend of mine (a clergyman of the Church of England) expressed in his mother's honesty, "I wouldn't trust her with a bad sixpence round the corner." However, your boots, as I said, are safe, and will reach your hands (or feet, I should rather say) in due course of time, I have no doubt.

I have had two letters from America lately, the last of them containing much news about the movements of the abolitionists, in which its writer takes great interest. Among other things, she mentions that an address had been published to the slaves, by Gerrit Smith, exhorting them to run away, to use all means to do so, to do so at any risk, and also by all means and at any risk to learn to read. By all means, he advises them, in no case to use violence, or carry off property of their masters' (except indeed themselves, whom their masters account very valuable property). I should have told you that Gerrit Smith himself was a large slave-holder, that he has given up all his property, renounced his home in the South (where, indeed, if he was to venture to set foot, he would be murdered in less than an hour). He lives at the North, in comparative poverty and privation, having given up his wealth for conscience' sake. I saw him once at Lucretia Mott's. He was a man of remarkable appearance, with an extremely sweet and noble countenance. He is one of the "confessors" in the martyr-age of America.

I am much concerned at your account of E——, for though sprains and twists and wrenches are not uncommon accidents, I have always much more dread of them than of a bona (bony) fide fracture. I always fear some injury may be lodged in the system by such apparently lesser casualties, that may not reveal itself till long after the real cause is forgotten....

I must end this letter, for I have delayed it too shamefully long, and you must think me more abominable than ever, in spite of which I am still

Your most affectionate FANNY.

CRANFORD HOUSE, April 17th, 1842.

I put a letter into the post for you, my dearest Harriet, this afternoon. This is all I was able to write to you yesterday—Wednesday; and now it is Thursday evening, and there is every prospect of my having leisure to finish my letter.

Emily has asked me several times to come and spend the evening with her mother, and I have promised her each time that the first evening....

Thus far last night, my dear—that is to say, Thursday evening. It is now Friday evening, and the long and the short of the story was that Emily dined out, Mrs. FitzHugh teaed with the Miss Hamiltons, my party went to Drury Lane, and I passed the evening alone; and the reason why this letter was not finished during that lonely evening, my dear, was that I was sitting working worsted-work for Emily in the parlor downstairs when my people all went away, and after they were gone I was seized with a perfect nervous panic, a "Good" fever, and could not bring myself to stir from the chair where they had left me. As to going up into the drawing-room, it was out of the question; I fancied every step of the stairs would have morsels of flesh lying on it, and the banisters would be all smeared with blood and hairs. In short, I had a fit of the horrors, and sat the whole blessed evening working heart's ease into Emily's canvas, in a perfect nightmare of horrible fancies. At one moment I had the greatest mind in the world to send for a cab, and go to Covent Garden Theatre, and sit in Adelaide's dressing-room; but I was ashamed to give way to my nerves in that cowardly fashion, and certainly passed a most miserable evening.... However, let me leave last night and its horrors, and make haste to answer your questions....

Another pause, dear Harriet, and here I am at this picturesque old place, Cranford House, paying another visit to ——'s venerable friend, old Lady Berkeley. I have been taking a long walk this morning with Lady ——, whose London fine-ladyism gave way completely in these old walks of her early home, to which all the family appear extremely attached. Her unfeigned delight at the primroses, oxlips, wild cherry bloom, and varying greens of the spring season made me think that her lament was not applicable to herself, just then, at any rate. "What a pity," cried she, "it is that one cannot be regenerated as the earth is every spring!" She seemed to me to be undergoing a very pretty process of regeneration even while she spoke. It is touching to observe natural character and the lingering traces of early impressions surviving under the overlaying of the artificial soil and growth of after years of society and conventional worldly habits. She pointed out to me a picturesque, pretty object in the grounds, over which she moralized with a good deal of enthusiasm and feeling—an old, old fir-tree, one of the cedar tribe, a tree certainly many more than a hundred years old, whose drooping lower branches absolutely lie upon the lawn for yards all round it. One of these boughs has struck into the ground, and grown up into a beautiful young tree, already twelve or fourteen feet high, and the contrast between the vivid coloring and erect foliage of this young thing, and the rusty, dusky green, drooping branches of the enormous tree, which seems to hang over and all round it, with parental tenderness, is quite exquisite. One of them, however, must, nevertheless, destroy or be destroyed by the other; a very pretty vegetable version of the ancient classical, family fate, superstitions....

Pray, if you know how flowers propagate, write me word. In gathering primroses this morning, Lady —— and I exercised our ignorance in all sorts of conjectures upon the subject, neither of us being botanists, though she knew, which I did not, the male from the female flowers.

I get a good deal of sleep since you have gone away, as I certainly do not sit up talking half the night with anybody else. But as for enough, is there such a thing as enough sleep? and was anybody ever known to have had it? and who was he or she?

I have had two long letters from Elizabeth Sedgwick, containing much matter about the abolitionists, in whose movements, you know, she is deeply interested; also more urgent entreaties that I will "use my influence" to secure our return home in the autumn!...

My father appears to be quite well, and in a state of great pleasurable excitement and activity of mind, having (alas! I regret to say) accepted once more the management of Covent Garden, which is too long a story to begin just at the end of my paper; but he is in the theatre from morning till night, as happy as the gods, and apparently, just now, as free from all mortal infirmity. It is amazing, to be sure, what the revival of the one interest of his life has done for his health.

I went to the Portland Street Chapel last Sunday, and heard a sermon upon my peculiar virtue, humility, not from the same clergyman we heard together; and S——, who is too funny, sang the Psalms so loud that I had to remonstrate with her.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

[A horrible murder had just been committed by a miserable man of the name of Good, who endeavored to conceal his crime by cutting to pieces and scattering in different directions the mangled remains of his victim—a woman. The details of these horrors filled the public papers, and were the incessant subject of discussion in society, and were calculated to produce an impression of terror difficult to shake off even by so little nervous a person as myself.

The Countess of Berkeley, to whom I have alluded in this letter, was a woman whose story was a singular romance, which now may be said to belong to "ancient history." She was the daughter of a butcher of Gloucester, and an extremely beautiful person. Mr. Henry Berkeley, the fifth son of Lady Berkeley, for many years Member of Parliament for Bristol, and as many years the persistent advocate of the system of voting by ballot, travelled and resided for some time in America, and formed a close intimacy with ——, who, when we came to England, accepted Mr. Berkeley's invitation to visit his mother at Cranford, and took me with him, to make the acquaintance of this remarkable old lady. She was near eighty years old, tall and stately, with no apparent infirmities, and great remains of beauty. There was great originality in all she said, and her manner was strikingly energetic for so old a woman. I remember, one day after dinner, she had her glass filled with claret till the liquid appeared to form a rim above the vessel that contained it, and, raising it steadily to her lips, looked round the table, where sat all her children but Lord Fitzhardinge, and saying, "God bless you all," she drank off the contents without spilling a drop, and, replacing the glass on the table, said, "Not one of my sons could do that."

One morning, when I was rather indisposed, and unable to join any of the parties into which the guests had divided themselves on their various quests after amusement, I was left alone with Lady Berkeley, and she undertook to give me a sketch of her whole history; and very strange it was. She gave me, of course, her own version of the marriage story, and I could not but wonder whether she might have persuaded herself into believing it true, when she wound up her curious and interesting account of her life by saying, "And now I am ready to be carried to my place in the vault, and my place in the vault is ready for me" (she pointed to the church which adjoined the old mansion); "and I have the key of it here," and she gave a hearty slap upon her pocket. She told me of her presentation at Court, and the uproar it occasioned among the great ladies there, whose repugnance to admit her of their number she described with much humor, but attributed solely to the fact of her plebeian descent, of which she spoke unhesitatingly.

The impression I gathered from her narrative, rather unconsciously on her part I suspect, was that the Queen, whose strictness upon the subject of reputation was well known, objected to receiving her (Lady Berkeley called her, rather disrespectfully, "Old Charlotte" all the time, but spoke of George III. as "the King"), but was overruled by the King, who had a personal friendship for Lord Berkeley.

The strangest thing in her whole account of herself, however, was the details she gave me of her singular power over her husband. She said that in a very few years after their marriage (by courtesy) she perceived that her husband's affairs were in the most deplorable state of derangement: that he gambled, that he was over head and ears in debt, that he never had a farthing of ready money, that his tenantry were worse off than any other in the country, that his agents and bailiffs and stewards were rogues who ground them and cheated him, that his farmers were careless and incompetent, and that the whole of his noble estate appeared to be going irretrievably to ruin; when the earl complaining one day bitterly of this state of things, for which he knew no remedy, she told him that she would find the remedy, and undertake to recover what was lost and redeem what remained, if he would give her absolute discretionary power to deal with his property as she pleased, and not interfere with her management of it for a whole year. He agreed to this, but, not satisfied with his promise, she made him bind himself by oath and, moreover, execute documents, giving her legal power enabling her to act independently of him in all matters relating to his estate. The earl not unnaturally demurred, but at length yielded, only stipulating that she should always be prepared to furnish him with money whenever he wanted it. She bound herself to do this, and received regular powers from him for the uninterrupted management of his property and administration of his affairs for a whole year. She immediately set about her various plans of reform, and carried them on vigorously and successfully, without the slightest interference on the part of her dissipated and careless husband, who had entirely forgotten the whole compact between them. Some months after the agreement had gone into effect, she perceived that he was harassed and disturbed about something, and questioning him, found he had incurred a heavy gambling debt, which he knew not how to meet. His surprise was extreme when, recalling the terms of their mutual agreement, she put him in possession of the sum he required. "He called me an angel," she said. "You see, my dear, one is always an angel, when one holds the strings of the purse, and that there is money in it."

She persevered in her twelvemonth's stewardship, and at the end of that time had redeemed her word, and relieved her husband's estate from its most pressing embarrassments. The value of the land had increased; the condition of the tenantry had improved; intelligent and active farmers had had the farms rented to them, instead of the previous sleepy set of incumbents; and finally, a competent and honest agent, devoted to carry out her views, was placed over the whole. The property never fell from this highly prosperous condition, for Lord Berkeley never withdrew it from his wife's supervision; and she continued to administer his affairs till his death, and maintained an extraordinary influence over all the members of her family at the time of my acquaintance with her. They were all rather singular persons, and had a vein of originality which made them unlike the people one met in common society. I suppose their mother's unusual character may have had to do with this.

Lord Fitzhardinge was never at Cranford when I was there, though I have, at various times, met all the other brothers.

Frederick Berkeley went into the navy, and rose to the important position of an admiral; Craven Berkeley, Grantley Berkeley, and Henry Berkeley were all in Parliament. The latter was for many years Member for the important constituency of Bristol, and, probably in consequence of opinions acquired during his residence in the United States, was a consistent advocate for the introduction of vote by ballot in our elections. This gentleman was an unusually accomplished person: he had made preparatory studies for two professions, the Church and the Bar; but though he embraced neither career (possibly on account of an accident he met with while hunting, which crippled him for life), the reading he had gone through for both had necessarily endowed him with a more than common degree of mental cultivation. He was an excellent musician, played on the piano and organ with considerable taste and feeling, and had a much more thorough acquaintance with the science of music than is usual in an amateur.

Morton Berkeley sought no career; he lived with his mother and sister, Lady Mary, at Cranford, his principal pleasure and occupation being the preservation of the game on the estate—an object of not very easy accomplishment, owing to the proximity of Cranford to London, the distance being only twelve miles by railroad, and the facilities thus offered of escape and impunity to poachers necessarily considerable. The tract immediately round Cranford was formerly part of the famous, or rather infamous, Hounslow Heath; and I have heard Mr. Henry Berkeley say that in his youth he remembered perfectly, when he went to London with his father, by day or night, loaded pistols were an invariable part of the carriage furniture.

My first acquaintance with Mr. Morton Berkeley's devotion to the duties of a gamekeeper was made in a very singular manner, and accompanied by a revelation of an unexpected piece of sentiment.

—— and myself were visiting at Cranford on one occasion, when the only strangers there beside ourselves were Lady C——, Lord and Lady S——, and Lord F—— and his sister, a lady of some pretensions to beauty, but still more to a certain fashionable elegance of appearance, much enhanced by her very Parisian elaborateness of toilette.

One night, when the usual hour for retiring had come, the ladies, who always preceded the gentlemen by some hours to their sleeping apartments, had left the large room on the ground-floor, where we had been spending the evening. As we ascended the stairs, my attention was attracted by some articles of dress which lay on one of the window-seats: a heavy, broad-brimmed hat, a large rough pea-jacket, and a black leather belt and cutlass—a sort of coastguard costume which, lying in that place, excited my curiosity. I stopped to examine them, and Lady Mary exclaiming, "Oh, those are Morton's night-clothes; he puts them on when everybody is gone to bed, to go and patrol with the gamekeeper round the place. Do put them on for fun;" she seized them up and began accoutring me in them.

When I was duly enveloped in these very peculiar trappings, we all burst into fits of laughter, and it was instantly proposed that we should all return to the drawing-room, I marching at their head in my gamekeeper's costume. Without further consideration, I ran downstairs again, followed by the ladies, and so re-entered the room, where the gentlemen were still assembled in common council, and where our almost immediate return in this fashion was hailed by a universal shout of surprise and laughter. After standing for a minute, with a huge rough overcoat over my rose-colored satin and moire skirts, which made a most ludicrous termination to the pugnacious habit of my upper woman, I plunged my hand into one of the pockets, and drew forth a pair of hand-cuffs (a prudent provision in case of an encounter with poachers). Encouraged by the peals of merriment with which this discovery was greeted, I thrust my other hand into the other pocket, when Mr. Morton Berkeley, without uttering a word, rushed at me, and, seizing me by the wrist, prevented my accomplishing my purpose. The suddenness of this movement frightened me at first a good deal. Presently, however, my emotion changed, and I felt nothing but amazement at being thus unceremoniously seized hold of, and rage at finding that I could not extricate myself from the grasp that held me. Like a coward and a woman, I appealed to all the other gentlemen, but they were laughing so excessively that they were quite unable to help me, and probably anticipated no great mischief from Mr. Berkeley's proceeding. I was almost crying with mortification, and actually drew the cutlass and threatened to cut the fingers that encircled my wrist like one of the iron handcuffs, but, finding my captor inexorable, I was obliged, with extreme sulky confusion, to beg to be let go, and promise to take the coat off without any further attempts to search the pockets. I divested myself of my borrowed apparel a great deal faster than I had put it on, and its owner walked off with the pea-jacket, the right pocket of which remained unexplored. We ladies withdrew again, rather crestfallen at the termination of our joke, I rubbing my wrist like Mary Stuart after her encounter with Lord Ruthven, and wondering extremely what could be the mysterious contents of that pocket.

The next day Lady Mary told me that her brother had long cherished a romantic sort of idolatry for Miss F——, and that, as a pendant to the handcuffs in one pocket of his dreadnought, the other contained her miniature, which he dreaded the night before that my indiscretion would produce, to the derision of the men, the distress and confusion of the young lady herself, and the possible displeasure of her brother. Mr. Morton Berkeley's manners to me after that were again, as they always had been, respectful and rather reserved; the subject of our "fight" was never again alluded to, and he remained to me a gentle, shy, courteous (and romantic) gentleman.

He was habitually silent, but when he did speak, he was very apt to say something apposite, and generally containing the pith of the matter under discussion. I remember once, when I was reproaching his brother Henry and his sister with what I thought the unbecoming manner in which they criticised the deportment and delivery of a clergyman whose sermon they had just listened to (and who certainly was rather an unfortunate specimen of outward divinity), Mr. Morton Berkeley suddenly turned to me, and said, "Why, Mrs. Butler, he is only the rusty bars the light shines through"—a quotation, in fact, but a very apposite one, and I am not sure but that it was an unconscious one, and an original illustration on his part.

Mr. Thomas Duncombe, the notorious Radical Member for Finsbury, very generally and very disrespectfully designated in the London society of his day as "Tommy Duncombe," and Mr. Maxse (Lady Caroline Berkeley's husband), were also among the persons with whom I became acquainted at Cranford.

Of a curious feat of charioteership performed by the latter gentleman I was told once by the Duke of Beaufort, who said he had derived from it the nickname of "Go-along Maxse." Driving late one night with a friend on a turnpike road after the gates were closed, he said to his companion, "Now, if the turnpike we are just coming to is shut, I'll take the horse and gig over the gate." The gig was light, the horse powerful and swift. As they bowled along and came in sight of the gate, they perceived that it was closed; when Mr. Maxse's companion calling out to him, "Go-along, Maxse," that gentleman fulfilled his threat or promise, whichever it might be, and put his horse full at the gate, which the gallant creature cleared, bringing the carriage and its live freight safe to the ground on the other side; a feat which I very unintentionally imitated, in a humble degree, many years after, with an impunity my carelessness certainly did not deserve.

Driving in a state of considerable mental preoccupation out of my own gate one day at Lenox, in a very light one-horse "wagon" (as such vehicles are there called), instead of turning my horse's head either up or down the road, I let him go straight across it, to the edge of a tolerably wide dry ditch, when, suddenly checking him, the horse, who was a saddle-horse and a good leaper, drew himself together, and took the ditch, with me in the carriage behind him, and brought up against a fence, where there was just room for him to turn round, which he immediately did, as if aware of his mistake, and proceeded to leap back again, quite successfully without any assistance of mine, I being too much amazed at the whole performance to do anything but sit still and admire my horse's dexterity.

I have adverted to the still existing industry of "gentlemen of the road," in speaking of Cranford in the days of the Earl of Berkeley, who used to take pistols in the carriage when he went to London. On one occasion, when he was riding, unattended but fortunately not unarmed, over some part of Hounslow Heath, a highwayman rode up to him, and, saluting him by name, said, "I know, my lord, you have sworn never to give in to one of us; but now I mean to try if you're as good as your word." "So I have, you rascal, but there are two of you here," replied the earl. The robber, thrown off his guard, looked round for the companion thus indicated, and Lord Berkeley instantly shot him through the head; owing it to his ready presence of mind that he escaped a similar fate at the hands of his assailant.

My mother, I think, had the advantage of a slight personal acquaintance with one of the very last of these Tyburn heroes. She lived at one time, before her marriage, with her mother and sisters and only brother, at a small country house beyond Finchley; to which suburban, or indeed then almost entirely rural, retreat my father and other young men of her acquaintance used occasionally to resort for an afternoon's sport, in the present highly distinguished diversion of pigeon-shooting. On one of these occasions some one of her habitual guests brought with him a friend, who was presented to my mother, and joined in the exercise of skill. He was like a gentleman in his appearance and manners, with no special peculiarity but remarkably white and handsome hands and extraordinary dexterity, or luck, in pigeon-shooting. Captain Clayton was this individual's name, and his visit, never repeated to my mother's house, was remembered as rather an agreeable event. Soon after this several outrages were committed on the high-road which passed through Finchley; and Moody, the celebrated comic actor, who lived in that direction, was stopped one evening, as he was driving himself into town, by a mounted gentleman, who, addressing him politely by name, demanded his watch and purse, which Moody surrendered, under the influence of "the better part of valor." Having done so, however, he was obliged to request his "very genteel" thief to give him enough money to pay his turnpike on his way into town, where he was going to act, whereupon the "gentleman of the road" returned him half-a-crown, and bade him a polite "Good-evening." Some time after this, news was brought into Covent Garden, at rehearsal one morning, that a man arrested for highway robbery was at the Bow Street Police Office, immediately opposite the theatre. Several of the corps dramatique ran across the street to that famous vestibule of the Temple of Themis; among others, Mr. Moody and Vincent de Camp. The latter immediately recognized my mother's white-handed, gentleman-like pigeon-shooter, and Moody his obliging MacHeath of the Finchley Common highway. "Halloa! my fine fellow," said the actor to the thief, "is that you? Well, perhaps as you are here, you won't object to return me my watch, for which I have a particular value, and which won't be of any great use to you now, I suppose." "Lord love ye, Mr. Moody," replied Captain Clayton, with a pleasant smile, "I thought you were come to pay me the half crown I lent you."]

HARLEY STREET, Friday, April 22nd, 1842. MY DEAR T——,

I am not in the least indifferent to the advent of L100 sterling....

I am amused with your description of Dickens, because it tallies so completely with the first impression he made upon me the only time I ever met him before he went to America.... I admire and love the man exceedingly, for he has a deep warm heart, a noble sympathy with and respect for human nature, and great intellectual gifts wherewith to make these fine moral ones fruitful for the delight and consolation and improvement of his fellow-beings.

Lord Morpeth is indeed, as we say, another guessman, but quite one of the most amiable in this world or that. He is universally beloved and respected, so tenderly cherished, by his own kindred that his mother and sisters seem absolutely miserable with various anxieties about him, and the weariness of his prolonged absence. He is a most worthy gentleman, and "goes nigh to be thought so" by all classes here, I can tell you....

You ask me if I have any warmer friends in England than your people, who are certainly my warmest friends in America. I have some friends in my own country who have known and loved me longer than your family; but I do not think, with one or two exceptions, that they love me better, nor do I reckon upon the faith and affection of my American friends less than upon that of my English ones. But the number of people whom I entirely love and trust is very small anywhere, and yet large enough to make me thank God every day for the share He has given me of worthy friendships—treasures sufficient for me to account myself very rich in their possession; living springs of goodness and affection, in which my spirit finds never-failing refreshment. But I have in my own country a vast number of very kind and cordial acquaintances, and, to tell you the truth, am better understood (naturally) and better liked in society, I think, here than on your side of the water. I fancy I am more popular, upon the whole, among my own people than among yours; which is not to be wondered at, as difference is almost always an element of dislike, and, of course, I am more different from American than English people. Indeed, I have come to consider the difference of nationality a broader, stronger, and deeper difference than that produced by any mere dissimilarity of individual character. It is tantamount to looking at everything from another point of view; to having, from birth and through education, other standards; to having, in short, another intellectual and moral horizon. No personal unlikeness between two individuals of the same nation, however strong it may be in certain points, is equal to the entire unlikeness, fundamental, superficial, and thorough, of two people of different nations.

I am anxious to close this letter before I go out, and shall only add, in replying to your next question of whether I ever feel any desire to return to the stage, Never.... My very nature seems to me dramatic. I cannot speak without gesticulating and making faces, any more than an Italian can; I am fond, moreover, of the excitement of acting, personating interesting characters in interesting situations, giving vivid expression to vivid emotion, realizing in my own person noble and beautiful imaginary beings, and uttering the poetry of Shakespeare. But the stage is not only this, but much more that is not this; and that much more is not only by no means equally agreeable, but positively odious to me, and always was.

Good-by. God bless you and yours.

Believe me always yours most truly, FANNY BUTLER.

HARLEY STREET, May 1st, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I have just despatched a letter to Emily, from whom I I have had two already since she reached Bannisters. She writes chiefly of her mother, whose efforts to bear her trial are very painful to poor Emily, whose fewer years and excellent mental habits render such exertions easier to her. To no one can self-control under such sorrow ever be easy.

You ask about my going to the Drawing-room, which happened thus: The Duke of Rutland dined some little time ago at the Palace, and, speaking of the late party at Belvoir, mentioned me, when the Queen asked why I didn't have myself presented. The duke called the next day at our house, but we did not see him, and he being obliged to go out of town, left a message for me with Lady Londonderry, to the effect that her Majesty's interest about me (curiosity would have been the more exact word, I suspect) rendered it imperative that I should go to the Drawing-room; and, indeed, Lady Londonderry's authoritative "Of course you'll go," given in her most gracious manner, left me no doubt whatever as to my duty in that respect, especially as the message duly delivered by her was followed up by a letter from the duke, from Newmarket, who, from the midst of his bets, handicaps, sweepstakes, and cups, wrote me over again all that he had bid the marchioness tell me. Wherefore, having no objection whatever to go to Court (except, indeed, the expense of my dress, the idea of which caused me no slight trepidation, as I had already exceeded my year's allowance), I referred the matter to my supreme authority, and it being settled that I was to go, I ordered my tail, and my top, train, and feathers, and went. And this is the whole story, with this postscript, that, not owning a single diamond, I hired a handsome set for the occasion from Abud and Collingwood, every single stone of which darted a sharp point of nervous anxiety into my brain and bosom the whole time I wore them.

As you know that I would not go to the end of the street to see a drawing-room full of full moons, you will easily believe that there was nothing particularly delightful to me in the occasion. But after all, it was very little more of an exertion than I make five nights of the week, in going to one place or another; and under the circumstances it was certainly fitting and proper that I should go.

I suffered agonies of nervousness, and, I rather think, did all sorts of awkward things; but so, I dare say, do other people in the same predicament, and I did not trouble my head much about my various mis-performances. One thing, however, I can tell you: if her Majesty has seen me, I have not seen her; and should be quite excusable in cutting her wherever I met her. "A cat may look at a king," it is said; but how about looking at the Queen? In great uncertainty of mind on this point, I did not look at my sovereign lady. I kissed a soft white hand, which I believe was hers; I saw a pair of very handsome legs, in very fine silk stockings, which I am convinced were not hers, but am inclined to attribute to Prince Albert; and this is all I perceived of the whole royal family of England, for I made a sweeping courtesy to the "good remainders of the Court," and came away with no impression but that of a crowded mass of full-dressed confusion, and neither know how I got in nor out of it....

You ask about Liszt. He does not take the management of the German Opera, as was expected; indeed, I wonder he ever accepted such an employment. I should think him most unfit to manage such an undertaking, with his excitable temper and temperament. I do not know whether he will come to London at all this season. Adelaide has been bitterly disappointed about it, and said that she had reckoned upon him in great measure for the happiness of her whole summer....

You ask next in your category of questions after Adelaide's dog, and whether it is led in a string successfully yet; and thereby hangs a tale. T'other morning she was awakened by a vehement knocking at her door, and S—— exclaiming, in a loud and solemn voice, "Adelaide, thy maid and thy dog are in a fit together!" which announcement she continued to repeat, with more and more emphasis, till my sister, quite frightened, jumped out of bed, and came upon the stairs, where she beheld the two women and children just come in from their walk; Anne, looking over the banisters with her usual peculiar air of immovable dignity, slowly ejaculating, "What a fool the girl is!" Caroline followed in her wake, wringing her hands, and alternately shrieking and howling, like all the Despairs in the universe. It was long before anything could be distinguished of articulate speech, among the fraeulein's howls and shrieks; but at length it appeared that she had taken "die Tine" out in the Regent's Park with Anne and the children, who now go out directly after their breakfast. Tiny, it seems, enjoyed the trip amazingly, and became so excited and so very much transported with what we call animal spirits in human beings that it began to run, as the fraeulein thought, away. Whereupon the fraeulein began to run after it; whereupon Tiny, when it heard this Dutch nymph heavy in hot pursuit, ran till it knocked its head against a keeper's lodge, and here, because it shook and trembled and stared, probably at its own unwonted performance, a sympathizing crowd collected, who instantly proclaimed it at first in a conwulsion fit, and then decidedly mad. Water was offered it, which it only stared at and shook its head, evidently dreading the cleansing element. A policeman coming by immediately proposed to kill it. This, however, the fraeulein objected to; and catching the bewildered quadruped in her arms, she set off home, escorted by a running mob of sympathetic curiosity. But about half-way the struggle between herself and "die Tine" became so terrific that it ended by the luckless little brute escaping from her, and precipitating itself down an area, where it remained, invoking heaven with howls, while Caroline ran howling down the street. The man-servant was then sent (twice with a wrong direction) to fetch the poor little creature up, and bring it home. At length Caroline accompanied the footman to the scene of the dog-astrophe (you wouldn't call it cat-astrophe, would you?), and "die Tine" was safely lodged in the back-yard here, where, being left alone and not bothered with human solicitude, it presently recovered as many small wits as it ever had, drank voluntarily plenty of water, and gave satisfactory signs of being quite as rational as any lady's little dog need be; but the fraeulein protests she will never take "die Tine" out walking again.

Good-bye dear. God bless you. I am pretty well, if that comports with low spirits and terrible nervous irritability.

Yours ever, FANNY.

My father desires his love to you.

HARLEY STREET, Friday, May 6th, 1842.

I did ask Emily my botanical questions, but she could tell me no more than you have done, and knew nothing special about the primroses.

You ask me a great deal in your letter about my father again taking the management of Covent Garden, and on what terms he has done so; all which I have told you in the letter I have just despatched to you....

Adelaide has repeatedly said that, as soon as she has realized three hundred a year, she will give up the whole business; and I comfort myself with that purpose of hers; for if at the conclusion of next season she will go to America for a year, she will more than realize the result she proposes to herself.... I cannot, however, help fearing that obstacles may arise to prevent her eventually fulfilling her purpose when the time comes for her retiring, according to her present expectation and wish....

I have not been out a great deal lately, We seem a little less inclined to fly at all quarry than last season; and as I never decide whether we shall accept the invitations that come or not, I am very well pleased that some of them are declined. I believe I told you that Lady Londonderry had asked us to a magnificent ball. This I was rather sorry to refuse, as a ball is quite as great a treat to me as to any "young miss" just coming out. Indeed, I think my capacity of enjoyment and excitement is greater than that of most "young misses" I see, who not only talk of being bored, but actually contrive, poor creatures! to look so in the middle of their first season.

I spent two hours with poor Lady Dacre yesterday evening.... After sitting with her, we went to a large party at Sydney Smith's, where I was very much amused and pleased, and saw numbers of people that I know and like—rather.

You ask about my walks.... They are now chiefly confined to my peregrinations in the Square, measuring the enclosed gravel walks of which I have already, since your departure, finished the "Memoires de l'Enfant du Peuple," and brought myself, mirabile dictu! to within twenty pages of the end of Mrs. Jameson's book upon Prussian school statistics....

I do not think Mr. W—— any authority upon any subject. I consider him a perfect specimen of a charlatan, and his opinions with regard to slavery and the abolitionists are particularly little worthy of credit in my mind, because he used America precisely as an actor would, to make money wherever he could by his lectures, which he puffed himself, till he was absolutely laughed at all over the country, and which were, by the accounts of those who heard them, perfectly shallow and often quite erroneous as far as regarded the information they pretended to impart. The Southern States were a lucrative field for his lecturing speculation; the Northern abolitionists were far from being sufficiently numerous or influential for it to be worth his while to conciliate them; and for these reasons I attach little value to his statement upon that or indeed any other subject.

You ask me what was my impression altogether of the Drawing-room. I have told you about my own performances there, of which, however, I dare say I exaggerated the awkwardness to myself. The whole thing wearied me, just as any other large, overcrowded assembly where I could not sit down would; and that is the chief impression it has left upon me. I believe I was flattered by the Queen's expressing any curiosity about me, but I went simply because I was told it was right that I should do so. I am always horribly shy, or nervous, or whatever that foolish sensation ought to be called, at even having to walk across a room full of people; and therefore the fuss and to-do and ceremonial of the presentation (particularly not having been very well drilled beforehand by Lady Francis, who presented me) were disagreeable to me; but I have retained no impression of the whole thing other than of a very large and fatiguing rout. We are advised to go again on the birthday, but that I am sure we shall not do; and now that the Queen—God bless her!—has perceived that I do not go upon all-fours, but am indeed, as Bottom says, "a woman like any other woman," I have no doubt her gracious Majesty is abundantly satisfied with what she saw of me.

Good-bye, dearest Harriet.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

[The enthusiastic abolitionist, Mrs. Lydia Child, had written to me, requesting me to give her for publication some portions of the journal I had kept during my residence in Georgia; and I had corresponded with my friend Mrs. Charles Sedgwick upon the subject, deciding to refuse her request. My Georgia journal never saw the light till the War of Secession was raging in America, and almost all the members of the society in which I was then living in England were strongly sympathizing with the Southern cause, when I thought it right to state what, according to my own observation and experience, that cause involved.]

HARLEY STREET, May 6th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

The carriage is waiting to take —— to the Levee, and I am waiting till it comes back to go upon my thousand and one daily errands. Adelaide, it being her last day at home, appears anxious to enjoy as much as she can of my society, and has therefore gone fast asleep in the arm-chair by the table at which I am writing, and has expressed her intention of coming out and paying visits with me this morning. She starts at eight o'clock this evening, and will reach Birmingham, I believe, about one. This arrangement, which I should think detestable, pleases her very much....

Mr. Everett, our friend, presents ——, and I thought Anne would have fallen down in a fit when she heard that the ceremony consisted in going down on one knee and kissing the Queen's hand. She did not mind my doing it the least in the world, but her indignation has been unbounded at the idea of a free-born American citizen submitting to such degradation. Poor thing! "Lucifer, son of the morning," was meek and humble to her.

We dined to-day with the Francis Egertons, to meet the young Guardsmen who are to form our corps dramatique for "The Hunchback," which, you know, we are going to act in private. To-morrow evening we go to Sydney Smith's, and on Monday down to Oatlands for a few days. I am always delighted in that place and the lovely wild country round it. Lady Francis will mount me, and I expect my old enjoyment in riding about those beautiful and well-remembered haunts with her....

There has been a grand row at the Italian Opera-House, among the managers, singers, and singeresses. Mario (Mons. Di Candia; I suppose you know who I mean) has, it seems, for some reason or other, been discharged. Madame Grisi, who sympathizes with him, refuses to uplift her voice, that being the case; the new singeress, Frezzolini, does not please at all; and the new singer, Rouconi, isn't allowed by his wife to sing with any woman but herself, and she is a perfect dose to the poor audience. Lumley, the solicitor, manager of these he and she divinities, declares that if they don't behave better he'll shut the theatre at the end of the week. In the mean time, underhand proposals have been made to Adelaide to stop the gap, and sing for a few nights for them—a sort of proposal which does not suit her, which she has scornfully rejected, and departed with her tail over her shoulder, leaving the behind scenes of Her Majesty's Theatre with their tails between their legs....

My dearest Harriet, you ask me if I do not think the spirit of martyrdom is often alloyed with self-esteem and wilfulness. God alone knows the measure in which human infirmity and human virtue unite in inducing the sacrifice of life and all that life loves for a point of opinion. I confess, for my own part, self-esteeming and wilful as I am, that to suffer bodily torture for the sake of an abstract question of what one believes to be right is an effort of courage so much above any that I am capable of that I do not feel as if I had a right to undervalue it by the smallest doubt cast upon the merit of those who have shown themselves capable of it. It may be that, without such admixture of imperfection as human nature's highest virtues are still tinged with, the confessors of every good and noble cause would have left unfulfilled their heroic task of witnessing to the truth by their death; but if indeed base alloy did mingle with their great and conscientious sacrifice, let us hope that the pangs of physical torture, the anguish of injustice and ignominy, and the rending asunder of all the ties of earthly affection, may have been some expiation for the imperfection of their most perfect deed....

Will you, my dear, be so good as to remember what a hang-nail is like? or a grain of dust in your eye? or a blister on your heel? or a corn on your toe? and then reflect what the word "torture" implies, when it meant all that the most devilish cruelty could invent. Savonarola! good gracious me! I would have canted and recanted, and called black white, and white black, and confessed, and denied! Please don't think of it! God be praised, those days are over! Not but what I edified Mr. Combe greatly once, when I was a girl, by declaring that if, by behaving well under torture, I could have vexed my tormentors very much, and if I might have had plenty of people to see how well I behaved, I thought I could have managed it; to which he replied, "Oh, weel now, Fanny, ye've just got the very spirit of a martyr in you." See if that theory of the matter answers your notion....

You ask me how I managed about diamonds to go to Court in. I hired a set, which I also wore at the fete at Apsley House; they were only a necklace and earrings, which I wore as a bandeau, stitched on scarlet velvet, and as drops in the middle of scarlet velvet bows in my hair, and my dress being white satin and point lace, trimmed with white Roman pearls, it all looked nice enough. The value of the jewels was only L700, but I am sure they gave me L7000 worth of misery; and if her Majesty had but known the anguish I endured in showing my respect for her by false appearances, the very least she could have done would have been to have bought the jewels and given them to me. Madame Devy made my Court dress, which was of such material as, you see, I can use when I play "The Hunchback" at Lady Francis's. I am ruining myself, in spite of my best endeavors to be economical; but if it is any comfort for you to know it, my conscience torments me horribly for it....

God bless you. Good-bye, dear.

Ever yours affectionately, F. A. B.

HARLEY STREET, Saturday, May 7th, 1842.

... What an immense long talk I am having with you this morning, my dear Hal! I do not believe you are wearied, however; but you will surely wonder why I did not put all these letters under one cover with the three sovereign heads on the one packet; and I am sure I don't know why I have not. But it doesn't matter much my appearing a little more or a little less absurd to you.

You ask who I shall associate with while —— and Adelaide are away.... I presume with my own writing-table and the carriage cushions, just as I do now, just as I did before, and just as I am likely to do hereafter....

It was not the presence of the Queen that affected my nerves at the Drawing-room, but my own presence, i.e., as the French say, I was "tres embarrassee de ma personne." The uncertainty of what I was to do (for Lady Francis had been exceedingly succinct in her instructions), and the certainty of a crowd of people staring all round me,—this, I think, and not the overpowering sense of a royal human being before me, was what made me nervous. Were I to go again to a Drawing-room, now that I know my lesson, I do not think I should suffer at all from any embarrassment. We are not asked to the fancy ball at the Palace, I am told, because of our omission in not attending at the Birthday Drawing-room, which, it seems, is a usual thing after a first presentation. I should like to have seen it; it will be a fine sight. In the mean time, as many of our acquaintances are going, we come in for a full share of the insanity which has taken possession of men's and women's minds about velvets, satins, brocades, etc. You enter no room that is not literally strewed with queer-looking prints of costumes; and before you can say, "How d'ye do?" you are asked which looks best together, blue and green, or pink and yellow; for, indeed, their selections are often as outrageous as these would be. I never conceived people could be so stupid at combining ideas, even upon this least abstruse of subjects; and you would think, to hear these fine ladies talk the inanity they do about their own clothes, now they are compelled to think about them for themselves, that they have no natural perceptions of even color, form, or proportion. The fact is that even their dressing-brains are turned over to their French milliners and lady's-maids. I understand Lady A—— says she will make her dress alone (exclusive of jewels) cost L1000.

Some people say this sort of mad extravagance does good; I cannot think it. It surely matters comparatively little that the insane luxury of the self-indulgent feeds the bodies of so many hundred people if at the same time the mischievous example of their folly and extravagance is demoralizing their hearts and minds and injuring a great many more.

Touching Lady A——, she gave the address of one of her milliners to Lady W——, who, complaining to her of the exorbitant prices of this superlative faiseuse, and plaintively stating that she had charged her fifty guineas for a simple morning dress, Lady A—— replied, "Ah, very likely, I dare say; I don't know anything about cheap clothes."

I do not know where Adelaide is likely to lodge in Dublin, nor do I believe she knows herself; but before this letter reaches you, you will have found out. I had almost a mind to ask her to write to me, but then I knew both how she hates it and how little time she was likely to have, so I forbore. She has left me with the pleasing expectation that any of these days her eccentric musical friend Dessauer may walk in, to be by me received, lodged, entertained, comforted, and consoled, in her absence (in which case, by-the-by, you know, I should associate with him while she is away). From parts of his letters which she has read to me, I feel very much inclined to like him, ... and I imagine I shall find him very amusing....

You ask about our getting up of "The Hunchback" at the Francis Egertons'. I forget whether you knew that Horace Wilson [my kind friend and connection, the learned Oxford Professor of Sanscrit, who to his many important acquirements and charming qualities added the accomplishments of a capital musician and first-rate amateur actor] has been seriously indisposed, and so out of health and spirits as to have declined the part of Master Walter, which he was to have taken in it. This has been a great disappointment to me, for he would have done it admirably, and as he is a person of whom I am very fond, it would have been agreeable to me to have had him among us, and I should have particularly liked him for so important a coadjutor. He failing us, however, Knowles himself has undertaken to play the part, and I shall be glad enough to do it with him again. I have a great deal of compassionate admiration for poor Knowles, who, with his undeniable dramatic genius, his bright fancy, and poetical imagination, will, I fear, end his days either in a madhouse or a poorhouse. The characters beside Sir Thomas Clifford and Modus (which you know are taken by Henry Greville and ——) are filled by a pack of young Guardsmen, with whom I dined, in order to make acquaintance, at Lady Francis's t'other day. Two of them, Captain Seymour and a son of Sir Francis Coles, are acquaintances of yours and your people.

You ask how I am amusing myself. Why, just as usual, which is well enough. I am of too troubled a nature ever to lack excitement, and have an advantage over most people in the diversion I am able to draw from very small sources.

I went last night to the French play, to see a French actress called Dejazet make her first appearance in London. The house was filled with our highest aristocracy, the stalls with women of rank and character, and the performance was, I think, one of the most impudent that I ever witnessed. Dr. Whewell [the celebrated Master of Trinity] and Mrs. Whewell were sitting near us, and left the theatre in the middle of Dejazet's first piece—I suppose from sheer disgust. She is a marvellous actress, and without exception the most brazen-faced woman I ever beheld, and that is saying a great deal. Good-bye.

Ever your affectionate FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, Saturday, May 14th, 1842. MY DEAREST HAL,

On my return from Oatlands yesterday, I found no fewer than four letters of yours, and this morning I have received a fifth.... I am most thankful for all your details about Adelaide, who, of course, will not have time to write to any of us herself.... Miss Rainsforth, her mother, and their travelling manager, Mr. Callcott, are her whole party.... Miss Rainsforth is a quiet, gentle, well-conducted, well-bred, amiable person; Mr. Callcott is a son of the composer, and a nephew of our friend Sir Augustus, and has the refinement of mind and manners which one would look for in any member of that family.... I am very sorry that Adelaide cannot see more of you, and you of her....

You ask whether it is a blessing or a curse not to provide one's own means of subsistence. I think it is a great blessing to be able and allowed to do so. But I dare say I am not a fair judge of the question, for the feeling of independence and power consequent upon earning large sums of money has very much destroyed my admiration for any other mode of support; and yet certainly my pecuniary position now would seem to most people very far preferable to my former one; but having earned money, and therefore most legitimately owned it, I never can conceive that I have any right to the money of another person.... I cannot help sometimes regretting that I did not reserve out of my former earnings at least such a yearly sum as would have covered my personal expenses; and having these notions, which impair the comfort of being maintained, I am sometimes sorry that I no longer possess my former convenient power of coining. I do not think I should feel so uncomfortable about inheriting money, though I had not worked for it; for, like any other free gift, I think I should consider that legitimately my own, just like any other present that was made me....

"The Hunchback" is to be acted at the Francis Egertons', in London, though I do not very well see how; for Bridgewater House is in process of rebuilding, and their present residence in Belgrave Square, though large enough for all social purposes, is far from being well adapted to theatrical ones; insomuch—or, rather, so little—that it is my opinion we shall be in each other's arms, laps, and pockets throughout the whole performance, which will be inconvenient, and in some of the situations slightly indecorous.

I have received this morning, my dear, your notice of the "Sonnambula," for which we are all very grateful to you. Give my love to my sister. I expected her success as a matter of course, and did not anticipate much annoyance to her from her present mode of life, ... because I have known her derive extreme amusement and diversion from circumstances and associates that would have been utterly distasteful to me. Her love and perception of the ridiculous is not only positive enjoyment, but a protection from annoyance and a mitigation of disgust. My father desires his love to you, and bids me thank you for your kindness in sending him the newspapers. With regard to that last song in the "Amina," of which you speak as of a tour de force, it is hardly so much so, in point of fact, as her execution of the whole part, which is too high for her; and though she sings it admirably in spite of that, she cannot give it the power and expression that she would if it lay more easily in her voice. This, however, is the case with other music that she sings, and the consequence is that, though she has great execution, and power, and sweetness, and finish in the use of her artificial voice, it wants the spontaneous force in high music of a naturally high organ.

Pray, did you ever pity me as much as you do Adelaide in the exercise of her profession? You certainly never expressed the same amount of compassion for my strolling destinies, nor did I ever hear you lament in this kind over the fate of John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, both of whom had impertinences addressed to them by your Dublin gallery humorists. Pray, what is the meaning of this want of feeling on your part for us others, or your excess of it for Adelaide? Is it only singing histrions who appear to you objects of compassion? Good-bye, dearest Harriet. I have to write to Emily, and to answer an American clergyman, a friend of mine, who has written to me from Paris; and moreover, being rather in want of money, I am about to endeavor to make practicable for the English stage a French piece called "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," which, with certain vicious elements, has some very striking and effective situations, and is, dramatically speaking, one of the most cleverly constructed plays I have seen for a long while. Therefore, farewell. If I could earn L200 now, I should be glad.

HARLEY STREET, Thursday, May 19th, 1842.

Thank you, my dearest Harriet, for your long account of Adelaide. She has written to my father, which I was very glad of.... Of course, I have not expected to hear from her, but have been delighted to get all your details. In her letter to my father, she says she gets on extremely well with her companions, that they are gay and merry, and that her life with them is pleasant and amuses her very much.

You do not ask me a single question about a single thing, and therefore I will just tell you how matters in general go on with me. In the first place, I heard yesterday that we are definitely to return to America in August. Some attempt was made to renew our lease of this house for a few months; but difficulties have arisen about it, and we shall probably return to the United States as soon as possible after our lease expires. I do not yet feel at all sure of the fulfilment of this intention, however; but at any rate it is one point of apparent decision indicated....

My feelings and thoughts about the return are far too numerous and various to be contained in a letter. One thing I think—I feel sure of—that it is right, and therefore I am glad we are to do it. My father, to whom this intention has not yet been mentioned, is looking wonderfully well, and appears to be enjoying his mode of life extremely. He spends his days at Covent Garden, and finds even now, when the German company are carrying on their operations there, enough to do to keep him interested and incessantly busy within those charmed and charming precincts. I am pretty well, though not in very good spirits; my life is much more quiet and regular than when you were here, and I enjoy a considerable portion of retiracy.

I have taken possession of Adelaide's little sitting-room, and inhabit it all day, and very often till tea-time in the evening. Owing to our day no longer being cut to pieces by our three-o'clock dinner (on account of Adelaide), I do not run into arrears with my visits, and generally, after discharging one or two recent debts of that sort, am able to get an hour's walk in Kensington Gardens, and come home between four and five o'clock.

We have not been out a great deal lately; we have taken, I am happy to say, to discriminating a little among our invitations, and no longer accept everything that offers.

I spent three delightful days at Oatlands, which is charming to me from its own beauty and the association of the pleasure which I enjoyed there in past years. The hawthorn was just coming into blossom, the wild heaths and moors and commons were one sheet of deep golden gorse and pale golden broom, and nothing could be lovelier than the whole aspect of the country.

The day before yesterday I dined tete-a-tete with Mademoiselle d'Este, for whom I have taken rather a fancy, and who appears to have done the same by me. Her position is a peculiar and trying one, combined with her character, which has some striking and interesting elements. She is no longer young, but has still much personal beauty, and that of an order not common in England: very dark eyes, hair, and complexion, with a freedom and liveliness of manner and play of countenance quite unusual in Englishwomen.... She lives a great deal alone, and reads a great deal, and thinks a little, and I feel interested in her. She has sacrificed the whole comfort and, it appears to me, much of the possible happiness of her life to her notion of being a princess, which, poor thing! she is not; and as she will not be satisfied with, or even accept, the position of a private gentlewoman, she is perpetually obliged to devise means of avoiding situations, which are perpetually recurring, in which her real rank, or rather no rank, is painfully brought home to her. This unfortunate pretension to princess-ship has probably interfered vitally with her happiness, in preventing her marrying, as she considers, below her birth [i.e. royally]; and as she is a very attractive woman, and, I should judge, a person of strong feelings and a warm, passionate nature, this must have been a considerable sacrifice; though in marrying, to be sure, she might only have realized another form of disappointment.

Yesterday we went to a fine dinner at Lord F——'s. He and his sisters are good-natured young people of large fortune, whose acquaintance we made at Cranford, and who are very civil and amiable in their demonstrations of good-will towards us. A son of the Duke of Leinster was at this dinner, and invited —— to go with him this morning and see Prince Albert review the Guards; which he has accordingly done.

To-night we go to Sydney Smith's, which I always enjoy exceedingly; and for next week, I am happy to say, we have at present no engagements but a dinner at the Francis Egertons', and another evening at Sydney Smith's....

I believe I have now told you pretty much all I have to tell. I am working at a translation of a French piece called "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," by which I hope to make a little money, with which I should be very glad to pay Mademoiselle Devy's bill for my spring finery.

I went to Covent Garden the other day, to see if I could find anything in the theatre wardrobe that I could make use of for "The Hunchback," and did find something; and, moreover, I think Adelaide will be able to get her dress for Helen from there, though it seemed rather a doleful daylight collection of frippery. My first dress I can make one of my own white muslin ones serve for, my last I shall get beautifully out of my Court costume; so that the three will only cost me the price of altering them for the private theatrical occasion.

We met at Oatlands Mrs. G——, the mother of the Member for Dublin, who has been preparing herself, by a twelve years' residence on the Continent, for a plunge into savagedom, by a return to her home in Connemara; and it was both comical and sad to hear her first launch out upon the merits of the dear "wild Irish," and her desire to be among and serviceable to "her people," and then, all in the same breath, declare that the mere atmosphere of England and English society was enough to kill any one with "the blue devils" who had ever been abroad; and this, mind you, is the impression British existence makes upon her in the full height of the gay London season. Fancy what she will find Connemara! She knows you and your people, and gave me a most ardent invitation to the savage Ireland where she lives. Poor woman! I pity her; her case is not absolutely unknown to me, or quite without parallel in my own experience.

Good-bye. God bless you.

Your affectionate F. A. B.

HARLEY STREET.

This letter has been begun a week; it is now Saturday, May 28th, 1842.

MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Pray give my love to Mrs. Kemble, and tell her that the Queen Dowager sent for me to go and pay her a visit yesterday. For goodness' sake, Harriet, don't misunderstand me, I am only in joke! I live among such very matter-of-fact persons that I really tremble for an hour after every piece of nonsense I utter. You must observe by this that I am in a painfully frequent state of trepidation; but what I meant by this message to Mrs. Kemble is that I have been extremely amused at her taking the trouble to write to Mrs. George Siddons to find out "all about" my going to the Drawing-room, and the rumor which had reached her of the Queen having desired to see me. George Siddons told me this himself, and it struck me as such a funny interest in my concerns on the part of Mrs. Kemble, who takes none whatever in me, that I thought I would send her word of the piece of preferment which has occurred to me since, viz. being sent for by the Queen Dowager, who desired my friend Mademoiselle d'Este to bring me to call upon her. But what wonderful gossip it does seem to be writing gravely round and round from Leamington to London, and from London to Leamington, about!

You ask me how it fares with me. Why, busily and wearily enough. We have had a perfect deluge of invitations lately, two or three thick of a night....

We are going to-night to the Duchess of Sutherland's fancy ball at Stafford House, which is to be a less formal, but not less magnificent, show than the Queen's masque.

I have not begun to rehearse "The Hunchback" yet, for I shall not require many rehearsals; but one of our party attended the first this morning, and said all the young amateurs promised very fairly, and that Henry Greville did his part extremely well, which I am very glad to hear. I have had but one visit from him since his return to town, when, of course, he discussed Adelaide's plans with great zeal. He certainly wishes very much that she should sing at the Opera, but his view of the whole matter is so different from mine ... that we are not likely to agree very well, even upon so general a point of discussion as her best professional interests.

I am much concerned at your observations about her exhaustion and hoarseness. I am so anxious that her present life should not be prolonged, so anxious that she should realize her very moderate wishes and leave it, that I cannot bear to think of any possible failure of her precious gift from over-exertion.... I think, begging your pardon, you talk some nonsense when you compare your existence, as an object of rational pity, with my sister's. All other considerations set apart, there are certain conditions of life, which are the result of peculiar states and stages of society, that are indisputably less favorable for the production of happiness, and the exercise of goodness also, than others. Among these results of over-civilization are the careers of public exhibitors of every description. In judging of their conduct or character, we may make every allowance for the peculiar dangers of their position, and the temptations of their peculiar gifts; but I confess I am amazed at any woman who, sheltered by the sacred privacy of a home, can envy the one or desire the other.

Dearest Harriet, this letter has lain so long unfinished, and I am now so engulfed in all sorts of worry, flurry, hurry, row, fuss, bustle, bother, dissipation and distraction, that it is vain hoping to add anything intelligible to it. Good-bye, dearest.

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, May 29th, 1842. DEAREST HARRIET,

This is Sunday, and, owing to my custom of neither paying visits nor going to dinner or evening parties on "the first day of the week," I look forward to a little leisure; though the repeated raps at the door already this morning remind me that it will probably be interrupted often enough to render it of little avail for any purpose of consecutive occupation....

You ask me if I think of "taking to translating." My dear Harriet, if you mean when I return to America, I shall take to nothing there but the stagnant life I led there before, which, in the total absence of any impulse from the external circumstances in which I live and the utter absence of any interest in any intellectual pursuit in those with whom I live, becomes absolutely inevitable; and so I think that, once again in my Transatlantic home, I shall neither originate nor translate anything.

I have "taken to translating" "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle" because my bill at Mademoiselle Devy's is L97, and I am determined my brains shall pay it; therefore, also, I have given my father a ballet on the subject of Pocahontas, and am preparing and altering "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle" for Covent Garden, for both which pieces of work I hope to get something towards my L97. Besides this, I have offered my "Review of Victor Hugo" to John for the British Quarterly Review, of which he is, you know, the editor—of course, telling him that it was written for an American magazine—and he has promised me sixteen guineas for it if it suits him. Besides this, I have offered Bentley the beginning of my Southern journal, merely an account of our journey down to the plantation.... Besides this, I have drawn up and sketched out, act by act, scene by scene, and almost speech by speech, a play in five acts, a sequel to the story of Kotzebue's "Stranger," which I hope to make a good work of. Thus, you see, my brains are not altogether idle; and, with all this, I am rehearsing "The Hunchback" with our amateurs, for three and four hours at a time, attending to my own dresses and Adelaide's (who will attend to nothing), returning, as usual, all the visits, and going out to dinners and parties innumerable. This, you will allow, is rather a double-quick-time sort of existence; but the after-lull of the future will be more than sufficient for rest.