Records of a Girlhood

My dearest H–,

You are the first to whom I date this new year.... I told you in one of my letters to keep the five guineas Mrs. Norton has paid you for my scribblements to pay the postage of my letters—do so....

We arrived in this place on Monday, at half-past four, having left Philadelphia at six in the morning. We have just terminated a second engagement there very successfully. If the roads and carriages are bad, and the land-traveling altogether detestable, the speed, facility, and convenience of the steamboats, by which one may really be conveyed from one end to another of this world of vast waters, are very admirable. Vast waters indeed they are! We came down the Delaware on Monday, and (open your Irish eyes!) sometimes it was six, sometimes thirteen miles wide, and never narrower than three or four miles at any part of it that we saw. So wide an expanse of fresh running water is in itself a fine object. We crossed the narrow neck of land between the Delaware and the Chesapeake on a railroad with one of Stephenson's engines....

The railroad was full of knots and dots, and jolting and jumping and bumping and thumping places. The carriages we were in held twelve people very uncomfortably. Baltimore itself, as far as I have seen it, strikes me as a large, rambling, red-brick village on the outskirts of one of our manufacturing towns, Birmingham or Manchester. It covers an immense extent of ground, but there are great gaps and vacancies in the middle of the streets, patches of gravely ground, parcels of meadow land, and large vacant spaces—which will all, no doubt, be covered with buildings in good time, for it is growing daily and hourly—but which at present give it an untidy, unfinished, straggling appearance.

While my father and I were exploring about together yesterday, we came to a print-shop, whose window exhibited an engraving of Reynolds's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and Lawrence's picture of my uncle John in Hamlet. We stopped before them, and my father looked with a good deal of emotion at these beautiful representations of his beautiful kindred, and it was a sort of sad surprise to meet them in this other world where we are wandering, aliens and strangers.

This is the newest-looking place we have yet visited, the youngest in appearance in this young world; and I have experienced to-day a disagreeable instance of its immature civilization, or at any rate its small proficiency in the elegancies of life. I wanted to ride, but although a horse was to be found, no such thing as a side-saddle could be procured at any livery-stable or saddler's in the town, so I have been obliged to give up my projected exercise.

I have been to my first rehearsal here this morning, and wretched enough all things were. I act for the first time to-morrow night Bianca, which they have everywhere chosen for my opening part; and it is a good one for that purpose, as I generally act and look well in it, and it is the sort of play that all sorts of people can comprehend. There is a foreign—I mean continental—custom here, which is pleasant. They have a table d'hôte dinner at two o'clock, and while it is going on a very tolerable band plays all manner of Italian airs and German waltzes, and as there is a fine long corridor into which my room-door opens, with a window at each end, I have a very agreeable promenade, and take my exercise to this musical accompaniment....

I have at this moment on my table a lovely nosegay—roses, geraniums, rare heaths, and perfect white camellias. Our windows are all wide open; the heat is intense, and the air that comes in at them like a sirocco. It is unusual weather for the season even here, and very unwholesome.

In a week's time we are going on to Washington, where we shall find dear Washington Irving, whom I think I shall embrace, for England's sake as well as his own. We have letters to the President, to whom we are to be presented, and to his rival, Henry Clay, and to Daniel Webster, whom I care more to know than either of the others.

After a short stay in Washington we return here, and then back to Philadelphia and New York, till the 20th of February, after which we sail for Charleston. There has been, and still exists at present, a very considerable degree of political alarm and excitement in this country, owing to the threat of the South Carolinians to secede from the Union if the tariff is not annulled, and the country is in hourly expectation of being involved in a civil war. However, the prevailing opinion among the wise seems to be that the Northern States will be obliged to give up the tariff, as the only means of preserving the Union; and if matters come to a peaceable settlement, we shall proceed in February to Charleston; if not, South Carolina will have other things to think of besides plays and play-actors. The summer we shall probably spend in Canada; the winter perhaps in Jamaica, to which place we have received a most pressing invitation from Lord Mulgrave. The end of the ensuing spring will, I trust in God, see us embarked once more for England....

We are earning money very fast, and though I think we work too incessantly and too hard, yet, as every night we do not act is a certain loss of so much out of my father's pocket, I do not like to make many objections to it, although I think it is really not unlikely to be detrimental to his own health and strength....

I spent yesterday evening with some very pleasant people here, who are like old-fashioned English folk, the Catons, Lady Wellesley's father and mother. They are just now in deep mourning for Mrs. Caton's father, the venerable Mr. Carroll, who was upward of ninety-five years old when he died, and was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. I saw a lovely picture by Lawrence of the eldest of the three beautiful sisters, the daughters of Mrs. Caton, who have all married Englishmen of rank. [The Marchioness of Wellesley, the Duchess of Leeds, and Lady Stafford. The fashion of marrying in England seems to be traditional in this family. Miss McTavish, niece of these ladies, married Mr. Charles Howard, son of the Earl of Carlisle.]

The Baltimore women are celebrated for their beauty, and I think they are the prettiest creatures I have ever seen as far as their faces go; but they are short and thin, and have no figures at all, either in height or breadth, and pinch their waists and feet most cruelly, which certainly, considering how small they are by nature, is a work of supererogation, and does not tend to produce in them a state of grace.... We act every night this week, and as we are obliged to rehearse every morning, of course I have no time for any occupations but my strictly professional ones. I do not approve of this quantity of hard work for either my father or myself, but I do not like to make any further protest upon the subject....

Good-by, dearest H–.

    I am ever your affectionate
    F. A. K.

To Mrs. Jameson

    Baltimore, January 11, 1833.

Thank you across the sea, dear Mrs. Jameson, for your letter of the 1st of November. I had been wondering, but the day before it reached me, whether you had ever received one I wrote to you on my first arrival in New York, or whether you were accusing me of neglect, ingratitude, forgetfulness, and all the turpitudes that the delay of a letter sometimes causes folk to give other folk credit for. My occupations are incessant, or rather, I should say, my occupation, for to my sorrow I have but one. 'Tis not with me now as in the fortunate days when, after six rehearsals, a piece ran, as the saying is, twenty nights, leaving me all the mornings and three evenings in the week at my own disposal. Here we rush from place to place, at each place have to drill a new set of actors, and every night to act a different play; so that my days are passed in dawdling about cold, dark stages, with blundering actors who have not even had the conscience to study the words of their parts, all the morning. All the afternoon I pin up ribbons and feathers and flowers, and sort out theatrical adornments, and all the evening I enchant audiences, prompt my fellow-mimes, and wish it had pleased Heaven to make me a cabbage in a corner of a Christian kitchen-garden in—well, say Hertfordshire, or any other county of England; I am not particular as to the precise spot.... Whenever I can I get on horseback; it is the only pleasure I have in this world; for my dancing days are drawing to a close. But I mean to ride as long as I have a hand to hold a rein, or a leg to put over a pommel. By the by, I ought to beg your pardon for the last sentence; I ought to have said a foot to put into a stirrup; for if you are not ashamed of having legs you ought to be—at least, we are in this country, and never mention, or give the slightest token of having such things, except by wearing very short petticoats, which we don't consider objectionable.... I am glad you have furbished up and completed your little room, because it is a sign you mean to stay where you are, and I like to know where to find you in my imagination.... I have just seen dear Washington Irving, and it required all my sense of decent decorum to prevent my throwing my arms round his neck, he looked so like a bit of home, England.

You will be glad to hear that we are thriving, in body and estate. We are all well, and our work is very successful. The people flock to see us, and nothing can exceed the kindness which we meet with everywhere and from everybody.... I read nothing whatever since I am in this blessed land. The only books I have accomplished getting through have been Graham's "History of North America," Knickerbocker's "History of New York," which nearly killed me with laughing; "Contarini Fleming," which is very affected and very clever; sundry cantos of Dante, sundry plays of Shakespeare, sundry American poems [which are very good], and old Captain John Smith's quaint "History of Virginia." As fast as I gather my wits together for any steady occupation, I am whisked off to some new place, and do not recover from one journey before I have to take another. The roads here shake one's body, soul, thoughts, opinions, and principles all to pieces; I assure you they are wicked roads.

Our theater, Covent Garden, is, we understand, going to the dogs. I cannot help it any more, that is certain, and feel about that as about all things that have had their day—it must go. Taglioni is like a dream, and you must not abuse Mademoiselle Mars to me. I never saw her but twice—in "L'Ecole des Vieillards" and "Valérie"—and I thought her perfection in both.... If I do not leave off, you will be blind for the next fortnight with reading this crossed letter. I wish you success most heartily in all you undertake, and am truly and faithfully yours,

    Fanny Kemble.

[Washington Irving was intimately acquainted with my father and mother, and a most kind and condescending friend to me. He often told me that when first he went to England, long before authorship or celebrity had dawned upon him, he was a member of a New York commercial house, on whose affairs he was sent to Europe. It was when he was a mere obscure young man of business in London that he had been introduced to my mother, whose cordial kindness to him in his foreign isolation seemed to have made a profound impression on him; for when I knew him, in the days of his great literary celebrity and social success, he often referred to it with the warmest expressions of gratitude. I think, of all the distinguished persons I have known, he was one of the least affected by the adulation and admiration of society. He remained quite unchanged by his extreme social popularity. Simple, unaffected, unconstrained, genial, kindly, and good, he seemed so entirely to forget his own celebrity, that one almost forgot it too in talking to him. I remember his coming, the day after my first appearance at Covent Garden, to see us, and congratulated my parents on the success of that terrible experiment. I, who was always delighted to see him, ran to fetch the pretty new watch I had received from my father the night before, and displayed its beauties with an eager desire for his admiration of them. He took it and slowly turned it about, commending its fine workmanship and pretty enamel and jewelry; then putting it to his ear, with a most mischievous look of affected surprise, he exclaimed, as one does to a child's watch, "Why, it goes, I declare!"

To my great regret and loss, I saw Mademoiselle Mars only in two parts, when, in the autumn of her beauty and powers, she played a short engagement in London. The grace, the charm, the loveliness, which she retained far into middle age, were, even in their decline, enough to justify all that her admirers said of her early incomparable fascination. Her figure had grown large and her face become round, and lost their fine outline and proportion; but the exquisite taste of her dress and graceful dignity of her deportment, and sweet radiance of her expressive countenance, were still indescribably charming; and the voice, unrivaled in its fresh melodious brilliancy, and the pure and perfect enunciation, were unimpaired, and sounded like the clear liquid utterance of a young girl of sixteen. Her Celimène and her Elmire I never had the good fortune to see, but can imagine, from her performance of the heroine in Casimir de la Vigne's capital play of "L'Ecole des Vieillards," how well she must have deserved her unrivaled reputation in those parts.

It is remarkable that one of the most striking points in Madame d'Orval was suggested by herself to the author. De la Vigne, according to the frequent usage of French authors, was reading his piece to the great actress, upon whom its success was mainly to depend, and when he came to the scene where the offended but unjustly suspicious husband recounts to his wife the details of his duel with the young duke whose attentions to her had excited his jealousy, and that when, full of the tenderest anxiety for his safety, she flies to meet him, and is repulsed by the bitter irony of his speech, beginning, "Rassurez-vous, madame, le duc n'est point blessé," Mademoiselle Mars, having listened in silence till the end of D'Orval's speech, exclaimed, "Mais, quoi! je ne dis rien, elle ne dit rien!" De la Vigne, who had made the young woman listen in speechless anguish to the bitter and unjust reproach conveyed by her husband's first words and his subsequent account of the duel, said, in some surprise at Mademoiselle Mars' suggestion, "Mais quoi encore—que peut-elle dire? que voudriez-vous qu'elle dise?" "Ah, quelquechose!" cried Mademoiselle Mars, clasping her hands in the imagined distress of the situation; "rien—deuxmots seulement. 'Ah, monsieur!' quand il dit, 'Rassurez-vous, madame, le duc n'est point blessé.'" "Eh bien! dites, dites comme cela," cried De la Vigne, amazed at all the expression the exquisite voice and face had given to the two words. And so the scene was altered, and the long recital of D'Orval was broken by the reproachful "Ah, monsieur!" of his wife, and seldom has the utterance of such an insignificant exclamation affected those who heard it so keenly. For myself, I never can forget the sudden, burning blush that spread tingling to my shoulders at all the shame and mortification and anguish conveyed in the pathetic protest of that "Ah, monsieur!" of Mademoiselle Mars.

Dr. Gueneau de Mussy, who knew her well, and used to see her very frequently in her later years of retirement from the stage, told me that he had often heard her read, among other things, the whole play of "Le Tartuffe," and that the coarse flippancy of the honest-hearted Dorinne, and the stupid stolidity of the dupe Orgon, and the vulgar, gross, sensual hypocrisy of the Tartuffe, were all rendered by her with the same incomparable truth and effect as her own famous part of the heroine of the piece, Elmire. On one of the very last occasions of her appearing before her own Parisian audience, when she had passed the limit at which it was possible for a woman of her advanced age to assume the appearance of youth, the part she was playing requiring that she should exclaim "Je suis jeune! je suis jolie!" a loud, solitary hiss protested against the assertion with bitter significance. After an instant's consternation, which held both the actors and audience silent, she added, with the exquisite grace and dignity which survived the youth and beauty to which she could no longer even pretend, "Je suis Mademoiselle Mars!" and the whole house broke out in acclamations, and rang with the applause due to what the incomparable artiste still was and the memory of all that she had been.]

    New York, February 21, 1833.

It is a long time since I have written to you, my dearest H–.... My work is incessant, … and there is no end to the breathless hurry of occupation we pass our days in. Here is already a break since I began this letter, for we are now in Philadelphia, on our way to Washington, and it is Thursday, the 3d of March.... It has been matter of serious regret to me that I have not, from the very first day of my becoming a worker for wages, looked more into the details of my earnings and spendings. I have felt this particularly lately from circumstances relative to V–'s position, which is a very sad one, from which I have been very anxious to relieve her.... All I know at present is, that since we have been here in America our earnings have already been sufficient to enable us to live in tolerably decent comfort on the Continent.... Do you know, dearest H–, that it is not impossible that I may never return to England to reside there. See it again, I will, please God to grant me life and eyes, but the state of my father's property in Covent Garden is such that it seems more than likely that he may never be able to return to England without risking the little which these last toilsome years will have enabled him to earn for the support of his own and my mother's old age. He will be compelled, in all likelihood, to settle and die abroad, as my uncle John did, by the liabilities of that ruinous possession of theirs, the first theater of London. When first my father communicated this chance to me, and expressed his determination, should the affairs of the theater remain in their present situation, to buy a small farm in Normandy, and go and live there, my heart sank terribly. This was very different from my girlish dream of a life of lonely independence among the Alps, or by the Mediterranean; and the idea of living entirely out of England seems to me now very sad for all of us.... However, there are earth and skies out of England. What does Imogen say?—

"I prithee think, there's livers out of Britain;"

and if God vouchsafe me my faculties, and I can bid farewell to this life of distasteful toil, I have visions of studies and pursuits which I think might make existence very happy in a farm in Normandy, though such might not have been my own choice.... What special inquiries did you wish me to make about General Washington? I was, when at Washington, within fifteen miles of Mount Vernon, his home and burying-place, but could not make time to go thither. I have one of his autograph letters, and if there be any indication of character in handwriting—which I hope to goodness there is not—it certainly exists in his, for a firmer, clearer, and fairer hand I never saw—an excellent, honest handwriting. His likeness confronts one at every corner here; not only at every street corner, where he lends his countenance to the frequenters of drinking-houses, but over every chimney-piece in every sitting-room. He is like the frogs of the old Egyptian plague, except that they were in the king's chamber, where he was too good a Republican ever to have been.

I am amused at your summing up your account of the restless and perturbed state of poor Ireland by saying, "After all, I believe America is the land of peace and quiet." It seems to me, who am here, that everything at this moment threatens change and disintegration in this country. It is impossible to imagine more menacing elements of discord and disunion than those which exist in the opposite and antagonistic interests of its southern and northern provinces, and the anomalous mixture of aristocratic feeling and democratic institutions.... God bless you, my dear H–. I will write to you soon again; if possible, before the breathing-time this snow-storm is giving us is over.

    Ever affectionately yours,
    F. A. K.
    New York, April 3, 1833.

My dearest H–,

… I am working very hard, what with rehearsing, acting, studying new parts, devising new dresses, and attending—which, of course, I am obliged also to do—to the claims of the society in which we are living, and my time is so full that I barely contrive to fulfill all my duties and answer all the claims made upon me.... The spring is in the sky, and in the air her soft smile and sweet breath are gladdening the world; but the process of vegetation is much later in beginning, and much more rapid in its operations when they do begin here, than with us. Though the last three days have been as hot as our midsummer weather, the trees are yet leafless and budless—as dry and unpromising-looking as they were in mid-winter; and, indeed, the transition from winter to summer is almost instantaneous here. The spring does not stand coaxing and beckoning the shy summer to the woods and fields as in our country, but while winter yet seems lord of the ascendant, and his white robes are still covering land and water, suddenly the summer looks down upon the earth from the cloudless sky, and, as by magic, the ice melts, the snow evaporates, the trees are clothed with green, the woods are full of flowers, and the whole world breaks out into a hallelujah of warmth, beauty, and blossoming like mid-July in our deliberate climate. This again lasts, as it were, but a day; the sun presently becomes so powerful that the world withers away under the intense heat, the flowers and shrubs fade, and instead of screening and refreshing the earth, are themselves scorched and parched with the glaring fierceness of the sky; the ground cracks, the watercourses dry up, the rivers shrink in their beds, and every human creature that can flies from the lowlands and the cities to go up into the north or to the mountains to find breath, shelter, and refreshment from the sultry curse. Then comes the autumn, and that is most glorious; not soft and sad as ours, but to the very threshold of winter bright, warm, lovely, and gorgeous. Two seasons remain to our earthly year, remembrances, I think, of Paradise; the spring in Italy, and autumn in America....

You ask me how I "fit in" to my American audiences? Why, very kindly indeed. At first they seemed to me rather cold, and I felt this more with regard to my father than myself, but I think they have grown to like us; I certainly have grown to like them, and their applause satisfies me amply.... I heard yesterday of one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's prints of me which was carried by a peddler beyond the Alleghany Mountains [the Alleghany Mountains then were further than the Rocky Mountains are now from the Atlantic seaboard], and bought at an egregious price by a young engineer, who with fifteen others went out there upon some railroad construction business, were bidding for it at auction in that wilderness, where they themselves were gazed at, as prodigies of strange civilization, by the half-savage inhabitants of the region. That touched and pleased me very much.... We are going to act here till the 12th of this month, when we go to Boston, where we shall remain for a month; after which we return here for a week, and then proceed to Philadelphia by the 1st of June, where we intend closing our professional labors for the summer. Thence we shall probably go to Niagara and the Canadas. My father has talked of spending a little quiet time in Rhode Island, where the weather is cool and we might recruit a little; but there does not seem much certainty about our plans at present. In the autumn we shall begin our progress toward New Orleans, where we shall probably winter, and act our way back here by the spring, when I hope and trust we shall return to England.... The book of Harriet Martineau's which you bade me read is delightful. I have not quite finished it yet, for I have scarcely any time at all for reading; for want of the habit of thinking and reading on such subjects I find the political economy a little stiff now and then, though the clearness and simplicity with which it is treated in this story are admirable. I did not know that I was supposed to be the original of Letitia.... God bless you, my dearest H–.

    I am ever your most affectionate,
    F. A. K.

"For Each and for All" was, I think, the name of the volume taken from Miss Martineau's admirable series of political economy tales, which my friend, Miss S–, sent me. The heroine of the story is a young actress, and Miss Martineau once told me that she had derived some slight suggestion of the character from me.

    New York, Friday, April 10, 1833.

My dearest H–,

… On Monday last I acted Lady Macbeth; on Tuesday, Lady Townley; on Wednesday, Belvidera; and last night, Portia, and Mary Copp in "Charles II." This is pretty hard work. To-morrow we start for Boston, which we shall reach on Sunday, and Monday our work begins there.... I think four nights a week as much as either my father or myself ought to work, and as much as we really can work profitably, the rest being money taken from our capital—i.e., our health. But in Boston we shall act for three weeks or a month every night but the Saturdays. [The days when four or five performances a week were considered a sufficient exertion for popular actors or singers are far enough in the past, and now there seems to be no limit to the capacity of such artists for earning money by the exercise of their talents. Five and six performances a week are the normal number now expected from great European stars, or rather those which great European stars expect to give and to be paid for. Their health is one invariable sacrifice to this over-work, and their artistic excellence a still more grievous one. It has been asked why artists invariably return to Europe comparatively coarse and vulgar in the style of their performances, and the result is attributed to the want of refined taste and critical judgment of the American audiences—in my opinion very unjustly, for if want of knowledge and nice perception in the public induces carelessness and indifference in performers, the grasping greed of gain and incessant over-exertion, mental and physical, for the sake of satisfying it, is a far more certain cause of artistic deterioration. During Madame Ristori's last visit to America, I went to see a morning performance of "Elizabeta d'Inglterra" by her. Arriving at the theater half an hour before the time announced for the performance, I found notices affixed to the entrances, stating that the beginning was unavoidably delayed by Madame Ristori's non-arrival. The crowd of expectant spectators occupied their seats and bore this prolonged postponement with American—i.e., unrivaled—patience, good-temper, and civility. We were encouraged by two or three pieces of information from some official personage, who from the stage assured us that the moment Madame Ristori arrived (she was coming by railroad from Baltimore) the play should begin. Then came a telegram, she was coming; then an announcement, she was come; and driving from the terminus straight to the theater, tired and harassed herself with the delay, she dressed herself and appeared before her audience, went through a part of extraordinary length and difficulty and exertion—almost, indeed, a monologue—including the intolerable fatigue and hurry of four or five entire changes of costume, and as the curtain dropped rushed off to disrobe and catch a train to New York, where she was to act the next morning, if not the evening, of that same day. I had seen Madame Ristori in this part in England, and was shocked at the great difference in the merit of her performance. Every particle of careful elaboration and fine detail of workmanship was gone; the business of the piece was hurried through, with reference, of course, only to the time in which it could be achieved; and of Madame Ristori's once fine delineation of the character, which, when I first saw it, atoned for the little merit of the piece itself, nothing remained but the broad claptrap points in the several principal situations, made coarse, and not nearly even as striking, by the absence of due preparation and working up to them, the careless rendering of everything else, and the slurring over of the finer minutiæ and more delicate indications of the whole character. It was a very sad spectacle to me.]

Besides your letter, the poor old Pacific (the ship that brought us to America) brought me something else to-day. While Washington Irving was sitting with me, a message came from the mate of the Pacific with a large box of mould for me. I had it brought in, and asking Irving if he knew what it was, "A bit of the old soil," said he; and that it was.... Washington Irving was sure to have guessed right as to my treasure, and I was not ashamed to greet it with tears before him.... He is so sensible, sound, and straightforward in his way of seeing everything, and at the same time so full of hopefulness, so simple, unaffected, true, and good, that it is a privilege to converse with him, for which one is the wiser, the happier and the better....

Here is Monday, April 15th, Boston, my dear H–. We arrived here yesterday evening, and in the course of this morning I have already received fourteen visitors, all of whom I shall have to go and waste my time with in return for their kind waste of theirs upon me.... To-morrow I begin my work with "Fazio" and go to a party afterward....

    Tuesday, 16th.

… This morning I have been to rehearsal, and out shopping, and received crowds of strangers who come and call upon us.... To-night I make my first appearance here in "Fazio," and we hear the theater will be crammed, and I am going to a party after that dreadful play; not by way of delight, but of duty, and a severe one it will be. To-morrow I act Mrs. Haller, Thursday Lady Teazle, and Friday Bianca again; Saturday is a blessed holiday.... I have finished Smith's "Virginia," which I found rather tiresome toward the end. I have finished Harriet Martineau's political-economy story, which I liked exceedingly. I am reading a small volume of Brewster's on "Natural Magic," which entertains me very much; but I am dreadfully cramped for time, and my poor mind goes like a half-tended garden, which every now and then makes me feel sad.

You would have been pleased, dear H–, if you had heard Washington Irving's answer to me the other day when, in talking with him of my profession and my distaste for it, I complained of the little leisure it left me for study and improving myself, for reading, writing, and the occupations that were congenial to me. "Well," he said, "you are living, you are seeing men and things, you are seeing the world, you are acquiring materials and heaping together observations and experience and wisdom, and by and by, when with fame you have acquired independence and retire from these labors, you will begin another and a brighter course with matured powers. I know of no one whose life has such a promise in it as yours." Oh! H–, I almost felt hopeful while he spoke so to me....

[Alas! my kind friend was no prophet. Not many months after, sitting by him at a dinner-party in New York, he said to me, "So I hear you are engaged to be married, and you are going to settle in this country. Well, you will be told that this country is like your own, and that living in it is like living in England: but do not believe it; it is no such thing, it is nothing of the sort; which need not prevent your being very happy here if you make the best of things as you find them. Above all, whatever you do, don't become a creaking door." "What's that?" asked I, laughing. He then told me that his friend Leslie, the painter, who was, I believe, like his contemporary and charming rival artist, Gilbert Stewart Newton, an American by birth, had married an Englishwoman, whom he had brought out to America, "but who," said Irving, "worried and tormented his and her own life out with ceaseless complaints and comparisons, and was such a nuisance that I used to call her 'the creaking door.'"]

Good-by, and God bless you, dearest H–.

    I am affectionately yours,
    Fanny Kemble.
    Boston, Sunday, April 21, 1833.