Records of a Girlhood

Dear Mrs. Jameson,

There lies in my desk, and has lain, I am ashamed to say, for a long time now, an unanswered letter of yours, which smites my conscience every time I open that useful receptacle (desk, not conscience), where it has, I am sorry to say, many companions in its own predicament. My time is like running water, and the quickest, but the rapids of Niagara, that ever ran, I think; and every hour, as it flies away, is filled with so much that must be done, letting alone so much that I would wish to do, that I am fairly out of breath, and feel as if I were flying myself in a whirling high wind, and if ever I stop for a moment, shan't be surprised to find that I have gone crazy. I think I should like to spend a few days entirely alone in a dark room, secluded from every sight and sound, for my senses are almost worn out, and my sense exhausted, with looking, hearing, feeling, going, doing, being, and suffering. Our work is incessant; we never remain a month in any one place, and we are scarce off our knees from putting things into drawers than we are down on them again to take them out and put them all back into trunks. My health has not suffered hitherto from this constant exertion, but I am occasionally oppressed with the dreadful unquietness of our life, and long for a few moments' rest of body and of mind.

This is our first visit to this place, and I am enchanted with it. As a town, it bears more resemblance to an English city than any we have yet seen; the houses are built more in our own fashion, and there is a beautiful walk called the Common, the features of which strongly resemble the view over the Green Park just by Constitution Hill. The people here take more kindly to us than they have done even elsewhere, and it is delightful to act to audiences who appear so pleasantly pleased with us....

Only think! a book was sent to me from Philadelphia the other day which proved to be the "Diary of an Ennuyée." I have no idea who it came from, or who made so good a guess at that old predilection of mine. I fell to forthwith—for that book has always had a most powerful charm for me—and read, and read on, though I have read it many a time through before, and though I had been acting Bianca, and my supper was on my plate before me.

I heard the other day mention of another work of yours, since the Shakespeare book. If you are not weary of writing to me, with such long intervals between your question and my reply, tell me something of this new work in your next letter.

Our plans for the summer are yet unsettled.... I was much disappointed on arriving here to find that Dr. Channing has left Boston for the South. His health is completely broken, and the bleak and bitter east wind that blows perpetually here is a formidable enemy to life, even in stronger frames than his....

The hotel in which we are lodging here is immediately opposite the box-office, and it is a matter of some agreeable edification to me to see the crowds gathering round the doors for hours before they open, and then rushing in, to the imminent peril of life and limb, pushing and pommeling and belaboring one another like madmen. Some of the lower class of purchasers, inspired by the thrifty desire for gain said to be a New England characteristic, sell these tickets, which they buy at the box-office price, at an enormous advance, and smear their clothes with treacle and sugar and other abominations, to secure, from the fear of their contact of all decently-clad competitors, freer access to the box-keeper. To prevent, if possible, these malpractices, and secure, to ourselves and the managers of the theater any such surplus profit as may be honestly come by, the proprietors have determined to put the boxes up to auction and sell the tickets to the highest bidders. It was rather barbarous of me, I think, upon reflection, to stand at the window while all this riot was going on, laughing at the fun; for not a wretch found his way in that did not come out rubbing his back or his elbow, or showing some grievous damage done to his garments. The opposite window of my room looks out upon a churchyard and a burial-ground; the reflections suggested by the contrast between the two prospects are not otherwise than edifying.... Good-by; God bless you!

    I am ever yours, most truly,
    Fanny Kemble.
    New York, Friday, May 24, 1833.

My dearest H–,

I received your last letter, dated the 22d March, a week ago, when I was in Boston, which we have left, after a stay of five weeks, to return here, where we arrived a few days ago....

Boston is one of the pleasantest towns imaginable. It is built upon three hills, which give it a singular, picturesque appearance, and I suppose suggested the name of Tremonte Street, and the Tremonte Hotel, which we inhabited. The houses are many of them of fine granite, and have an air of wealth and solidity unlike anything we have seen elsewhere in this country. Many of the streets are planted with trees, chiefly fine horse-chestnuts, which were in full leaf and blossom when we came away, and which harmonize beautifully with the gray color and solid handsome style of the houses. They have a fine piece of ground, like a park, in one part of the town, which, together with the houses round it, reminded me a good deal of the Green Park and the walk at the back of Arlington Street.

[The addition of the new part of Boston, stretching beyond the Common and the public Gardens, has added immensely to the beauty of the city, and the variety of the buildings and alternate views at the end of the vistas of the fine streets, looking toward Dorchester Heights, and those ending in the blue waters of the bay and Charles River, not unfrequently reminded me both of Florence and Venice, under a sky as rich, and more pellucid, than that of Italy.]

The country all round the neighborhood of Boston is charming. The rides I took in every direction were lovely, and during the last fortnight of our stay nothing could exceed the exquisite brightness of the spring weather. The apple trees were all in bloom, the lilacs in flower, and everything as sweet, fresh, and enchanting as possible.... How I wish you could have seen the glorious Hudson with me the other day, now that the woods on its banks are dark with the shade of their thick and varied foliage! How you would have rejoiced in the beautiful and noble river scenery! This is "a brave new world," more ways than one, and we are every way bound to like it, for our labor has been most amply rewarded in its most important result, money; and the universal kindness which has everywhere met us ever since we first came to this country ought to repay us even for the pain and sorrow of leaving England. We are to remain here about ten days longer, and then proceed to Philadelphia, where we shall stay a fortnight, and then we start for cool and Canada, taking the Hudson, Trenton Falls, and Niagara on our way; act in Montreal and Quebec for a short time, and then adjourn, I hope, to Newport in Rhode Island, to rest and recruit till we begin our autumnal work.... And now I have done grumbling at "the state of life into which it has pleased God to call me." My dear H–, I began this letter yesterday, and am this moment returned from a long visit to Dr. Channing.... The outward man of the eloquent preacher and teacher is rather insignificant, and produces no impression at first sight of unusual intellectual supremacy; and though his eyes and forehead are fine, they did not seem to me to do justice to the mind expressed in his writings; for though Shakespeare says,

"There is no art to read the mind's construction in the face,"

I think the mental qualities are more often detected there than the moral ones. He is short and slight in figure, and looks, as indeed he is, extremely delicate, an habitual invalid; his eyes, which are gray, are well and deeply set, and the brow and forehead fine, though not, perhaps, as striking as I had expected. The rest of the face has no peculiar character, and is rather plain.

He talked to me a great deal about the stage, acting, the dramatic art; and, professing to know nothing about it, maintained some theories which proved he did not, indeed, know much. As far as knowledge of the stage and acting goes, of course this was not surprising, his studies, observation, and experience certainly not having lain in that direction; indeed, if they had, he might not have shown more comprehension of the subject. Sir Thomas Lawrence is the only unprofessional person I ever heard speak upon it whose critical opinion and judgment seemed to me worth anything; but it appeared to me that, in the course of the discussion, some of Dr. Channing's opinions (with all respect be it spoken) betrayed an ignorance of human nature itself, upon which, after all, dramatic literature and dramatic representation are founded. He asked me if at the present day, and in our present state of civilization, such a character as Juliet could be imagined possible; so that I believe I was a little disappointed, in spite of his greatness, his goodness, and my reverence and admiration for him.

I went to call on him with a Miss Sedgwick, a person of considerable literary reputation here, and whose name and books you may perhaps have heard of. One of them, "Hope Leslie," is, I think, known in England. Though she is a good deal older than myself, I have formed a great friendship with her; she is excellent, as well as very clever and charming. She knows Dr. Channing intimately, and is a member of his church....

It is now Monday morning, dear H–, and I am presently going to set off to the races. American races! only think of that! I who never saw but one in my own country, and was totally uninterested by it! But I am going chiefly to please a nice little woman who is just married, and whose husband has several horses that are to run, so perhaps I shall find these more exciting than I did the races I attended at home. They are very little supported or resorted to here; the religious and respectable part of the community disapprove of them. There is a general prejudice against them, and they are even preached against; so that they are entirely in the hands of a few gentlemen of fortune, who keep them up, partly for their amusement, and partly with a view to the improvement of the breed of horses in this country. The running is said to be very good, the show is nothing.... However, I am going, and therefore you may look hereafter to hear—what you shall hear now—because I'm just come back, and am happy to inform you that my friend's husband's horse won the race. The stake was only £2000—no very great matter—but still enough to make the result interesting, if not important; though I think the hazard we ran of our lives at starting was the most exciting part of the day.

The racecourse is on Long Island, and, to reach it, one crosses the arm of the sea that divides that strip of land from New York in a steam ferryboat. All these transports were so thronged to-day with carriages, horses, and a self-governed, enlightened, and very free people, that in all my life I never saw anything so frightful as the confusion of the embarking and disembarking....

Dr. Channing was talking to me the other day of Harriet Martineau's writings, and has sent me "Ella of Garvelock," recommending it highly as an interesting story, though he does not seem to think Miss Martineau's principles of political economy sufficiently sound to make her works as useful upon that subject, or to do all the good which she herself evidently hopes to produce by these tales....

God bless you, dear friend! I am ever most truly yours,

    F. A. K.
    New York, Sunday, June 24, 1833.

Great was my surprise, dear Mrs. Jameson, to find accompanying your letter of April 9th a card of Mr. Jameson's. My father called upon him almost immediately, but had not the good fortune to find him at home, and I presume he is now gone on to Canada, whither we are ourselves proceeding, and where we may very possibly meet him. Our spring engagements are all over, and we are now going away from the hot weather to Niagara, into which, if all tales be true, I expect to fall headlong, with sheer surprise and admiration; after which I shall accompany my father to Montreal and Quebec, where we shall resume our professional labors....

I am very sorry you have been ill. You do not speak of your eyes, from which I argue that you were not painfully conscious of the existence of those valuable luminaries at the time you wrote....

The accounts, public and private, that we receive of the state of England are not encouraging, and the trouble seems such as neither Tory, Whig, nor even Radical, can cure. You talk of bringing out a colony to this country; bring out half of England, and those who starve at home will have to eat, and to spare, here. How I do wish our poor laboring people could be made to know how easily they might exchange their condition for a better one!

I wish you could have heard what my father was reading to us this morning out of Stewart's "North America;" not Utopian dreams of some imaginary land of plenty and fertility, but sober statements of authentic fact, telling of the existence of unnumbered leagues of the richest soil that ever rewarded human industry an hundredfold; wide tracts of lovely wilderness, covered with luxuriant pasture, and adorned profusely with the most beautiful wild flowers; great forests of giant timber, and endless rolling prairies of virgin earth, untouched by ax or plow; a world of unrivaled beauty and fertility, untenanted and empty, waiting to receive the over-brimming populations of the crowded lands of Europe, and to repay their labor with every species of abundance. It is strange how slow those old-world, weary, working folk have hitherto been to avail themselves of God's provision for them here.... You tell me you are working hard, but you do not say at what. Innumerable are the questions I have been asked about you, and a Philadelphian gentleman, a very intelligent and clever person, who is a large bookseller and publisher here, bade me tell you that you and your works were as much esteemed and delighted in in America as in your own country. He was so enthusiastic about you that I think he would willingly go over to England for the sole purpose of making your acquaintance.

[It is a pity that the American law on the subject of copyright should have rendered Mr. Carey's admiration of my friend and her works so barren of any useful result to her. Any tolerably just equivalent for the republication of her books in America would have added materially to the hardly earned gains of her laborious literary life.]

I am already half moulded into my new circumstances and surroundings; and though England will always be home to my heart, it may be that this country will become my abiding-place; but if you come out to Canada we shall meet on this side of the Atlantic instead of the other....

    Believe me ever yours truly,
    F. A. K.

To Miss Fitzhugh

    Montreal, July 24, 1833.

My dearest Emily,

Within the last fortnight we have progressed, as we say in this country, over about nine hundred and fifty miles of land and water. We have gone up the Hudson, seen Trenton, the most beautiful, and Niagara, the most awful, of waterfalls. As for Niagara, words cannot describe it, nor can any imagination, I think, suggest even an approximate idea of its terrible loveliness. I feel half crazy whenever I think of it. I went three times under the sheet of water; once I had a guide as far as the entrance, and twice I went under entirely alone. If you fancy the sea pouring down from the moon, you still have no idea of this glorious huge heap of tumbling waters. It is worth crossing the Atlantic to see it.... As I stood upon the brink of the abyss when I first saw it, the impulse to jump down seemed all but an irresistible necessity, and but for the strong arm that held mine fast I think I might very well have taken the same direction as the huge green glassy mountain of water that was pouring itself headlong into—what no eye can penetrate. It literally seemed as if everything was going down there, and one must go along with everything. The chasm into which the cataract falls is hidden by dense masses of snowy foam and spray, rising in an everlasting creation of cloud up into the sky, and vailing the frantic fury of the caldron below, where the waves churn and tread each other underfoot in the rocky abyss that receives them, in darkness which the sun's rays cannot penetrate nor the strongest wind for a moment disperse; a mystery, of which its thousand voices reveal nothing. It is nonsense writing about it—seeing and hearing are certainly, in this case, the only reasons for believing. I think it would be delightful to pass one's life by this wonderful creature's side, and quite pleasant to die and be buried in its bosom....

We left that wonderful place a few days ago, steamed across Lake Ontario, came down the rapids of the St. Lawrence in an open boat, sang the Canadian boat song, and are now safe and sound, only half roasted, in his Majesty's dominions. Of all that we have seen, Niagara is, of course, the old object beyond all others, but we were delighted with the softness and beauty of a great deal of the scenery that we saw in traversing the State of New York—one of twenty States, not the largest of the twenty, but large enough to hold England in its lap.

The rapids of the St. Lawrence, though, I believe, really rather dangerous to descend, have so little appearance of peril that I derived none of the excitement I had expected, and which a little danger always produces, from going through them. Instead of shooting down long sheets of rushing water, which was what I expected, we were tossed and tumbled and shaken up and down, in the midst of a dozen conflicting currents and eddies, which break the whole surface of the river into short pitching waves, and dance about in frantic white whirligigs, like the circles of the bad nuns' ghosts, in Meyerbeer's devilish Opera....

Good-by, my dearest Emily. I am always affectionately yours,

    F. A. K.
    Steamboat St. Patrick, on the St. Lawrence, August 17, 1833.

My dearest H–,

There is lying in my desk an unfinished letter to you, begun about a week ago, which is pausing for want of an opportunity to go on with it; but here I am, a prisoner in a steamboat, destined to pass the next four and twenty hours on the broad bosom of the St. Lawrence, and what can I do better than begin a fresh chapter to you, leaving the one already begun to be finished on my next holiday. My holidays, indeed, are far from leisure time, for when I have nothing to do I have all the more to see; so that I am as busy and more weary than if I were working much harder.

We have been staying for the last fortnight in Quebec, and are now on our way back to Montreal, where we shall act a night or two, and then return to the United States, to New York and Boston.... The greater part of these poems of Tennyson's which you have sent me we read together. The greater part of them are very beautiful. He seems to me to possess in a higher degree than any English poet, except, perhaps, Keats, the power of writing pictures. "The Miller's Daughter," "The Lady of Shalott," and even the shorter poems, "Mariana," "Eleänore," are full of exquisite form and color; if he had but the mechanical knowledge of the art, I am convinced he would have been a great painter. There are but one or two things in the volume which I don't like. "The little room with the two little white sofas," I hate, though I can fancy perfectly well both the room and his feeling about it; but that sort of thing does not make good poetry, and lends itself temptingly to the making of good burlesque.

I have much to tell you, for in the last two months I have seen marvelous much. I have seen Niagara. I wish you had been there to see it with me. However, Niagara will not cease falling; and you may, perhaps, at some future time, visit this country. You must not expect any description of Niagara from me, because it is quite unspeakable, and, moreover, if it were not, it would still be quite unimaginable. The circumstances under which I saw it I can tell you, but of the great cataract itself, what can be told except that it is water?

I confess the sight of it reminded me, with additional admiration, of Sir Charles Bagot's daring denial of its existence; having failed to make his pilgrimage thither during his stay in the United States, he declared on his return to England that he had never been able to find it, that he didn't believe there was any such thing, and that it was nothing but a bragging boast of the Americans.

At Albany, our first resting-place from New York, we had been joined by Mr. Trelawney, who had been introduced to me in New York, and turned out to be the well-known friend of Byron and Shelley, and author of "The Adventures of a Younger Son," which is, indeed, said to be the story of his own life.

[His wild career of sea-adventure with De Ruyter, who was supposed to have left him at his death all his share of the results of their semi-buccaneering exploits, his friendship and fellowship with Byron and Shelley, the funeral obsequies he bestowed upon the latter on the shore of the Gulf of Spezzia, his companionship in the mountains of Greece with the patriot chief Odysseus, and his marriage to that chief's sister, are all circumstances given with more or less detail in his book, which was Englished for him by Mary Shelley, the poet's widow, who was much attached to him; Trelawney himself being quite incapable of any literary effort which required a knowledge of common spelling.... He was strikingly handsome when first I knew him, with a countenance habitually serene, and occasionally sweet in its expression, but sometimes savage with the fierceness of a wild beast. His speech and movements were slow and indolently gentle, his voice very low and musical, and his utterance deliberate and rather hesitating; he was very tall, and powerfully made, and altogether looked like the hero of a wild life of adventure, such as his had been. I hear he is still alive, a very wonderful-looking old man, who sat to Millais for his picture, exhibited in 1874, of the "Old Sea-Captain."]

We all liked him so well that my father invited him to join our party, and travel with us to Niagara, whither he was bound as well as ourselves. He had seen it before, and though almost all the wonders of the world are familiar to him, he said it was the only one that he cared much to see again.

We reached Queenstown on the Niagara River, below the falls, at about twelve o'clock, and had three more miles to drive to reach them. The day was serenely bright and warm, without a cloud in the sky, or a shade in the earth, or a breath in the air. We were in an open carriage, and I felt almost nervously oppressed with the expectation of what we were presently to see. We stopped the carriage occasionally to listen for the giant's roaring, but the sound did not reach us until, within three miles over the thick woods which skirted the river, we saw a vapory silver cloud rising into the blue sky. It was the spray, the breath of the toiling waters ascending to heaven. When we reached what is called the Niagara House, a large tavern by the roadside, I sprang out of the carriage and ran through the house, down flights of steps cut in the rock, and along a path skirted with low thickets, through the boughs of which I saw the rapids running a race with me, as it seemed, and hardly faster than I did. Then there was a broad, flashing sea of furious foam, a deafening rush and roar, through which I heard Mr. Trelawney, who was following me, shout, "Go on, go on; don't stop!" I reached an open floor of broad, flat rock, over which the water was pouring. Trelawney seized me by the arm, and all but carried me to the very brink; my feet were in the water and on the edge of the precipice, and then I looked down. I could not speak, and I could hardly breathe; I felt as if I had an iron band across my breast. I watched the green, glassy, swollen heaps go plunging down, down, down; each mountainous mass of water, as it reached the dreadful brink, recoiling, as in horror, from the abyss; and after rearing backward in helpless terror, as it were, hurling itself down to be shattered in the inevitable doom over which eternal clouds of foam and spray spread an impenetrable curtain. The mysterious chasm, with its uproar of voices, seemed like the watery mouth of hell. I looked and listened till the wild excitement of the scene took such possession of me that, but for the strong arm that held me back, I really think I should have let myself slide down into the gulf. It was long before I could utter, and as I began to draw my breath I could only gasp out, "O God! O God!" No words can describe either the scene itself, or its effect upon me.

We staid three days at Niagara, the greater part of which I spent by the water, under the water, on the water, and more than half in the water. Wherever foot could stand I stood, and wherever foot could go I went. I crept, clung, hung, and waded; I lay upon the rocks, upon the very edge of the boiling caldron, and I stood alone under the huge arch over which the water pours with the whole mass of it, thundering over my rocky ceiling, and falling down before me like an immeasurable curtain, the noonday sun looking like a pale spot, a white wafer, through the dense thickness. Drenched through, and almost blown from my slippery footing by the whirling gusts that rush under the fall, with my feet naked for better safety, grasping the shale broken from the precipice against which I pressed myself, my delight was so intense that I really could hardly bear to come away.

The rock over which the rapids run is already scooped and hollowed out to a great extent by the action of the water; the edge of the precipice, too, is constantly crumbling and breaking off under the spurn of its downward leap. At the very brink the rock is not much more than two feet thick, and when I stood under it and thought of the enormous mass of water rushing over and pouring from it, it did not seem at all improbable that at any moment the roof might give way, the rock break off fifteen or twenty feet, and the whole huge cataract, retreating back, leave a still wider basin for its floods to pour themselves into. You must come and see it before you die, dear H–.