Dearest H–,

I received my book and your letter very safely about a week ago, and would have written to say so sooner, but have been much occupied with one thing and another that has prevented me. So you are beaten, vieilles perukes that you are! not by one or two, but by forty-one; and your bones are all the likelier to ache, and I am not at all sorry. Think of Brougham going down on his marrow-bones (there can be none in them, though), and adjuring the Lords, con quella voce! e quel viso! to pass the Bill, like good boys, and remember the schoolmaster, who surely, when he is at home, cannot be said to be abroad. A good coup de théâtre is not an easy thing, and requires a good deal of tact and skill. I cannot help thinking there must have been something grotesque in this performance of Brougham's, as when Liston turned tragedian and recited Collins's "Ode to the Passions" in a green coat and top boots. The excitement, however, was tremendous; the House thronged to suffocation; as many people crammed into impossible space as the angels in the famous Needle-point controversy. Lady Glengall declares that she sat for four hours on an iron bar. I think this universal political effervescence has got into my head. And what will you do now? You cannot create forty-one Peers; the whole Book of Genesis affords no precedent. I suppose Parliament will be prorogued, ministers will go out, a "cloth of gold" and "cloth of frieze" Government, with Brougham and Wellington brought together into it, will be cobbled, and a new Bill, which will set the teeth of the Lords so badly on edge, will be concocted, which the people will accept rather than nothing, if they are taken in the right way. That, I suppose, is what you Whigs will do; for an adverse majority of forty-one must be turned somehow or other, as it can hardly be gone straight at by folks who mean to keep on the box, or hold the reins, or carry the coach to the end of the journey....

I do not know at all how I should like to live in a palace; I am furiously fond of magnificence and splendor, and not unreasonably, seeing that I was born in a palace, with a sapphire ceiling hung with golden lamps, and velvet floors all embroidered with sweet-smelling, lovely-colored flowers, and walls of veined marble and precious, sparkling stones. I almost doubt if any mere royal palace would be good enough for me, or answer my turn. I should like all the people in the world to be as beautiful as angels, and go about crowned with glory and clothed with light (dear me, how very different they are!); but failing all that I should like in the way of enormously beautiful things, I pick up and treasure like a baby all the little broken bits of splendor and sumptuousness, and thank Heaven that their number and gradations are infinite, from the rainbow that the sun spans the heavens with, to the fine, small jewel drawn from the bowels of the earth to glitter on a lady's neck....

My dearest H–, I wish I were with you with all my heart, but, as if to diminish my regret by putting the thing still further beyond the region of possibility, I act next Monday the 17th, instead of the 24th. (They say "a miss is as good as a mile;" why does it always seem so much worse, then?) I begin with Belvidera, and have already begun my cares and woes and tribulations about lilac satins and silver tissues, etc., etc. Young is engaged with us, and plays Pierre, and my father Giaffir, which will be very dreadful for me; I do not know how I shall be able to bear all his wretchedness as well as my own. To be a good politician one ought to have, as it were, only one eye for truth; I do not at all mean to be single-eyed in the good sense of the word, but to be incapable of seeing more than one side of every question: one sees a part so much more strongly when one does not see the whole of a matter, and though a statesman may need a hundred eyes, I maintain that a party politician is the better for having only one. Restricted vision is good for work, too; people who see far and wide can seldom be very hopeful, I should think, and hope is the very essence of working courage. The matter in hand should always, if possible, be the great matter to those who have to carry it through, and though broad brains may be the best for conceiving, narrow ones are, perhaps, the best for working with.

Thank you for your quotation from Sir Humphry Davy; it did me good, and even made me better for five minutes; and your Irish letter, which interested me extremely. "Walking the world." What a sad and touching expression; and how well it describes a broken and desponding spirit! And yet what else are we all doing, in soul if not in body? Is not that solitary, wandering feeling the very essence of our existence here?

You ask if the interests of the theater and mine are not identical? No, I think not. The management seems to me like our Governments for some time past, to be actuated by mere considerations of temporary expediency; that which serves a momentary purpose is all they consider. But it stands to reason that if they make me play parts in which I must fail, my London popularity must decrease, and with it my provincial profits; and that, of course, is a serious thing. In short, dear H–, where success means bread and butter, failure means dry bread, or none; and I hate the last, I believe, less than the first, though, as I never tried starvation, perhaps dry bread is nicer....

The excitement about the Bill is rising instead of subsiding. The shops are all shut, and the people meeting in every direction; the windows of Apsley House have been smashed, and Wellington's statue (the Achilles in the Park) pelted and threatened to be pulled down. They say that Nottingham and Belvoir Castles are burnt down. All this is bad, and bodes, I fear, worse. Good-by, dear.

Your affectionate
F. A. K.

Thursday, August 22d.—I read some of "Cibber's Lives." I should like to read a well-written French life of Alin Chartier, Louis XI.'s ugly secretary, whose mouth Queen Margaret kissed while he was sleeping, "parce qu'elle avait dit de si belles choses." In the life, or rather the death, of Sackville, he notes his sitting up till eleven at night as a manifest waste of human existence. It is near two in the morning as I am now writing, but people's notions change as to time as well as other things. We don't dine at twelve any more. Macdonald, the sculptor, dined with us; I like him for dear Scotland's sake, and the blessed time I passed there. After the gentlemen came up into the drawing-room, Nourrit, the great French tenor, sang delightfully for us; Adelaide sang and played, and Nourrit made her try a charming duet from the "Dame Blanche," which I accompanied, and was frightened to death for self and sister. Macdonald wants to make a statue of me in "The Grecian Daughter," at the moment of veiling the face: he is right. An interval of some time elapsed, in which I did not keep my journal regularly. I had a long visit from my friend Miss S–. The lawsuit about the theater continued, the affairs of the concern becoming more and more involved in difficulties every day; and my father, worried almost to death with anxiety, vexation, and hard work, had a serious illness.

Saturday, November 25th.—My father was not quite so well this morning. I took Dr. Wilson home in the carriage; he talked a great deal about this horrible burking business (a series of atrocious murders committed by two wretches of the names of Burk and Bishop, for the purpose of obtaining, for the corpses of their victims, the price paid by the Edinburgh surgeons for subjects for dissection; the mode of death inflicted by these men came to be designated by the name of the more hardened murderer as burking).

I called at Fozzard's for the boys, and set them down at Angelo's (a famous school for fencing, boxing, and single-stick, where my brothers took lessons in those polite exercises). In the evening, at the theater, dear Charles Young played "The Stranger" for the last time; the house was very full, and I played very ill. After the play Young was enthusiastically called for. I have finished "Tennant's Tour in Greece," which I rather liked. I have been reading "Bonaparte's Letters to Joséphine;" the vague and doubting spirit which once or twice throws its wavering shadow across his thoughts, startles one in contrast with the habitual tone of the mind, which assuredly ne doubtait de rien, especially of what his own power of will could accomplish. The affection he expresses for his wife is sometimes almost poetical from its intensity, in spite of the grossness of his language. He seems to have believed in nothing but volition, and that volition is in itself, perhaps, a mere form of faith. It's a dangerous worship, for the devil in that shape does obey so long and so well before he claims his due; so much is achieved precisely by that belief in what can be achieved; the last round of the ladder, somehow or other, however, always seems to break down at last, and then I doubt if the people who fall from it can all declare, as Holcroft did when he fell from his horse, and, as his surgeon assured him, broke his ribs, that he was positive he had not, because in falling he had exerted the energy of will, and could not therefore have broken his bones.

Sunday, 29th.—The great good fortune of a good sermon at church. After church Mrs. Jameson, John Mason, and Mr. Loudham called; the latter said he had good news about that fatal theater of ours, for that Mr. Harris seemed to be inclined to come into some accommodation, and so perhaps this cancer of a Chancery suit may stop eating our lives away. Oh dear! I am afraid this is too good news to be true. I went to my father's room and sat by him for a long time, and talked about the horse I had bought for him; and there he lies in his bed, and God knows when he will even be able to walk again.

Monday, 30th.—I went to rehearsal. It seems that the managers and proprietors (of course not my poor father) had summoned a meeting of all the actors to try and induce them to accept for the present a reduced rate of salary till the theater can be in some measure relieved of its most pressing difficulties. I knew nothing of this, and, finding them all very solemnly assembled in the greenroom, asked them cheerfully why they were all there, which must have struck them strangely enough. I dare say they do not know how little I know, or wish to know, about this disastrous concern. On my return home, I heard that Dr. Watson had seen my father, and requested that Dr. Wilson might be sent for. They fear inflammation of the lungs; he has gone to the very limit of his tether, for had he continued fagging a night or two longer the effects might have been fatal. Poor, poor father!…

Lady Francis and Mrs. Sullivan called in the afternoon; I was feeling miserable, and exhausted with my rehearsal. In the evening I helped my mother to move all the furniture, which I think is nothing in the world but a restless indication of her anxiety about my father; it is the fourth time since she same back from the country.

Tuesday, December 1st.– … It seems that in the arrangement, whatever it may be, which has taken place between the actors and the management, Mr. Harley and Mr. Egerton are the only ones who have declined the proposed accommodation. Young has behaved like an angel, offering to play for nothing till Christmas; how kind and liberal he is! Mr. Abbott, Mr. Duraset, Mr. Ward, and all the others, have been as considerate and generous as possible. But the thing is doomed, and will go to the ground, in spite of every effort that can be made to stave the ruin off.

I was greeted this morning, when I came down to breakfast, with a question that surprised and amused we very much. "Pray, Fanny," said John, "did you ever thank Mr. Bacon (one of the editors of the Times) for his book (the "Life of Francis I." which Mr. Bacon had been kind enough to send me); for here is a very abusive critique in to-day's Times of the play last night." "Well," thought I, "that's a comical sequitur, and a fine estimate of criticism;" but the conclusion was droller still. I had not forgotten to thank the friendly author for his book, nor had he written the article in question; but it seems a young gentleman, much in love with Miss Phillips (a promising and very handsome young actress at Drury Lane), had found pulling me to pieces the easiest way of showing his admiration for her. That is not a very exalted style of criticism either, but it is just as well that one should occasionally know what the praise and blame one receives may be worth. It seems that when it was determined that Miss Sheriff should come out, Mr. Welsh, whose pupil she was, made a great feast, and invited two-and-twenty gentlemen connected with the press to a private hearing of her.... In the evening, we all went to hear her, being every way much interested in her success. John and Henry went into the front of the house; my mother, Dr. Moore (the Rev. Dr. Moore, a great friend of my father and mother's), and myself, went up to our own box. The house was crammed, the pit one black, crowded mass. Poor child! I turned as cold as ice as the symphony of "Fair Aurora" (the opera was "Artaxerxes") began, and she came forward with Mr. Wilson. The bravos, the clapping, the noise, the great sound of popular excitement overpowering in all its manifestations; and the contrast between the sense of power conveyed by the acclamations of a great concourse of people, and the weakness of the individual object of that demonstration, gave me the strangest sensation when I remembered my own experience, which I had not seen. When I saw the thousands of eyes of that crowded pitful of men, and heard their stormy acclamations, and then looked at the fragile, helpless, pretty young creature standing before them trembling with terror, and all woman's fear and shame in such an unnatural position, I more than ever marveled how I, or any woman, could ever have ventured on so terrible a trial, or survived the venture. It seemed to me as if the mere gaze of all that multitude must melt the slight figure away like a wreath of vapor in the sun, or shrivel it up like a scrap of silver paper before a blazing fire. It made poor Dr. Moore and myself both cry, but there was a deal more sympathy in my tears than in his; for I had known the dizzy terror of that moment, had felt the ground slide from under my feet and the whole air become a sea of fiery rings before my swimming eyes. Besides my fellow-feeling for her actual agony, I had one for what her after trials may be, and I hoped for her that she might be able to see the truth of all things in the midst of all things false; and then, if she takes pleasure in her gilded toys, she will not have too bitter a heartache when they are broken. She sang well, and soon recovered from her fright, which, even from the first, did not affect her voice. She is rather pretty, but does not walk or move gracefully; she was well dressed, all but her hair, which was dressed in the present frizzy French fashion, and looked ridiculous for Mandane. Her singing was good, of a good style; I do not mean only that she sang "Fly, soft ideas, fly," and "Monster away!" and "The Soldier Tired," brilliantly, because they do not test the best singing, but the soave sostenuto of her "If e'er the cruel tyrant love," and "Let not rage thy bosom firing," were specimens of the best and most difficult school of singing. They were flowing, smooth, soft, and sweet, without trick or device of mere florid ornamentation, and were as intrinsically good in her execution as they are admirable in that peculiar style of composition. Her shake is not genuine, and some of her rapid descending scales want finish and accuracy; her use of her arms and her gestures were very pretty and graceful, and we were all greatly pleased with her. Braham was magnificently great, in spite of his inches. What a noble artist he is! and with what wonderful vigor he acts through his singing! being no actor at all the moment he stops singing. Wilson sang out of tune; the music is not in his voice, and he was frightened. Miss Cawse was rather a dumpy Artaxerxes, which is an impertinent remark for me to make; she has a beautiful contralto voice. The opera went off brilliantly, and after it the audience called for "God Save the King," which was performed. Paganini was in the box opposite to us; what a cadaverous-looking creature he is! Came home and saw my father, and gave him the report of Miss Sheriff's success....

Friday, December 2d.– … I went to see Cecilia Siddons; I thought her looking aged and thin, and Mrs. Wilkinson (Mrs. Siddons's companion for many years previous to her death) looking sad and ill too. They have both lost the one idea of their whole lives.

Saturday, 3d.– … It seems the doctors recommend my father's going to Brighton. I was urging him to do so this morning.... After tea I looked on the map for Rhodez, the scene of that horrible Fualdes tragedy (a murder the commission of which involved some singular and terribly dramatic incidents). I read Daru's "History of Venice" till bedtime.

Sunday, December 4th.– … My father, for the first time this fortnight, was able to dine with us. After dinner I read the whole trial of Bishop and Williams, and their confession. My mother is reading aloud to us Lord Edward Fitzgerald's Life.

Great Russell Street, December 4, 1831.

Dear H–,

It is at the sensible hour of a quarter-past twelve at night that I begin this immense sheet of paper, and with the sensible purpose of filling it before I go to bed.... What an unsatisfactory invention letter-writing is, to be sure; and yet there is none better for the purpose. When you asked me so affectionately in your letter whether I was going to bed, I concluded naturally that you were writing to me instead of doing so yourself; but I received the letter at half-past nine in the morning, when I was getting ready to ride. This sort of epistolary cross-questions and crooked answers is sometimes droll, but oftener sad: we weep with those who did weep, when they have dried their eyes; and rejoice with those who did rejoice, but the corners of whose mouths are already drawn down for crying, while we fancy we are smiling sympathetically with them.... You ask me how the world goes with me, and I can only say round, as I suppose it does with everybody. All goes on precisely as usual with me; my life is exceedingly uniform, and it is seldom that anything occurs to disturb its monotonous routine. My dear father, thank Heaven, is better, but still very weak, and I fear it will be yet some time before he recovers his strength. He came down to dinner to-day for the first time in this fortnight; indeed, it is only since the day before yesterday that he has left his bed; but I trust that this attack will serve him for a long time, and that with rest and quiet he will regain his strength.

I am really glad my aunt Kemble is better, though I remember having some not unpleasant ideas as to how, if she were not, you would go to Leamington to nurse her, and so come on and stay with us in London; but I cannot wish it at the price of her prolonged indisposition, poor woman!… I am sorry to say my father is pronounced worse to-day; he has a bad side-ache, and they are applying mustard poultices to overcome it. There is some apprehension of a return of fever. This is a real and terrible anxiety, dear H–. The theater, too, is going on very ill, and he is unable to give it any assistance; and for the same reason I can do nothing for it, for all my plays require him, except Isabella and Fazio, and these are worn threadbare. It is all very gloomy; but, however, time doth not stand still, and will some day come to the end of the journey with us.... You say Undine reminds you of me.... The feeling of an existence more closely allied to the elements of the material universe than even we acknowledge our dust-formed bodies to be, possesses me sometimes almost like a little bit of magnus; bright colors, fleeting lights and shadows, flowers, and above all water, the pure, sparkling, harmonious, powerful element, excite in me a feeling of intimate fellowship, of love, almost greater than any human companionship does. Perhaps, after all, I am only an animated morsel of my palace, this wonderful, beautiful world. Do you not believe in numberless, invisible existences, filling up the vast intermediate distance between God and ourselves, in the lonely and lovely haunts of nature and her more awful and gloomy recesses? It seems as if one must be surrounded by them; I do not mean to the point of merely suggesting the vague "suppose?" that, I should think, must visit every mind; but rather like a consciousness, a conviction, amounting almost to certainty, only short of seeing and hearing. How well I remember in that cedar hall at Oatlands, the sort of invisible presence I used to feel pervading the place. It was a large circle of huge cedar trees in a remote part of the grounds; the paths that led to it were wild and tangled; the fairest flower, the foxglove, grew in tall clumps among the foliage of the thickets and shrubberies that divided the lawn into undulating glades of turf all round it; a sheet of water in which there was a rapid current—I am not sure that it was not the river—ran close by, and the whole place used to affect my imagination in the weirdest way, as the habitation of invisible presences of some strange supernatural order. As the evening came on, I used frequently to go there by myself, leaving our gentlemen at table, and my mother and Lady Francis in the drawing-room. How I flew along by the syringa bushes, brushing their white fragrant blossoms down in showers as I ran, till I came to that dark cedar hall, with its circle of giant trees, whose wide-sweeping branches spread, at it were, a halo of darkness all round it! Through the space at the top, like the open dome of some great circular temple, such as the Pantheon of Rome, the violet-colored sky and its starry worlds looked down. Sometimes the pure radiant moon and one fair attendant star would seem to pause above me in the dark framework of the great tree-tops. That place seemed peopled with spirits to me; and while I was there I had the intensest delight in the sort of all but conscious certainty that it was so. Curiously enough, I never remember feeling the slightest nervousness while I was there, but rather an immense excitement in the idea of such invisible companionship; but as soon as I had emerged from the magic circle of the huge black cedar trees, all my fair visions vanished, and, as though under a spell, I felt perfectly possessed with terror, and rushed home again like the wind, fancying I heard following footsteps all the way I went. The moon seemed to swing to and fro in the sky, and every twisted tree and fantastic shadow that lay in my path made me start aside like a shying horse. I could have fancied they made grimaces and gestures at me, like the rocks and roots in Retsch's etchings of the Brocken; and I used to reach the house with cheeks flaming with nervous excitement, and my heart thumping a great deal more with fear than with my wild run home; and then I walked with the utmost external composure of demure propriety into the drawing-room, as who should say, "Thy servant went no whither," to any inquiry that might be made as to my absence....

It seems to me that you would be a poet but for your analyzing, dissecting, inquiring, and doubting mental tendency. Your truth is not a matter of intuition, but of demonstration; and when you get beyond demonstrability, then nothing remains to you but doubt.... God bless you, dear!

I am yours ever affectionately,
F. A. K.

Monday, December 5th.– … My father is worse again to-day. Ohimé! His state is most precarious, and this relapse very alarming. It is dreadful to see him drag himself about, and hear his feeble voice. Oh, my dear, dear Father! Heaven preserve you to us!

Tuesday, 6th.—My father is much worse. How terrible this is!… Dall met me on the stairs this morning, and gave me a miserable account of him; he had just been bled, and that had somewhat relieved him. I went and sat with him while my mother drove out in the carriage. I stayed a long while with him, and he seemed a little better.... My father's two doctors have returned again, and paid him two visits daily. I read Daru all the evening.

Wednesday, 7th.– … So I am to play Belvidera on Monday, and Bianca on Wednesday. That will be hard work; Bianca is terrible.

Thursday, 8th.– … My dear father is beginning to gain strength once more, thank Heaven! I received a letter from Lady Francis about the play (a translation of the French piece of "Henri Trois," by Lord Francis, the production of which at Covent Garden is being postponed in consequence of my father's illness). Poor people! I am sorry for their disappointment.... I devised and tried on a new dress for Bianca; it will be very splendid, but I am afraid I shall look like a metal woman, a golden image. [The dress in question was entirely made of gold tissue; and one evening a man in the pit exclaimed to a friend of mine sitting by him, "Oh! doesn't she look like a splendid gold pheasant?" the possibility of which comparison had not occurred to me, not being a sportsman.]

Friday, 9th.– … I went with my mother to the theater to hear "Fra Diavolo," with which, and Miss Sheriff's singing in it, we were delighted.

Saturday, 10th.– … We had a talk about the fashion of southern countries of serenading, which I am very glad is not an English fashion. Music, as long as I am awake, is a pure and perfect delight to me, but to be wakened out of my sleep by music is to wake in a spasm of nervous terror, shaking from head to foot, and sick at my stomach, with indescribable fear and dismay; certainly no less agreeable effect could possibly be contemplated by the gallantry of a serenading admirer, so I am glad our admirers do not serenade us English girls. This picturesque practice prevails all through the United States, where the dry brilliancy of the climate and skies is favorable to the paying and receiving this melodious homage, and where musical bands, sometimes numbering fifty, are marshaled by personal or political admirers, under the balconies of reigning beauties or would-be-reigning public men. My total ignorance of this prevailing practice in the United States led to a very prosaic demonstration of gratitude on my part toward my first serenaders; for I opened my window and rewarded them with a dollar, which one of the recipients informed me he should always keep, to my no small confusion, not knowing the nature of my gratuitous indulgence, and that, like my Lady Greensleeves in the old English ballad, "My music still to play and sing" would be, while I remained in America, a disinterested demonstration of the devotion of my friends.... My poor mother is in the deepest distress about my father. Inflammation of the lungs is dreaded, and he is spitting blood. I felt as if I were turning to stone as I heard it. I came up to my own room and cried most bitterly for a long time. In the afternoon I was allowed to go in and see my father; but I was so overcome that, as I stooped to kiss his hand, I was almost suffocated with suppressed sobs. I did control myself, however, sufficiently to be able to sit by him for a while with tolerable composure. Cecilia and Mrs. Wilkinson called, and were very kind and affectionate to me. They brought news that Harry Siddons had arrived in India and been sent off to Delhi. My brother Henry, poor child, came and lay on the sofa in my room, and we cried together almost through the whole afternoon, in spite of our efforts to comfort each other. My heart dies away when I think of my dear father.... I got a very kind and affectionate letter from Lady Francis; she wants us very much to go again to Oatlands. After all, perhaps it would not be so sad there as I think, though it must appear changed enough in some respects, if not in all. Everything is winter now, within and without me; and when I was last there it was summer, in my heart and over all the earth. My cedar palace is there still, and to that I should bring more change than I should find. Poor Undine! how often I think of that true story. When I went to the theater my heart really sickened at my work; my eyes smarted, and my voice was broken, with my whole day's crying. The house seemed good; I played ill, and felt very ill. Lord M– was in the stage-box, which annoyed me. I hate to have my society acquaintance close to me while I am acting. The play was "Venice Preserved." After I came home I saw my father, who is a little better; but now Henry is quite unwell, and I am in a high fever—I suppose with all this wretchedness and exertion.

Thursday, 13th.—My father has passed a quieter night, thank God. I went to Fozzard's riding-school with John, and tried a hot little hunter that they want to persuade Lady Chesterfield to ride—a very pretty creature, but quite too eager for the school. While I was riding Lady Grey came in, very much frightened, upon her horse, which was rather fresh. She took Gazelle, which I was riding, and I rode her horse tame for her. It is very odd that, riding as well as she does, she should be so miserably nervous on horseback.... I drove to Mrs. Mayo's, who impressed and affected me very much. Those magnificent eyes of hers are becoming dim; she is growing blind, with eyes like dark suns. I could not help expressing the deep concern I felt for such a calamity. She replied that doubtless it was a trial, but that she saw many others afflicted with dispensations so much heavier than her own, that she was content. To grow blind contentedly is to be very brave and good, and I admired and loved her even more than I did before. When I came home, I went and sat with my father. He has decided that we shall not go to Oatlands, and I am hardly sorry for it.

Friday, 14th.—Went over my part for to-night.... Victoire came with me to the theater instead of Dall, whose whole time is taken up attending on my father. The house was bad, and I thought I acted very ill, though Victoire and John, who was in the front, said I did not. Henry Greville was in the boxes, and to my surprise went from them to the pit, though I ought not to have been surprised, for, for such a fine gentleman, he is a very sensible man. Colonel and Lady C. Cavendish were in the orchestra, and how I did wish them further. I do so wonder, in the middle of my stage despair, what business my drawing-room acquaintances have sitting staring at it. My dress was beautiful. As for the audience, I do not know what ailed them, but they seemed to have agreed together only to applaud at the end of the scenes, so that I got no resting interruptions, and was half dead with fatigue at the end of the play. I read Daru's "Venice" between the scenes, and saw my father for a few minutes after I came home.

Thursday, 15th.—Had a delightful long letter from H–, who is a poet without the jingle.... Another physician is to be called in for my father. Oh, my dear father! Mr. Bartley was with him about this horrible theater business.... My mother went in the evening with John to hear Miss Sheriff in Polly. It is her first night in "The Beggar's Opera," and my father wished to know how it went. I stayed at home with poor Henry, and after tea sat with my father till bedtime.

Friday, 16th.—Went to the theater at eleven, and rehearsed Isabella in the saloon, the stage being occupied with a rehearsal of the pantomime. When my rehearsal was over, the carriage not being come, I went down to see what they were doing. There was poor Farleigh, nose and all (a worthy, amiable man, and excellent comic character, with a huge excrescence of a nose), qui se déménait like one frantic; huge Mr. Stansbury, with a fiddle in his hand, dancing, singing, prompting, and swearing; the whole corps de ballet attitudinizing in muddy shoes and poke-bonnets, and the columbine, in dirty stockings and a mob-cap, ogling the harlequin in a striped shirt and dusty trousers. What a wrong side to the show the audience will see!

My father is better, thank God! After dinner sat with poor Henry till time to go to the theater. Played Isabella. House bad. I played well; I always do to an empty house (this was my invariable experience both in my acting and reading performances, and I came to the conclusion that as my spirits were not affected by a small audience, they, on the contrary, were exhilarated by the effect upon my lungs and voice of a comparatively cool and free atmosphere). I read Daru between my scenes; I find it immensely interesting.... I read Niccolini's "Giovanni di Procida," but did not like it very much; I thought it dull and heavy, and not up to the mark of such a very fine subject.

Saturday, 17th.– … My father, thank God, appears much better.... I have christened the pretty mare I have bought "Donna Sol," in honor of my part in "Hernani." In the evening I read Daru, and wrote a few lines of "The Star of Seville;" but I hate it, and the whole thing is as dead as ditch-water.

Sunday, 18th.—To church.... After I came home I went and sat with my father. Poor fellow! he is really better; I thank God inexpressibly!

Great Russell Street, December 18.

Dear H–,

I have had time to write neither long nor short letters for the last week; Mr. Young's engagement being at an end, I have been called back to my work, and have had to rehearse, and to act, and to be much too busy to write to you until to-day, when I have caught up all my arrears.

My father, thank God, is once more recovering, but we have twice been alarmed at such sudden relapses that we hardly dare venture to hope he is really convalescent. Inflammation on the lungs has, it seems, been going on for a considerable time, and though they think now that it has entirely subsided, yet, as the least exertion or exposure may bring it on again, we are watching him like the apples of our eyes. He has not yet left his bed, to which he has now been confined more than a month....

The exertion I have been obliged to make when leaving him to go and act, was so full of misery and dread lest I should find him worse, perhaps dead, on my return, that no words can describe what I have suffered at that dreadful theater. Thank God, however, he is now certainly better, out of present danger, and I trust and pray will soon be beyond any danger of a relapse. Anything like Dall's incessant and unwearied care and tenderness you cannot imagine. Night and day she has watched and waited on him, and I think she must have sunk under all the fatigue she has undergone but for the untiring goodness and kindness of heart that has supported her under it all. She is invaluable to us all, and every day adds to her claims upon our love and gratitude....

In the passage you quote from Godwin, he seems to think a friend of more use in reproving what is evil in us than I believe is really the case. Do you think our faults and follies can ever be more effectually sifted, analyzed, and condemned by another than by our own conscience? I do not think if one could put one's heart into one's friends' hand that they could detect one defect or evil quality that had not been marked and acknowledged in the depths of one's own consciousness. Do you suppose people shrink more from the censure of others than from self-condemnation? I find it difficult to think so.... You appear to me always to wish to submit your faith to a process which invariably breaks your apparatus and leaves you very much dissatisfied, with your faith still a simple element in you, in spite of your endeavors to analyze or decompose it. Are not, after all, our convictions our only steadfastly grounded faith? I do not mean conviction wrought out in the loom of logical argument, where one's understanding must have shuttled backward and forward through every thread a thousand times before the woof is completed, but the spiritual convictions, the intuitions of our souls, that lie upon their surface like direct reflections from heaven, distinct and beautiful enough for reverent contemplation, but a curious search into whose nature would, at any rate temporarily, blur and dissipate and destroy....

The sense of power which man cannot control is one thing that makes the sea such a delightful object of contemplation; the huge white main, and deep, tremendous voice of the vast creature over which man's daring and his knowledge give him but such imperfect mastery, suggest images of strength which are full of sublime fascination as one stands on the shore, looking at the vasty deep, and remembers how precarious and uncertain is man's dominion over it, and how God alone rules and governs it. It is impossible not to rejoice in the great sense of its huge power and freedom, even though their manifestations toward men are so often terrible and destructive.... Oh yes, indeed, I, like Wallenstein, have faith in the "strong hours," and hold their influence the more efficacious that we seldom think of resisting it; or, if we do, are seldom successful in the attempt....

The theater is going on very ill, but negotiations are pending between the partners, which it is hoped may eventually terminate in some arrangement with the creditors about the property. I have been acting Bianca again; I certainly am not jealous, and cannot imagine being so, any more of my husband than of my friend. I doubt if I have the power of loving which produces jealousy, in spite of which that part tries me dreadfully. I can conceive no torment comparable to that passion, which, however, I think is foreign to my own nature. I am reading Daru's "History of Venice," and am rather disappointed in the entertainment I expected to derive from it. It is a pretty long undertaking, too.... Remember me to all your people; and since you will have it that I am twin-sister to a fountain, remember me to my cousin, the dear little spring in the dell, which I love the more that it sometimes reflects your face and figure, as well as the fairies who dance round it by night. Do you hear that poor Lord Grey is said to be haunted by a vision of Lord Castlereagh's head? It sounds like a temptation of the devil to scare him into cutting his throat. Lord Brougham and the Duke of Wellington seem to me the only two men likely to keep their heads in these times of infinite political perturbation; but the one is made of steel, and the other of india-rubber.

Yours, dearest, always,
F. A. K.

Monday, 19th.—Went to Fozzard's, and had a pleasant, gossiping ride with Lady Grey and Miss Cavendish. While I was still riding, the Duchess of Kent and our little queen that is to be came down into the school; I was presented to them at their desire, and thought Princess Victoria a very unaffected, bright-looking girl. Fozzard made me gallop round; I think he is rather proud of showing me off.... My father is not so well again to-day. How dreadful these alternations are! I read Daru all the afternoon, and then sang in my own room to amuse Henry, till dinner-time. Colonel Bailey sent me the mare's saddle and bridle, and after dinner the boys put them on a chair for me, and gave me an absurd make-believe ride.

Wednesday, 21st—Dear Mr. Harness called, and I received him. He tells me that at the theater they want to do his tragedy ("The Wife of Antwerp," was, I think, the name of the piece) without my father; but this seems to me really sheer madness. The play is a pretty, interesting, well-written piece, and, well propped and sustained, may perhaps succeed for a few nights, but as to throwing the whole weight, or rather weakness of it, upon my shoulders, or any one pair of shoulders, it is folly to think of it. It is not a powerful sort of monologue like "Fazio," where the interest centres in one person and one passion, and therefore if that character is well sustained the rest can shift for itself. It is no such matter; it is a play of incident and not of character, and must be played by people and not one person. What terrible bad management! But, poor people! what can they do, with my father lying disabled there? If it was not for their complete disregard for their own interest, I should be inclined to quarrel with them for the way in which they are ruining mine; and I sincerely hope, for the sake of everybody concerned, that Mr. Harness will resist this senseless proposition.

I went with John in the afternoon to Angerstein's Gallery (M. Angerstein's fine collection of pictures was not then incorporated in the National Gallery, of which it subsequently became so important a portion); there are some new pictures there. Unluckily, we had only an hour to stay, but I brought away a great deal with me for so short a time. Among the additions was a very singular old painting, "The Holy Family," by one of the earliest masters, whose name I forget, not being familiar with it. I looked long at the glorious Titian, the "Bacchus and Ariadne," which always reminds me of—

"Whence come ye, jolly Satyrs, whence come ye?
Like to a moving vintage down they came."

One of the most famous pictures here is "Our Saviour disputing with the Doctors," by Leonardo da Vinci. I hardly ever receive pleasure from his pictures; there is a mannerism in all that I have seen that is positively disagreeable to me. How the later artists lost the simple secret of earnest vigor of their predecessors, while gaining in everything that was not that! Grace, finish, refinement, accuracy of drawing, richness of coloring, all that merely tended towards perfection and execution, while the simplicity and single-heartedness of conception died away more and more. All art seems by degrees to outgrow its strength, and certainly in painting the archaic cradle touches one's imagination as neither the graceful youth nor mature manhood do. "Le mieux c'est l'ennemi du bien" in nothing more than the progress of art after a certain period of its development, and when its mere mechanism is best understood, and applied in the most masterly manner. The spirit has tarried behind, and we have to return to seek it among the earlier days, when the genius of man was like a giant, rude, naked, and savage, but vigorous and free—unadorned indeed, but also untrammeled. Only a certain proportion of excellence is allowed to our race, but that is granted; and let us stretch it, expand it, roll and beat it out as we will, it is still but the same square inch made thin to cover a greater surface. For one good we still must yield another; we have no gain that is not loss, no acquisition but surrender, "exchange" which may perhaps be "no robbery," though quantity does seem a poor substitute for quality in matters of beauty. I wish I had lived in the times when the ore lay in the ingot (and had been one of the few who owned a nugget), instead of in these times of universal gold-leaf, glitter without weight, and shining shallowness of mere surface. Vigor is better than refinement, and to create better than to improve, and to conceive better than to combine. I wonder if the world, or rather the human mind, will ever really grow decrepit, and the fountain of beauty in men's souls run dry to the dregs; or will the manifestations only change, and the eternal spirit reveal itself in other ways?…

On our way home I had a long and interesting talk with John about the different forms of religious faith into which the gradual development of the human mind has successively expanded; each, of course, being the result of that very development, acting on the original necessity to believe in and worship and obey something higher and better than itself, implanted in our nature. It seems strange that he has a leaning to Roman Catholicism, which I have not. Our Protestant profession appears to me the purest creed—form—that Christianity has yet arrived at; but, I suppose, a less spiritual one, or perhaps I should say external accompaniments, affecting more palpably the senses and imagination, are wholesome and necessary to the cultivation and preservation of the religious sentiment in some minds. Catholicism was the faith of the chivalrous times, of the poetical times, of times when the creative faculty of man poured forth in since unknown abundance masterpieces of every kind of beauty, as manifestations of the pious and devout enthusiasm. Protestantism is undoubtedly the faith of these times; a denying faith, a rejecting creed, a questioning belief, its evil seems essentially to coincide with the worst tendency of the present age, but its good seems to me positive and unconditional, independent of time or circumstance; the best, in that kind, that the believing necessity in our nature has yet attained. Rightly understood and lived up to, the only service of God which is intellectual freedom, as all His service, lived up to, under what creed soever, is moral freedom. And it is in some sort in spite of myself that I say this, for my fancy delights in all the devout and poetical legendary conceptions which the stern hand of reason has stripped from our altars.

I found a letter at home from Emily Fitzhugh; she writes me word she has been revising my aunt Siddons's letters; thence an endless discussion as to the nature of genius, what it is. I suppose really nothing but the creative power, and so it remains a question if the greatest actor can properly be said to possess it. Again, how far does the masterly filling out of an inferior conception by a superior execution of it, such as really great actors frequently present, fall short of creative power, properly so called? Is it a thing positive, of individual inherent quality, or comparative, and composed of mere respective quantity? Can its manifestation be partial, and restricted to one faculty, or must it be a pervading influence, permeating the whole mind? Certainly Mrs. Siddons was what we call a great dramatic genius, and off the stage gave not the slightest indication of unusual intellectual capacity of any sort. Kean, the only actor whose performances have ever realized to me my idea of the effect tragic acting ought to produce, acted part of his parts rather than ever a whole character, and a work of genius should at least show unity of conception. My father, whose fulfilling of a particular range of characters is as nearly as possible perfect, wants depth and power, and power seems to me the core, the very marrow, so to speak, of genius; and if it is not genius that gave incomparable majesty and terror to my aunt's Lady Macbeth, and to Kean's Othello incomparable pathos and passion, and to my father's Benedict incomparable spirit and grace, what is it? Mere talent carried beyond a certain point? If so, where does the one begin and the other end? Or is genius a precious, inconvertible, intellectual metal, of which some people have a grain and a half, and some only half a grain?… There is dreadful news from Spain, and I fear it is too true. Torrijos has made another attempt. Oh, how thankful we must be that John is returned to us!

Great Russell Street, Monday, December 23.

Dear Mrs. Jameson,

I owe you many excuses for not having sooner acknowledged your letter, but you may have seen by the papers that we have been bringing out a new piece, and that is always, while it goes on, an engrossing of time and attention paramount to all other claims. It is a play of Lord Francis Leveson's, and I know you will be glad to hear that it has been successful and is likely to prove serviceable to the theater. Another reason, too, for my silence is, that I have been working very hard at "The Star of Seville," which, I am thankful to say, has at length reached its completion. I have sent it to the theater upon approbation, in the usual routine of business; and am waiting very patiently the decision of the management on its fitness or unfitness for their purposes.

I know not whether your party at Teddesley are good thermometers, by which to judge of the state of political feeling here in London, but at this moment the rumor is rife that the Ministry dare not make the new batch of Peers, cannot carry the Bill, and must resign. To whom? is the next question, and it seems a difficult one to answer. One hardly sees, looking round the political ranks, who are to be the men to come forward and take up this tangled skein effectually. I write with rather a sympathetic leaning toward the Tory side of this Reform question, and do not know whether in so doing I am affronting you or not. In any case, I imagine, there can be but one opinion as to the difficulty, and even danger, of the present position of public affairs and public temper with regard to them.

Do you not soon think of returning to Town? or are you so well pleased with your present abode as to prolong your visit? London is particularly full, I think, for the time of year, and people are meeting in smaller numbers and a more sociable and agreeable way than they do later in the season. I was at two parties last week, each time, I am ashamed to say, after acting. I can't say that I find society pleasant; it reminds me a good deal of a "Conversation Cards," the insipid flippancy, of whose questions and answers seems to me to survive in these meetings, miscalled occasionally conversaziones. Dancing appears to me rational, and indeed highly intellectual, in comparison with such talk; and that I am as fond of as ever, but that has not begun yet, and I find these soirées causantes drearily unedifying.

Talking of stupid parties, your beautiful little picture of me and my various costumes helped away two hours of such intolerably dull people here the other night; I assure you we all voted you devout thanks on the occasion.... We are all tolerably well; my father is gradually recovering his strength, and though after such an attack as his has been the progress must of necessity be slow, we are inclined to hope, from that very circumstance, that it will be the more sure.... If you do not return soon, perhaps I shall hear from you again; pray recollect that it will give me great pleasure to do so, and that I am very sincerely yours,

F. A. K.

I dressed my Juliet the last time I acted it, exactly after your little sketch of her....

Thursday.—Worked at "The Star of Seville." In the evening the play was "Isabella;" the house very bad. I played very well. The Rajah Ramahun Roy was in the Duke of Devonshire's box, and went into fits of crying, poor man!

Friday, 23d.—It is all too true; John has had a letter from Spain; they have all been taken and shot. I felt frozen when I heard the terrible news. Poor Torrijos! And yet I suppose it is better so: he would only have lived to bitter disappointment, and the despairing conviction that the spirit he appealed to did not animate one human being in his deplorable and degenerate land. A young Englishman, of the name of Boyd, John's sometime friend and companion, was taken and shot with the rest: it choked me to think of his parents, his brothers and sisters. Surely God has been most merciful to us in sparing us such an anguish, and bringing our wanderer home before this day of doom. How I thought of Richard Trench and his people! John did not seem to me to be violently affected, though his first exclamation was one of sharp and bitter pain: I suppose he must, long ere this, have felt that there could be no other end to this utterly hopeless attempt.... In the afternoon I called on Mrs. Norton, who is always to me astonishingly beautiful. The baby was asleep, and so I could not see it, but Spencer has grown into a very fine child.

Monday, 26th.—Went to see how the pantomime did. I did not think it very amusing, but there was an enchanting little girl (Miss Poole) who did Tom Thumb, and whose attitudes in her armor were most of them copied from the antique, and really beautiful. Poor dear, bright little thing!

My father was in bed when we returned; I went and saw him for a minute, to tell him how the pantomime had succeeded; it ended with some wonderful tight-rope dancing by an exceedingly steady, graceful man; but it turned me perfectly sick, and I hate all those sort of things.

Thursday, 29th.—After dinner worked at "The Star of Seville." I really wonder I have the patience to go on with it, it is such heavy trash. After tea my father begged me to sing to him. I am always horribly frightened at singing before my mother; I cannot bear to distress her accurate ear with my unsteady intonation, and the more I think of it, the colder my hands grow and the hotter my face, the huskier my voice and the flatter my notes; I bungle over accompaniments that I have at my fingers' ends, and forget words I know as well as my alphabet; in short, I feel like a wretch, and I sing like a wretch, and I make wretched all my hearers. My mother's own nervous terror when she had to sing on the stage, as a young woman, was excessive, as she has often told me; and her mother repeatedly but vainly endeavored to bribe her with the promise of a guinea if she would sing as well in public any of the songs that she sang perfectly well at home. I sang for some time, and by degrees got more courage, till at last I managed to sing tolerably in tune. My mother says I have more voice than A–. I am sorry to hear her voice has grown thin—that sweet, melodious voice I did so love to listen to; but perhaps it will recover its tone.

Wednesday, 28th.—My dear, dear father came down to breakfast, looking horribly thin and pale, poor fellow! but, thank God, he was able to come once more among us. I am to act Euphrasia on Monday; how I do hate it! Monday week my father talks of resuming his work again with Mercutio. Dear me! how happy I shall be! once more speaking the love poetry of Juliet after all these "meaner beauties of the night" that I have been executing ever since he has been ill. Juliet did very right to die; she would have become Bianca when once she was Mrs. Romeo Montague.... I wrote to Lady Francis about "Katharine of Cleves," (Lord Francis's translation of "Henri Trois"), who is once more beginning to lift up her head. My father thinks it may be done on Wednesday week.... It is now determined that Henry should go into the army, and my mother wants me to besiege Sir John through Lady Macdonald (the general's general) about a commission for him. In the evening, not having to be anybody tragical or heroical, I indulged in my own character, and had a regular game of romps with the boys; my pensive public would not have believed its eyes if it could have seen me with my hair all disheveled, not because of my woes, but because of riotous fun, jumping over chairs and sofas, and dodging behind curtains and under tables to escape from my pursuers. "Is that Miss Kemble?" as poor Mr. Bacon involuntarily exclaimed the first time he saw me.

Great Russell Street, December 29, 1831.

My dearest H–,

You shall not entreat in vain, neither shall you have a short answer because you have an immediate one.... I should not have answered you so instantaneously, but that my last account of my dear father was so bad that I cannot delay telling you how much better he is, and how grateful we all are for his restoration to health. He is released from his bed, of which he must be heartily sick, and comes down to breakfast at the usual time: of course he is still weak and low, and wretchedly thin, but we trust a little time will bring back good spirits and good looks, though after such a terrible attack I fear it will be long before his constitution recovers its former strength, if indeed it ever does. He talks of resuming his labors at the theater next Monday week. Oh! my dear H–, what a dreadful season of anxiety this has been! but, thank God, it is past.

I had intended that this letter should go to you to-day, but you will forgive the delay of a day in my finishing it when I tell you that I have some hope of its producing a commission for Henry. Sir John Macdonald, at whose house you dined in the summer with my mother, is now adjutant-general, and I know not what besides; and after my mother and myself had expended all our eloquence in winding up my father's mind to resolve upon the army as Henry's profession, she thought the next best thing I could do would be to attack Lady Macdonald and secure the general's interest. They happened to call this afternoon, and your letter, my dear H–, has been left unfinished till past post-time, while I was soliciting this favor, which I have every hope we shall obtain. Lady Macdonald is extremely kind and good-natured, and I am sure will exert herself to serve us, and if this can be accomplished I shall be haunted by one anxiety the less.

Henry is too young and too handsome to be doing nothing but lounging about the streets of London, and even if he should be ordered to the Indies, it is something to feel that he is no longer aimless and objectless in life—a mere squanderer of time, without interest, stake, or duty, in this existence. I am sure this news will pacify you, and atone for the day's delay in this letter reaching you.

[My youngest brother Henry had a passionate desire to be a sailor, and never exhibited the slightest inclination for any other career. Admiral Lake, who was a very kind friend of my father's and mother's, knowing this to be the lad's bent, offered, on one occasion, to take charge of him, and have him trained for his profession under his own supervision. Such, however, was my mother's horror of the sea, and dread of losing her darling, if she surrendered him to be carried from her to Nova Scotia, whither I think Admiral Lake was bound when he offered to take my brother with him, that she induced my father to decline this most friendly and advantageous offer. Henry never after that exhibited the slightest preference for any other profession, and always said, "They may put me at a plow-tail if they like." He went through Westminster School, after a previous training at Bury St. Edmunds, not otherwise than creditably; but a very modest estimate of his own capacity made him beg not to be sent to Cambridge, where he said he was sure he should only waste money, and do himself and us no credit. (The bitter disappointment of my brother John's failure there had made a deep impression upon him.) Finally it was decided that he should go into the army, and the friendly interest of Sir John Macdonald and the liberal price Mr. Murray gave me for my play of "Francis I." enabled me to get him a commission; it was the time when they were still purchasable. My poor mother, unable to refuse her consent to this second favorable opportunity of starting him in life, acquiesced in his military, though she had thwarted his naval, career, and was well content to see her boy-ensign sent over with his troops to Ireland. But from Ireland his regiment was ordered to the West Indies, and after his departure thither she never again saw him in her life.]