File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Emmeline (Austin) Wadsworth, 14 August 1841 (a0c10ebc-f352-43d5-b5e6-65b61639ed8d).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-011#019

Tunbridge Wells. Aug 14th 1841.
If it must be counted sinful, my precious darling, to long anxiously for a good out of our reach than has my departure from you been the source of much evil to my soul for I still breathe nothing but wishes for your constant presence, malgré your doubts & fears & beliefs that I find it difficult to turn my thoughts homeward. Can you believe that any material pleasures (for so may be called those soley of the senses & mind) if they crowded every hour here could night for one hour in the balance with the rich revelations of the inner life I have been hourly blessed with on the other side, unlocked by your true & confiding affection? I say not this for sentiment’s sake you know, but as the inevitable out-pouring of my heart, grateful to oppression, for the wondrous all you have been to me & (so please God) shall continue to be while life lasts – or as long as He thinks me worthy to receive such a goodly heritage. I cannot begin even a letter without this prefacing out-burst of what is ever uppermost & will now, having said grace, tell you the reason why I have been ‘specially longing for you lately. A week ago, today, we left London infinitely thankful to breathe again God’s air tho’ I felt saddish to take leave there of dear Mrs Rich whom it is probable I shall not see again as she soon goes to France for a visit to a friend & may not return before I sail. [crossed out: She] I have told you she cannot be known without being loved &, what is as well, cannot be near without being known for life is too real & earnest a thing with her to be smothered under conventional mummy cloths & she has no false shame in revealing her experience therein, so out it comes ‘frank & free’ & it is a life worth telling & worth listening to so much beyond the generality that one is the more grateful for the bestowal. Especially in England where there is an instinctive diplomatic secretiveness. Even in this short intercourse I feel that I have gained a genuine acquaintance with another soul; a soul-history – the only kind I take much interest in, for it is a microcosm of all, French revolutions are in it & many passes of Thermopylae. [p. 2] But before I take leave of London too, I must tell you of some of my doings there. I saw & talked with Mrs Basil Montagu & should, I think, have liked her vastly had I had time to get beyond wonder & a sort of admiration of the externals. I have a great ‘penchant’ for certain kinds of old women. Mrs Rich is a very satisfying beau ideal of the noblest kind & Mrs M. I fancy, would prove another, tho’ of a lower grade. One, thro’ loftiness of soul, the latter thro’ heart, - so I judged from the tone of her voice, her manner & kindly sympathy with it in others. Not that I put heart below soul, I ca’nt undertake any such metaphysical distinction but the two women are not on a par – as individuals. I was quite awed by the picturesque grandeur of Mrs Montague’s appearance in her stately old-fashioned dress à la Mrs Siddons, & lofty cap banded under the chin giving a very prononcé outline to her features. But her voice was as douce as Rogers’ & she talked most frankly & graciously. Lauded greatly, as you will conjecture, Sumner, (what would surprise Tom’s Club I think,) for his manners as much as his mind or heart, their very brusquerie evidently refreshing to a person liking genuine things & weary of merely conventional good-breeding & blasé elégans. So she said in more words. Likewise mainly was enthusiastic about Pierce Butler for manners, heart, mind, every-thing; thought Mrs B. borrowed from instead of lending lustre [crossed out: from] to her husband & was astonished he could have been so undervalued in America. He has been much liked here; - his quiet, gentlemanly ways are more English than the usual feverish, nervous state of the American pulse. With us a man seems torpid that is ‘comme il faut’ here. I believe Hunt would be thought charming; such a high-bred repose,! such an uncompromising timidity in his “If I may venture to assent” &c! Of course they detect the sham of parvenuism better than we do even, but I mean the tone of society is subdued terribly. A lake-like calm or moved in formal waves; no free, brook-like, gushing, rushing & splashing from rock to tree as ours does when it shows any life at all. But I like Pierce Butler much & am glad he has been appreciated here since certainly not justly with us. It must give great satisfaction to his wife. They are gone, I believe, on a tour down the Rhine with Miss Kemble [p. 3] I hope Mrs B. will poetisize a little there for it is a new enchantment to her & will stir her spirit up finely. May rich grain arise from such ploughing but after Byron who can venture to exult, in print, in ‘the exulting river.’ Pierce seems to have forgotten the existence of Phil: & his slaves. & doubtless enjoys being thought of something more than the appendage of an authoress & actress. In London I saw, too, the renowned bump-discoverer De Ville & was induced to have my brain examined thinking I might gain thereby some wise hints for future guidance. He is an eccentric personage & certainly startled me, as he does every one, by his discrimination of those shades of feeling we fancy most concealed from others. You shall see his report & judge of its truth. Anxiety about the affection of my friends was one strong point, - one I was to guard from growth. There our heads sympathise n’est ce pas? Take care how you increase this weak spot by any fickleness. I believe I have the greatest faith of the two, however, because I stand most in need of it. Indeed I cannot but have an awful misgiving at times that I am too dependent on it, not on faith but on your love & abidingness near me. Do I not confess to myself & to you forever how truly it is my best earthly blessing now & does not that make it, at once, the mark for every cruel shaft of circumstance? I cannot hug my treasure in security. I know life too well for that but the doubt I shrink from, yet feel, deepens trebly its value now. As we both acknowledge danger there is a comfort in believing we deserve less to have our joy in each other toppled down. I wish you could have seen me at De Villes. I must have looked ludicrously sitting there in solemn suspense with my hair streaming over my shoulders & my eyes arrested by the most awful conclave of rows & rows of skulls all grinning at me from shelves around, beside staring busts & casts of renowned people witnessing the operation; not a word spoken for an hour but this strange man ever & anon grasping my head & then scribbling away his discoveries. It was very like, to me, necromancy in the olden time; Pleasant thought to put an utter stranger so coolly in possession of yr character! [crossed out: but we] Robert drove us from L. the first day to Seven Oaks a neat little town in the lovely valley of the Medway where we passed a [p. 4] quiet Sunday in the nicest English inn, with a garden no private gentleman’s in America could rival for order & arrangement. Such beds [of] geranium & velvet turf & views of sloping fields & groves like something magical for richness – then a peeping Gothic parsonage & a church tower of grey stone under which Tom & I, at twilight, listened to the lifeless but well-pronounced discourse of a parson whose person & sentences were as neatly finished off as the Nature around. But the next mn’g I longed for you with heart & soul to enjoy with us Knole a very quaint, antique, castellated residence we explored very thoroughly. It belonged to the Earls of Dorset, now to Countess of Plymouth, & is crammed with interesting portraits & gorgeous antiquities, such as tapestry old enough to harbor ghosts of a dozen generations & untarnished mirror frames & dressing-tables of solid wrought silver &c. the 2d organ made in England & a Crucifixion in carved wood given to the family by Mary Queen of Scotts just before her execution. But I will spare you the housekeeper’s catalogue & only tantalize you with some of the pictures. Here is the famous Ugolino by Sir Joshua for which his banished Lord furnished hints. As I am so fresh from Dante & think it a subject as little capable of any painting but his as Lear is of any acting, I was surprised to find myself regarding this with any satisfaction. It is certainly very powerful & touching & is very true to the meaning-; the cold light from the grated window brings in fine sculpture-like relief the stony agony of the Father’ face & figure, the inner petrefaction [sic] has stiffened every muscle & feature as if the influence of Medusa’s head co-operates with internal suffering & the pliant bodies of the sons, the warm soft hand of the youngest within the rigid grasp of this He-Niobe, the grim, stunned, yet proudly despairing look are all worthy of the subject - & finely managed in design & coloring. Its vis à vis is an admirable thing too by him, - a gypsy girl telling the fortune of a merry insouciant damsel whose lover all intent & curious makes a lovely group. Among portraits of nearly all the great literary men, which lines the dining room, I coveted a beautiful one of Milton as a youth; [p. 5] eyes fair & blue as F’s with soft flowing hair & that holy expression about the brow peculiar to those on whom God has set his seal of lofty purity & thought. Such a likeness of Caroline White we stumbled on here in the shape of an Italian singer – by Sir Joshua. The arch fun of the eyes & mouth & the very moulding of the features more like her than any portrait could be; for one of those will’o’the wisp looks so rarely caught happened to be on this lovely life-like sketch. But I wont try to make visible to you the wonders of this labyrinth of quaint rooms – nor how nobly the ivy clung to the massive stone towers & portal, nor how proudly the deer stalked under the gigantic trees in the Park, for it cant be done & since I have no ‘wishing-cap’ words are worse than vain. This was a good morceau for one mn’g but at noon we had another still more rich in associations. Penshurst, Sir Philip Sidney’s grand nest, whence he sung such strains that the very stones seem vocal still. It is a striking, noble-looking place like an enchanted Castle, girded near the moat by a ring of flowers of such gorgeous dyes I fancied them a magic coil to retain it thus paralysed. This sounds like nonsense but so must fanciful impressions-; such was the air it bore to all of us. En façe is a fine old tree said to be planted at his birth - & I looked at it with respect as his representative & contemporary. Within, are few good pictures but many curious relics, par exemple his shaving glass & a bit of embroidery worked by Queen Bess on her visit to Sir Philip. Her royal hands had condescended to prick canvass, tho’ with gold & silver thread only, after the same stitch & fashion we do now-a-days. Sir Philip’s portrait was not very flattering to one’s notions of him with its flame cold locks & formal cut but there is, too, much refinement in the forehead & cast of the features. He could not but write ‘Acradias’ with such country around. It is fatiguingly lovely & I am enjoying this peculiarly, because there is much greater variety than is usual in England. There are in this neighbourhood tangled woods with fern, shaggy trees & unkempt road-sides so like America I can easily believe myself there, then rough wilds Commons amethystine with heather, whose flower [p. 6] aids, they say, the salubrity of the air & coupled with this, like these fair Saxon children with gypsey boys & ragged-donkies, are gracefully sloping meadows of that luxurious green so wholly English.
Has ever read Camilla my darling? I am doing so on the strength of inhabiting for a week this old-fashioned watering-place where she met with so many disasters - & tho’ laughing at its musty sentiment, think it very natural & womanish & certainly much truer to life as it then was than any of our novels to ours. We are in very nice lodgings here & amuse ourselves by driving thro’ the pretty country or inspecting the droll turn outs here of invalids & visitors in fine liveried equipages, in donkey droskies, on horseback & ass-back. Mary is much revived by the pure bracing air blowing over these heights & Commons & tho’ we expect no summer heat & only partial sunshine find the climate agreeing with us all. Tom & I patronize very lengthy, & very charming, rural walks over fields & thro’ woods, sketching the picturesque cottages, or lolling under trees with Stockbridge indolence, discussing English ways & people & American defects & promises & at every step wishing à haute voix 3000 miles of water were nul [sic] & void & our tete à tete could be enlarged I need not say by what welcome addition. This is an extinct volcano of a watering-place I should judge from the present quiescence & demi-semi genteel air of its frequenters, but is all the more agreeable to us for that. It seems strange to encounter people as one does at such a place & know there is no possibility of knowing more of them than the cut of their clothes & features, such a paralytic chill does English reserve infuse into the social ‘abandon’ essential to such gatherings in every other country. What a contrast to our patriarchal family-ship at Newport or Saratoga where one jumps into an acquaintance as naturally as into one’s shoes. A ring of fire, or ice rather, encircles every individual here, & few are the intruders, tho’ I believe the victim himself would often fain help em over it if he knew how. Well it is a great safe- [p. 7] guard to individuality – tho’ killing to sociability. I hope you are surviving with Christian patience my sage strictures on England & the English. I am ashamed of being caught in the shallow conceit traveller’s are so apt to play the fools in unawares. To judge without knowledge is the regular epidemic one goes thro’ – conscious of the disease yet ignorant of its cure; that is to simply hold the tongue. Robert has left us for business at London & on his return we think of proceeding to the southern coast, to Hastings probably to think of sea-bathing & Harold. Having a voiture we are very independent people & can wander as far & as fast as we like. Anne interrupts me to display Master Ronald in his grandiose attire – of a smart new coat & hat cocked up with a white feather tuft à la mode Anglaise. It is vastly becoming to his fair round cheeks & having bestowed my quantum of Auntly admiration off he goes to help adorn the Common in common with the cunning little donkies & other mannikins equally fine. We seized one of these beasts yesterday & gave him his first ride which he exulted in like a genuine J[ohn] Bull – Tom meanwhile renewing his juvenility by helping all the boy[s] to fly their kites & then abusing their English stupidity versus Yankee cleverness. I am tempted to this garrulity because I hope your eyes are better & that you have leisure eno’ in the country to bear with it. If I had the heart to utter a complaint against you, light of my life, it would be that you do not write as fully as I pine to hear touching yourself – just what is rippling the current of yr thoughts, & feelings. I know it is hard to write this but alas, ‘tis what I am most anxious to know whether such peace &trust as blessed me for a time at Woolwich have been your in-dwellers or such tormenting lodgers of self-ennui, self-disgust as have succeeded them with me likewise find heart-room in your loneliness. I have been suffering from this re-action the humiliation the fact of the law of re-action must create. To find resignation with our weakness & impatience with it, peace & chaos following like day & night, fever & ague is to me a bitter shame; any new spring of night feeling seems but the ordained action of the shuttle in a [p. 8 top] machine & we appear to lose control of our very selves, the puppets of good & bad angels. We take too much credit to ourselves for either change this is the cause of the mortification when we are brought to acknowledge “tis God that worketh in us to will & to do of his good pleasure” but I am so slow to confess this till I have undergone the pain! I can only hint at my meaning on paper – how sorely I miss at such times yr sympathy & support - & helpful encouragements. I shrink from troubling Mary [p. 8 bottom] with all my wayward troubles as I do you, for just now, poor girl, her physical weakness is suffering eno’ to her & magnifies the distresses of others. I must patiently abide the tenth wave of Christian trust, & bear meanwhile as I have so often before, the intervening poison billows of human self recoil. If we live to see the tenth become 5th or 3d even must we despair that hereafter it will become all? Oh for a peep thro’ your dear eyes into “that little world of thee,” into all its upheavings & down fallings, hope-springs, fair hills heaped with life’s sure gains, Sahara deserts, flat & oppressive & glorious seas where ‘deep calleth unto deep.’ I have been lately thinking very deeply of your [p. 8 cross] character, my best friend, & would fain make some of its peculiar gifts my own but must first change both warp & woof I fear! I so covet certain things you so rashly undervalue, ungrateful little woman that you are – [p. 5 cross] as you do probably [crossed out: other] things you possess not as fully as other. The summer is fast gliding away & I think & speak cheerfully of my return for Mary gives me a hope that they may visit us next Spring & that will ease our fresh parting greatly. But I must not forget what I am inflicting on your poor eyes. Good bye – my best darling. All joy be with you!
Yr most faithful
Fanny
Mary & Tom send their love
As a proof of Ronald’s thriving condition Anne soberly asserts with nurse-like exultation that when put upon a donkey’s back it bent beneath him!! An infant Hercules in good sooth.
ADDRESSED: MISS AUSTIN.

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