After breakfast, practised: Mr. and Mrs. —— called, also Dr. ——. Went and saw poor Mrs. —— for a little time; she interests me most extremely—I like her very very much. Came up to my own room; read a canto of Dante. Was called down to see folk, and found the drawing-room literally thronged. The first face I made out was Mr. ——'s, for whom I have taken an especial love: two ladies, a whole load of men, and Mr. ——, who had brought me a curious piece of machinery, in the shape of a musical box, to look at. It contained a little bird, no larger than a large fly, with golden and purple wings, and a tiny white beak. On the box being wound up, this little creature flew out, and, perching itself on the brink of a gold basin, began fluttering its wings, opening its beak, and uttering sundry very melodious warblings, in the midst of which, it sank suddenly down, and disappeared, the lid closed, and there was an end. What a pity 'tis that we can only realise fairy-land through the means of machinery. One reason why there is no such thing left as the believing faculty among men, is because they have themselves learnt to make magic, and perform miracles. When the coast was once more clear, I returned to my room, got out things for the theatre, dined tête-à-tête with D——; my father dined at the public table. After dinner, came up stairs, read Grahame, wrote journal, began my novel under another shape. I can't write prose; (query, can I any thing else?) I don't know how, but my sentences are the comicalest things in the world; the end forgets the beginning, and the whole is a perfect labyrinth of parenthesis within parenthesis. Perhaps, by the by, without other view, it would be just as well if I exercised myself a little in writing my own language, as the grammar hath it, "with elegance and propriety." At half-past five, went to the theatre. The play was Romeo and Juliet; the house not good. Mr. —— played Romeo.
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I acted like a wretch, of course; how could I do otherwise? Oh, Juliet! vision of the south! rose of the garden of the earth! was this the glorious hymn that Shakspeare hallowed to your praise? was this the mingled strain of Love's sweet going forth, and Death's dark victory, over which my heart and soul have been poured out in wonder and ecstasy?—How I do loathe the stage! these wretched, tawdry, glittering rags, flung over the breathing forms of ideal loveliness; these miserable, poor, and pitiful substitutes for the glories with which poetry has invested her magnificent and fair creations—the glories with which our imagination reflects them back again. What a mass of wretched mumming mimicry acting is! Pasteboard and paint, for the thick breathing orange groves of the south; green silk and oiled parchment, for the solemn splendour of her noon of night; woolen platforms and canvass curtains, for the solid marble balconies and rich dark draperies of Juliet's sleeping-chamber, that shrine of love and beauty; rouge, for the startled life-blood in the cheek of that young passionate woman; an actress, a mimicker, a sham creature, me, in fact, or any other one, for that loveliest and most wonderful conception, in which all that is true in nature, and all that is exquisite in fancy, are moulded into a living form. To act this! to act Romeo and Juliet! horror! horror! how I do loathe my most impotent and unpoetical craft!
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In the last scene of the play, I was so mad with the mode in which all the preceding ones had been perpetrated, that, lying over Mr. ——'s corpse, and fumbling for his dagger, which I could not find, I, Juliet, thus apostrophised him,—Romeo being dead—"why, where the devil is your dagger, Mr. ——!" What a disgusting travesty. On my return home, I expressed my entire determination to my father to perform the farce of Romeo and Juliet no more. Why, it's an absolute shame that one of Shakspeare's plays should be thus turned into a mockery. I received a note from young Mr. ——, accompanied by a very curious nosegay in shells; a poor substitute for the breathing, fresh, rosy flowers he used to furnish me with, when I was last here.
Thursday, 6th.
The morning was beautifully bright and warm, like a May morning in England. After breakfast, practised for two hours: while doing so, was interrupted by Mr. ——, who came to bid us good-by. He was going on to New York, and thence to England.
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