Monday, August 8th.—I read old Biagio's preface to Dante, which, from its amazing classicality, is almost as difficult as the crabbed old Florentine's own writing. Worked at a rather elaborate sketch tolerably successfully, and was charmingly interrupted by having our landlady's pretty little child brought in to me. She is a beautiful baby, but will be troublesome enough by and by.... At the theater the house was very good; I played tolerably well upon the whole, but felt so fagged and faint toward the end of the play that I could hardly stand.
Tuesday, August 9th.—I sometimes wish I was a stone, a tree, some senseless, soulless, irresponsible thing; that ebbing sea rolling before me, its restlessness is obedience to the law of its nature, not striving against it, neither is it "the miserable life in it" urging it to ceaseless turmoil and agitation. We dined early, and then started for Dorchester, which we reached at half-past ten, after a most fatiguing journey. It was a still, gray day, an atmosphere and light I like; there is a clearness about it that is pleasanter sometimes than the dazzle of sunshine. Some of the country we drove through was charming, particularly the vale of Honiton.... I have an immense bedroom here; a whole army of ghosts might lodge in it. I hope, if there are any, they will be civil, well-behaved, and, above all, invisible.
Wednesday, August 10th. ... At ten o'clock we started for Weymouth, where we arrived in the course of an hour, and found it basking on the edge of a lovely summer sea, with a dozen varying zones of color streaking its rippling surface; from the deep, dark purple heaving against the horizon to the delicate pearl-edged, glassy golden-green that spreads its transparent sheets over the sparkling sand of the beach. The bold chalky cliffs of the shore send back the burning sunlight with blinding brightness, and stretch away as far as eye can follow in hazy outlines, that glimmer faintly through the shimmering mist. It is all very beautiful.... I got ready my things for the theater, ... and when I got there I was amused and amazed at its absurdly small proportions; it is a perfect doll's playhouse, and until I saw that my father really could stand upon the stage, I thought that I should fill it entirely by myself. How well I remember all the droll stories my mother used to tell about old King George III. and Queen Charlotte, who had a passion for Weymouth, and used to come to the funny little theater here constantly; and how the princesses used to dress her out in their own finery for some of her parts. [I long possessed a very perfect coral necklace of magnificent single beads given to my mother on one of these occasions by the Princess Amelia.] The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and our masquerade scene was in the height of the modern fashion, for there was literally not room to stir; and what between my nurse and my father I suffered very nearly total eclipse, besides much danger of being knocked down each time either of them moved. In the balcony, besides me, there was a cloud, which occasionally interfered with my hair, and I think must have made my face appear to the audience like a chin and mouth speaking out of the sky. To be sure, this inconvenient scenic decoration made rather more appropriate the lines which Shakespeare wrote (only unfortunately Romeo never speaks them), "Two of the stars," etc. I acted very well, but was so dreadfully tired at the end of the play that they were obliged to carry me up to my dressing-room, where I all but fainted away; in spite of which, as I got out of the carriage at the door of our lodging, hearing the dear voice of the sea calling me, I tried to persuade Dall to come down to it with me; but she, thinking I had had enough of emotion and exertion, made me go in and eat my supper and go to bed, which was detestable on her part, and so I told her, which she didn't mind in the least.
Thursday, August 11th.—A kind and courteous and most courtly old Mr. M—— called upon us, to entreat that we would dine with him during our stay in Weymouth; but it is really impossible, with all our hard work, to do society duty too, so I begged permission to decline. After he was gone we walked down to the pier, and took boat and rowed to Portland. The sky was cloudless, and the sea without a wave, and through its dark-blue transparent roofing we saw clearly the bottom, one forest of soft, undulating weeds, which, catching the sunlight through the crystal-clear water, looked like golden woods of some enchanted world within its depths; and it looks just as weird and lovely when folks go drowning down there, only they don't see it. I sang Mrs. Hemans's "What hid'st thou in thy treasure-caves and cells?" and sang and sang till, after rowing for an hour over the hardly heaving, smooth surface, we reached the foot of the barren stone called Portland. We landed, and Dall remained on the beach while my father and I toiled up the steep ascent. The sun's rays fell perpendicularly on our heads, the short, close grass which clothed the burning, stony soil was as slippery as glass with the heat, and I have seldom had a harder piece of exercise than climbing that rock, from the summit of which one wide expanse of dazzling water and glaring white cliffs, that scorched one's eyeballs, was all we had for our reward. To be sure, exertion is a pleasure in itself, and when one's strength serves one's courage, the greater the exertion the greater the pleasure. We saw below us a railroad cut in the rock to convey the huge masses of stone from the famous quarries down to the shore. The descent looked almost vertical, and we watched two immense loads go slowly down by means of a huge cylinder and chains, which looked as if the world might hang upon them in safety. I lay down on the summit of the rock while my father went off exploring further, and the perfect stillness of the solitude was like a spell. There was not a sound of life but the low, drowsy humming of the bees in the stone-rooted tufts of fragrant thyme. On our return we had to run down the steep, slippery slopes, striking our feet hard to the earth to avoid falling; firm walking footing there was none. When we joined Dall we found, to our utter dismay, that it was five o'clock; we bundled ourselves pêle-mêle into the boat and bade the boatman row, row, for dear life; but while we were indulging in the picturesque he had been indulging in fourpenny, which made him very talkative, and his tongue went faster than his arms. I longed for John to make our boat fly over the smooth, burnished sea; the oars came out of the water like long bars of diamond dropping gold. We touched shore just at six, swallowed three mouthfuls of dinner, and off to the theater. The play was "Venice Preserved." I dressed as quick as lightning, and was ready in time. The house was not very good, and I am sure I should have wondered if it had been, when the moon is just rising over the fresh tide that is filling the basin, and a delicious salt breeze blows along the beach, and the stars are lighting their lamps in heaven; and surely nobody but those who cannot help it would be breathing the gas and smoke and vile atmosphere of the playhouse. I played well, and when we came home ran down and stood a few minutes by the sea; but the moon had set, and the dark palpitating water only reflected the long line of lights from the houses all along the curving shore.
Friday, August 12th, Portsmouth.— ... The hotel where we are staying is quite a fine house, and the Assembly balls used to be held here, and so there is a fine large "dancing-hall deserted" of which I avail myself as a music-room, having entire and solitary possession of it and a piano.... At the theater the house was good, and I played well....
Monday, August 15th, Southampton.—After breakfast practised till eleven, and then went to rehearsal; after which Emily Fitzhugh came for me, and we drove out to Bannisters. Poor Mrs. Fitzhugh was quite overcome at seeing my father, whom she has not seen since Mrs. Siddons's death; we left her with him to talk over Campbell's application to her for my aunt's letters. He has behaved badly about the whole business, and I hope Mrs. Fitzhugh will not let him have them.... When we came in I went and looked at Lawrence's picture of my aunt in the dining-room (now in the National Gallery; it was painted for Mrs. Fitzhugh). It is a fine rich piece of coloring, but there is a want of ease and grace in the figure, and of life in the countenance, and altogether I thought it looked like a handsome dark cow in a coral necklace. O ox-eyed Juno! forgive the thought.... At the theater the house was good; the play was "Romeo and Juliet," and I played well. While I was changing my dress for the tomb scene—putting on my grave-clothes, in fact—I had desired my door to be shut, for I hate that lugubrious funeral-dirge. How I do hate, and have always hated, that stage funeral business, which I never see without a cold shudder at its awful unfitness. I can't conceive how that death's pageant was ever tolerated in a theater. [I think Mrs. Bellamy, in her "Memoirs," mentions that it was first introduced as a piece of new sensation when she and Garrick were dividing the town with the efforts of their rival managership.] At present the pretext for it is to give the necessary time for setting the churchyard scene and for Juliet to change her dress, which she has no business to do according to the text, for it expressly says that she shall be buried in all her finest attire, according to her country's custom. In spite of which I was always arrayed in long white muslin draperies and veils, with my head bound up, corpse fashion, and lying, as my aunt had stretched me, on the black bier in the vault, with all my white folds drawn like carved stone robes along my figure and round my feet, with my hands folded and my eyes shut. I have had some bad nervous minutes, sometimes fancying, "Suppose I should really die while I am lying here, making believe to be dead!" and imagining the surprise and dismay of my Romeo when I didn't get up; and at others fighting hard against heavy drowsiness of over-fatigue, lest I should be fast asleep, if not dead, when it came to my turn to speak—though I might have depended upon the furious bursting open of the doors of the vault for my timely waking. Talking over this with Mrs. Fitzhugh one day she told me a comical incident of the stage life of her friend, the fascinating Miss Farren. The devotion of the Earl of Derby to her, which preceded for a long time the death of Lady Derby, from whom he was separated, and his marriage to Miss Farren, made him a frequent visitor behind the scenes on the nights of her performance. One evening, in the famous scene in Joseph Surface's library in "The School for Scandal," when Lady Teazle is imprisoned behind the screen, Miss Farren, fatigued with standing, and chilled with the dreadful draughts of the stage, had sent for an armchair and her furs, and when this critical moment arrived, and the screen was overturned, she was revealed, in her sable muff and tippet, entirely absorbed in an eager conversation with Lord Derby, who was leaning over the back of her chair.
Tuesday, 16th, Southampton.—After breakfast walked down to the city wall, which has remnants of great antiquity they say, as old as the Danes, one bit being still heroically called "Canute's Castle."
Wednesday, August 17th.—Went to the theater, and rehearsed "The Stranger." On my return found Emily waiting for me, and drove with her to Bannisters.... In the evening, at the theater, the house was very good, but I played only so-so, and not at all excellent well....
Thursday, August 18th.—While I was practising I came across that pretty piece of ballad pathos, "The Banks of Allan Water," and sang myself into sobbing. Luckily I was interrupted by Dall and my father, who came in with a little girl, poor unfortunate! whose father had brought her to show how well she deserved an engagement at Covent Garden. She sat down to the piano at his desire, and panted through the great cavatina in the "Gazza Ladra." Poor little thing! I never heard or saw anything that so thoroughly impressed me with the brutal ignorance of our people; for there is scarcely an Englishman of that man's condition, situated as he is, who would not have done the same thing. A child of barely ten years old made to sing her lungs away for four hours every day, when it is not possible yet to know what the character and qualities of her voice will be, or even if she will have any voice at all. Wasting her health and strength in attempting "The Soldier Tired" and "Di piacer," it really was pitiful. We gave her plenty of kind words and compliments, and sundry pieces of advice to him, which he will not take, and in a few months no doubt we shall hear of little Miss H—— singing away as a prodigy, and in a few years the voice, health, and strength will all be gone, and probably the poor little life itself have been worn out of its fragile case. Stupid barbarian! After rehearsal drove to Bannisters.... In the evening, at the theater, the play was "The Provoked Husband." The house was very full; I played fairly well. I was rather tired, and Lady Townley's bones ached, for I had been taking a rowing lesson from Emily, and supplied my want of skill, tyro fashion, with a deal of unnecessary effort.
Friday, August 19th.— ... It sometimes occurs to me that our spirits, when dwelling with the utmost intensity of longing upon those who are distant from us, must create in them some perception, some consciousness of our spiritual presence, so that not by the absent whom I love thinking of me, but by my thinking of them, they must receive some intimation of the vividness with which my soul sees and feels them. It seems to me as if my earnest desire and thought must not bring those they dwell on to me, but render me in some way perceptible, if not absolutely visible, to them.