Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

Dearest H——,

You are in Italy! in that land which, from the earliest time I can remember, has been the land of my dreams; and it seems strange to me that you should be there, and I here; for when we were together the realities of life, the matter-of-fact interests of every-day existence always attracted your sympathies more than mine; nor do I remember ever hearing you mention, with the longing which possessed me, Italy, or the shores of the Mediterranean.... If, as I believe, there is a special Providence in "the fall of a sparrow," then your and my whereabouts are not the result of accidental circumstance, but the providential appointment of God. Dearest H——, your life's lesson just now is to be taught you through variety of scene, the daily intercourse of your most precious friend [Miss Dorothy Wilson], and the beautiful and lofty influences of the countries in which you are traveling and sojourning: and mine is to be learnt from a page as different as the chapters of Lindley Murray's Grammar are different from those of a glorious, illuminated, old vellum book of legends. I not only believe through my intuitive instincts, but also through my rational convictions, that my own peculiar task is the wholesomest and best for me, and though I might desire to be with you in Italy, I am content to be without you in America.... How much all separation and disappointment tend to draw us nearer to God! To me upon this earth you seem almost lost—you, and those yet nearer and dearer to me than yourself; your very images are becoming dim, and vague, and blurred in outline to my memory, like faded pictures or worn-out engravings. I think of you all almost as of the dead, and the feverish desire to be once more with you and them, from which I have suffered sometimes, is gradually dying away in my heart; and now when I think of any of you, my dear distant ones, it is as folded with me together in our Heavenly Father's arms, watched over by His care, guarded over by His merciful love, and though my imagination no longer knows where to seek or find you on earth, I meet you under the shadow of His Almighty Wings, and know that we are together—now—and forever.

SEPARATION OF FRIENDS. [To those who know the rate of intercourse between Europe and America now, these expressions of the painful sense of distance from my country and friends, under which I suffered, must seem almost incomprehensible,—now, when to go to Europe seems to most Americans the easiest of summer trips, involving hardly more than a week's sea voyage; when letters arrive almost every other day by some of the innumerable steamers flying incessantly to and fro, and weaving, like living shuttles, the woof and warp of human communication between the continents; and the submarine telegraph shoots daily tidings from shore to shore of that terrible Atlantic, with swift security below its storms. But when I wrote this to my friend, no words were carried with miraculous celerity under the dividing waves; letters could only be received once a month, and from thirty to thirty-seven days was the average voyage of the sailing packets which traversed the Atlantic. Men of business went to and fro upon their necessary affairs, but very few Americans went to Europe, and still fewer Europeans went to America, to spend leisure, or to seek pleasure; and American and English women made the attempt still seldomer than the men. The distance between the two worlds, which are now so near to each other, was then immense.]

Let me answer your questions, dear H——; though when I strive most entirely to satisfy you, I seem to have left out the very things you wish to know....

I am reading Sir Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici." What charming old English it is! How many fantastical and how many beautiful things there are in it!

Yesterday I walked down, with a basket of cucumbers and some beautiful flowers, to Mrs. F——'s, the wife of the Unitarian clergyman whose church I attend, and who is an excellent and highly valued friend of mine; and I sat two hours with her and another lady, going through an interminable discussion on the subject of intellectual gifts: the very various proportions in which they were distributed, and the measure of consciousness of superiority which was inevitable, and therefore allowable, in the possessor of an unusual amount of such endowments....

I wish Mr. and Mrs. F—— lived near me instead of being merely come to spend a few weeks in this neighborhood.... I do not keep a diary any more; I do not find chronicling my days helps me to live them, and for many reasons I have given up my journal. Perhaps I may resume it when we set out for the South....

We are now altogether proprietors of this place, and I really think, as I am often told, that it is getting to be prettier and better kept than any other in this neighborhood. It is certainly very much improved, and no longer looks quite unlike an English place, but there are yet a thousand things to be done to it, in the contemplation of which I try to forget its present mongrel appearance.

Now, dear, I have answered as many of your questions as my paper allows. Do not, I beseech you, send me back word that my letter was "thoroughly unsatisfactory."

God bless you.