Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

Fanny.

Monday, December 15th, 1845.

Dearest Hal,

Thank you for your nice inkstand, but I do not like your sending it to me, nevertheless; because I am sure it is a very great privation to you, being, as you are, particular and fidgety in such matters; and it is not a great gain to me, who do not care what I write out of, and surely I shall always be able, go where I will, among frogs or macaronis, to procure sucre noir or inchiostro nero to indite to you with. I shall send you back the poor dear little beloved pest you sent me first, because I am sure the stopper can be readjusted, and then it will be as good as ever, and you will have a peculiar inkstand to potter with, without which I do not believe you would be yourself.

Thank you for the extract from Arnold. I have no idea that Adam was "a mystical allegory," and you know that I believe every man to be his own devil, and a very sufficient one for all purposes of (so-called) damnation....

GENESIS. I suppose the history of Genesis to be the form assumed by the earliest traditions in which men's minds attempted to account for the creation and the first conditions of the human species. The laborious and perilous existence of man; the still more grievous liabilities of woman, who among all barbarous people is indeed the more miserable half of mankind: and it seems obvious that in those Eastern lands, where these traditions took their birth, the growth of venomous reptiles, the deadliest and most insidious of man's natural enemies, should suggest the idea of the type of all evil.

Moses (to whom the Genesis is, I believe, in spite of some later disputants, generally attributed), I presume, accepted the account as literally true, as probably did the authorities, Chaldean or other, from which he derived it....

Moses' "inspiration" did not prevent his enacting some illiberal and cruel laws, among many of admirable wisdom and goodness; and I see no reason why it should have exempted him from a belief in the traditions of his age....

I have heard that there has lately been found in America part of the fossil vertebræ of a serpent which must have measured, it is said, a hundred and forty feet! I cannot say I believe it, but if any human creatures inhabited the earth at the time when such "small gear" are supposed to have disported themselves on its surface, if the merest legend containing reference to such a "worm" survived to scare the early risers on this planet of ours, in its first morning hours of consolidation, who can wonder that such a creature should become the hideous representative of all evil, the origin of all sin and suffering, and the special being between which and the human race irreconcilable enmity was to exist forever? for surely not even the most regenerate mind in Christendom could live on decent terms with the best-disposed snake of such a length as that.

I do not think Mrs. Jameson had positively done anything in the matter of Mrs. Harry Siddons's memoirs beyond looking over a good many papers and preparing her mind with a view to it; and what you tell me a little shakes my confidence in my own opinion upon the subject, which, indeed, was by no means positively made up about it, because I know—at least I think—there were elements in Mrs. Harry's mind not altogether incompatible perhaps with the desire of leaving some record of herself, or having such made for her by others.... There are few people whom I pity more than Mrs. Jameson. I always thought she had a great deal of good in her, but the finer elements in her character have become more apparent and valuable to me the longer I have known her; her abilities are very considerable, and her information very various and extensive; she is a devoted, dutiful daughter, and a most affectionate and generous sister, working laboriously for her mother and the other members of her family.... I compassionate and admire her very much.