Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

MARY BERRY. Charles Greville began writing to me upon these subjects, with reference to the rapidly declining health and strength of his and my friend, Mary Berry; over whose approaching death he lamented greatly, although she is upwards of eighty years old, and, according to my notions, must be ready and willing to depart.

Charles Greville's ideas, as far as I can make them out, appear to me those of a materialist. His chief regret seems to be for the loss of a person he cared for, and the departure of a remarkable member of his society. Beyond these two views of the subject he does not appear to me to go.

He has sent me, in the last letter I received from him, an extract from one of Sir James Mackintosh's, on the death of his wife, which he calls a "touching expression of grief," but which strikes me as rather a deplorable expression of grief without other alleviation than the dim and doubtful surmise of a mind the philosophy of which had never accepted the consolations of revelation, and yet, under the pressure of sorrow, rejected the narrower and shallower ones of stoical materialism.

You wish to hear of my arrangement with my cousin, Charles Mason, and I will tell you when it is decided on....

I have had a note from your sister, asking me to dine with them any day after the 16th, when they expect to come to town; but I have declined the invitation, because I do not wish to give up dining with my brother Henry, who comes to me every day when I don't act....

It seems strange that you should ask me if uncertainty, torments me. It torments me SO that I never endure it, even when the only escape from it is by some conclusion that I know to be rash and ill-advised.

"The woman who deliberates," says the saying, "is lost." My loss has been, and ever will be, through precipitation, not deliberation. To choose anything, a gown even, is a martyrdom to me, and, unlike the generality of my sex, I generally go into a shop, wishing to look at nothing, and knowing only the precise color, material, and quantity of the stuff I mean to purchase; for if I were to leave myself the smallest discretion—option, we will say (I can hardly leave myself what I haven't got)—I should infallibly buy something revoltingly ugly, out of mere impatience of the investigation and deliberation necessary to get something that pleased me. It is to save myself from the trouble of choice that I have made so many arbitrary and, to your thinking, absurd rules about the details of my daily life; but they spare me indecision about trifles, and I find it, therefore, comfortable to follow them.

I am at Morrison's hotel; the rooms are clean, comfortable, and cheerful, but the fare is bad and far from abundant; but if the charges are meagre in proportion, I shall be satisfied, if not with food, at least with equity.

My friend Arthur Malkin is here, as secretary to one of the members of the committee sent out from England to organize relief for your wretched countrymen. He is good and clever, and it is a great pleasure to me to have him here. I am sorry Mr. Labouchère [afterwards Lord Taunton] is away in Parliament. I wished particularly to have met him.

Lord Bessborough was at the play last night, and sent, after it was over, to invite me to the St. Patrick's ball on Wednesday; but I have declined, as I do not feel at all well enough for dissipations that would bore as well as tire me. I am told he means to ask me to dine at the Castle, which I rather dread, as it is not, I believe, allowable to refuse a representative of majesty; but I dread the exertion and the tedium of the thing, and have a particular dislike to the notion of meeting ——....