Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

The railroad running through the Castle Gardens has cruelly spoiled them, of course, though from the depth of the ravine, at the bottom of which it lies, it is not seen from Prince's Street; but its silver wake floats up above the highest trees of the banks, and the Gardens themselves are ruined by it. I have a sadly affectionate feeling for every inch of that ground.... I do not admire Scott's monument very much. It is an exact copy in stone of the Episcopal Throne in Exeter Cathedral, a beautiful piece of wood carving. The difference between the white color of the statue and the gray shrine by which it is canopied is not agreeable to me. I should have liked it better if the figure had been of the same stone as the monument, and so of the same color.

In Edinburgh it is never so much the detail of its various parts that arrests my attention and enchants me especially, as the picturesque and grand effect of its several parts in juxtaposition with each other—the beautiful result of all its features together, the striking and romantic whole. The Carlton Hill seems to me more covered with buildings than I thought it was; but I believe you have seen it since I have, so that I do not know how to answer your question about it.

In determining to act in Edinburgh I followed the advice of the Mairs, who were, of course, more likely to be able to judge of the probable relative success of reading or acting here, and who counselled the latter.... Good-bye, dear.

Ever yours,

Fanny.

EFFECTS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. [My cousin Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Mrs. Harry Siddons, married Major Mair, son of that fine old officer, Colonel Mair, Governor of Fort George. During several protracted seasons of foreign service, one of the banishments to which his military duty condemned Arthur Mair was a remote and lonely outpost on the furthest border of our then hardly peopled Canadian territory—a literal wilderness, without human inhabitants. Here, alone, with the small body of men under his command, he led a life of absolute mental and intellectual solitude, the effect of which upon his nervous system was such that, on his return to civilized existence, the society of his fellow-creatures, and all the intercourse of busy city life, affected him with such extreme shyness and embarrassment that in his own native town of Edinburgh, for some time after his return to it, he used to avoid all the more frequented thoroughfares, from mere nervous dread of encountering and being spoken to by persons of his acquaintance—an unfavorable result of "solitary confinement," even in a cell as wide as a wilderness.]

Star Hotel, Glasgow, George Square, October 4th.

Dear Harriet,

My acquaintance with the H—— D——s dates only from my last visit to Glasgow, when they joined our party at this hotel, and returned to Carolside with us. The lady is a daughter of a family who are intimate friends of T—— M——, and was presented to me when a girl in London some years ago. She has since married, and I met her again, with her husband, here a little while ago.... They both show a very kind desire to be civil and amiable to me, and I like them both, and her especially. They have spent the last five years of their lives wandering together about Europe and Asia. They have no children, and have travelled without any of the servants that generally attend wealthy English people abroad (courier, lady's-maid, valet); and have come home so in love with their wild untrammelled life, that the possession of their estate at Ardoch, and their prospect of an income of many thousands a year, seem equally to oppress them as undesirable incumbrances, requiring them to sacrifice all their freedom, and submit to all sorts of civilized conventional constraints from which they have lived in blessed exemption abroad, and to adopt a style of existence utterly repugnant to their nomadic no-habits. G—— D——, on their return to Ardoch, proposed to his wife to take up their abode in two of the rooms of their fine large house, and let the rest to some pleasant and amusing people; for, he said, they never could think of living in that house by themselves....

Your distress about my readings I answered with a slight feeling that it was a pity you should begin to be anxious and troubled about the details of a project that may possibly never be carried out after any fashion. I paid heed, nevertheless, to your observations, of which I admit the force, and am so far from having determined to abide by any theoretical convictions of my own upon the subject that I shall be guided entirely by Mr. Mitchell's opinion about the best manner of giving my readings; for, as I do it for money, I shall do it in the way most likely to be profitable. At the same time, I shall certainly use my best endeavor to have the business so arranged as to desecrate as little as possible the great works of the master, in the exposition and illustration of which I look for infinite pleasure and profit of the highest order, whatever my meaner gain by it may be....