These various proposals have put me in heart once more about the possible success of this reading experiment, and I am altogether much comforted at seeing that employment is not likely to fail me, which I was beginning to fear it might.... Of course, if I apply for engagements to managers, I must expect to take their terms, not to make my own—for beggars must not be choosers, as I learnt long ago; and when I solicit an engagement, I must be prepared to sell myself cheap—and I will. If Maddox won't pay me what I ask, and Webster won't have me at any price, I shall come to you and Dorothy, who, I "reckon," will take me on my own terms: which in these my days of professional humiliation (not personal humility, you know), is quite kind of you.
Yours ever,
Fanny.
King Street, Friday, 28th.
My dearest Hal,
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. You will be glad to hear that Mr. Maddox has at length come into my terms.... For the next two months this is some anxiety off my mind, and I trust will be off yours for me; and the last two days have shown me that my chance of getting employment, either acting or reading, is likely to last—at any rate till my sister returns, when I shall probably stay with her till my departure for America.... I am most thankful that the depression and discouragement under which I succumbed for a while has been thus speedily relieved. It is a curious sensation to have a certain consciousness of power (which I have, though perhaps it is quite a mistaken notion), and at the same time of absolute helplessness. It seems to me as if I had some sort of strength, and yet I feel totally incapable of coping with the small difficulties of circumstance under which it is oppressed; it's like a sort of wide-awake nightmare. I suppose it's because I am a woman that I am so idiotic and incompetent to help myself.
But when one thinks of it, what a piteous page in the history of human experience is the baffling and defeat of real genius by the mere weight of necessity, the bare exigencies of existence, the need to live from day to day. Think of Beethoven dying, and saying to Hummel, with that most wonderful assertion of his own great gifts, "Pourtant, Hummel, j'avois du génie!"—such transcendent genius as it was too! such pure and perfect and high and deep inspiration! which had, nevertheless, not defended him from the tyranny of poverty, and the petty cares of living, all his life.
Is it not well that people of great genius are always proud as well as humble, and that the consciousness of their own nobility spreads, as it were, the wings of an angel between them and all the baseness and barrenness through which they are often compelled to wade up to the lips? Whenever I think of Burns, my heart tightens itself, to use a French expression, for a most painful physical emotion. Do you know Schiller's exquisite poem of the "Division of the Earth"? I will send you a translation, if you do not—a rough one I made of it when it was one of my German lessons. My version is harsh and poor enough, but the thoughts are preserved, and the thought is worthy of that noble poet....
29, King Street, Saturday, 12th.
My dearest Hal,