Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

I have received this morning from Liverpool, in answer to my letter about my readings, a very earnest request that I would give lectures upon Shakespeare. This I have declined doing, not having either the requisite knowledge or ability nor the necessary time properly to prepare a careful analysis of the smallest portion of such over-brimming subjects as those plays. I should like to study again Hazlitt's and Coleridge's comments upon Shakespeare; the former I used to think excellent.

Mrs. Grote herself wrote those stanzas upon Mendelssohn which you saw in the Spectator. She urged me vehemently, while I was with her at the Beeches, to do something of the kind; but I could not. She then showed me her verses, which please me better now than they did then; for then the painful association of his former existence in that place, and the excitement of his beautiful music, which she plays extremely well, had affected my imagination and feelings so much that I should have found it very difficult to be satisfied with any poetical tribute to him that was not of the very highest order.

She and I walked together to the spot in the beautiful woodland where he had lain down to rest, and where she wishes to erect a monument; and I cannot tell you how profoundly I was touched, as we stood silently there, while the great heavy drops, melting in the winter evening's sunshine, fell from the boughs of the beech-trees like slow tears upon the spot where he had lain.

I have read more of Stanley's "Sermons," and quite agree with you in the difference you draw between them and Mr. Furness's book; the spirit of both is kindred....

I don't know anything about the income-tax. I am getting frightfully behind the times, having read no Times for a long time; but as regards income-tax, or any other tax, there is no telling how long one may be free from such galls in America. If they indulge in a few more such national diversions as this war in Mexico, they will have to pay for their whistle, in some shape or other, and in more shapes than one.

It is deplorable to hear the despondency of all public and political men that I see, with regard to the condition of the country. With the Tories, one has long been familiar with their cries that "the sky is falling:" but now the Liberals, at least those who all their lives have been professing Liberals, seem to think "the sky is falling" too; and their lamentable misgivings are really sad to listen to.

I dined on Saturday at Lady Grey's, with the whole Grey family. Lord Dacre, and all of them, spoke of Cobden and Bright as of another Danton and Mirabeau, likened their corn-law league, and peace protests, to the first measures of the first leaders of the French Revolution; and predicted with woful headshakings a similar end to their proceedings. I do not know whether this is an injustice to the individuals in question, but it seems to me an injustice to the whole people of England collectively, and to their own class, the aristocracy of England, which has incurred no such retribution, but which has invariably furnished liberal and devoted leaders to every step of popular progress—their own father an eminent instance of devotion to it. Such misgivings seem to me, too, quite unjust to the powerful, enlightened, and wealthy class which forms the sound body of our sound-hearted nation: and equally unjust to those below it, in whom, in spite of much vice and more ignorance, of poverty and degradation, the elements of evil do not exist in the degree and with the virulence that spawned that hideous mob of murderers who became at last the only government of revolutionary France. The antecedent causes have not existed here for such results; and it is an insult to the whole English people to prophesy thus of it.

[Lord Dacre, because of his devotion to the agricultural interest, as he conceives it, and being himself a great practical farmer, seemed to me at once, at the time of the repeal of the corn laws, to renounce his Liberalism; and though one of the most enlightened, generous, and broad-minded politicians I have ever known, till then, to become suddenly timid, faithless, and almost selfish, in his fear of the consequences of Sir Robert Peel's measures.]

What a fine thing faith in God is, even when one's own individual interests must perish, even though the temporary interests of one's country may appear threatened with adversity! What an uncommonly fine thing it is under such circumstances to do right, and to be able to believe in right doing!... As I listened to the persons by whom I was surrounded, and considered their position and circumstances—their forks and spoons, their very good dinner, and all their etceteras of luxury and enjoyment,—I thought that, having all they have, if they had faith in God and in their fellow-creatures besides, they would have the portion of those who have none of the good things of this world—they would have too much.

BELIEF IN HUMANITY. Will the days ever come when men will see that Christ believed in humanity as none of His followers has ever done since; that He, knowing its infirmity better than any other, trusted in its capacity for good more than any other? We are constantly told that people can't be taught this, and can't learn that, and can't do t'other; and He taught them nothing short of absolute perfection: "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." Are we to suppose He did not mean what he said?