Records of Later Life

by Fanny Kemble

Give my love to Lord Dacre, if that is respectful enough; and also to Mrs. Sullivan, whose intercourse, briefly as I was able to enjoy it, was very delightful to me.

Affectionately yours,

F. A. B.

Philadelphia, Tuesday, January 8th, 1838.

My Dearest Harriet,

I am not prone to that hungry longing for letters which you have so often expressed to me, yet I was getting heart-sick for some intelligence from some of my dear ones beyond the seas. My own people have not written to me since I left England, and it seemed to me an age since I had heard from you. The day before yesterday, however, brought me letters from you and Emily, and they were dearly welcome.

MADAME DE [STAËL]. A poor woman, who of course had more children than she could well feed or honestly provide for, said to me the other day, alluding to my solitary blessing in that kind, that "Providence had spared me wonderfully." ... How fatal this notion, so prevalent among the poor and ignorant, and even the less ignorant and better-to-do classes, is!—this fathering of our progeny upon Providence, which produces so much misery, and so much crime to boot, in our swarming pauper populations. I have had it in my mind lately once or twice, to write an "Apology for," or "Defense of" Providence. I am sick of hearing so much misery, so much suffering, so much premature death, and so much unnecessary disease, laid to the charge of our best Friend, our Father who is in heaven. Moreover, it is the good (not the reasonable, though) who bring these railing accusations against Providence. Let what calamity soever visit them, they never bethink themselves of their own instrumentality in the business; but with a resignation quite more provoking than praiseworthy, turn up their eyes, and fold their hands, and miscall it a dispensation of Providence. The only application of that "technical" term that I ever heard with pleasure, was that of the delightfully devout old Scotch lady, who said, "Hech, sirs, I'm never weary of reflecting on the gracious dispensations of Providence towards myself, and its righteous judgments on my neighbors!" Doubtless, God has ordained that sin and folly shall produce suffering, that the consequences may warn us from the causes. Madame de Staël, whose brilliancy, I think, has rather thrown into the shade her very considerable common sense, has well said, "Le secret de l'existence, c'est le rapport de nos peines avec nos fautes." And to acknowledge the just and inevitable results of our own actions only as the inscrutable caprices of an inscrutable Will, is to forego one of the most impressive aspects of the great goodness and wisdom of the Providence by which we are governed. Death, and the decay which should be its only legitimate preparation, are not contrary to a right conception of either. But instead of sitting down meekly under what godly folks call "mysterious dispensations" of the Divinity, I think, if I took their view of such unaccountable inflictions, I should call them devilish rather than Divine, and certainly go mad, or very bad. Bearing the righteous result of our own actions, while we suffer, we can adore the mercy that warns us from evil by its unavoidable penalties, at the same time remembering that even our sins, duly acknowledged, and rightly used, may be our gain, through God's merciful provision, that our bitterest experience may become to us a source of virtue and a means of progress. The profound sense of the justice of our Maker renders all things endurable; but the idea of the arbitrary infliction of misery puts one's whole soul in revolt. Wretchedness poured upon us, we cannot conceive why or whence, may well be intolerable; suffering resulting from our own faults may be borne courageously, and with a certain comfort,—forgive the apparent paradox—the comfort is general, the discomfort individual; and if one is not too selfish, one may rejoice in a righteous law, even though one suffers by it. Moreover, if evil have its inevitable results, has not good its inseparable consequences? If the bad deeds of one involve many in their retribution, the well-doing of one spreads incalculable good in all directions. It is because we are by no means wholly selfish, that the consequences of our actions affect others as well as ourselves; so that we are warned a thousand ways to avoid evil and seek good, for the whole world's sake, as well as our own.

What a sermon I have written you! But it was my thought, and therefore, I take it, as good to you as anything else I could have said.

Of course, children cannot love their parents understandingly until they become parents themselves; then one thinks back upon all the pain, care, and anxiety which for the first time one becomes aware has been expended on one, when one begins in turn to experience them for others. But the debt is never paid back. Our children get what was given to us, and give to theirs what they got from us. Love descends, and does not ascend; the self-sacrifice of parents is its own reward; children can know nothing of it. In the relations of the old with the young, however, the tenderness and sympathy may well be on the elder side; for age has known youth, but youth has not known age.

You say you are surprised I did not express more admiration of Harriet Martineau's book about America. But I do admire it—the spirit of it—extremely. I admire her extremely; but I think the moral, even more than the intellectual, woman. I do not mean that she may not be quite as wise as she is good; but she has devoted her mind to subjects which I have not, and probably could not, have given mine to, and writes upon matters of which I am too ignorant to estimate her merit in treating of them. Some of her political theories appear to me open to objection; for instance, female suffrage and community of property; but I have never thought enough upon these questions to judge her mode of advocating them. The details of her book are sometimes mistaken; but that was to be expected, especially as she was often subjected to the abominable impositions of persons who deceived her purposely in the information which she received from them with the perfect trust of a guileless nature. I do entire justice to her truth, her benevolence, and her fearlessness; and these are to me the chief merits of her book....