Cheltenham, Aug. 8, 1819.
My recollections of Anna Seward are as favourable as gratitude for the most sedulous desire on her part to receive with marked kindness the visitor introduced by her Llangollen friends can make them. You shall have them copied verbatim from my journal when I return.[61] Her genius seemed of an order calculated to take much higher flights than she ever accomplished. The growth of her wing was impeded by ‘too much cherishing.’ She lived in the relaxing atmosphere of a country town, where she was indubitably superior to all the women and most of the men in mental gifts and attainments, and though not absolutely beautiful, her personal attractions were considerable—two circumstances adverse to the expansion of talent. ‘Trop d’encouragement lasse le génie,’ says Mad. de Staël, an accurate observer of external life and internal feelings; and the more personal advantages a woman possesses, the farther she is removed by man from that tone of equality which would tend to her improvement. While young he too often looks at her as his prize or his prey, his friend, his enemy, or his victim, to render her even-handed justice. And when old, he considers it as something inherently ridiculous that she should wither away, according to the universal law of nature, and deems her change ‘from fair to foul’ (as Lord Byron uncivilly calls it, when speaking of his mistress) a fit subject for all his powers of ridicule. A country town also is a nursery of much vanity in those who are superior to their companions. Each remarkable person is usually unrivalled in his own department; and the dissipation is more constant, more from morning till night, and more dozy and stupefying than in a capital. Her Letters, I own, I had not patience to read through. Her account of living characters seemed to me prolix and dull, though I had no right to complain, being dismissed with the laconic phrase of ‘amiable, lovely, and accomplished.’ It would have required much higher sauce to bribe me to go through the book.
TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.
Cheltenham, Aug. 8, 1819.
If I were in danger, I could not be removed in a better time, provided it is suitable to my eternal interests; for I should leave all the people I most love prosperous and happy, and all, except your dear self, in good health. I have a sufficiency for all my boys, and the most complete union and affection in my family; and I should escape the steep part of the down hill, for as yet many circumstances have combined to hide from me that I was going down. My husband being much younger than the husbands of my cotemporaries, my children being young, the cheerfulness of my temper when well, and my freedom from the common cares of advancing years, have all combined to keep me in a comfortable atmosphere of youthfulness, which could not have lasted many years longer. Besides, from the multifarious accidents of life, a few added years might give me the pain of losing some of the dear objects of my affection. So, to return, provided it were suitable to my eternal interests, I could not go in a better time; yet, I assure you, I would much prefer staying with those I love.
Oct., 1819.—A letter full of the most awful details relative to the Duke of Richmond’s death. They shall not darken this paper. On so awful an infliction, from which no care can insure us, and which may at any moment occur to us or ours, it is best not to fix our eyes too steadily. One circumstance only it may not be wholly unprofitable to keep in mind. The bite was inflicted by an irritated animal—a fox, which had been confined, escaped to the woods, was retaken, and became enraged at being again subject to confinement. I remember the Duke of Richmond in Ireland, when, as Col. Lennox, he was an object of universal admiration to the young of both sexes. His duel with the Duke of York seemed to have something in it chivalrous, displaying a recklessness of all selfish considerations. We knew little of the particulars, but this mystery increased our respect. He was supposed to excel in all manly exercises, and that was a higher praise in those days than it is in these more intellectual times. He was said to be the finest formed man in England, and his playing at cricket was praised as an exquisite display of grace, strength, and skill. When Lord Buckingham was Secretary in Lord Westmoreland’s Administration, he gave parties in the Phœnix Park, where the élite of the young men played cricket, while Lady Westmoreland and a few young women, either of the highest station or selected from the beauties of that time (and in those days beauty was itself a dignity), sat in a tent as spectators. The writer is ashamed to say, that such is her propensity to ennui under the smallest constraint or continuity of enforced pleasure, she has suffered greatly under the delights of these parties, and was too well prepared to answer the question, ‘Est-ce que je m’amuse?’ Yet by those who never were invited how much were they desired; how much were the initiated envied by those who were hopeless of admission. Cricket was succeeded by a dinner; cards and dancing filled up the interval till the appearance of a supper, twin brother to the dinner; and then by the light of the waning moon or rising dawn, we parted to drive through the beautiful scenery of the Park.
Nov. 10.—Yesterday evening I tried to read Boccaccio, in order to find a tale to amuse my children. The language may be very fine and very pure, but the stories in general are so cumbrously told, so loaded with unnecessary circumstance, so coarsely indecent, and so brutally cruel, that I cannot but wonder at the reputation of this work. Impurity without wit, and dénouements of assault and battery, are to be found in almost every page of the tales that mean to be gay. Yet a few of them are charming, and I love to see the mine where Shakespeare found so much valuable ore.