Revere House, Boston,
Friday, February 7.
I feel terrified, when you speak of my determining what is to be done with your pictures when they arrive in Boston, for assuredly I am utterly incompetent to any such decision, and can only refer myself to the judgment of my friend Mr. Cabot, who will certainly advise for the best in the matter, but who, nevertheless, is not infallible. I should think it rather late in the season for exhibiting them here, but again would not take upon myself to say. I do not know what the percentage on sale here is, but presume it is not higher than in London. But here people exhibit their pictures at a shilling a head, i.e. put them in a room hung round with black calico, light up a flare of gas above them, and take a quarter of a dollar from every sinner who sees them. Two of Churche's pictures (he is a great American artist, though you may never have heard of him) have been, or rather are, at this moment so exhibiting—his "Falls of Niagara," and a very beautiful landscape called the "Heart of the Andes." Both these pictures were exhibited in London, I know not with what success; they have both considerable merit, but the latter I admire extremely. Page had a "Venus" here the other day, exhibited by gas-light in a black room; but indeed, dear Mr. Leighton, it sometimes seems to me as if you never could imagine or would consent to the gross charlatanry which is practised—how necessarily I do not know—here about all such matters. Certainly your gold medal should be trumpeted—and your profession of art and your confession of faith, and anything most private and particular that you would not wish known, had better be published in several versions in all the newspapers of the United States. Your pictures must be placarded over all the walls in all the sizes of type conceivable, and all the colours of the rainbow. If you will write me your personal history, and rampant puffs of your own performances, I will copy them and send them to those sources of public instruction, the enlightened public press. Moreover, I will go and sit before them daily and utter exclamations of admiration on every note in my voice, and if anything else remains to be done I will do it; but you must not make me in any way responsible for the result, because it is not in the least likely that you will write yourself up to the mark of puffing as practised here. Basta—I will take the very best advice and do the very best I can about the pictures, and rejoice in my heart to see them myself, that I can assuredly promise you. By-the-bye, I gave your address only a few days ago, to be sent to a person now in Europe negotiating with French and English artists for pictures to exhibit. I wonder if he will find you and enlighten your mind about art in America. Thank you for the account of Westbury and its Christmas festivities, and thank you, thank you for the sketch of the home you are so very kind as to promise me; it will be a blessed treasure to see, for you cannot conceive the dreary heart-sickness that utterly overcomes me here sometimes. To-day I was singing the quartette in "Faust" that we used to sing, and was obliged to stop for crying. I wished extremely to have a photograph of the house, and, if I could only have afforded it, should have asked you to sell me every sketch you took about the place. The skies here are beautiful, wonderful in their transparent purity. They seem to me of a different texture from any other I ever saw, more diaphanous, and there is a colour in them when they are quite free from clouds that surpasses in delicacy all other skies I have seen. It is like the complexion of the young girls here, a miracle of evanescent brilliant softness. My winter is wearing along pretty tolerably. My Christmas was passed entirely alone, but I am quite used to that. I am beginning to be much occupied about the plans and drawings for a house, which I am thinking of building on some land I own in Massachusetts. It is a great undertaking, and really at fifty years old seems hardly worth while, and yet, till I am ready for my coffin, I must have some place in which to rest my head. Perhaps some fine day—who knows?—you will come to see me there. That would be a very pretty plot, and I think I need not say how welcome you would be, dear Mr. Leighton, to yours very truly,
Fanny Kemble.
Lenox, Tuesday.
A thousand thanks, my dear Mr. Leighton, for the minute account of Westbury—as I cannot know anything about my sister, it is something to know how her house is settled and decorated, and how the place where she lives looks. The red velvet drawing-room sounds gorgeous, and it must be very becoming to the pictures. Of your pictures that have "wandered west" you may be sure I should have written you, if I had had the good news to give you that either of them was sold, but I am sorry to say this is not the case. The New York Exhibition is now closed, and the pictures have been sent back to Boston, where they are at present hanging in the Athenæum under the care of Mr. Ordway, who wishes, but does not much hope, to be able to sell them. It seems that one or two people asked the price of the pictures in New York, but considered it, when they received the information, "rather a tall price." I am a little consoled at the ill success of this venture of yours, by Henry Greville's writing me that your hands are full of orders, for which you are to be well paid. Your small acquaintance, Fanny, who left me this morning after a visit of a month, propounded to me the expediency of desiring the purchaser of the reconciliation of old Capulet and Montague to buy as its pendant the "Paris and Juliet"; and though she has no personal acquaintance with the lover of art in question, she said, when she got to Philadelphia she should set about intriguing to that effect; and she had my full permission to try and to succeed. I wish I could tell you anything pleasant in return for your description of the rooms at Westbury, but I have nothing very cheerful to impart. I have been quite unwell, and am still very far from flourishing; my spirits are much depressed, and the life I lead, of incessant worry and discomfort with servants and all one's domestic arrangements, is something quite too tedious to relate—and that indeed it would be impossible to realise, as the Yankees say, unless you witnessed it. I saw Hetty Hosmer three days after her arrival in Boston. Her father is a hopeless invalid, and she will certainly not leave him while he lives; but I suspect that he is likely to die before this year ends, and then she will return to live in Italy. The State of Missouri has voted two thousand pounds for a statue of Colonel Benton, one of its "great men," to be erected by her, which, of course, is a whole plume of feathers in her cap.
Good-bye, dear Mr. Leighton; believe me always yours most truly,
Fanny Kemble.
You must not fail to write to me any directions that you wish observed about your pictures, while they remain here. I am only too glad to try to serve you.
Lenox, Berkshire, Massachusetts,
Monday, March 12.
Pictures of very high pretensions are exhibited, like the scenes in a theatre, by gas-light, and advertised in coloured posters all over the streets like theatrical exhibitions. However, it is no use vexing your soul with what neither of us can help. I cannot and will not accept the responsibility of disposing of your pictures; but I will get the best advice I can about them and follow it, and spare no personal pains to have them advantageously dealt with; only, I hope it will not be very long before they arrive, because my own stay in Boston is now drawing to a close, and after the end of the present month I shall be at Lenox, a remote village in a lonely hill district one hundred miles from Boston, or rather I should say seven hours distant from the nearest railroad station, which is six miles away again from Lenox. When once I come here—for I write at this moment from this snowy wilderness—it will be to remain for the next nine or ten months, so you see I must make all arrangements about your pictures before taking my leave of civilised communities. I came up to this place from Boston yesterday to look at a house that I think of hiring for a year, and shall return to the city next week. I have left your pictures (should they arrive during my absence) to the charge of a friend of mine who is one of the directors of the Athenæum, and will see that they are properly received. Thank you a thousand times for the promised likeness of Westbury, which will be a treasure to me. What a contrast is my recollection of that charming place, to the abomination of desolation of the dreary savage winter landscape of low black hills, bristling with wintry woods and wide, bare, snow-covered valleys, that stretch before me here at this moment. I am well, but much worn out with my last course of public readings, which I had just ended in Boston. My daughters are well, and write to me tolerably frequently; the eldest seems happy and contented in her marriage; your small acquaintance, Fanny, writes to me from Savannah of sitting with the doors and windows wide open, and wiping the perspiration from her face in the meantime; and here everything is buried in snow. I shall wait till I return to Boston to finish this, as I shall hope to send you then news of the arrival of your pictures.