Brunswick Hotel, Boston.
November 25th 1881.
If I should write here all that I might write, I should speedily fill this as yet unspotted blank-book, bought in London six months ago, but hitherto unopened. It is so long since I have kept any notes, taken any memoranda, written down my current reflections, taken a sheet of paper, as it were, into my confidence! Meanwhile so much has come and gone, so much that it is now too late to catch, to reproduce, to preserve. I have lost too much by losing, or rather by not having acquired, the note-taking habit. It might be of great profit to me; & now that I am older, that I have more time, that the labour of writing is less onerous to me, & I can work more at my leisure, I ought to endeavour to keep, to a certain extent, a record of passing impressions, of all that comes, that goes, that I see, & feel, & observe. To catch and keep something of life—that’s what I mean. Here I am back in America, for instance, after six years of absence, & likely while here to see and learn a great deal that ought not to become mere waste material. Here I am, da vero, and here I am likely to be for the next five months. I am glad I have come—it was a wise thing to do. I needed to see again les miens, to revive my relations with them, and my sense of the consequences that these relations entail. Such relations, such consequences, are a part of one’s life, and the best life, the most complete, is the one that takes full account of such things. One can only do this by seeing one’s people from time to time, by being with them, by entering into their lives. Apart from this I hold it was not necessary I should come to this country. I am 37 years old, I have made my choice, & God knows that I have now no time to waste. My choice is the old world—my choice, my need, my life. There is no need for me to-day to argue about this; it is an inestimable blessing to me, and a rare good fortune, that the problem was settled long ago, & that I have now nothing to do but to act on the settlement.—My impressions here are exactly what I expected they would be, & I scarcely see the place, and feel the manners, the race, the tone of things, now that I am on the spot, more vividly than I did while I was still in Europe. My work lies there—and with this vast new world, je n’ai que faire. One can’t do both—one must choose. No European writer is called upon to assume that terrible burden, and it seems hard that I should be. The burden is necessarily greater for an American—for he must deal, more or less, even if only by implication, with Europe; whereas no European is obliged to deal in the least with America. No one dreams of calling him less complete for not doing so. (I speak of course of people who do the sort of work that I do; not of economists, of social science people.) The painter of manners who neglects America is not thereby incomplete as yet; but a hundred years hence—fifty years hence perhaps—he will doubtless be accounted so. My impressions of America, however, I shall after all, not write here. I don’t need to write them (at least not àpropos of Boston;) I know too well what they are. In many ways they are extremely pleasant; but, heaven forgive me! I feel as if my time were terribly wasted here! x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
It is too late to recover all those lost impressions—those of the last six years—that I spoke of in beginning; besides, they are not lost altogether, they are buried deep in my mind, they have become part of my life, of my nature. At the same time if I had nothing better to do, I might indulge in a retrospect that would be interesting and even fruitful—look back over all that has befallen me since last I left my native shores. I could remember vividly, & I have little doubt I could express happily enough, if I made the effort. I can remember without effort with what an irresistible longing I turned to Europe, with what ardent yet timid hopes, with what indefinite yet inspiring intentions, I took leave of les miens. I recall perfectly the maturing of my little plan to get abroad again and remain for years, during the summer of 1875; the summer the latter part of which I spent in Cambridge. It came to me there on my return from New York where I had been spending a bright cold unremunerative, uninteresting winter, finishing Roderick Hudson & writing for the Nation. (It was these two tasks that kept me alive.) I had returned from Europe the year before that, the beginning of September ’74, sailing for Boston with Wendell Holmes & his wife as my fellow passengers. I had come back then to “try New York”—thinking it my duty to attempt to live at home before I should grow older, and not take for granted too much that Europe alone was possible; especially as Europe for me then meant simply Italy, where I had had some very discouraged hours, and which, lovely and desirable though it was, didn’t seem as a permanent residence, to lead to anything. I wanted some thing more active, and I came back and sought it in New York. I came back with a certain amount of scepticism, but with very loyal intentions, & extremely eager to be “interested.” As I say, I was interested but imperfectly, and I very soon decided what was the real issue of my experiment. It was by no means equally soon, however, that I perceived how I should be able to cross the Atlantic again. But the opportunity came to me at last—it loomed before me one summer’s day, in Quincy St. The best thing I could imagine then was to go and take up my abode in Paris. I went (sailing about October 20th 1875,) & I settled myself in Paris with the idea that I should spend several years there. This was not really what I wanted; what I wanted was London—and Paris was only a stopgap. But London appeared to me then impossible. I believed that I might arrive there in the fulness of years, but there were all sorts of obstacles to my attempting to live there then. I wonder greatly now, in the light of my present knowledge of England, that these obstacles should have seemed so large, so overwhelming & depressing as they did at that time. When a year later I came really to look them in the face, they absolutely melted away. But that year in Paris was not a lost year—on the contrary. On my way thither I spent something like a fortnight in London; lodging at Story’s Hotel, in Dover Street. It was November—dark, foggy, muddy, rainy, & I knew scarcely a creature in the place. I don’t remember calling on anyone but Lady Rose and H.J.W. Coulson, with whom I went out to lunch at Petersham, near Richmond. And yet the great city seemed to me enchanting, & I would have given my little finger to remain there rather than go to Paris. But I went to Paris, and lived for a year at 29 Rue de Luxembourg (now Rue Cambon.) I shall not attempt to write the history of that year—further than to say that it was time by no means mis-spent. I learned to know Paris & French affairs much better than before—I got a certain familiarity with Paris (added to what I had acquired before) which I shall never lose. I wrote letters to the New York Tribune, of which, though they were poor stuff, I may say that they were too good for the purpose; (of course they didn’t succeed.) I saw a good deal of Charles Peirce that winter—as to whom his being a man of genius reconciled me to much that was intolerable in him. In the spring, at Madame Tourguéneff’s I made the acquaintance of Paul Joukowsky. Non ragionam di lui—ma guarda e passa. I don’t speak of Ivan Tourguéneff, most delightful & lovable of men, nor of Gustave Flaubert, whom I shall always be so glad to have known; a powerful, serious, melancholy, manly, deeply corrupted, yet not corrupting, nature. There was something I greatly liked in him, & he was very kind to me. He was a head & shoulders above the others, the men I saw at his house on Sunday afternoons—Zola, Goncourt, Daudet, &c; (I mean as a man—not as a talker &c.) I remember in especial one afternoon (a weekday) that I went to see him and found him alone. I sat with him a long time, something led him to repeat to me a little poem of Th. Gautier’s—Les Vieux Portraits (what led him to repeat it was that we had been talking of French poets, and he had been expressing his preference for Theophile Gautier over Alfred de Musset—“il était plus fran[ç]ais,” etc.) I went that winter a great deal to the Comédie Fran[ç]aise—though not so much as when I was in Paris in ’72. Then I went every night—or almost. And I have been a great deal since; I may say that I know the Comédie Francaise. Of course I saw a great deal of the little American “set”—the American village encamped en plein Paris. They were all very kind, very friendly, hospitable &c; they knew up to a certain point their Paris. But ineffably tiresome and unprofitable. Their society had become a kind of obligation, and it had much to do with my suddenly deciding to abandon my plans of indefinite residence, take flight to London & settle there as best I could. I remember well what a crime Mrs. S. made of my doing so; & one or two other persons as to whom I was perfectly unconscious of having given them the right to judge my movements so intimately. Nothing is more characteristic of certain American women than the extraordinary promptitude with which they assume such a right. I remember how Paris had in a hundred ways, come to weary and displease me; I couldn’t get out of the detestable American Paris. Then I hated the Boulevards, the horrible monotony of the new quarters. I saw, moreover, that I should be an eternal outsider. I went to London in November 1876. I should say that I had spent that summer chiefly in three places: at Etretat, at Varennes (with the Lee Childes,) and at Biarritz—or rather at Bayonne, where I took refuge being unable to find quarters at Biarritz. Then late in September I spent a short time at St. Germain, at the Pavillon Louis XIV. I was finishing the American. The pleasantest episode (by far) of that summer was my visit to the Childes; to whom I had been introduced by dear Jane Norton; who had been very kind to me during the winter; and who have remained my very good friends. Varennes is a little moated castel of the most picturesque character, a few miles from Montargis, “au coeur de l’ancienne France.” I well recall the impression of my arrival—driving over from Montargis with Edward Childe in the warm August evening and reaching the place in the vague twilight, which made it look precisely like a décor d’op[é]ra. I have been back there since—and it was still delightful; but at that time I had not had my now very considerable experience of country visits in England; I had not seen all those other wonderful things. Varennes therefore was an exquisite sensation—a memory I shall never lose. I settled my self again in Paris—or attempted to do so; (I like to linger over these details, and to recall them one by one;) I had no intention of giving it up. But there were difficulties in the Rue de Luxembourg—I couldn’t get back my old apartment, which I had given up during the summer. I don’t remember what suddenly brought me to the point of saying—“Go to—I will try London.” I think a letter from William had a good deal to do with it, in which he said “Why don’t you?—that must be the place.” A single word from outside often moves one (moves me at least) more than the same word infinitely multiplied, as a simple voice from within. I did try it, and it has succeeded beyond my most ardent hopes. As I think I wrote just now, I have become passionately fond of it; it is an anchorage for life. Here I sit scribbling in my bedroom at a Boston hotel—on a marble-topped table!—& conscious of a ferocious homesickness—a homesickness which makes me think of the day when I shall next see the white cliffs of old England loom through their native fog, as one of the happiest of my life! The history of the five years I have spent in London—a pledge, I suppose, of many future years—is too long, and too full to write. I can only glance at it here. I took a lodging at 3 Bolton St, Piccadilly; and there I have remained till to-day—there I have left my few earthly possessions, to await my return. I have lived much there, felt much, thought much, learned much, produced much; the little shabby furnished apartment ought to be sacred to me. I came to London as a complete stranger, and to-day I know much too many people. J’y suis absolument comme chez moi. Such an experience is an education—it fortifies the character & embellishes the mind. It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners—all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. I have felt these things at times so strongly that I have said—“Ah London, you too then are impossible?” But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. I take it as an artist and as a bachelor; as one who has the passion of observation and whose business is the study of human life. It is the biggest aggregation of human life—the most complete compendium of the world. The human race is better represented there than anywhere else, and if you learn to know your London you learn a great many things. I felt all this in that autumn of 1876, when I first took up my abode in Bolton St. I had very few friends, the season was of the darkest & wettest; but I was in a state of deep delight. I had complete liberty, and the prospect of profitable work; I used to take long walks in the rain. I took possession of London; I felt it to be the right place. I could get English books: I used to read in the evenings, before an English fire. I can hardly say how it was, but little by little I came to know people, to dine out, &c. I did, I was able to do, nothing at all to bring this state of things about; it came rather of itself. I had very few letters—I was afraid of letters. Three or four from Henry Adams, three or four from Mrs. Wister, of which I only, as I think, presented one (to George Howard.) Poor Motley, who died a few months later, & on whom I had no claim of any kind, sent me an invitation to the Athenaeum, which was renewed for several months, and which proved an unspeakable blessing. When one starts in the London world (& one cares enough about it, as I did, to make one’s self agreeable, as I did) cela va de soi; it goes with constantly increasing velocity. I remained in London all the following summer—till Sept. 1st—& then went abroad. I spent some six weeks in Paris, which was rather empty and very lovely, and went a good deal to the theatre. Then I went to Italy, spending almost all my time in Rome (I had a little apartment flooded with sun, in the Capo le Case.) I came back to England before Xmas, and spent the following nine months or so in Bolton St. The club question had become serious and difficult; a club was indispensable, but I had of course none of my own. I went through Gaskell’s, (& I think Locker’s) kindness for some time to the Traveller’s; then after that for a good while to the St. James’s, where I could pay a monthly fee. At last, I forget exactly when, I was elected to the Reform; I think it was about April 1878. (F.H. Hill had proposed, and C.H. Robarts had seconded, me: or vice versa.) This was an excellent piece of good fortune, and the Club has ever since been, to me, a convenience of the first order. I could not have remained in London without it, and I have become extremely fond of it; a deep local attachment. I can now only briefly enumerate the landmarks of the rest of my residence in London. In the autumn of 1878 I went to Scotland, chiefly to stay at Tillypronie. (I afterwards paid a whole visit at Gillesbie, Mrs. Rogerson’s, in Dumfriesshire.) This was my first visit to Scotland, which made a great impression on me. The following year, 1879, I went abroad again—but only to Paris. I staid in London during all August, writing my little book on Hawthorne, and on September 1st crossed over to Paris and remained there till within a few days of Xmas. I lodged again in the Rue de Luxembourg, in another house, in a delightful little entresol entre cour et jardin, which I had to give up after a few weeks however, as it had been let over my head. Afterwards I went to an hotel in the Rue St. Augustin (de Choiseul et d’Egypte—) where I was staying during the great snow-storm of that year, which will long be famous. It was in that October that I went again to Varennes; & I had other plans for seeing a little of France which I was unable to carry out. But I did a good deal of work: finished the ill-fated little Hawthorne, finished Confidence, began Washington Square, wrote a Bundle of Letters. I went that Christmas, and had been, I think, the Xmas before, to Ch. Milnes Gaskell’s (Thorne’s.) In the spring I went to Italy—partly to escape the “Season”, which had become a terror to me. I couldn’t keep out of it (I had become a highly-developed diner-out, &c,) & its interruptions, its repetitions, its fatigues, were horribly wearisome, & made work extremely difficult. I went to Florence and spent a couple of months, during which I took a short run down to Rome and to Naples, where I had not been since my first visit to Italy, in 1869. I spent three days with Paul Joukowsky at Posilippo, and a couple of days alone at Sorrento. Florence was divine, as usual, and I was a great deal with the Bootts, at that exquisite Bellosguardo. At the Hotel de l’Arno, in a room in that deep recess, in the front, I began the Portrait of a Lady—that is I took up, and worked over, an old beginning, made long before. I returned to London to meet William, who came out in the early part of June, & spent a month with me in Bolton St, before going to the continent. That summer and autumn I worked, tant bien que mal, at my novel which began to appear in Macmillan in October (1880.) I got away from London more or less—to Brighton, detestable in August, to Folkestone, Dover, St. Leonard’s &c. I tried to work hard, and I paid very few visits. I had a plan of coming to America for the winter, and even took my passage; but I gave it up. William came back from abroad & was with me again for a few days, before sailing for home. I spent November & December quietly in London, getting on with the Portrait, which went steadily, but very slowly, every part being written twice. About Xmas I went down into Cornwall, to stay with the John Clarks, who were wintering there, & then to the Pakenhams, who were (and still are,) in the Government House at Plymouth. (Xmas day, indeed, I spent at the Pakenhams’—a bright, military dinner, at which I took in Elizabeth Thompson (Mrs. Butler,) the military paintress: a gentle, pleasing woman, very deaf.) Cornwall was charming, and my dear Sir John drove me far away to Penzance, & thence to the Land’s End, where we spent the morning of New Year’s day—a soft moist morning, with the great Atlantic heaving gently round the nethermost point of Old England (I was wrong just above in saying that I went first to the Clarks—I went on there from Devonport.) I came back to London for a few weeks, and then, again, I went abroad. I wished to get away from the London crowd, the London hubbub, all the entanglements & interruptions of London life; and to quietly bring my novel to a close. So I planned to betake myself to Venice. I started about February 10th and I came back the middle of July following. I have always to pay toll in Paris—it’s impossible to pass through. I was there for a fortnight, which I didn’t much enjoy. Then I travelled down through France, to Avignon, Marseilles, Nice, Mentone & San Remo, in which latter place I spent three charming weeks, during most of which time I had the genial society of Mrs. Lombard & Fanny L. who came over from Nice for a fortnight. I worked there capitally, and it made me very happy. I used in the morning, to take a walk among the olives, over the hills, behind the queer little black, steep town. Those old paved roads that rise behind and above San Remo, and climb and wander through the dusky light of the olives, have an extraordinary sweetness. Below and beyond, were the deep ravines, on whose sides old villages were perched, and the blue sea, glittering through the grey foliage. Fanny L. used to go with me—enjoying it so much that it was a pleasure to take her. I went back to the inn to breakfast (that is, lunch) and scribbled for 3 or 4 hours in the afternoon. Then, in the fading light, I took another stroll, before dinner. We went to bed early, but I used to read late. I went with the Lombards, one lovely day, on an enchanting drive—to the strange little old mountain town of Ceriana. I shall never forget that; it was one of the things one remembers; the grand clear hills, among which we wound higher and higher; the long valleys, swimming seaward, far away beneath; the bright Mediterranean, growing paler and paler as we rose above it; the splendid stillness, the infinite light, the clumps of olives, the brown villages, pierced by the carriage road, where the vehicle bumped against opposite doorposts. I spent ten days at Milan after that, working at my tale & scarcely speaking to a soul; Milan was cold, dull, & less attractive than it had been to me before. Thence I went straight to Venice, where I remained till the last of June—between three and four months. It would take long to go into that now; and yet I can’t simply pass it by. It was a charming time; one of those things that don’t repeat themselves; I seemed to myself to grow young again. The lovely Venetian spring came and went, and brought with it an infinitude of impressions, of delightful hours. I became passionately fond of the place, of the life, of the people, of the habits. I asked myself at times whether it wouldn’t be a happy thought to take a little pied-à-terre there, which one might keep forever. I looked at unfurnished apartments; I fancied myself coming back every year. I shall go back; but not every year. Herbert Pratt was there for a month, and I saw him tolerably often; he used to talk to me about Spain, about the East, about Tripoli, Persia, Damascus; till it seemed to me that life would be manquée altogether if one shouldn’t have some of that knowledge. He was a most singular, a most interesting type, and I shall certainly put him into a novel. I shall even make the portrait close, and he won’t mind. Seeing picturesque lands, simply for their own sake, and without making any use of it—that, with him, is a passion—a passion of which if one lives with him a little (a little, I say; not too much) one feels the contagion. He gave me the nostalgia of the sun, of the south, of colour, of freedom, of being one’s own master, and doing absolutely what one pleases. He used to say “I know such a sunny corner, under the South wall of old Toledo. There’s a wild fig growing there; I have lain on the grass, with my guitar. There was a musical muleteer, &c.” I remember one evening when he took me to a queer little wine shop, haunted only by gondoliers & facchini, in an out of the way corner of Venice. We had some excellent muscat wine; he had discovered the place and made himself quite at home there. Another evening I went with him to his rooms—far down on the Grand Canal, overlooking the Rialto. It was a hot night; the cry of the gondoliers came up from the Canal. He took out a couple of Persian books and read me extracts from Firdausi and Saadi. A good deal might be done with Herbert Pratt. He, however, was but a small part of my Venice. I lodged on the Riva, 4161, 4º pº. The view from my windows was “una bellezza;” the far-shining lagoon, the pink walls of San Giorgio, the downward curve of the Riva, the distant islands, the movement of the quay, the gondolas in profile. Here I wrote, diligently every day & finished, or virtually finished, my novel. As I say, it was a charming life; it seemed to me at times, too improbable, too festive. I went out in the morning—first to Florian’s, to breakfast; then to my bath, at the Stabilimento Chitarin; then I wandered about, looking at pictures, street life &c, till noon, when I went for my real breakfast to the Café Quadri. After this I went home and worked till six o’clock—& sometimes only till five. In this latter case I had time for an hour or two en gondole before dinner. The evenings I strolled about, went to Florian’s, listened to the music in the Piazza, & two or three nights a week went to Mrs. Bronson’s. That was a resource—but the milieu was too American. Late in the spring came Mrs. V. R., from Rome, who was an even greater resource. I went with her one day to Torcello, & Burano; where we took our lunch and ate it on a lovely canal at the former place. Toward the last of April I went down to Rome and spent a fortnight—during part of which I was laid up with one of those terrible attacks in my head. But Rome was very lovely; I saw a great deal of Mrs. V. R.: had (with her) several beautiful drives. One in particular I remember; out beyond the Ponte Normentano, a splendid Sunday. We left the carriage & wandered into the fields, where we sat down for some time. The exquisite stillness, the divine horizon, brought back to me out of the buried past all that ineffable, incomparable impression of Rome. (1869, 1873.) I returned to Venice by Ancona and Rimini. From Ancona I drove to Loreto, and, on the same occasion, to Recanati, to see the house of Giacomo Leopardi, whose infinitely touching letters I had been reading while in Rome. The day was lovely and the excursion picturesque; but I was not allowed to enter Leopardi’s house. I saw, however, the dreary little hill-town where he passed so much of his life, with its enchanting beauty of site, and its strange, bright loneliness. I saw the streets—I saw the views he looked upon. . . . Very little can have changed. I spent only an evening at Rimini, where I made the acquaintance of a most obliging officer, who seemed delighted to converse with a forestiero, and who walked me (it was a Sunday evening) all over the place. I passed near Urbino: that is I passed a station, where I might have descended to spend the night, to drive to Urbino the next day. But I didn’t stop! If I had been told that a month before, I should have repelled the foul insinuation. But my reason was strong. I was so nervous about my interrupted work that every day I lost was a misery, and I hurried back to Venice and to my MS. But I made another short absence, in June—a 5 days’ giro to Vicenza, Bassano, Padua. At Vicenza I spent 3 of these days—it was wonderfully sweet; old Italy, and the old feeling of it. Vivid in my memory is the afternoon I arrived, when I wandered into the Piazza and sat there in the warm shade, before a caffè, with the smooth slabs of the old pavement around me, the big palace & the tall campanile opposite, &c. It was so soft, so mellow, so quiet, so genial, so Italian; very little movement, only the waning of the bright day, the approach of the summer night. Before I left Venice the heat became intense, the days and nights alike impossible. I left it at last, and closed a singularly happy episode; but I took much away with me. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
I went straight to the Lake of Como and over the Splügen spent only a lovely evening (with the next morning) at Cadenabbia. I mounted the Splügen under a splendid sky, and I shall never forget the sensation of rising, as night came (I walked incessantly, after we began to ascend) into that cool pure Alpine air, out of the stifling calidarium of Italy. I shall always remember a certain glass of fresh milk which I drank that evening, in the gloaming, far up, (a woman at a wayside hostel had it fetched from the cow) as the most heavenly draft that ever passed my lips. I went straight to Lucerne, to see Mrs. Kemble, who had already gone to Engelberg. I spent a day on the lake, making the giro; it was a splendid day, & Switzerland looked more sympathetic than I had ventured to hope. I went up to Engelberg, & spent nearly a week with Mrs. Kemble & Miss Butler, in that grim, ragged, rather vacuous, but by no means absolutely unbeautiful valley. I spent an enchanting day with Miss Butler—climbing up to the Trubsee, toward the Joch pass. The Trubsee is a little steel-grey tarn, in a high cool valley, at the foot of the Tiltis, whose great silver-gleaming snows overhang it and light it up. The whole place was a wilderness of the alpine rose—& the alpine stillness, the splendour of the weather, the beauty of the place, made the whole impression immense. We had a man with us who carried a lunch; & we partook of it at the little cold inn. The whole thing brought back my old Swiss days; I hadn’t believed they could revive even to that point. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
New York, 115 East 25th St. Dec. 20th 1881. I had to break off the other day in Boston—the interruptions in the morning here are intolerable. That period of the day has none of the social sanctity here that it [has] in England, & which keeps it singularly free from intrusion. People—by which I mean ladies—think nothing of asking you to come & see them before lunch. Of course one can decline, but when many propositions of that sort come, a certain number stick. Besides, I have had all sorts of things to do, chiefly not profitable to recall. I have been three weeks in New York, and all my time has slipped away in mere movement. I try as usual to console myself with the reflection that I am getting impressions. This is very true; I have got a great many. I did well to come over; it was well worth doing. I indulged in some reflections a few pages back which were partly the result of a melancholy mood. I can do something here—it is not a mere complication. But it is not of that I must speak first in taking up my pen again—I shall return to those things later. I should like to finish briefly the little retrospect of the past year’s doings, which I left ragged on the opposite page. x x x
x x x x x x x x I came back from Switzerland to meet Alice, who had been a month in England, & whom I presently saw at the Star & Garter, at Richmond. I spent two or three days with her, and saw her afterwards at Kew, then I went down to Sevenoaks and to Canterbury for the same purpose, spending a night at each place. I paid during July & August several visits. One to Burford Lodge, (Sir Trevor Lawrence’s;) memorable on which occasion was a certain walk we took (on a Sunday afternoon,) through the grounds of the Deepdene, an artificial but to me a most enchanting and most suggestive English place—full of foreign reminiscences; the sort of place that an Englishman of 80 years ago, who had made the grand tour and lingered in Italy would naturally construct. I went to Leatherhead, & I went twice to Mentmore. (On one of these occasions Mr. Gladstone was there.) I went to Fredk. Macmillan’s at Walton-on-Thames, & had some charming moments on the river. Then I went down into Somerset & spent a week at Midelney Place, the Cely Trevilians’. It is the impression of this visit that I wish not wholly to fade away. Very exquisite it was (not the visit, but the impression of the country;) it kept me a-dreaming, all the while I was there. It seemed to me very old England; there was a peculiarly mellow and ancient feeling in it all. Somerset is not especially beautiful; I have seen much better English scenery. But I think I have never been more penetrated—I have never more loved the land. It was the old houses that fetched me—Montacute, the admirable; Barrington, that superb Ford Abbey, & several smaller ones. Trevilian showed me them all; he has a great care for such things. These delicious old houses, in the long August days, in the South of England air, on the soil over which so much has passed & out of which so much has come, rose before me like a series of visions. I thought of a thousand things; what becomes of the things one thinks of at these times? They are not lost, we must hope; they drop back into the mind again, and they enrich and embellish it. I thought of stories, of dramas, of all the life of the past,—of things one can hardly speak of; speak of, I mean, at the time. It is art that speaks of those things; & the idea makes me adore her more & more. Such a house as Montacute, so perfect, with its grey personality, its old-world gardens, its accumulations of expression, of tone—such a house is really, au fond, an ineffaceable image; it can be trusted to rise before the eyes in the future. But what we think of with a kind of serrement de coeur is the gone-&-left-behind-us emotion with which at the moment we stood and looked at it. The picture may live again; but that is part of the past. x x x x x x
Cambridge, Dec. 26th. x x x x x x
I came here on the 23d, to spend Xmas, Wilky having come on from the West (the first time in several years,) to meet me. Here I sit writing in the old back sitting room which William & I used to occupy & which I now occupy alone—or sometimes with poor Wilky, whom I have not seen in some eleven years, & who is wonderfully unchanged for a man with whom life has not gone easy. The long interval of years drops away, & the edges of the chasm “piece together” again, after a fashion. The feeling of that younger time comes back to me in which I sat here scribbling, dreaming, planning, gazing out upon the world in which my fortune was to seek, & suffering tortures from my damnable state of health. It was a time of suffering so keen that that fact might seem to give its dark colour to the whole period; but this is not what I think of to-day. When the burden of pain has been lifted, as many memories & emotions start into being as the little insects that scramble about when, in the country, one displaces a flat stone. Ill-health, physical suffering, in one’s younger years is a grievous trial; but I am not sure that we do not bear it most easily then. In spite of it we feel the joy of youth; and that is what I think of to-day among the things that remind me of the past. The freshness of impression and desire, the hope, the curiosity, the vivacity, the sense of the richness and mystery of the world that lies before us,—there is an enchantment in all that which it takes a heavy dose of pain to quench and which in later hours, even if success have come to us, touches us less nearly. Some of my doses of pain were very heavy; very weary were some of my months and years. But all that is sacred; it is idle to write of it to-day. x x x x x x x x x
What comes back to me freely, delightfully, is the visions of those untried years. Never did a poor fellow have more; never was an ingenuous youth more passionately and yet more patiently eager for what life might bring. Now that life has brought something, brought a measurable part of what I dreamed of then, it is touching enough to look back. I know at last what I wanted then—to see something of the world. I have seen a good deal of it, and I look at the past in the light of this knowledge. What strikes me is the definiteness, the unerringness of those longings. I wanted to do very much what I have done, and success, if I may say so, now stretches back a tender hand to its younger brother, desire. I remember the days, the hours, the books, the seasons, the winter skies and darkened rooms of summer. I remember the old walks, the old efforts, the old exaltations and depressions. I remember more than I can say here to-day.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Again, in New York the other day, I had to break off: I was trying to finish the little history of the past year. There is not much more to be said about it. I came back from Midelney, to find Alice in London, and spent ten days with her there, very pleasantly, at the end of August. Delightful to me is London at that time, after the horrors of the Season have spent themselves, and the long afternoons make a cool grey light in the empty West End. Delightful to me, too, it was to see how she enjoyed it—how interesting was the impression of the huge, mild city. London is mild then; that is the word. And then I went to Scotland—to Tillypronie, to Cortachy, to Dalmeny, to Laidlawstiel. I was to have wound up, on my way back, with Castle Howard; but I retracted, on account of Lord Airlie’s death. I can’t go in to all this; there were some delightful moments, and Scotland made, as it had made before, a great impression. Perhaps what struck me as much as anything was my drive, in the gloaming, over from Kirriemuir to Cortachy; though taking the road afterward by daylight, I saw it was commonplace. In the late Scotch twilight, & the keen air, it was romantic: at least it was romantic to ford the river at the entrance to Cortachy, to drive through the dim avenues and up to the great lighted pile of the castle, where Lady A., hearing my wheels on the gravel (I was late) put her handsome head from a window in the clock-tower, asked if it was I, and wished me a bonny good-evening. I was in a Waverley Novel. Then my drive (with her) to Glamys; and my drive (with Miss Stanley) to Airlie Castle, enchanting spot! Dalmeny is delicious, a magnificent pile of woods beside the Forth; & the weather, while I was there, was the loveliest I have ever known in the British isles. But the company was not interesting, and there was a good deal of dreariness in the ball we all went to at Hopetoun for the coming of age of the heir. A charming heir he was, however, and a very pretty picture of a young nobleman stepping into his place in Society—handsome, well-mannered, gallant, graceful, with 40 000 £ a year and the world at his feet. Laidlawstiel, on a bare hill among hills, just above the Tweed, is in the midst of Walter Scott’s country. Reay walked with me over to Achistiel one lovely afternoon; it is only an hour away. The house has been greatly changed since the “Sheriff’s” day; but the place, the country, are the same, and I found the thing deeply interesting. It took me back. While I was at the Reays’ I took up one of Scott’s novels—Redgauntlet; it was years since I had read one. They have always a charm for me—but I was amazed at the badness of R.; l’enfance de l’art.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Now and here, I have only one feeling—the desire to get at work again. It is nearly six months that I have been resting on my oars—letting the weeks go, with nothing to show for them but these famous “impressions”! Prolonged idleness exasperates & depresses me, and though now that I am here, it is a pity not to move about and (if the chance presents itself) see the country, the prospect of producing nothing for the rest of the winter is absolutely intolerable to me. If it comes to my having to choose between remaining stationary somewhere and getting at work, or making a journey during which I shall be able to do no work, I shall certainly elect for the former. But probably I shall be able to compromise: to see something of the country & yet work a little. My mind is full of plans, of ambitions; they crowd upon me, for these are the productive years of life. I have taken aboard by this time a tremendous quantity of material; I really have never taken stock of my cargo. After long years of waiting, of obstruction, I find myself able to put into execution the most cherished of all my projects—that of beginning to work for the stage. It was one of my earliest—I had it from the first. None has given me brighter hopes—none has given me sweeter emotions. It is strange never the less that I should never have done anything—& to a certain extent it is ominous. I wonder at times that the dream should not have faded away. It comes back to me now, however, & I ache with longing to settle down at last to a sustained attempt in this direction. I think there is really reason enough for my not having done so before: the little work at any time that I could do, the uninterrupted need of making money on the spot, the inability to do two things at once, the absence of opportunities, of openings. I may add to this the feeling that I could afford to wait, that, looked at as I look at it, the drama is the ripest of all the arts, the one to which one must bring most of the acquired as well as most of the natural, and that while I was waiting I was studying the art, and clearing off my field. I think I may now claim to have studied the art as well as it can be studied in the contemplative way. The French stage I have mastered: I say that without hesitation. I have it in my pocket, and it seems to me clear that this is the light by which one must work to-day. I have laid up treasures of wisdom about all that. What interesting hours it has given me—what endless consideration it has led to! Sometimes, as I say, it seems to me simply deplorable that I should not have got at work before. But it was impossible at the time, and I knew that my chance would come. Here it is: let me guard it sacredly now. Let nothing divert me from it; but now the loss of time, which has simply been a maturing process, will become an injurious one. Je me résume, as George Sand’s heroes say. I remember certain occasions; several acute visitations of the purpose of which I write come back to me vividly. Some of them, the earliest, were brought on merely by visits to the theatre—by seeing great actors, &c—at fortunate hours; or by reading a new piece of Alex. Dumas, of Sardou, of Augier. No, my dear friend, nothing of all that is lost. Ces [é]motions-là ne se perdent pas; elle[s] rentrent dans le fonds même de notre nature; elle[s] font partie de notre volonté. The volonté has not expired; it is only perfect to-day. Two or three of the later occasions of which I speak have been among the things that count in the formation of a purpose; they are worth making a note of here. What has always counted, of course, has been the Comédie Française; it is on that, as regards this long day-dream, that I have lived. But there was an evening there that I shall long remember; it was in September 1877. I had come over from London; I was lodging in the Avenue d’Antin—the house with a tir behind it. I went to see Jean Dacier, with Coquelin as the hero; I shall certain[ly not] forget that impression. The piece is, on the whole, I suppose, bad; but it contains some very effective scenes, and the two principal parts gave Coquelin & Favart a magnificent chance. It is Coquelin’s great chance, and he told me afterwards in London that it is the part he values most. He is everything in it by turns, and I don’t think I ever followed an actor’s creation more intently. It threw me into a great state of excitement; I thought seriously of writing to Coquelin, telling him I had been his school-mate &c. It held up a glowing light to me—seemed to point to my own path. If I could have sat down to work then I probably should not have stopped soon. But I didn’t; I couldn’t; I was writing things for which I needed to be paid from month to month. (I like to remind myself of these facts—to justify my innumerable postponements.[)] I remember how, on leaving the theatre—it was a lovely evening—I walked about a long time under the influence not so much of the piece as of Coquelin’s acting of it, which had made the thing so human, so brilliant, so valuable. I was agitated with what it said to me that I might do—what I ought to attempt; I walked about the Place de la Concorde, along the Seine, up the Champs Elysées. That was nothing, however, to the state I was thrown into by meeting Coquelin at breakfast at Andrew Lang’s, when the Comédie Française came to London. The occasion, for obvious reasons, was unpropitious, but I had some talk with him which rekindled and revived all my latent ambitions. At that time too my hands were tied; I could do nothing, and the feeling passed away in smoke. But it stirred me to the depths. Coquelin’s personality, his talk, the way the artist overflowed in him,—all this was tremendously suggestive. I could say little to him there—not a tittle of what I wished; I could only listen, and translate to him what they said—an awkward task! But I listened to some purpose, and I have never lost what I gained. It excited me powerfully; I shall not forget my walk, afterwards, down from South Kensington to Westminster. I met Jack Gardner, & he walked with me to leave a card at the Speaker’s House. All day, & for days afterward, I remained under the impression. It faded away, in time, & I had to give myself to other things. But this brings it back to me; and I may say that those two little moments were landmarks. There was a smaller incident, later, which it gives me pleasure to recall, as it gave me extreme pleasure at the time. John Hare asked me (I met him at dinner, at the Comyns Carrs’,)—urged me, I may say—to write a play, and offered me his services in the event of my doing so. I shall take him at his word. When I came back from Scotland in October last I was full of this work; my hands were free; my pocket lined; I would have given a £100 for the liberty [to] sit down and hammer away. I imagined such a capital winter of work. But I had to come hither instead. If that however involves a loss of part of my time, it needn’t involve the loss of all!
Feb. 9th 1882. x x x x x x x x x x x
102 Mt. Vernon St. Boston. x x
When I began to make these rather ineffectual records I had no idea that I should have in a few weeks to write such a tale of sadness as to-day. I came back from Washington on the 30th of last month (reached Cambridge the next day,) to find that I should never again see my dear mother. On Sunday Jan. 29th, as Aunt Kate sat with her in the closing dusk (she had been ill with an attack of bronchial asthma, but was apparently recovering happily,) she passed away. It makes a great difference to me! I knew that I loved her—but I didn’t know how tenderly till I saw her lying in her shroud in that cold North Room, with a dreary snow-storm outside, & looking as sweet & tranquil & noble as in life. These are hours of exquisite pain; thank heaven this particular pang comes to us but once. On Sunday evening (at 10 o’clock—in Washington) I was dressing to go to Mrs. Robeson’s—who has written me a very kind letter, when a telegram came in from Alice (William’s.) “Your mother exceedingly ill. Come at once.” It was a great alarm, but it didn’t suggest the loss of all hope; & I made the journey to New York with whatever hope seemed to present itself. In New York at 5 o’clock I went to Cousin H.P.’s—& there the telegram was translated to me. Eliza Ripley was there—& Katie Rodgers—& as I went out I met Lily Walsh. The rest was dreary enough. I went back to the Hoffman House, where I had engaged a room on my way up town & remained there till 9.30, when I took the night-train to Boston. I shall never pass that place in future without thinking of the wretched hours I spent there. At home the worst was over; I found Father & Alice & A.K. extraordinarily calm—almost happy. Mother seemed still to be there—so beautiful, so full of all that we loved in her, she looked in death. We buried her on Wednesday Feb. 1st; Wilkie arrived from Milwaukee a couple of hours before. Bob had been there for a month—he was devoted to mother in her illness. It was a splendid winter’s day—the snow lay deep & high. We placed her for the present in a temporary vault in the Cambridge cemetery—the part that lies near the river. When the spring comes on we shall go & choose a burial place. I have often walked there in the old years—in those long, lonely, rambles that I used to take about Cambridge, & I had, I suppose, a vague idea that some of us would some day lie there, but I didn’t see just that scene. It is impossible to me to say—to begin to say—all that has gone down into the grave with her. She was our life, she was the house, she was the key-stone of the arch. She held us all together, & without her we are scattered reeds. She was patience, she was wisdom, she was exquisite maternity. Her sweetness, her mildness, her quiet natural beneficence were unspeakable, & it is infinitely touching to me to write about her here as that was. When I think of all that she had been, for years—when I think of her hourly devotion to each & all of us—& that when I went to Washington the last of December I gave her my last kiss, I heard her voice for the last time,—there seems not to be enough tenderness in my being to register the extinction of such a life. But I can reflect, with perfect gladness, that her work was done—her long patience had done its utmost. She had had heavy cares & sorrows, which she had borne without a murmur, & the weariness of age had come upon her. I would rather have lost her forever than see her begin to suffer as she would probably have been condemned to suffer, & I can think with a kind of holy joy of her being lifted now above all our pains and anxieties. Her death has given me a passionate belief in certain transcendent things—the immanence of being as nobly created as hers—the immortality of such a virtue as that—the reunion of spirits in better conditions than these. She is no more of an angel to-day than she had always been; but I can’t believe that by the accident of her death all her unspeakable tenderness is lost to the beings she so dearly loved. She is with us, she is of us—the eternal stillness is but a form of her love. One can hear her voice in it—one can feel, forever, the inextinguishable vibration of her devotion. I can’t help feeling that in those last weeks I was not tender enough with her—that I was blind to her sweetness & beneficence. One can’t help wishing one had only known what was coming, so that one might have enveloped her with the softest affection. When I came back from Europe I was struck with her being worn & shrunken, & now I know that she was very weary. She went about her usual activities, but the burden of life had grown heavy for her, & she needed rest. There is something inexpressibly touching to me in the way in which, during these last years, she went on from year to year without it. If she could only have lived she should have had it, & it would have been a delight to see her have it. But she has it now, in the most complete perfection! Summer after summer she never left Cambridge—it was impossible that father should leave his own house. The country, the sea, the change of air & scene, were an exquisite enjoyment to her; but she bore with the deepest gentleness & patience the constant loss of such opportunities. She passed her nights & her days in that dry, flat, hot, stale & odious Cambridge, & had never a thought while she did so but for Father & Alice. It was a perfect mother’s life—the life of a perfect wife. To bring her children into the world—to expend herself, for years, for their happiness & welfare—then, when they had reached a full maturity & were absorbed in the world & in their own interests—to lay herself down in her ebbing strength & yield up her pure soul to the celestial power that had given her this divine commission. Thank God one knows this loss but once; and thank God that certain supreme impressions remain! x x x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x All my plans are altered—my return to England vanishes for the present. I must remain near father; his infirmities make it impossible I should leave him. This means an indefinite detention in this country—a prospect far enough removed from all my recent hopes of departure.
August 3d 1882. 3 Bolton St. W. From time to time one feels the need of summing-up. I have done it little in the past, but it will be a good thing to do it more in the future. The prevision with which I closed my last entry in these pages was not verified. I sailed from America on the date I had in my mind when I went home—May 10th. Father was materially better and had the strongest wish that I should depart; he and Alice had moved into Boston, and were settled very comfortably in a small, pretty house (101 Mt. Vernon St.) Besides, their cottage at Manchester was rapidly being finished; shortly before sailing I went down to see it. Very pretty—bating the American scragginess; with the sea close to the piazzas, and the smell of bayberries in the air. Rest, coolness, peace, society enough, charming drives; they will have all that.—
Very soon after I had got back here my American episode began to fade away, to seem like a dream; a very painful dream, much of it. While I was there, it was Europe, it was England, that was dreamlike—but now all this is real enough. The Season is over thank God; I came in for as much of it as could crowd itself into June and July. I was out of the mood for it, preoccupied, uninterested, bored, eager to begin work again; but I was obliged, being on the spot, to accommodate myself to the things of the day, and always with my old salve to a perturbed spirit, the idea that I was seeing the world. It seemed to me on the whole a poor world this time; I saw and did very little that was interesting. I am extremely glad to be in London again; I am deeply attached to London; I always shall be; but decidedly I like it best when it is “empty,” as during the period now beginning. I know too many people—I have gone in too much for society. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Grand Hotel, Paris, November 11th. Thanks to “society,” which, in the shape of various surviving remnants of the season, to a succession of transient Americans and to several country visits, continued to mark me for its own during the greater part of the month of August, I had not even time to finish that last sentence, written more than three months ago. I can hardly take up at this date the history of these three months: a simple glance must suffice. I remained in England till the 12th of September. Bob, whom I had found reclining on my sofa in Bolton St when I arrived from America toward the last of May—(I hadn’t even time, above, to mention my little disembarkation in Ireland and the few days I spent there—) Bob, who as I say was awaiting me at my lodgings in London—greatly to my surprise, and in a very battered & depressed condition, thanks to his unhappy voyage to the Azores—sailed for home again in the last days of August, after having spent some weeks in London, at Malvern and at Llandudno, in Wales. The last days, before sailing, he spent with me. About the 10th of September William arrived from America, on his way to the continent to pass the winter. After being with him for a couple of days, I came over to Paris via Folkestone (I came down there & slept, before crossing,) while he crossed to Flushing, from Queenborough. All summer I had been trying to work, but my interruptions had been so numerous that it was only during the last weeks that I succeeded, even moderately, in doing something. My record of work for the whole past year is terribly small, and I opened this book, just now, with the intention of taking several solemn vows in reference to the future. But I don’t even know whether I shall accomplish that. However, I am not sure that such solemnities are necessary, for God knows I am eager enough to work, and that I am deeply conscious of the need of it, both for fortune and for happiness. x x x x x x x x x x x x x I scarcely even remember the three or four visits to which, in the summer, I succeeded in restricting my “social activity.” A pleasant night at Losely—Rhoda Broughton was there. Another day I went down there to lunch, to take Howells (who spent all August in London) and Bob. Two days at Mentmore, a Saturday-to-Monday episode (very dull) at Miss de Rothschild’s, at Wimbledon; a very pleasant day at the Arthur Russells’, at Shiere. This last was charming; I think I went nowhere else—having wriggled out of Midelney, from my promised visit to Mrs. Pakenham, and from pledges more or less given to Tilliepronie. Toward the last, in London, I had my time pretty well to myself, and I felt, as I have always felt before, the charm of those long, still days, in the empty time, when one can sit and scribble, without notes to answer and visits to pay. Shall I confess, however, that the evenings had become dull? x x x x x x x x x x x x x x I had meant to write some account of my last months in America, but I fear the chance for this has already passed away. I look back at them, however, with a great deal of tenderness. Boston is absolutely nothing to me—I don’t even dislike it. I like it, on the contrary; I only dislike to live there. But all those weeks I spent there, after Mother’s death, had an exquisite stillness and solemnity. My rooms in Mt. Vernon St. were bare and ugly; but they were comfortable—even, in a certain way, pleasant. I used to walk out, and across the Common, every morning, and take my breakfast at Parker’s. Then I walked back to my lodgings and sat writing till four or five o’clock; after which I walked out to Cambridge over that dreary Bridge whose length I had measured so often in the past, and, four or five days in the week, dined in Quincy St. with Father and Alice. In the evening I walked back, in the clear American starlight—I got in this way plenty of exercise. It was a simple, serious, wholesome time. Mother’s death appeared to have left behind it a soft beneficent hush in which we lived for weeks, for months, and which was full of rest and sweetness. I thought of her, constantly, as I walked to Boston at night along those dark vacant roads, where, in the winter air, one met nothing but the coloured lamps and the far-heard jingle of the Cambridge horse-cars. My work at this time interested me too, and I look back upon the whole three months with a kind of religious veneration. My work interested me even more than the importance of it would explain—or than the success of it has justified. I tried to write a little play (D. M.) & I wrote it; but my poor little play has not been an encouragement. I needn’t enter into the tiresome history of my ridiculous negotiations with the people of the Madison Square Theatre, of which the Proprietors behaved like asses and sharpers combined; this episode, by itself, would make a brilliant chapter in a realistic novel. It interested me immensely to write the piece, and the work confirmed all my convictions as to the fascination of this sort of composition. But what it has brought [me] to know, both in New York and in London, about the manners and ideas of managers & actors and about the conditions of production on our unhappy English stage, is almost fatally disgusting and discouraging. I have learned, very vividly, that if one attempts to work for it one must be prepared for disgust, deep and unspeakable disgust. But though I am disgusted, I do not think I am discouraged. The reason of this latter is that I simply can’t afford to be. I have determined to take a year—even two years, if need be, more, in experiments, in studies, in attempts. The dramatic form seems to me the most beautiful thing possible; the misery of the thing is that the baseness of the English-speaking stage affords no setting for it. How I am to reconcile this with the constant solicitation that presses upon me, both from within and from without, to get at work upon another novel, is more than I can say. It is surely the part of wisdom, however, not to begin another novel at once—not to commit myself to a work of longue haleine. I must do short things, in such measure as I need, which will leave me intervals for dramatic work. I say this rather glibly—and yet I sometimes feel a woful hunger to sit down to another novel. If I can only concentrate myself: this is the great lesson of life. I have hours of unspeakable reaction against my smallness of production; my wretched habits of work—or of no-work; my levity, my vagueness of mind, my perpetual failure to focus my attention, to absorb myself, to look things in the face, to invent, to produce, in a word. I shall be 40 years old in April next: it’s a horrible fact! I believe however that I have learned how to work and that it is in moments of forced idleness, almost alone, that these melancholy reflections seize me. When I am really at work, I’m happy, I feel strong, I see many opportunities ahead. It is the only thing that makes life endurable. I must make some great efforts during the next few years, however, if I wish not to have been on the whole a failure. I shall have been a failure unless I do something great!