BOOKS.

THE LAST LETTERS OF FANNY KEMBLE.*

THIS work, consisting of the latest letters of a well-known member of a distinguished family, is a pleasant supplement to its enjoyable predecessors, which gave the writer's reminis- cences of her " girlhood " and "early life," retaining as it does most of their special attractions, with the added charm which belongs to the utterances of a kindly and cultivated woman who in advanced years preserves the quick interest and ready sympathy of youth and maturity. Though the letters of Fanny Kemble are pleasing, in virtue of that light-handed treatment of the trifles of life in which feminine correspondents are so incontestably superior to the generality of men, the writer cannot be classed among the women whose peculiar gift is the knack of saying nothing very delightfully. On the contrary, she has a good deal to say that is of intrinsic interest, though many a reader will probably be unconscious of the extent to which the attractiveness of the matter is dependent upon the brightness of the manner and the happy • Further'. Records, 1848-1853. A Series of Letter,. By Franc:lea lune Sembla. In 2 vole. Loudoui Richard Bentley and Son.

instinct of selection. Many of the letters were written from. America to a friend or relative in Ireland, and abound in glimpses of those conditions of life in the United States which are unnoted by the native American because they are familiar, and unobserved by the ordinary tourist because they only enter into the experience of a resident. Then, too, there are remarks. upon books and current topics, and occasional sketches of distinguished people ; but all these things are, for the most part, treated allusively and with "a flying finger,"—not with the elaboration of set disquisition or description; they simply come into the letters because they have come into the life of which the letters are a transcript or reflection.

It was evidently a life of many interests,—diverse enough, but harmonised in a sane, well-balanced individuality. Calling one day upon Miss Bremer, who was not very well,, Fanny Kemble expressed a fear that her hostess might feel unpleasantly the exertion of receiving her, and after cordially exclaiming, "Oh, no, no ! " the invalid laughingly added,. "And yet I do not know that I ought to see so many people as you are." The impression stamped on the mind by this impromptu characterisation is sharpened by the letters themselves. In some the writer appears as the typical house- wife, discoursing wisely of servants and other domesticities ; in others, as the shrewd social observer; in others, again, as the- woman who feels to the full the fascination of problems which the mere housewife or the mere social observer is apt to ignore. It is not often that Fanny Kemble is sententious, but now and then we have a sentence which might find a place in a volume of .Pensees, as when she remarks that "Nothing seems stranger than the delusions of other people when they have ceased to be our own," or that "One of the dangers of the stage, as a. profession, is the habit acting fosters of expressing superficial emotion," or when she writes, with less pointedness of expres- sion, but equal truth of observation:—" Surely, dear H—, a life of great unhappiness is compatible with immense. and intense enjoyment. The first belongs to the mental and moral nature, the last to the physical organisation." As a rule, however, Fanny Kemble's expression of her thought does not even tend towards an assumption of the epigrammatic form of utterance, which is, indeed, alien to the conversational tone of really good correspondence. Her- frequent remarks on literary subjects are always charac- terised by a penetrating and utterly unpretentious common- sense, which is noticeably present in the following strictures upon the tendency, created and fostered by the dominance of periodical literature, to emphasise unduly the aspects of truth which lend themselves most readily to treatment in the ever-- popular " article : " — " The worst of this kind of writing (I mean this essay and article writing) appears to me that, from the peculiar exigencies. and limitations of that species of literature, it inclines writers to- lay hold of some one side, some portion or aspect only, of subjects which have a very large and wide scope; and induces them to write out that mere fragmentary truth as if it carried more ground than it really does. For if the truth itself, as we understand it,. is merely fragmentary (as may very well be the case), the article must, nevertheless, be a finished and complete whole ; and I think that merely valuable suggestions and partial perceptions of con- siderable interest are injured by being extended into systems of philosophy, and made the subject of more extensive deductions than naturally belong to them, and to account for many more phenomena than they really teach."

Fanny Kemble's style is, it will be seen, occasionally loose No correct writer, for example, would speak of "teaching' phenomena; but she makes her meaning perfectly clear, and the substance of what is said is excellent, for the criticism hits a real blot. She has a good deal that is interesting to say about the great servant problem, which is difficult enough in England, but which in America has become well-nigh insoluble. Certainly, the letters dealing with this theme are for the most part dated some sixteen or seventeen years back; but there is no reason to believe that there has been any recent relaxation of the strain of the situation. In 1874, Fanny Kemble wrote :—

"The servants in Philadelphia are of the lowest class of ignorant Irish, having never, before they came to America, seen the inside of any more civilised house than their own .mud hovels, and im- mediately find situations as cooks, or housemaids, or nursemaids (for all of which they are as well qualified as for coachmen, grooms, and gardeners), at ten shillings a week (the lowest wages given),. and quite as often at fifteen and twenty."

A minimum expenditure of 226 per annum in wages to one inefficient servant must indeed be a terrible tax on the less opulent members of the middle classes in American cities, and. though Fanny Kemble's means appear to have been what would.

usually be considered ample, we feel it quite natural that the record of having paid a couple of guineas a week for the ser- vices of a charwoman who preferred drink to work should be followed by the statement, " I cannot afford either piano or carriage." Of course, the feeling which is universal in the United States, and far too general in England, that domestic service is essentially degrading, is largely responsible both for the scarcity and non-efficiency of the American " help ;" but so far, at any rate, as the latter is concerned, the employers are probably as blameworthy as the employed :—

"The total absence of early discipline," writes Fanny Kemble, "makes bad disciplinarians of American heads of houses. They are impatient of system, of order, of necessary and legitimate control themselves, and shrink with great cowardice from en- forcing them on their own children and servants. The children are allowed to be at once familiar and rude towards the latter. Nowhere in the world, where I have been, is the relation of home dependency and authority so little understood, or the intercourse of members of households so wanting in mutual good breeding and courtesy. The institutions which secure freedom all but unbounded to all, the almost inviolability of individual rights, cannot by any possibility supply the place of domestic virtues or charities, or the graces of mutual respect and regard that ennoble and sweeten human relationships."

These sentences are quite in Carlyle's spirit, and are none

the less, but all the more effective, for having more modera- tion of tone and language than is usually to be found in similar utterances of the Chelsea prophet. "Carlyle, you know," writes Fanny Kemble, "was one of my early idols, and has remained so always ;" but she never seems to have been led away, as were too many idolators, into confounding the mere rhetorical extravagance which was the alloy of his

teaching, with the teaching itself. It seems to have been her opinion that this extravagance entered largely into his often- quoted estimate of the intellectual powers of his wife, and that Mrs. Carlyle's endowments, such as they were, were largely vitiated by this very habit of over-statement which renders Carlyle's own writings so repellent to many sober- minded, and perhaps unimaginative or non-humorous, people :

"In my personal intercourse with her [Mrs. Carlyle] she seemed to me a bright, clever, intelligent woman, but as to any comparison between her mental powers and those of the two great geniuses of our day, George Sand and George Eliot, it was really absurdly inadmissible. She either bad caught from Carlyle or was naturally endowed with a fine general contempt for the intellects of her acquaintance and in her letters, I think, displays an effort at brilliancy and point quite destructive of its effect. A very small instance of this, with reference to myself, will illus- trate this tendency. Mrs. Butler paid me a visit,' said she, with a riding-whip, I suppose to keep her hand in.' I was dressed in my habit, and just' going out on horseback, and necessarily carried my riding-whip, which I am not aware of ever practising (keeping my hand in) with any creature but my horse. The desire to write something smart, such as this observation of hers exhibits, seems to me unpleasant, and unsuccessfully and frequently apparent in Mrs. Carlyle's letters, I wish clever people had a higher and juster respect for simple stupidity."

The writer's life during the years covered by these letters was for the most part so quiet and retired, that references to the many men and women of letters known to Fanny Kemble are less frequent than might have been expected,—the only name known to the world which recurs again and again being that of her beloved friend, Miss Cobbe. We have, however, a reminiscence of Harriet Martineau ; one or two pleasant and characteristic anecdotes of Longfellow ; a glimpse of Mr. Bret Harte, who reminded Fanny Kemble of "our old pirate and bandit friend Trelawny in his appearance, though the latter was an almost Orientally dark-complexioned man, and Mr. Bret Harte was comparatively fair ;" and an account of a visit from Lord Houghton, which does not seem to have been a conspicuous success, as the hostess was terribly depressed by the responsibility of entertaining a lion, more especially a lion "accustomed to the luxurious comfort of English people of Lord Houghton's class." Of these literary passages, one of the most interesting is devoted to a story of personal ex- perience told by Mr. Bret Harte, with which we must con- clude out- notice of this very pleasant and readable collection

of letters. The story began with Mr. Bret Harte's narration of how, while travelling in a wild, solitary district, he put up for the night at a rough road-side tavern, and learned that his only fellow-guest was a rough desperado, for whom the myr- midons of Judge Lynch were searching. In the middle of the night, the party of horsemen arrived and inquired for the man ; but on being assured by the landlord that he was not there, remounted their horses and rode on ;— "At break of day, Bret Harte took his departure, finding that

for the first part of the journey he was to have the hiding hero of the night (thief or murderer probably) for his companion, to whom, on his departure, the master of the house gave the most reiterated, detailed, minute, and precise directions as to the only road by which it would be possible that he could escape his pursuers, Bret Harte meanwhile listening to these directions as if they were addressed to himself. They rode silently for a short time, and then the fugitive began to talk—not about his escape, not about the danger of the past night, not about the crime he had committed, but about Dickens's last aery, in which he ex- pressed such an eager and enthusiastic interest, that he would have passed the turning in the road by which he was to have made his escape, if Bret Harte had not pointed it out to him, saying, That is your way.' I wish I could remember what story of Dickens's it was, and that he could have been made acquainted with this incident, worthy of a record in one of his books."

We may just add the remark that if, as seems not unlikely, this curious conversation suggested Mr. Bret Harte's graceful little poem, "Dickens in Camp," the book which interested the bunted desperado was The Old Curiosity-Shop, which is

there referred to.