LETTERS FROM A RECLUSE.
FANNY KEMBLE !—you will laugh at me, my friend, but I cannot help thinking that an unlucky conjunction of names. Mr. Shandy should have been at the christening, and ordered it more befittingly. There is a levity about the name of FANNY, ill-suited to the tragic associa- tions belonging to KEMBLE. FANNY is good for flirtation and farce.
How I envy you metropolitans the enjoyment of the theatres ; and how .I long for the opportunity of jtstiv appreciating the dramatic poetry Of WALKER, KNOWLES, and MITFoan ! SHAKSPEARE is agreed to be better for the closet than the stage; but are not your modern dramatists better for the stage than the closet ?—for I have read some of their plays, and cannot understand their success. This circumstance, if it be as I, imagine, may denote a change in the cha- racter of dramatic writings. What is good for action may be flat on paper. To the great names of WALKER, KNOWLES, and MITFORD, another bard is now, I see, to be added,—the famous Mr. LISTER, he of whom we have read so much in the newspapers. What a sensa- tion Granby made among you! Was it ever equalled ? Did Waverly produce any thing approaching to the same impression? For weeks together, my Chronicle talked daily praise of "the new novel Granby ;" and even Mr. WRIGHT'S masquerades lost interest in comparison with that remarkable topic of wonderment. What exact echoes of the popular voice are newspapers! How surprisingly they embody public sentiment, and set before us the abridgment of the day's world! I pause on that last sentence, for I suspect it is rather one of those derided opinions which you term commonplaces, than one of my own Conception. How can I call newspapers exact echoes, without know- ledge of the voice. They may be Irish echoes, for aught I know.; an- swering "Very well, thank ye," to "How d'ye do ? " Without some idea of the common estimate, I feel that one cannot judge of the repre- sentation.• We must see the original to decide on the likeness. That Granby and Opera Masquerades were extraordinarily approved, there can be no doubt ; but the rage may have been in degree exaggerated ; or the editor of my paper may have had some peculiar relish for i masking and novel-reading. It s -a.sign of a grateful disposition in a man, to repeat praises for received pleasures. Ordinarily, one reads a book and lays it down, pronouncing it good, and there an end ; but a journalist of a grateful mind repeats day after day the same note of approbation, as if to set a public example of one of the most lovely of the virtues. Is it not-an indication creditable to the press., that the praise of good books and elegant public amusements'. is oftener reite- rated then the abuse of bad men, or the censure of injudicious mea- sures. My Chronicle used to be somewhat severe in its politics ; but how kind it ever is, on the other hand, to new novels ! How encourag- ing to authors! How ready to lift and prolong the note of praise ! All the venom of criticism seems to have deposited itself in your Quarter- lies—so called, it would almost seem, hwas a non lucendo, because they give no quarter ; and your more ephemeral papers are all gentle- ness and good-humour. But whither am I wandering ? I wish to write of Miss KEMBLE, and I have strayed to the foreign question of criticism. Far as I am from the scene, the account of the young actress's debut moved my sympathies. How pleasing the circumstance of the mother playing huly Capulet to her daughter's Juliet ! Had the idea been carried a step or two further, and the Nurse been enacted by the young lady's ancient domestic, and Peter by Mr. CHARLES KEMBLE'S real foot- man, would it have improved the effect, heightened the success of the family scene ?—Perhaps not, and I only throw out the thought which my idleness has suggested. I read in your SPECTATOR some nice criticisms on Miss KEMBLE'S fall backwards, where, as you completely show, the sense would re- .quire any one who fell at all to fall forwards. " Lookers on," they say, " see most of the game ; " but the reason you have urged against the practice, would, according to my limited observation, explain it. When I went to plays—for you know I have not always lived in a wood —KEAN was the rage, and I could not help remarking that all his singularities were accounted strokes of genius. It seemed a maxim, that what nobody else ever thought, or did, must be right. When I thought " How odd !" my neighbours, I remarked, cried " How great ! " Newjallings are surely as justifiable as new readings or new fightings ; and with only four modes of falling, there is at least ingenuity in choosing one which may fill the intelligent spectator with an inquiring surprise. I lately read with immoderate delight a paper in Blackwood's Edin- burgh Magazine, demonstrating that Hamlet should be played with stuffing, u-la-Falstg fir; as he is a pursy prince, of "too, too solid flesh,' and "fat and scant of breath." The proofs from the text were quite convincing. It seems to me, that, with similar ingenuity, a case might be made out for Juliet's backward fall. Does not the Nurse, in her garrulous reminiscences at the beginning of the play, tell a story of July's fall on her face ; and does she not then and there distinctly anticipate the amended manner of tumble. Pray consider it. Apropos of matters theatrical—explain to me more at length (you ave already touched on it) why it i- that managers are invariably styled" spirited and liberal ?" • 'ity you term " spirit " in a manager, arid what " liberality . of aid in classical reading, we have an ADAM'S Roman and I fTER'S Grecian Antiquities,— would that some learned .man, infer d in the manners and customs of our land, would write a similar work on modern English usages ! Modes in all departments are strange things. I have seen that modern prodigy a lady's sleeve ! and, because they are borrowed from the Bishops; they call them, Imbeciles ! What manners are these! What irreverence to the Episcopal Bench ! From reading the obituaries, one would be induced to doubt the existence of imperfection in the world ; for as all the people who die are paragons of excellence, it were fair to infer the same character of the living ; but I saw the other day this singular and solitary exception to the observation.
" Died, Mr. J. Bird, corn-factor, Bridgewater, aged Seventy. Within a few hours of his demise, he sent for an appraiser to take an inventory of his property : his next inquiry was, What will you charge me for sellingilie goods after my death V The terms having been agreed on, he died in a few minutes after, maintaining even to the last moment of his life the same mer- cenary disposition he had erer been toted for."
Un bel loge ! When I got to the " maintaining," I expected a recital of the virtues as of custom. The straightforward comment baulked me.
I have been reading SOUTHEY'S colloquies; an unsatisfactory and rather forbidding book, but, like all his writings with which I am ac- quainted, containing good things, and good thoughts. His chapter on OWEN of Lanark is full of suggestion. OWEN'S scheme seems to me as a most ingenious piece of clock-work wanting only the main- spring. The motive to industry is not sufficient. But why might not a society be formed between your Club system and the project of OWEN ?—something larger, more dinmestic than. the Club plan, and less common in its constitution than the" New Town ?" Suppose the arrangement of a club extended,—that sleeping-apartments and private sitting-rooms were afforded for proportionately increased sub- scriptions,—could not men of small incomes live comfortably at a very easy rate ? It strikes me that the principle of combination is not suffi ciently carried into effect. We know that three or four can live to- gether more cheaply than apart ; but we do not act upon the knowledge. Is it because we are a sulky people ? Repulsion once conquered, how- ever, gives place to cohesion. A solitary being like myself, you may imagine, takes a lively interest in this inquiry. To me it seems the most unnatural of all things to prefer privacy to society. That feeling may colour my view of the matter ; but economy is surely the great study of our tax-pinched people, and will not the consideration of the saving weigh with them ? I remember reading in the Quarterly Be view, some years back, a beautiful article by SOUTHEY on Nunneries ; in which he deplored the want of places of refuge, shelter, and comfort, for unprotected females of narrow means ; and drew a touching pic- ture of the forlorn destitution of that state, termed,- as in mockery, " single blessedness." Nunneries had their abuses, but they had also their uses, which 'might easily be revived, while the evils are irrevocably departed. The unpopular name of nunnery is obviously immaterial, and may be exchanged for any other. The object proposed is simply an institution affording protection and subsistence for a- moderate yearly subscription. Were such establishments once formed, and their convenience, their charitable utility felt, kind-hearted individuals would be likely to promote their purposes by the aid of benefactions and endowments. I wish SOUTHEY would bring this subject to bear on the public ,mind, in a representation of evils and remedies. He would do it excellently, I am sure, from the indications he has already afforded. The miscues of loneliness are more felt than understood among us.
Writing is my substitute for conversation, and abruptness by con- sequence my privilege. You will therefore not startle at my flying off from Nunneries, or Joint Stock Bed and Board Associations, to the Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Church Steeple. SOUTHEY makes the thread of connexion. The Laureate is a good antiquary, and yet, though he is at the trouble of giving two versions of that popular in- stance of the miapprehension of post and propter, he does not add the explanation which I have read in an old author, and the statement of which is really due to the aged witness of Sandwich, whose apparent absurdity was in fact only an enthymeme. When questioned as to. the causes of the Goodwin Sands, he alleged Tenterden Church Stee- ple: now, says FULLER, if I remember aright, certain funds used to be applied for keeping clear the channel of Sandwich Creek, which done, the sands called-Goodwin (lid not collect ; but that money hav- ing been diverted to the building of Tenterden Steeple, the sands ac- cumulated past the power of art to disperse. Thus, the formation of the Goodwins had relation to Tenterden Church Steeple, and the old witness only failed to explain the consequence in his own mind.
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