306

THIRD VISIT TO OSBORNE.

[1870.

. . . The more frequently it has been witnessed, the more instructive and captivating it has become, each fresh study of it bringing to light beauties both of conception and expression which did not seem to be there before, and which, now that they are found, we would on no account wish to lose. The graceful actress shows us the Rosalind Shakespeare would have us see, and from such a picture the eye withdraws with lingering regrets. On appearing, Miss Faucit was received with a ringing round of cheers; and it is needless to remark that, throughout the play, the most admiring attention was bestowed upon her. Finally, when from the festive throng in Arden's forest she stepped forward to deliver the Epilogue, the house again rang with applause, and then for a few moments all were silent to hear the last words. The Epilogue is brief. It was spoken with that grace and elegance of manner which is never absent from Miss Faucit; and when the closing words came, "You will, for my kind offer, when I make courtsey, bid me farewell," the farewell was perceptibly hard to say, and the audience did not withhold its sympathy. Applause came in an impulsive burst from every part of the house, and was continued with such enthusiasm that Miss Faucit had again to come forward, and so receive in double measure the parting congratulations which the audience had, with unanimous cordiality, to bestow upon her.

Soon after our return to London came an invitation from the Queen, through the Princess Louise, for a five days' visit to Osborne. My wife was received by all with the same cordiality which had made former visits so happy. She read Tennyson's "Dora" and "The Brook" to the Queen after dinner one evening, and Mrs Browning's "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" on another; and she records that in a letter "the Queen said very sweet things of my reading. H.M. seems very fond of Mrs Browning's poems." Not long after our return home the following entry occurs: "March 12.-This morning came a lovely cashmere shawl to me as a present from the Queen, with a charming letter accompanying it from the Princess Louise. Acknowledged both (no easy task) before I went to bed."

In June we went to Wales, to see the progress making with the building and garden additions to our little property there. On our way we were greatly shocked by a placard at the Wrexham Railway Station announcing the sudden death, the previous day (June 9), of Charles Dickens. "I can never forget," the Diary says, "how kind he was to me when we met in my very early days at Mr Macready's, Mr S. C. Hall's, and at his own house. His Christmas Carol' will always seem

1870.]

ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION IN GLASGOW.

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come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone.-To bed, to bed, to bed!" Miss Faucit realised all the terror and pathos of the great master, to the interpretation of whose divine works the best efforts of her dramatic genius have been given.

Rosalind, Pauline, and Julia (in The Hunchback) were not found to be enough to satisfy the public's demand, and they pressed for an extra night. It was conceded, and Beatrice selected. This is the entry in the Diary previous to the performance: "Dec. 5.-Beatrice to-night. An extra night insisted on. My last of all, I suppose, in Scotland. My heart is very full. I must be brave to-night." Brave she was, and never acted better, raising the audience to the highest pitch of excitement. "At the close," one journal writes, "it was impossible. not to feel that there is no such actress left on the British stage. She was called twice before the curtain by the enthusiasm of the whole house. What memories of similar triumphs, from the time when she won them first in Scotland, must have passed before her! She has long reigned the queen of our stage; and we cannot part with Helen Faucit without bearing our grateful testimony to the nobility of her aims, and her resolution never to degrade the genius by which she has done so much to honour her profession." Next day she writes: "Last night tried me much. The audience did not seem to know how to show me kindness enough. Such a mass of people-crowds sent away. I shall live in their memories for many a day, I know." A true presentiment! But as she lived long in their memory, so did they live long in hers. If she had oftentimes touched their hearts in the deep emotions which her genius had awakened, they in turn had deeply moved hers by the sympathy which from first to last they had shown with her endeavours to keep alive their interest in the art to which her life was devoted. It had, therefore, cost her much pain throughout the engagement to think that of their loving greetings this was to be the last.

Before settling down at home she had agreed to appear in December for four nights at Liverpool. On Thursday the 8th, she writes: "Very tired, and all the last few days-quite upset by Monday night. Happily my feelings will not be concerned in my work next week." Very sorely tried, however,

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HER LADY MACBETH DESCRIBED

313

themselves air into which they vanished"; and the effect does not disappear

when the reading of the letter is over. On the contrary, it subtly animates the whole of the succeeding soliloquy. From the moment she hears of the witches and their more than mortal knowledge, the very being of Lady Macbeth is shared between the hard resolution to achieve the ambition of which her husband has given her hints, and an eagerness to claim partnership with the weird aids who have suddenly appeared to promote it. One could see the very air peopling, as with anxious thrilling accents and mistily wandering eyes the great actress peered around, feverishly petitioning—

"You murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief!"

And it needed no commentator to suggest how slight and unworthy would seem to such a nature her husband's milk of human kindness.

"Not without ambition,

But without the illness should attend it."

In a most pregnant accentuation of that word "illness," plainly conveying all its villainy, Miss Faucit embodied the whole unsentimental side of the character. Like many another woman, once instigated to iniquity, Lady Macbeth had no notion of turning weakly back before the gains were made. To the last she is true by hard force of feminine directness to this principle. But weakness of temperament prevails over strength of mind and will. Lady Macbeth cannot resist the temptation to range wildly the supernatural region into which her husband's letter tempts her; nor can she afterwards stand up against the fearful depression which sets in upon her when she finds her husband fatally environed by spectral mementoes of the crimes on which their state is based.

We have to thank Miss Faucit's vivid rendering of the first soliloquy for bringing home, more distinctly than it ever was brought before, this dual character of Lady Macbeth, and we shall never forget how at one point and in one attitude the two aspects of the part are brought into splendid juxtaposition. It is in the banqueting scene. At this point, especially when the Macbeth of the evening is also the star, Lady Macbeth usually disappears in a rather commonplace way from the scene. Her subsequent absence is felt to be almost inartistic, and her sleep-walking seems at best a very elliptical acknowledgment of her poetical importance to the story. Miss Faucit, as if the inheritor of some marvellous stage direction of the dramatist, makes all this clear by a wonderful elaboration of silent action. We defy any one to behold her exit after the banquet, even if the dénoûment were utterly unknown, without feeling that for her there can be no more crime or hearty enjoyment of the greatness secured by it; that by her the cup of life has been drunk, and that she will live in loathing of the lees. During the excitement of the feast, and even during the first ravings of Macbeth at the sight of Banquo's ghost, the queen has her game to play, and plays it royally. She gracefully suppresses the rising turmoil and curiosity amongst the guests. She descends from her throne to pacify the

CHAPTER XIV.

THIS was the year of the Franco-German war. All men's minds in England were full of it, and those who, like my wife, had valued friends in France, had their feelings severely tried by the almost daily tidings of the French reverses. Among the numerous passages in her Diary to which these gave rise, I find the following: "Sept. 11.-Am reading Herodotus lately. How events repeat themselves: This love of conquest! War seems to have been just as sad and cruel in the olden time as now. We thought we had tenderer hearts now at least, and shrank from inflicting pain. Read the accounts in the papers, and then see what barbarians men still become in battle, and what anguish and desolation they leave everywhere behind them. The poor peasants, who can heal their wounds? They are starved, unpitied, and unknown. I cannot but hope that peace must be at hand. Beautiful Paris must not be besieged!"

The wish was the prevailing one in England at the time, and it might have been well for the peace of Europe, had this humiliation been spared to France. But this was not to be; and what the citizens of Paris had yet to suffer was from time to time painfully brought home to my wife by letters, pigeon carried, from her friends there, with details of the privations and miseries brought upon them by the siege.

Dante Rossetti was a personal friend, of whom at this time we saw a good deal. Personally he was a favourite with my wife, but she had the courage to maintain an opinion as to his works, which was regarded as inexcusable heresy by many of his admirers in our immediate circle. She expressed it thus: "Nov. 6.-We all went to Dante Rossetti's at Cheyne Walk,