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WOMEN OF RENOWN
G.BARNETT SMITH.

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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
WOMEN OF RENOWN
99416.
NINETEENTH CENTURY STUDIES.
BY
24.
y
******************
GYBARNETT SMITH.
AUTHOR OF
THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT," CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES
OF SHELLEY AND VICTOR HUGO, "LIFE AND ENTERPRises of
FERDINAND DE LESSEPS," ETC.
1893.
LONDON:
W. H. ALLEN & CO., LIMITED,
13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.
1
WYMAN AND SONS, LIMITED,
PRINTERS,
LONDON AND REDHILL.
!
·
1
TO MY DEAR FRIEND
SIR J. CRICHTON BROWNE, M.D., LL.D.,
I INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME,
WITH ALL GOOD WISHES.
}
G. B. S.
PREFATORY NOTE.
I HAVE endeavoured to make these studies of eminent women
of the nineteenth century as representative as possible. The
fields covered embrace the literary, the scientific, the musical,
the dramatic, the philanthropic, and the adventurous. No
living women are included, but I should have added to the
list Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Mrs. Browning, had
I not already written upon them, and had they not also been
the subject of appreciative criticism by other writers. This
has been especially the case of recent years with Charlotte
Brontë and Mrs. Browning, and I rejoice greatly at the fact,
for twenty years ago I hope I did some little towards evoking
a deeper interest in their works by publishing full critical and
biographical articles upon those gifted writers in the Cornhill
Magazine. These articles were republished in my volume of
Poets and Novelists; and I look back now with pride to the
fact that the article on Mrs. Browning gave especial pleasure
to the great poet her husband, who honoured me with his
friendship until his death.
With regard to the following sketches, the biographical
element has been my main consideration, though I hope
X
PREFATORY NOTE.
there will be found a sufficiency of explanation and criticism
of the life-work of each character dealt with. I was desirous
of showing what these distinguished women were in themselves
-how they lived, moved, and acted; and for that reason I
have presented them wherever I could as painted by them-
selves or their contemporaries. Each career has its special
interest I shall be content if its delineation results in enter-
tainment and profit to the reader.
Y
Bournemouth, October 7, 1893.
G. B. S.
FREDRIKA BREMER
GEORGE ELIOT
JENNY LIND
MARY SOMERVILLE
MARGUERITE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON
RACHEL
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MARY CARPENTER
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN
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FREDRIKA BREMER.
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FREDRIKA BREMER.
BETWEEN those two remarkable Scandinavian writers, Fredrika
Bremer and Henrik Ibsen, there is a great gulf fixed. The
same northern latitude produced both, and yet it would be
impossible to cite two writers of any nationality who differed
so widely in their literary character and methods. In the
pages of Fredrika Bremer we seem to see reflected, as in some
translucent lake, the green pastures of a moral and intellectual
calm, or the mountains of a pure and lofty aspiration. With
Ibsen, on the contrary, we might be standing on the heights of
the Brocken, where the midnight storm lashes itself into tem-
pest, and the lightnings make visible the dark and sublime
things of the world. The writings of the one are suffused and
permeated by a loving faith and hope, and a complete reliance
upon the Divine will; the writings of the other are full of struggle,
of mental analysis, of passionate yearnings after individual free-
dom, of feverish revolt against social canons, of tragic in-
cidents, and of mystic and inextinguishable desires. Bremer
is the more reposeful; Ibsen the more powerful and original.
Bremer's is the happier soul, Ibsen's the greater, yet withal
the more unsatisfiable.
Fredrika Bremer was born in Tuorla Manor House, near
Abo, in Finland, on the 17th of August, 1801. Her father, the
Bruks-patron, or Iron-master, Carl Fredric Bremer, was de-
scended from an ancient German noble family, which settled
in Sweden in the reign of King Gustavus Adolphus the

4
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
her mother was Brigitta Charlotta Hollström. It was Fredrika's
grandfather, Jacob Bremer, who, after his migration from Sweden
to Finland, accumulated the wealth which placed the family in
affluent circumstances. By founding ironworks and factories
he likewise found employment for many hundreds of persons,
and, as he was ever generous to the poor and needy, his memory
was kept green in Finland long after his death. Jacob Bremer
was twice married-first to a lady of title, and secondly to the
young and handsome daughter of the Assessor of the Royal
Court of Justice. His children appear to have done well for
themselves; one of the daughters by his first wife married the
Governor of the County of Wasa, and another Baron Hisingör,
a Counsellor of the Royal Court of Justice. There were only
two children by the second marriage, Carl Fredric and Agatha ;
the latter married General Wrede, who afterwards became Field
Marshal Count Fabian Wrede; and Carl Fredric married as
we have seen, and had a numerous family, his second daughter
being Fredrika Bremer, whose talents acquired for her a
European reputation.
Q
At the commencement of the present century Finland was
the theatre of bloody struggles between Sweden and Russia,
which eventually ended in the cession of the country to the
latter Power. Carl Fredric Bremer was deeply attached to
Finland, but foreseeing the sad fate in store for her, he deter-
mined to move with his wife and young family to Sweden.
Accordingly in 1804 he settled in Stockholm, and the following
year purchased the country estate of Arsta, in the parish of
Öster-Hanninge, about three Swedish, or twenty English, milest
from the capital. Here his children were brought up, and
they appear to have had a roughish time of it until the advent
of a governess-Sara Eleanore de Frumerie, a descendant of
a French emigrant family. This lady seems to have been
just, truthful, and God-fearing, and to have laid the foun-
dation of all that was good in them. The relations be-
en parents and children in the upper circles of Sweden

FREDRIKA BREMER.
5-
were very hard and strained. The affections of the children
were kept down, so that they imbibed more fear than love for
their parents. Fredrika Bremer longed to please her mother,
whom she loved passionately and tenderly, but she was
rebuffed. She could never walk, stand, sit, or curtesy to the
haughty lady's satisfaction, and had many bitter and wretched
moments in consequence. Madame Bremer laid down three
inviolable principles for the education of her children. First,
they were to grow up in perfect ignorance of everything evil in
the world, so as to preserve in them pure and innocent minds;
secondly, they were to acquire as much knowledge as possible;
and thirdly, they were to eat as little as possible, for fear lest
they should become stupid and slow to learn, and develop into
strong, stout, and tall women—a class whom the worthy
mother cordially detested. In the few pages which Fredrika
Bremer has devoted to her own Autobiography, she has thus
described this early period in her life :—
To me Dame Nature was rather unfriendly, throwing all
kinds of difficulties in my way. None of those who surrounded
me understood how to guide a character like mine to good.
They tried to curb me by severity, or else my thoughts and
feelings were ridiculed. I was very unhappy in my early youth,
and, violent as I was in everything, I formed many plans to
shorten my life, to put out my eyes, &c., &c. ; merely for the
sake of making my mother repent her severity; but all ended
in my standing on the margin of the lake, looking down into
the water, or feeling the pricking of the knife in my eyeball.
Unhappy at home, because I was a restless, passionate crea-
ture, without the least of what one would call tact, my soul
clung ardently to the events of the outer world.
The war
against Napoleon stirred within me all my deepest feelings. I
determined to flee from home, to proceed to the theatre of
war, which I imagined would be an easy matter, and, dressed
in male costume, to become page to the Crown Prince (after-
wards King Charles XIV.), who at that time appeared to me
6
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
to be little less than a demi-god. I entertained those plans for
more than a year, until they melted away slowly, like snow
in water. Gradually my patriotic and warlike feelings were
lulled, but only to make room for new ones of another kind.
Religious enthusiasm and the most worldly coquetry were
struggling within me-feelings for which I was unable fully
to account, but which seemed to burst my young bosom, and
which sometimes filled it with a heaven and sometimes with a
hell: like two all-consuming flames, the desire to know and the
desire to enjoy were burning in my soul, without being satisfied
for many long years. The mere sight of certain words in a
book-words such as Truth, Liberty, Glory, Immortality-
roused within me feelings which vainly I would try to describe.'
To give vent to her ideas, she wrote verses, theatrical pieces,
and essays; composed music, and painted pictures, 'some of
them '--she naïvely confesses-' greater trash than the others.'
She was a coquette, and though rather plain of feature-having
a nose in particular which was a great trouble to her—she had
plenty of vivacity and freshness, and these procured her ad-
mirers and flatterers. In time she acquired a reputation for
wit. Even from her childhood it seemed as though she were
to become the champion of her sex, for her earliest verses con-
tained allusions to woman's dependent and subordinate
position in life. With regard to her personal appearance, her
sister tells us she was rather under the average size; that her
eyes were very handsome, thoughtful, and expressing goodness
and vivacity; but the head was large in proportion to the small
and slight figure; and the nose filled up a large place in her
physiognomy. Fredrika made many efforts to reduce it to
more reasonable dimensions, but the rebellious organ refused
to be compressed, and actually revenged itself by becoming
more formidable still, and taking on a fine high colour. Yet
the girl had her lovers, and she gives some amusing accounts
of them, one of which I must quote. She was staying with
her mother and sisters at a fashionable watering-place. 'A very
FREDRIKA BREMER.
!
7
It was a
amiable and chivalrous elderly gentleman and his wife,' she
observes, 'who were residing in the neighbourhood, did all they
could to make our stay as agreeable as possible. They had a
son, a young, gay, good and handsome lieutenant.
He began
to sigh for me, and I began to warm a little for him.
pastoral moment, when once, in the green fields, I was wiping
and scraping some tar off one of my shoes, and when he, with
half words and sighs—well, nothing more came of it. We left
at last, and he accompanied us to the nearest town. I remem-
ber, not without a pleasant sensation, this first silent, friendly
harmony of my soul with another's. We parted. I gave him
a carnation and a curl paper, and he gave me a few sprigs of
lavender. I cried the whole night after our parting, and for a
long time afterwards I sighed his name in my heart, but very
calmly.' On another occasion she felt Cupid's arrow sticking
in her heart for about a fortnight, and then it dropped out. By
the age of seventeen, it appears she had formed a determination
never to marry.
We have a glimpse of another side of her character several
years before she attained this age. It was at the time when all
Europe was the scene of war. Most of the nations had risen
to grapple with the hitherto invincible Napoleon, who was then
retreating from Russia after the disaster of Moscow. Under
the command of the Crown Prince of Sweden, Bernadotte,
whom the nations hailed as one of their liberators, a portion of
the Swedish army had crossed over into Germany. New ideas
and feelings were awakened in Fredrika Bremer by these stir-
ring events. 'She wept bitterly at not having been born a
man, so that she could have joined her countrymen to fight
against the general disturber of peace and the oppressor of
nations; she wanted to fight for her native country; longed to
distinguish herself to win renown and glory. She felt that she
would not be wanting in courage, if she could only get over to
Germany.' She was inspired by the most romantic visions, as
we have already seen from her Autobiography; and although she
8
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
was only thirteen years old, these dreams took such thorough
possession of her, that twice she set out for Stockholm, hoping
that fortune would favour her resolve, but she was beaten back,
disappointed and disheartened.
At the ages of fifteen and fourteen the sisters were allowed to
read the novels of Madame de Genlis and Miss Burney, but
the only result was to intensify their longing to escape from
the convent-like seclusion at Arsta. They were filled with the
notion that if they could once get out into the world they
would become the heroines of romance, and meet with un-
dreamed-of adventures. They even looked out almost daily
to being carried off by some nineteenth century knights, who
would be fired to heroic deeds through their influence. Not
long after this they became more staid, and were occupied for
a considerable time in translating a work written for children,
with a view of imparting to them the first ideas of religion.
Their father was so touched by this that he embraced them
both with tears, and had the work printed and published at his
own expense. Then began a thorough system of household
training, as well as more esthetic studies. The girls were
taught the art of musical composition and thorough bass.
Fredrika wrote a theatrical piece in one act, called The Poet,
and her sister Charlotte composed the music to it. But there
was little society at Arsta, and for all the news which came to
them from the capital they might as well have been a hundred
miles from Stockholm instead of barely twenty. It is quite
painful to read of their ennui ; life was often so dreary to these
young folks that the tears would roll down their cheeks. They
led a monotonous, joyless, and inactive life, which told especi-
ally upon Fredrika.
At last, in August, 1821, a change came over the scene.
Carl Bremer determined that his whole family should travel
for a year, and they accordingly set out upon their long
journey. Crossing over from Ystad to Stralsund, they made
their way through the sandy deserts of Pomerania and Lüne-
FREDRIKA BREMER.
9
berg, posting in two large travelling landaus, each drawn by
four horses. After great difficulty, owing to the bad condition of
the roads, they reached Frankfort-on-the-Main, and then pro-
ceeded to Darmstadt, where they remained for some time, and
where they frequently saw the famous Madame Schröder-
Devrient at the Darmstadt Theatre. Walks, books, and the
picture-gallery also interested them. In quick succession, Baden,
Basle, Geneva, and Lausanne were visited, and then the travel-
lers crossed the Jura Alps to Dijon, proceeding thence to Paris,
where they remained all through the following winter, spring,
and early summer. In Paris they saw all the great artistes of
the time-Talma, Madame Pasta, Mdlle. Mars, Mdlle. Georges,
&c. They were enchanted with Mars, but grievously dis-
appointed with Talma, wondering how he had acquired his
wide fame. In his tragic parts they regarded him as 'devoid of
truth, and full of exaggeration.' Pretty strong criticism this for
girls of twenty, who had hitherto seen little of life, or of the
stage.
The artistic result of the tour was to re-awaken in Fredrika
Bremer an all-consuming thirst for knowledge. The master-
pieces of Nature and Art had stirred her soul to its depths.
Consequently, when she returned to the quiet home life at Arsta
the revulsion of feeling was terrible. 'Isuffered like Tantalus,'
she says.
'Then began for us a life the heaviness and torture
of which it would be vain to attempt to paint. Our home be-
came to us a prison, compared with which a real prison would,
so it appeared to me, have been a delicious retreat.
We saw
nobody in our house, and those whom we saw in the houses of
others were unkind and unfriendly to us on account of our
foreign journey, and on account of the airs which people fancied
we wanted to give ourselves. Year after year a heavier and
darker cloud lowered itself over my home, and still more over
my soul. Gradually, all illusions vanished. With a soul in-
finitely lively and active, I found myself shut out from all
activity. If a charitable hand had then pointed out to me the
IO
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
road to light and future usefulness, through cultivation of my
intellect and a judicious division of the time to be devoted to
this purpose-oh! then so many years would not have rolled
past me like zeroes, and I would have borne better every day's
bitterness and pain. But my soul was still, as it were, in its
swaddling clothes. I read heaps of novels; they awakened
within me a longing for happiness and love which could not
be realised. I read large quantities of sermons, which did not
make me a bit better or less unhappy. I played the piano, and
occupied myself in one way or another, but more and more
listlessly. I waited for a turn in events, in order to enter into
activity, but no such events happened. Embroidering an in-
terminable grey neckerchief, I became more and more be-
numbed, that is to say, in my vital powers-in my desire to
live. The sense of pain did not become benumbed; it became,
on the contrary, more sharp every day, like the frost in a steadily
increasing winter. The flame in my soul was flickering fear-
fully, and wanted only one thing-to be extinguished for ever.
My sisters suffered with me; they suffered in me and I in
them. During the common sorrows of our continental jour-
ney we had become sincerely and closely united. During
the common sufferings of our domestic life we became still
more tenderly united ; and under affliction and tears those ties
were knit which nothing can make stronger, which nothing can
turn asunder, and which are now the chief source of my life's
happiness. Years rolled past, and everything remained in the
same state; physical pains, caused by inward pains, seized me ;
an eruption covered my face; my eyes became yellow. I felt,
both in body and soul, a sense of the utmost discomfort, a
kind of frost, a sensation as if I was becoming mouldy. I had
a fear and horror of people looking at me; my position, with
respect to them and to myself, was insupportable. The fate
of woman in general, and my own in particular, appeared to
me to be frightful. I saw assurance and courage in men's
looks; heard them express openly their thoughts and feelings,
FREDRIKA BREMER.
I I
and I was doomed to silence-to live without life.
to live without life. I was con-
scious of being born with powerful wings, but I was also con-
scious of their being clipped, and I fancied that they would
always remain so. I saw that I was disagreeable and repugnant
in the eyes of others, and I felt that it could not be otherwise,
for I was dissatisfied with myself, with my inward and outward
being.'
Yet through the midst of suffering a certain strength
gradually crept into her life. She had brooded over the dark
mysteries of existence, had realised the meaning of pain and
anguish, and had raised to Heaven a rebellious cry against her
lot. Then she became so gentle in suffering that she would
have borne anything to save the most insignificant insect a
pang. Relief came first through the avenues of Art. She
painted for hours daily, in order to find pecuniary means for
assuaging the afflictions of others, which made her heart bleed
to hear mentioned. Next she was deeply moved, and found her
imagination set aglow by Schiller's masterpieces, Don Carlos,
Maid of Orleans, &c., which her father read to his family in
the evenings. Then came the removal of the Bremers to a fine
suite of apartments in the Blasseholm Square, Stockholm. This
was in the year 1822, and it marked quite an era in the dull
lives of the younger members of the family.
Fredrika now
painted a considerable number of miniature portraits, and in
this branch of Art she seems to have manifested real genius.
In 1824 domestic troubles came. One of the daughters,
Agatha, was sent to the Orthopedic Institution at Paris to
undergo the treatment there. She was suffering from curva-
ture of the spine, and there was no remedy then in Sweden for
this affliction. Next the father became seriously ill, and as he
slowly approached convalescence, his daughters read works of
travel to him or played chess with him-a game which made
him chuckle with amusement if he won, but caused him great
chagrin if he lost, as is the way with many games and exercises
in this life besides chess. Life again became almost intoler-
I 2
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
able, and rather than spend any more winters aimlessly, she
resolved to go into one of the hospitals at Stockholm as a
nurse. All this time she wrote a little furtively, and in addi-
tion to prose sketches, produced some beautiful poems.
That she strove to do her duty while feeling discontented
with life is shown by many extracts in her journal. 'Practice
is the nurse of virtue,' she writes on one occasion. 'Virtue is
a child which decays and dies before it reaches maturity if
we neglect to feed it every day and to cultivate its strength.
If we rarely find an opportunity for great deeds and sacrifices,
still we have every day an opportunity of practising patience,
submission, self-denial, and many simple virtues which often
are the most difficult to practise for certain minds, because
these virtues are in themselves so quiet and unobserved.'
Again, To have suffered pain does always good afterwards.
Early discovery of my twenty years' experience!' Two years
later she writes: 'How stagnant, like a muddy pool is time
to youth dragging on a dull, inactive life. I am only twenty-
two, and yet I am often tired of the world and wish I was taken
from it.' A few months later still she writes against the 'de-
spicable low feeling' called egotism, which increases in most
persons with age. I will remain unmarried,' she says, 'in
order not to attach my heart exclusively to those whom I
should have to call mine; but I shall, for the sake of God and
of Eternal Love, love all my fellow-men; help and comfort all,
as far as lies in my power, which ought to be so much easier
when no domestic cares weigh upon my mind. That must be
a beautiful and happy life!'
،
Fredrika Bremer's first love was her native country. Indeed,
when most depressed and weary, nature seems to have exercised
a wonderfully recuperative power over her. She thus sets forth,
in simple but eloquent language, how her soul was lifted up
at such a season of mental languor into a new hope:-' I
imagined that I had closed my accounts with the world; the
desire for life and its enjoyments was extinguished within me.
FREDRIKa bremeR.
13
My soul became pure and at the same time true. My inces-
sant activity gave me a delightful consciousness of being here
in this world a consoling atom. In consequence of frequent
and fatiguing exercise in the open air, my body became
invigorated, my blood flowed more freely, my health im-
proved.
'One day, about the end of March, I walked across snow-
covered fields just as the sun was setting; the tear of gratitude
and joy of one, to whom I had just then given comfort, had
fallen like balm upon my heart. I had been walking very fast
to avoid coming home in the twilight, and I had stopped a
moment to recover breath and to inhale the mild, pure air. I
stood still, with my eyes turned to where the sun was sinking
in a flood of purple and golden glory beneath the western sky.
There came thence towards me, sweeping across the wide
expanse of snow, a breath of air delicious and full of a foretaste
of spring. I drank in its life-giving freshness with body and
soul. I collected my excited feelings to more calmness, looked
round, and turned, with full consciousness of the state of my
being, my thoughts upon myself, with this question: Would I
now wish to die? For the first time during many years, I felt
that I could answer, No! Oh, the moment of immeasurable
delight! Now awoke within me the hope of a resurrection to
happiness even on earth,—a hope which has not been deceived,
but which has been beautifully realised.'
Though Miss Bremer took to few persons in an intimate
sense, she had the faculty of inspiring devotion towards herself
in others. One noble-hearted and estimable lady, who learnt
to know her in her outward, and partly also in her inward
life, conceived for her a friendship which amounted almost
to a real passion. She would have done anything or every-
thing for her without the spoken word of command. A look
would have been enough, and the knowledge that she had
gained such an influence as this ennobled Fredrika Bremer in
her own estimation.
14
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
In 1828 she wrote the first volume of the Sketches of Every
day Life-her earliest work. The chief motive in having the
book published was the hope of getting a little money to assist.
the poor in the country. In the description which the author
gives of the youth and feelings of Elizabeth-a well-drawn
character in this work-she has portrayed her own. Here
comes out strongly the love of her native land. The book was
well received, and the author was encouraged during the
summer of 1829 to write a second volume of the Sketches.
This contained several pieces in which, from her own ex-
pericnce, she described under the form of real occurrences,
various misfortunes and sufferings, and also the eventual comfort
and balm for the same. In one of the most exquisite of the
pieces, she described an obscure Atom who bewailed his
nothingness. If he were only a dew-drop, so that he might
refresh earth's flowers it would be something; but he was a
nothing, and nobody either wanted or missed him. At the
close of a certain day, night rested upon the Atom; but he felt
his own darker night :-
'Then upon Aurora's rays came the Angel of Consolation,
a bright seraph, who with inexhaustible treasures of celestial
balm, soared forth over the earth; and wherever a martyr suffers
for truth, wherever a down-trodden ant feels a pang, there he
halts, gives life, enjoyment, comfort, forgetfulness, or—death.
The seraph saw the suffering Atom, and heard his silent
complaint.'
""Rejoice, suffering Atom!" said his friendly voice. "Thy
wish has been heard by an ever-listening ear. A tear of com-
passion and consolation, thou shalt glisten in my wreath, and
fall, a drop of balm, upon Affliction's burning pain."
'He spoke, and already the Atom glittered, transformed,
blissful, and bright, like a smiling tear, upon a beautiful poppy
in the seraph's wreath. "Oh!" whispered he, with humble
joy, "I am but a drop; yet, beautiful seraph, if sanctified by
thee, it gives to me the power to comfort a sufferer, then will I
FREDRIKA BREMER.
15
praise my glorious destiny-then will I bless thee and my
eternal origin."
"
The 'Home of Prayer' is another beautiful and touching
allegory; and as it furnishes a characteristic example of
Fredrika Bremer's literary skill and imaginative power, I will
reproduce the most essential passage in it. Prayer was the
offspring of the genius of Heavenly Love and of Affliction. She
grew up amid the delights of the celestial region, but neverthe-
less felt that this was not her true home. She longed with an
intense longing to visit the terrestrial sphere :
'The genius of Heavenly Love marked with loving looks
his daughter's silent sadness. And when the time had arrived,
the hour which Jehovah had appointed, he took her hand,
and soared with her through creation's endless space. They
approached a star, called Earth, where the seraph's eye with
melancholy joy found again images congenial to her heart and
soul. Bright tears glittered in the bells of flowers. The sun
burst through heavy clouds. Summer days and winter nights
rested alternately on the shadowy vales, and gloomy fogs rolled
over its loveliest landscapes.
"Here let us linger,-here let us rest!" whispered she be-
seechingly. They lowered their flight and alighted upon a hill,
from which wide-spreading cedars threw their lengthening
evening shadows. Sweetly smiling, the seraph looked round,
looked towards heaven, over whose face bright clouds were
wafted by gentle winds, and then at her heavenly guide,
saying, "Here it is good to remain; here is my home; here
let me stay!
CCC
>>
"Daughter of my love," replied her father, "yes, here thou
shalt stay, here is thy home; Jehovah wills it so; here is
the cradle of immortal beings-man's native land. Here,
under suffering, are born eternal joys. But, in order that
man shall not miss his goal, thou shalt be near him, a link
between me and my eternal home, which shall be his also one
day. Thou shalt teach him to pray, that is, to trust and hope.
16
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Thou shalt watch at his cradle and at his grave. Thou shalt
teach him, in all changes, to look upwards, that a ray of the
Eternal's brightness may throw light into his soul. Consolation
shall be thy name; thy mission, a woman's, to comfort and
support."
'So saying, he spread his dazzling pinions, and, slowly soaring
upwards, fixed a look full of measureless love upon the daugh-
ter, who, kneeling with clasped hands, and smiling in her tears,
prayed: "Oh! let it be so; oh, my father, my happiness is to
do thy will! Morning and evening, in the bright hours of day,
in the silent watches of night, I will direct man's looks and
man's heart to thee. But, that I may be always full of hope,
full of comfort and joy, that my smile may always beam trium-
phant over my tears, oh! therefore, be ever with me, abandon
me never, my father.'
"}
'The genius of Heavenly Love vanished behind a veil of
cloud out of the suppliant's sight; but a breath full of heavenly
sweetness fanned her fair curls and gently kissed her forehead,
cheek, and eyelids; and she felt conscious of a father's blessing.
Tremblingly rustled the cedar branches, and "Never," softly
whispered with a sound as if out of eternity, reached her ear.
She felt that he was ever near her.
'Earth became Prayer's home. Prayer became man's good
angel. She watched at his cradle, watched over his youth,
comforted him in every period of his life, cheered his old age;
and, amongst the foliage of the trees which overshadowed his
mortal resting-place, she was still heard to breathe peace and
joy,-whispering that now she had borne him home, and there
he did not need her aid any longer.'
A considerable time elapsed before the best Scandinavian
critics discovered that an original force had arisen in Swedish
literature—a writer imbued with true poetic feeling. But with
the appearance of the second volume of Sketches there was no
room left for doubt on this point. An author of acknowledged
repute expressed his joy that the literature of Sweden could
1
T
FREDRIKA BREMER.
17
boast of such an authoress. 'I am acquainted,' he said, 'with
the choicest literature of most countries, but I defy them all to
produce, in the genre which you have chosen, truer or more
beautiful pictures, not only of reality, but also of the ideal
world which lives and breathes within us. Nobody in our
country, either man or woman, has, as far as I am aware,
hitherto understood present events more thoroughly, with the
penetrating eye of genius, or drawn with a more masterly
hand their varied forms, and the miniatures of domestic life;
and all this with such genuine, unmistakable womanliness.'
The title given to the second volume of Sketches was ‘The H—
Family.' It became quite the rage in Stockholm, and was
talked about in every assembly. At a brilliant soirée at which
the Royal family were present, the authoress was the bright par-
ticular star of the evening, and being of a shy and somewhat
reserved nature, she was much embarrassed by the eulogies
showered upon her. The Aftonbladet trumpeted the news of
the authorship of the Sketches to the world, and the Swedish
Academy awarded to the hitherto unknown authoress its
lesser gold medal, as a token of its esteem and approbation.
From this time forward Fredrika Bremer devoted herself to
the production of stories which speedily became popular in
translations far beyond the bounds of Sweden. Mary Howitt
made her works known in England by her excellent transla-
tions, and for a time these Swedish novels were read with
great avidity. It will be convenient here to give some account
of the most important of them. The Neighbours, which is
simply a story of everyday life, is on the whole the best and
most perfect of all Miss Bremer's compositions. It lacks dra-
matic power, like all her works, but it reveals a keen eye for
observing the peculiarities of social life, and shows also a close
acquaintance with human nature. It is the record of a young
married woman's experiences for twelve months in a district to
which her husband has taken her. By means of letters she
describes the society into which she is thrown, and discusses
C
•
18
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
topics of the widest range, without, however, detailing many of
her own personal adventures. Her husband, whom she play-
fully calls 'Bear,' is one of the chief characters, and another is
ma chère mère, his stepmother-perhaps the strongest indivi-
duality in the book. 'She is a woman of strong mind, of
stronger prejudices, of iron nerves, of indomitable obstinacy,
ruling her household with a rod of iron, yet winning the love
of her people even amid their fears. All the little world of her
circle stand in awe of her. She is courted, dreaded, respected,
sneered at behind her back; and though perfectly well aware
that such are the feelings with which she is everywhere and by
all classes of persons regarded, she goes on her own way reso-
lutely through life, and commands esteem by the very force of
her eccentricities. The old lady manages her farm as she does
her household. She wears worsted stockings and hob-nailed
shoes, drives her own carriage, lectures her own labourers, and
now and then inflicts on a rebellious menial a little salutary
personal chastisement.' The Von P. family 'is a collection of
unfortunate pretensions,' and forms a striking contrast to the
worthy old couple, the Dahls. There is a mysterious occu-
pant of the mansion of Ramm, one Bruno Mansfeld, who is
supposed to absorb most of the reader's attention, but some-
how Miss Bremer has failed in his delineation, and she has her-
self admitted the fact. She has not been able to make him
fall deeply enough with respect to deeds, and it is only under
such circumstances that true love reveals its power and sublimity.
'When the guilty to the eyes of the indifferent spectator dis-
appears in the depths of his dark abyss, when he has forfeited
everybody's sympathy and interest, and when the pure and the
good turn away from him with horror, then it is that true love
triumphantly feels its power, stoops down to the forsaken one,
seizes hold of him, and does not rest until it has raised him out
of the slough.' A murder would have been more in accordance
with Bruno's character, while he has only darkened his past
by a petty larceny-the plunder of his mother's money-chest—
FREDRIKA BREMER.
19
and by a participation in the slave trade, which he soon gives
up. But he is a gloomy, miserable being, destined never to
enjoy earthly happiness. 'The thunderbolt which grazes his
forehead, lightens also in his soul, and shall there lighten re-
proachfully till the end of his life.' Bruno is intended to show,
by a living example, what tormentors conscience and memory
may become. A certain maiden lady, Miss Hellevi Hausgiebel
--who inhabits the Bird's Nest, and fills it with natural curiosities
-disguises under an eccentric and somewhat flippant manner
a great deal of good sense, with an equal portion of good
breeding. But the sweetest and loveliest of all the characters
is the maiden Serena, who is cruelly tempted by the villain
Bruno, but comes through the ordeal with noble firmness and
purity. The story, however, must be read in its entirety in
order to grasp its excellences, and to recognise how faith-
fully it portrays the warring motives and passions of human
life.
In Morning Watches, Fredrika Bremer set forth in detail
her religious views. Her intention was to depict, by means of
this book, the first faint streaks of light between night and a
new day. A number of moral objects were only partly lit up,
while others were left in darkness. Her reflections and musings
illumined only the heights and the general outlines of the land-
scape. They foreshadowed the complete light that was to
come in God's good time. The leading idea of the work was to
inculcate the right view of God, as shown in the manifestation
of His Son, creating in man a higher and nobler life, and
saving him from anxiety and darkness. The book was severely
handled by some critics, but it found a warm sympathiser and
apologist in the distinguished Bishop Tegnér. He proposed
to write a critical defence of it, but in a little allegory, in which
she depicted Tegnér as an eagle and herself as a persecuted
dove, she deprecated his mingling in the strife. She observed
that the dove must be glad the sooner the persecution ends,
and she may forget it while she is bathing her plumage in some
C 2
20
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
clear, purifying Bethesda water. 'And has not this been
offered to me? Oh, yes! I find this Bethesda in my own
conscience, in my joy at having acknowledged the Holy One
before the children of men; I find it in the public and private
acknowledgment of many an honest and noble soul; in the
certainty that in my work, imperfect as it is, I have yet spoken
words and thoughts which shall not have been spoken in vain ;
which shall, like the dandelion plant, grow all the stronger for
being trampled upon. All this comforts me. And, therefore,
peace, peace, good Tegnér! peace and not strife with the
world at all events, not for my sake.'
The Home is a charming story, containing little in the shape
of incident, yet holding us by its power of soul-introspection.
Its Christian philosophy is also good and sound, but this is
rarely obtruded, the writer's object being rather to indicate the
power of those little things, which in the sum go to the making
of human life. Such narrative as there is, is concerned with the
history of Judge Frank's family—which consists of himself, his
wife, one son, and seven daughters. Into the circle comes an
adopted orphan. The judge seems somewhat hard and cold,
and he repels us still further when he neglects his wife to pay
homage to a lady for whom he had formed an attachment
before his marriage. Mr. Jacobi, the tutor of the little Franks,
is gifted and handsome, but somewhat irregular in his habits of
life and thought. Elise, the judge's wife, is still very attractive
at thirty-two, and the tutor is smitten with admiration of her.
She has taken to writing romances, and when her husband dis-
covers this he upbraids her in a powerful scene for her neglect
of home. His cruel words sink deep into her being. ""Words,
words, words!" says Hamlet, disparagingly, but God preserve
us from the destructive power of words! There are words
which can separate hearts sooner than sharp swords; there are
words whose stings can remain in the heart through a whole
life!' Meantime the judge is fascinated by his former love, a
widow of great beauty. An attempted reconciliation between
FREDRIKA BREMER.
2 I
husband and wife fails, and the latter is obliged to confess that
during her troubles Jacobi has proved only too gentle and
sympathetic for her peace. Things are in a critical condition,
when a dance takes place, and the widow points out to the
judge Jacobi's devotion to Elise. But she had overshot the
mark. The judge believes in his wife, and suspicions engen-
dered with evil intent, lead to a mutual reconciliation. Elise's
heart is true, and in a touching scene she reproves Jacobi for
his feelings towards her, and by her moving eloquence saves
him from himself, and from the very appearance of wronging
her. Then there is a powerful scene between husband and
wife, which would move the stoutest heart, and from this mo-
ment there is never again the shadow of distrust between the
two.
But many other troubles fall upon the judge's household.
His adopted daughter turns out badly, while his own child
Eva, a girl of sweet and gentle nature, forms a misplaced
attachment, which causes her bitter anguish before she con-
quers it. Pecuniary difficulties next overtake the judge, and
his house is burnt down. But these are as trifles to the
father and mother compared with the loss of their only son
Henrik, after a brilliant career at college, and when life gave
promise of all that was good, and clever, and beautiful. The
simplicity and pathos of the ensuing death-scene can scarcely
be matched in any English novelist:
""I may remain with you, Henrik?" said she beseechingly."
'He smiled, took her hand, and laid it on his breast, and in
that same moment, closing his eyes, a calm refreshing sleep
stole over him. The assessor sat silently beside them, and
observed them both; it was not long, however, before he was
obliged to leave them, being summoned suddenly to someone
who was dangerously ill. He left them with the promise to
return in the course of the night. Munter was called in the city
the night-physician, because there was no one like him, who
appeared earnestly willing to give his help by night as by day.
22
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
'The mother breathed deeply when she saw herself alone
with her son. She folded her hands, and raised her eyes to
heaven with an expression which, through the whole of the
foregoing days, had been foreign to them. It was no longer
restless, almost murmuring anxiety; it was a mournful, yet at
the same time deep, perfect, nay, almost loving, resignation.
She bent over her son, and spoke in a low voice out of the
depths of her affectionate heart.
"Go, my sweet boy, go. I will no longer hold thee back,
since it is painful to thee! May the deliverer come! Thy
mother will no longer contend with him to retain thee! May
he come as a friendly angel and make an end of thy sufferings.
I will then be satisfied! Go, then, my first-born, my summer
child, go, and if there may never more come a summer to the
heart of thy mother-still go, that thou may'st have rest. Did
I make thy cradle sweet, my child, so would I not embitter by
my lamentations thy death-bed. Blessed be thou! Blessed
be He also who gave thee to me, and who now takes thee from
me to a better home! Some time, my son, I shall come home
to thee; go thou beforehand, my child. Thou art weary, so
weary. Thy last wandering was heavy to thee; now thou wilt
rest. Come, thou good deliverer, come, thou beloved death,
and give rest to his heart; but easily, easily. Let him not
suffer more, let him not endure more. Never did he give care
to his parents"
'At this moment Henrik opened his eyes, and fixed them
calmly, and full of expression, on his mother.
""Thank God!" said he, "I feel no more pain."
""Thanks and praise be given to God, my child,” said she.
'Mother and son looked on each other with deep and cheer-
ful love; they understood each other perfectly.
““When I am no more,” said he, with a faint and broken
voice, “then, tell it to Gabrielle prudently; she has such
tender feelings, and she is not strong. Do not tell it her on
a day—when it is cold or dull--but on a day when the sun
FREDRIKA BREMER.
23
shines warm-when all things look bright and kindly-then,
then tell her that I am gone away-and greet her-and tell
her from me-that it is not difficult to die !-that there is a
sun on the other side
J"
'He ceased, but with a loving smile on his lips, and his eyes
closed their lids, as if from very weariness.'
The loss of this beloved youth only seemed to draw the
survivors still closer together in the sacred bonds of family
affection. A lofty moral runs
A lofty moral runs through the story, and the
whole work is one of a very elevating character. It differs
vastly from the feverish literature which now passes current
under the name of fiction.
In construction, The President's Daughters, another of Miss
Bremer's earlier novels, is one of the most successful. With-
out any straining after effect, it unfolds by natural stages the
history of the personages with whom it deals. Edla and
Adelaide, the President's two daughters, are skilfully drawn.
We are sympathetically attracted towards the first from the
outset. Nature and education have failed in their purpose
with her, for although she is gifted beyond the average, she
has a highly sensitive spirit, and imbibes the idea that she
can never become an object of affection to anyone. Her
sister Adelaide, on the contrary, is exactly constituted to
create havoc in men's hearts. She is generous and unselfish,
beautiful and light-hearted; and her love-passages with her
cousin Otho, and subsequently with Count Alrick, may be
followed with genuine interest. Far less natural than the
sisters is the young artist Angelica, who becomes all the rage
in Stockholm. She is only eighteen, but she is made to talk
the most extraordinary transcendentalism, so that neither
her genius nor her beauty can atone for her rhapsodical
utterances. It is but just, however, to say that her artistic
talent is infinitely superior to her speech. Gratifying is it to
follow the influence of a judicious woman upon one of her
own sex, as we see it unfolded in the effects of good Made-
24
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
moiselle Rounquist's training on Edla. She is recovered from
a gloomy and morbid condition of being to become a useful
member of society. Her career enforces the lesson that
gentle treatment and a study of natural tastes and habits are
necessary in the development of some natures. Turning
aside now from particular characters, here is an admirable
passage on the art of pleasing, which might be studied with
advantage by the fair sex generally :—
'There is usually no distinction made between the desire
of pleasing and coquetry, yet, nevertheless, there is a very
essential difference. How repulsive, how displeasing is not
the woman commonly who is devoid of the wish to please;
to the enlightened thinker, perhaps, quite as disgusting as
the coquette. The life of an affectionate being is to unite,
by a beneficent and agreeable impression, all beings among
themselves and with her; the true Christian woman will
endeavour to be pleasing to all, and especially to those who
are nearest to her. But, then, in all this she thinks not of
herself, but of affording pleasure and satisfaction to others,
and thus fulfilling the Creator's intention in her existence.
She turns herself into a flower, but only in that degree which
is right and proper in itself, and pleasing to God and man.
She follows, by thus doing, the line of beauty which nature
and a good education have drawn in her soul.
'The coquettish woman, on the contrary, refers all to her-
self; the exterior of her character is selfishness and assurance.
She will please, let it cost what it may; and overstepping the
line of beauty in defiance of what is good and befitting, and
sinking down into the sensual, empty attraction, loses, by
degrees, her power, her charm, the esteem of the good, and
the peace of her own breast, and the holy heaven of beauty
closes its gates against her.
"The noble desire of pleasing may degenerate into coquetry
--coquetry is its caricature; but do not we see, everywhere in
life, that the white may become grey, the grey become darker
FREDRIKA BREMER.
25
}
and darker, till the colour of innocence is altogether lost in
black? The white, however, exists, and may lie spotless
beside the black, even as truth may beam clear by the side of
falsehood. There exists an innocent and amiable desire of
pleasing; may every woman possess it, and cry shame upon
its caricature!'
The story of Nina is less pleasing than any of those already
considered, and it is open to the charge of extravagance. The
heroine is a foolish young person who is altogether too impres-
sionable. She is first captivated by a Count Ludwig, then
falls desperately in love with a very forward admirer, Don
Juan; she next returns to her old love the Count, and finally
yields up all her affection to Mr. Edward Hervey. Pastor of
a parish in Nordland, Hervey is himself a most singular being,
the idol of his flock, and a social benefactor of the first order.
The sensation may be imagined when it is discovered that he
has taken holy orders in a false name, and that he stands
charged with murder, robbery, and seduction. He is guiltless.
of these foul crimes, however, the only foundation for them
being that he carried off a young lady from her father's house to
save her from marriage with a scoundrel; that he was wrecked
with her on a desolate island, and lived with her there until she
died; and that he then brought her body over to the mainland
to be buried. Edla and Nina meet with an untimely fate, and
one that seems especially hard upon the former. The novel
has many faults, and some of its characters behave in an
idiotic fashion; but when everything has been discounted,
there is still plenty of intrinsic human interest left in it.
The position of woman, and of the poorer classes, towards
Christianity, was thus forcibly set forth by Fredrika Bremer
in a letter to her most intimate friend:-'True it is that a
mother, a housewife, in Sweden is obliged, more than in
southern countries, to devote herself to practical life in her
house and in her home-provided she wishes to fulfil her
duties—and that she must deny herself, comparatively, many
26
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
of the enjoyments of intellectual life and of the fine arts. And
if human worth consisted in these, or if they essentially con-
tributed to the development of our eternal nature, then it
would be a hard fate to be a wife and a mother in Sweden.
But it is not so. That which really constitutes human worth
is moral virtue and an exalted mind; it is only this which
unites man with God; which gives the rank of citizen in His
kingdom here on earth and in heaven. Oh! my dear Frances,
this was always a delightful thought to me, and this doctrine of
Christianity, which equalises all ranks on earth, which weakens
the power of all external contingencies, this it was that from
my earliest youth drew me to the Gospel, already before I under-
stood all the depth, all the happiness, contained in its "joyful
message." You see, dearest friend, that it is this which makes
the poor fisherman, the simple peasant's wife, quell what is
evil in their propensities and in their nature, in order to follow
Christ's teachings, and thus stand nearer God than the greatest
philosopher and the most distinguished scientific man in the
intellectual circles of London or Paris, if these do not also
overcome their sinful nature, their pride, or other evil passions
which may possess them. If now we contemplate woman's
position in our Swedish homes, we shall find it brightening
more and more, when we consider that the practical life in the
same, the relation between parents, children, and servants and
others, tends more to develop people's moral virtues than
books and all the intellectual education in the world. From
this, however, I except Christian knowledge, which comprises
the wisest doctrines of the past and present times relating to
God and man, and which knowledge we stand in need of in
order to live as we ought to do. This knowledge we all gain,
in the civilised world directly or indirectly through the Gospel ;
for all the State, society, literature, &c., &c., is now founded
upon Christianity, and almost all of us know what we ought
to do.'
The fame which Miss Bremer's works had already attained
FREDRIKA BREMER.
27
led to a flattering mark of distinction from her native land in
December, 1844. At the anniversary of the Swedish Academy
held in that month, at Stockholm, the President spoke as
follows:-'The Academy being of opinion that it would act
in accordance with the prescribed rules in following attentively
the events in Swedish literature, even beyond the arena which
it has opened for competition, has more than once had the
satisfaction, in acknowledging distinguished merit, of uniting
with the public in paying homage to such merit. It is now
thirteen years since the Academy awarded a prize to a young
genius, whose first essays gave signs of a talent of uncommon
order in a branch of literature for which we hitherto have been
without a model. The rare union of the qualities of the heart
and of the mind, of beauty in delineation and purity of thought
which breathe through the pictures of domestic life, beginning
with Sketches of Everyday Life, and continued in a series of
charming paintings of the interior of social life, often hidden
from the eyes of the public, had drawn the attention not
only of Sweden, but also of Europe, to the authoress. The
Swedish Academy has requested and obtained the sanction of
its illustrious patron, the King, to award to the authoress, Miss
Fredrika Bremer, its large medal in gold, with the motto—
Genius and Taste, not as a reward, for this cannot come in
question, but as an acknowledgment of a merit which, accord-
ing to the words of the founder, "has raised the fame of
Swedish literature in foreign countries.”
Alternating her literary studies with foreign travel, Fredrika
Bremer made long journeys into Italy, Greece, Palestine, Swit-
zerland, England, and the United States. These visits greatly
expanded her mind, for wherever she went she made the most
of her opportunities for observing national customs and man-
ners, and the social and political life of the peoples among
whom she travelled. The materials which she thus collected
were afterwards utilised in her Homes of the New World and
Life in the Old World; works full of fine descriptions of
}
28
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
scenery and vivid pictures of social life, with sound views on
political and moral questions. Mary Howitt's translations had
done much to extend her fame both in America and England,
and she received a very warm welcome in both countries. In
the United States she enjoyed the society of Emerson, and of
other men of letters whose names were already honoured in
Europe.
On her return to her native country from America, in the
autumn of 1851, she was disturbed by mournful news. Her
sister Agatha, whose health had long been weak and failing, had
fallen into a gradual decline, and in the course of a few months
had calmly, and apparently without pain, departed this life.
Fredrika felt the shock keenly, but after a brief rest, she
resumed her old habits and occupations. She now led an
independent life at home, and regulated her time as she chose.
The morning was always devoted to reading and writing, when
no one was allowed to enter her room. After mid-day she re-
ceived visitors, or went out for exercise. Some of the follow-
ing works were produced before her return to Sweden, and the
others afterwards :-Strife and Peace, or Scenes in Dalecarlia ;
The Twins, and other Tales; Father and Daughter; New
Sketches of Everyday Life; Brothers and Sisters; The Bond-
maid; The Midnight Sun; The Diary; A Pilgrimage; Butter-
fly's Gospel; and An Easter Offering. All were either tran-
scripts of life, or allegorical writings with a moral purpose. In
Father and Daughter she further developed her ideas for
raising her own sex in the scale of being, and claiming for it
rights hitherto denied.
A little book which she issued under the title of Two Leaves
from the Borders of the Rhine gave an account of the Deaconess
Institution of Kaiserswerth, and was a faithful sketch of real
circumstances and situations, such as they had been viewed
by an honest and unprejudiced mind. But it had also another
side, for it depicted a young Republican of Marienberg-
a man of the extreme Left, dangerous to be followed as a
FREDRIKA BREMER.
29
leader of the people. Writing upon this effusion to an intelli-
gent young man who had somewhat misunderstood her opinions,
she said, 'The position which I occupy in this little pamphlet
is no other than that which I have held in Sister Life, and in
my other writings, and which I should wish to improve upon
more and more. It is a position above parties; one from which
I will contemplate and acknowledge the humanely good and
pure in the ultra-Republican, as well as in the ultra-Conserva-
tive; amongst the Protestants, even if he were an adherent of
Bruno Bauer's atheism and communism, as well as amongst
the Catholics, even if he were the most obdurate worshipper
of the coat in Trier; and I would besides let opinions be
valued at what they are worth, even if I should be obliged, in
consequence of the imperative force of thought, to join one of
them in preference. You have surely more than many others
felt within you this imperative force of thought, and that it is
enough to know that others also must feel the same in the direc-
tion which they have taken. My meaning, however, is not that
all these others are right in their views, but they have a right to
adhere to their belief and conviction, even if they are one-sided,
until they are convinced of their one-sidedness, and can rise to a
more liberal and more perfect conviction. That this can be the
case, I believe, for I believe in an eternal right, an eternal reason,
and in man's capacity to understand this, and in consequence
to coincide in, and to settle, if not all controversies, at any
rate, all bitter controversies. But nothing could contribute
more effectually to attain the aim which we covet, than to keep
this position above all parties, and to acknowledge willingly
the rights and motives of others, wherever it can be done,
while, with the whole energy of our mind, we endeavour to
throw light upon the subjects under contention, and thus, by
the inherent power of truth and light compel the antagonist to
be converted, and amend his views when they are wrong.'
Having said this much, however, she added, 'In my little
pamphlet upon Marienberg and Kaiserswerth I have shown the
30
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
contrast between two convictions: the one, which, disengaged
from its external foundation, believes in nothing beyond this life,
and hopes nothing after death; the other, that which believes,
hopes, loves, and lives in Christ. I have often shown this,
because I saw and found it so in the places and amongst the
people of whom I speak; and I have also done it because this
opinion is rooted in my inmost conviction. And I would rather
allow my right hand to be cut off than cease, directly or indi-
rectly, to point out to man the only true road to happiness,
and to show him the darkness and danger which he will have
to encounter on the contrary road.'
Fredrika Bremer's Letters were of a high type, full of thought,
acute in criticism, and beautiful in aspiration. An extract from
one of these, addressed to the Baron von Brinckman, expounded
her views on the Fine Arts as a part of Life. The art of life
she regarded as belonging to every intelligent person who loyally
endeavoured to lead the higher existence. 'Artist,' she re-
marked, 'in the sense now alluded to, I would call not only
him who creates esthetic works of art, but also the honest man
who lives according to strict and pure principles, and the good
man whose life is devoted to pure sacrifices of love. He creates
his world out of the genius of the heart. These are human
artists, as well as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller.
'Goethe's life appears to me be one of the richest, most per-
fect artist-lives. Up to his last moments his genius stood beside
him. His making signs with his finger in the air when his tongue.
had refused to speak-this last attempt of the earthly organ to
create is beautifully touching. These signs appear to me as a
sacred signature to his closed career, so near the confines of a
Oh! he has not finished yet,-the glorious one. Art
new one.
is eternal.
"The artist's different tasks-faithfully to copy reality in its
everyday dress, to reveal it in its ideal form; to copy its de-
tails, to form a whole out of many parts-have often been the
subject of my thoughts. It has appeared to me that no works of
FREDRIKA BREMER.
3I
(C
art can be beautiful, in the highest sense of the word, unless
the beautiful form is based upon an eternal, divine truth. Then
shall Milton's "Paradise Lost" stand higher than all the works
of Byron ; La Madonna San di Sisto," &c., be worth more than
the Laocoön groups; Fogelberg's "Oden "—the personification
of power and wisdom-more than Hogarth's paintings. For
the beautiful, as well as for the good, I would wish to have a
Jacob's ladder with an endless number of steps reaching from
earth to heaven, but the lower ones ought to be prized as well
as the highest. To value all, enjoy all, do justice to all, therein
I see the greatest happiness and an enviable faculty.'
Humanitarian projects were not advocated by Miss Bremer
with the pen alone. She threw herself heart and soul into
the efforts made by the women of Sweden to establish a
Refuge and Reformatory for neglected children.
Her per-
sonal aid was forthcoming for this excellent project, and to
convince others of its necessity and usefulness she wrote a
statement of her views on the problems requiring to be grappled
with. While her immediate object was to call forth or to rouse
the consciousness of social dignity and worth in woman's life
and sphere of activity, considered from a Christian and social
point of view, her inner aim went beyond the immediate visible
and stated purpose, and she sought to implant seed which
should strike root, and grow like the grain hidden in the earth.
She appealed to the motherly element in society to feel, think,
labour, and, above all, to take actual charge of the destitute
children—to save them, and through them to ensure the future
of the nation. A refuge was necessary for children who were
merely unfortunate, and thrown by a variety of circumstances
upon the world. Such an institution would prevent them
from becoming criminals. For older, depraved children a
reformatory was absolutely necessary, and it must have an im-
perative moral tendency. It must be an educational institu-
tion. 'It becomes to the young person everything or nothing.
The State must here, for the sake of its own good and for its
-
32
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
own security, meet the prodigal son as the father did in the
Gospel. Mercy must there go before justice.'
There was already in Stockholm a House of Refuge for neg-
lected children, which was, at the same time, an educational
institution. Children were trained, educated, and provided for
from their eighth year until, when they had been confirmed,
they entered into service, which the directors of the institu-
tion procured for them. Miss Bremer now suggested to the
directors that the usefulness of the institution might be greatly
extended. It might be considered as a central depôt for waifs
and strays, into which they should be received and taken care
of during the earliest part of their misery. From this depôt
they might afterwards be transplanted into the country amongst
peasants and small farmers, at a moderate remuneration, by
which means, not only the cost of maintenance would be largely
reduced, but the institution would be enabled to admit a much
greater number of children. There would also be the further
important advantage, that the children would be placed in the
same condition of life, would become inured to the same toil,
and would have the same prospects for the future as poor
people's children in general in Sweden. The plan suggested
by Miss Bremer was afterwards adopted by the directors of the
House of Refuge, and the results proved very beneficial to the
children. The directors, after having purchased an island of
considerable extent, situated at a distance of about five-and-
twenty English miles from Stockholm, entered into a contract.
with the peasants and farmers living on the same, according to
which they engaged themselves, on the payment of a fixed sum,
each to receive, educate, and instruct in agriculture, one or more
children of the House of Refuge, under the supervision of the
manager of the principal estate on the island.
That Fredrika Bremer could rejoice in the happiness of
others is shown by a beautiful letter which she wrote to a young
friend on his betrothal. After speaking of the perfect union)
that must subsist between two souls united together in love
FREDRIKA BREMER.
33
or in friendship, she went on to observe: 'Nothing is so bene-
ficial, nothing so develops a good, noble-minded young man,
and contributes to settle him, as his union with a young woman
of genuine worth. May you in your wedlock find a happiness
which I have also learnt to feel in happy and sincere friendship,
but of which now only the memory is left. Those whom I have
thus loved, and by whom I was thus loved myself, are all dead.
But to have thus loved, to have thus lived, is an unspeakable
blessing. We know then what heaven is, and we believe then
in its eternal reality. There lives then in our heart, in our in-
most soul, a spot perpetually green, where fountains well forth,
where roses are blooming-a peaceful oasis, where an eternal
summer is reigning, and to which we can fly in darker moments
as to our proper home. For if we have once found such a home
in another's soul, then everything discordant which chanced to
come between us was a mere fleeting cloud in a bright sky. If
we once have felt such a deep union with another being that
nothing in the world could shake its sincerity; if we have felt
that we belonged to one another eternally from a deep, divine
necessity, then we can let much in this life come and go as it
will; can lose much, suffer much, and yet be tranquil, still
have enough, and still thank God for immeasurable wealth in
the confidence of our heart.'
The Ladies' Institution of Stockholm was another society
in which Miss Bremer took a deep interest. It had various
philanthropic objects, such as taking charge of abandoned little
ones, and visiting the abodes of misery and death, which it
especially did during the severe cholera epidemic. The Asso-
ciation likewise distributed books for children by native authors,
and arranged for the production of a special Swedish child's
literature.
A
1
Miss Bremer saw in the moral and social elevation of woman
amongst all classes, the only safe guarantee for a better future
for the rising generation. She therefore determined, so far as
in her lay, to devote her remaining days to labour for this end.
X
D
34
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
In the second and third volumes of The Homes in the New
World, she gave expression to her opinions and thoughts on
this important subject. In fact, on her return from the United
States, she had thoroughly resolved to work for the entire
emancipation of the Swedish woman, and her deliverance from
the traditional restrictions which hemmed in her social position,
and which she considered to be both injurious and opposed to
her natural rights. She held that women ought, like men—
and together with them-to be allowed to study in the elemen-
tary schools and at the academies, in order to gain an oppor-
tunity of obtaining employments and positions suitable for
them in the service of the state. According to Fredrika's ideas,’
remarks her sister and biographer, 'it was a crying injustice to
deny women, even those with exceedingly brilliant intellect and
great talents, such opportunities. She said she was firmly con-
vinced that they could acquire all kinds of knowledge just as
well as men; that they ought to stand on the same level with
them, and that they ought to prepare themselves in the public
schools and universities to become lecturers, professors, judges,
physicians, and functionaries in the service of the state/ She
predicted that, if women were permitted, like men, to acquire
knowledge and skill, they would, when their capacity and in-
dispensableness in the labour of society had become more
generally acknowledged, be found fit for a variety of occupations,
which partly already now existed, and partly would be required
in future under a more energetic development of society; and
she maintained that Woman ought to have the same right to
benefit her native country with her talents as Man.'
It was in this spirit that Hertha, one of Fredrika's latest
novels, was written; and in its pages she defended at length
the social, political, and educational rights of woman. Her
sister did not see eye to eye with her in this matter. She could
not believe that the management of the business of the State
was the province of women, and she besought Fredrika to
consider well before encouraging Swedish women to enter upor

FREDRIKA BREMER.
35
a path which, according to her view, would lead them to misery
instead of happiness. Charlotte Bremer held, with the poet
Pope, that a woman 'should seek but Heaven's applauses and
her own'; that her mission was the quiet and noble one of
home. There were exceptions, she admitted, but this should
be regarded as the rule. Fredrika, with her rare talents and
accomplishments, had chosen as an authoress the path in which
she could ennoble humanity, and thereby effect an immense
amount of good; but the number of such gifted women was
very small, and it would be dangerous to encourage young
girls who were generally inclined to entertain a high opinion.
of themselves and their capacities--to choose a career in which,
while contending with young men in their studies and in their
employments under Government, they would or could be
subject to influences detrimental to true womanhood and
modesty. Educated with this aim in view, they would become
neither men nor women, and, when older, would be unfit for
domestic life. So argued Charlotte Bremer, who only saw
woman in the place God designed for her, as a wife, a mother,
or instructress; and she maintained that if woman rightly
understood her exalted and important mission in the world, she
might become the educator of the whole human race, and as
such, be of infinitely greater service to the State and her native
country than by holding any employment under Government.
Woman's true mission and sphere of activity in general have
been clearly pointed out to her by nature, and she has been
emancipated from the old thraldom by Christianity, which
teaches her that her highest and noblest mission consists in
· leading man's immortal soul to God. There are many avenues
of human service and human occupation calling out for woman
the educator, woman the consoler, woman the healer-capaci
ties in which she could infinitely better fulfil her noble destiny,
than in desiring those things which God and nature alike
predestined as the special functions of man.
The Bremers themselves did something towards solving the
D 2
36
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
educational problem. Mrs. Bremer and her daughters founded
a school on one of
one of the family estates in the neighbour-
hood of Arsta. An elderly widow, who had passed the Normal
School for National School teachers in Stockholm, was engaged
as teacher, and her daughter instructed the girls in sewing,
knitting, and spinning. Hedda Bremer, who warmly appreci-
ated the practical in life, superintended this department, and
saw that the girls were taught to mend their stockings, and
patch and repair their clothes. The school prospered, and the
children were good and industrious. Matters went on well for
many years, when a statute was at length passed in which more
extended knowledge was required as a condition for competent
teachers in national schools. These requirements the female
teacher could not fulfil, so an able male teacher was appointed
for the parish, and the old school was broken up. However,
some good was at last effected, for a statute passed in 1859
enacted that the rules relating to teachers in schools should
apply also to those women whose capabilities had been tried and
approved in the Seminary for Teachers in National Schools.
By this means, many widows and unmarried women of good
education were enabled to obtain scholastic appointments.
In March, 1855, Mrs. Bremer died, after two years of
suffering, borne with Christian resignation. She was nursed
all through by her daughter Fredrika, who, after this severe
loss, sought relief in philanthropic labours―visiting the prisons,
rescuing unfortunate children, nursing the sick, &c. She also
called upon her sex to collect money for various charitable
institutions—for the erection of dwellings for labourers, for an
asylum for aged females, for a school for deaf and dumb
children, &c.
Fredrika Bremer had a profound admiration for Alexandre
Vinet, the founder of the Free Church of Protestant Switzerland,
and a man of noble personal character. She resolved to visit
the scene of his labours for herself, and accordingly set out for
Switzerland in the summer of 1856. Although she had long
FREDRIKA BREMER.
37
been restless and desirous of a change, she had no idea of pro-
longing this journey through a period of five years. Such
proved to be the fact however. She visited Switzerland,
Belgium, France, Italy, Palestine, and Greece, and did not
return to Sweden till the middle of 1861. In the ensuing year
she once more visited Germany, and this was the last journey
she undertook.
Her biographer states that she was permitted to live to see
four important events realised at which her heart, always warm
and sympathetic for progress in a good and noble direction,
felt the sincerest joy. These were: the abolition of slavery in
the United States of America; a law passed in Sweden that
unmarried women should attain their majority at twenty-five
years of age; the organisation in Stockholm of a seminary for
educating female teachers; and the passing of a Parliamentary
Reform Measure for Sweden.
The desire to avoid the frequent winter parties and assemblies
in Stockholm, as well as the absolute necessity to escape from
the myriads of visitors who sought her acquaintance for the most
diversified objects-personal, social, eleemosynary, and philan-
thropic-made Fredrika Bremer determine to spend the
remainder of her days at Arsta. A severe attack of erysipelas,
however, prevented her from going thither permanently until
July, 1865. But once there, she soon recovered her health and
strength. Later in the summer her sister frequently saw her,
and was struck by her happy and contented spirit. 'Her mind
was now at ease,' she remarks; 'all doubts of God's justice and
goodness had vanished; all rebellious feelings, which had been
awakened in her when contemplating the unequal lots on
earth, were silenced; and when we spoke of some unhappy
people whom we knew personally, and who in poverty and
sickness had for years been suffering great bodily pain, I found
Fredrika full of hope, and convinced that their sufferings
here below would be requited in a double measure in a better
world.'
38
WOMEN OF RENΟΙ͂Ν.
It was at this time she wrote some admirable lines which
beautifully painted the peaceful state of her mind. I quote a
few of these lines :-
'Fate is to me a darkling cloud no more,
A cloud which hides the sun of light and beauty;
Praise be to God! I know now how it is,-
I know that in the sufferer's meek submission
Lies strength concealed to feed and nourish gladness ;
I know that in the martyr's crown of thorns,
When borne with patience, there is not one point,
Which, or in time or in eternity,
Blooms not into a rose.'
She believed that there was still work for her to do in
the world; that she would still be able to help, solace and
comfort the destitute, the suffering, the unhappy, the abandoned,
who from all quarters turned to her for assistance and consola-
tion. But the end of her well-spent life was nearer than she
thought. On Christmas Eve, 1865, she had entertained thirty
children, and sent them home with happy hearts and arms
laden with gifts. Although she had somewhat over-exerted her-
self she went to church on Christmas Day, but caught a severe
cold in consequence of a piercing wind. Next day inflammation.
of the lungs set in, and on the morning of the last day of the
year she peacefully drew her last breath. She was ready for the
change, and her last exclamations were, 'Light, Eternal Light'
-frequently repeated, and 'Let us speak of Christ's love-
the best, the highest love!' The news of her death excited the
liveliest feelings of sorrow in all classes throughout her beloved
Sweden.
A year after this sad event, Margaret Howitt published her
reminiscences of the dead in two volumes entitled, Twelve
Months with Fredrika Bremer in Sweden. This work enabled
English readers still more clearly to grasp the personality and
the literary gifts of the distinguished novelist.
The posthumous Sketches and Poems by Fredrika Bremer
FREDRIKA BREMER.
39
1
}
-published by her sister-reveal a ripened experience, and a
singularly tender and beautiful touch in dealing with the
mysteries of life, love, and death. Many of these sketches,
such as The Sisters, The Grateful Little Flower, and The Ugly
Hand and the Beautiful Hand, I should like to quote, but
must leave them to be sought out by the reader.
The same
remark applies to the Poems, though I must reproduce one
brief effusion to show the powerful simplicity of her more
pathetic strains. It is entitled The Last Song of the Lonely
one :-
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Fall, gentle snow, fall deep;
Make cold my place of sleep:
The heart that's burning here,
Longs for the coolness there.
And when I sleep below,
Fall faster still, kind snow;
No one will mourn for me,
Then hide me deep in thee.
For oh no mother will
Kneel at the lonely hill,
Nor any father know
Where I am laid so low.
Ah me! no sister dear
Will give my grave a tear;
And there no brother's grief
Will ever seek relief.
And not a single friend
Will ever o'er it bend,
And in remembrance throw
A flower on the snow.
And he who was my all,
His footsteps there may fall;
Woe's me! for by his side
She walks-his chosen bride.
Fall, icy snow, fall deep;
Make doubly cold my sleep:
The heart, now burning sore,
When frozen, feels no more.'
40
WOMEN Of renowN.
That Fredrika Bremer had no mean faculty in criticism is
shown by this judgment on Lord Brougham's Statesmen, which
exactly indicates the main defect of his lordship's sketches:
'I wonder whether it is a deficiency in me that I find
these delineations below my expectation? I longed to see
characters, distinguished men, and I see before me only-
orators. Lord Brougham appears to me to be so preoccupied
by the speeches of his statesmen and their talents in that line,
that he almost overlooks their actions as moral people; or, at
any rate, looks upon that characteristic as a secondary con-
sideration, alluding to it only in passing. Lord North is the
personage whom I imagine that I know and see, not from Lord
Brougham's biography, but from his daughter's, Lady Lindsay,
because she seizes just upon those moments in which the
character stands out naturally and completely. In order to be
able to know a man, one must see him in the hours of success
and of adversity; one must see him love; see his angry
passions roused; see him suffer, and see him--die. I longed to
have seen in Lord Brougham's work man stand forth out of the
moral elementary life (out of which the majority of mankind
scarcely ever steps forth), and reveal himself in a force, energetic
in good or in evil, in life and in death. But I did not find
there what I looked for. Lord Brougham's moral feeling, so
it seems to me, is of an English nature-pure, noble, and strong,
But I miss 'la scintilla celesta' in his expressions either of
blame or of praise; I miss vigour in spirit and in words.'
Fredrika Bremer has been compared with Jane Austen; but
the Swedish writer was the intellectual superior of the English.
Though not so great as a novelist, her culture was wider, and
her thought deeper; she had also a more vigorous imagination,
and a greater command both of the springs of humour and of
pathos. She had the delicacy of perception and love of quiet
home life which distinguished Jane Austen; but she could not
rival the style of the English novelist; a style that is inimitable,
but one likewise as difficult to define as it is easy to ap-
FREDRIKA BREMER.
41
preciate; nor could she lay claim to Jane Austen's marvellous
insight into character, with its thousand little shades and diver-
gences. But Fredrika Bremer was an authoress of whom any
country or people might be proud. There are those who,
with brilliant talents, nevertheless degrade their national litera-
ture; but it is her glory to have adorned and elevated the
literature of Sweden.
MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF
BLESSINGTON.
45
MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF
BLESSINGTON.
THIS brilliant and beautiful Irishwoman, who was so con-
spicuous a figure in London literary circles early in the present
century, led a strange and chequered career. Having been
the cynosure of all eyes for many years, there was something
dramatic in the closing scenes of her life. Statesmen, poets,
painters, heroes, all worshipped at her shrine, and besides
personal attractions of a high order, she must have possessed
intellectual gifts and graces which placed her above such
beauties as Grammont has described, and Sir Peter Lely
perpetuated. Her réunions included such men as Landor,
Dickens, the Bulwers, Moore, Galt, Reynolds, Landseer,
Maclise, Ainsworth, and Thackeray, in letters and art; and
such occasional guests as Grey, Canning, Russell, Wellington,
Durham, Burdett, Lyndhurst, and Brougham in the political
sphere. Yet with all this, one who knew Lady Blessington
intimately during the last eighteen years of her life, gave it as
her deliberate opinion that no woman was ever overwhelmed
with such professions of friendship and attachment from so
great a number of insincere acquaintances.
For the ultimate collapse which caused the star of this
leader of fashion and of letters to set in gloom, she was herself
partially responsible. While she was gifted with considerable
talents, and possessed a generous nature and a noble disposi-
tion, she was volatile, shallow, indiscreet, and extravagant. We
are at a sufficient distance from her now to discern those
46
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
failings which were hidden from her contemporaries by the
glamour of her beauty and her many fascinations. Madame
de Staël once said to a lady friend whom she found living in a
palatial and sumptuously-furnished villa, 'My dear, you have
too much luxury'; and the same might have been said of Lady
Blessington and every residence of hers, from the period of her
second marriage to the time of the disastrous break-up at Gore
House, her splendid mansion at Kensington Gore. But while
saying this, we must also do justice to her warm and generous
feelings, and her kindly sympathy with suffering poverty and
neglected merit in every pursuit and occupation.
Marguerite Blessington was the third child and second
daughter of Mr. Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, near Clonmel,
in the county of Tipperary, and she was born on the 1st of
September, 1790. Her father was the only son of Mr. Michael
Power, of Curragheen, who was descended from an ancient
family in the County of Waterford. Her mother was the
daughter of Mr. Edmund Sheehy, a gentleman who unjustly
perished on the scaffold in May, 1766, the victim of political
rancour and revenge. The Sheehys were a very ancient
Roman Catholic family who had intermarried with the
Desmonds. Marguerite Power's mother was not a little proud
of her ancestry, and her genealogical tree was preserved with
religious veneration, and studied until all its branches were
as familiar as the names of her children. 'My ancestors, the
Desmonds,' were her household gods, and their deeds and
prowess her favourite theme. Marguerite was not beautiful
in her youth, like her brothers and sisters. She was pale,
weakly, and ailing, and for years gave no hope of attaining to
womanhood: 'the precocity of her intellect, the keenness of
her perceptions, and her extreme sensitiveness, all of which
are so often regarded, more especially among the Irish, as the
precursive symptoms of an early death, confirmed this belief,
and the poor, pale, reflective child was long looked upon as
doomed to a premature grave.' Other things also made
}
;
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
47
against her the violent temper of her father, the inability of
her mother to appreciate her fine and subtle qualities, and the
boisterous and disturbing gaiety of her brothers and sisters,
who were ill-matched companions for a delicate child.
As she grew up, she was a thoughtful, speculative, inventive
girl, with powers of improvisation so highly developed that she
could entertain her family for hours with tales constructed as
she proceeded. On discovering this faculty, her parents
would frequently call upon her to improvise for the entertain-
ment of their neighbours and friends, so that in a short time.
she became the intellectual wonder of the district. About the
year 1796, Mr. Power resolved to move with his family to
Clonmel. The departure from the home of her childhood
caused poignant grief to Marguerite, but her improving health
at Clonmel, combined with the pleasures and amusements
into which she now entered, gradually reconciled her to the
change. But other troubles were not long in coming. Mr.
Power, who had been made a magistrate for the counties of
Tipperary and Waterford, gave way to reckless living and
extravagance. Led on by promises of a lucrative situation, and
hints at the probability of a baronetcy, as well as by his own
fearless and careless disposition, Mr. Power performed his oner-
ous and too often painful duties with a zeal which procured him
the animosity of many, but the thanks of the Secretary for
Ireland and of a nobleman who proposed to be his patron, but
who ultimately deluded him. Mr. Power became proprietor
of the Clonmel Gazette; but an Irish paper at that time, like
the human race, was born to trouble as the sparks fly up-
ward,' and it seems to have brought him nothing but prose-
cutions and libel suits. Before this, when his affairs became
involved, he had entered into a mercantile business at Water-
ford, with a view of retrieving them. He expended a great
deal of money in building stores and warehouses, but these
were burned by the populace, in revenge for alleged cruelties
practised upon them. Mr. Power now became violent in
48
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
temper and irregular in his habits, and treated his wife and
children with brutality. As a set-off against this, we are told
that he was a fine-looking man, of imposing appearance and
aristocratic air, and fond of dogs, horses, wine, and revelry.'
Once, the energy of his loyalty in tracking rebels' led him to
shoot a young peasant. The unfortunate man died, and Mr.
Power was tried for the murder, but acquitted.
The Judge,
however, thought this homicide was going a little too far
with the system of terror; so he reprobated the conduct of
Power, and had his name expunged from the magistracy.'
In the midst of scenes of anxiety and horror, Anne, the
eldest child of the Powers, was attacked with a nervous ſever—
partly the result of the family misfortunes and the violent con-
duct of her father-and, despite all that could be done for her,
she fell a victim to the disease. Not long afterwards, Edmund,
the second son, also died, so that gloom and sorrow settled
upon the survivors.
6
At the age of fourteen, Marguerite Power was taken into
society with her sister Ellen, who was slightly her junior.
Assemblies called coteries were held in Tipperary, at which
music and dancing were the principal amusements. The sisters
were admirable and graceful dancers, but Marguerite was much
more than this, and the intelligence of her conversation pro-
duced a more lasting impression than mere physical beauty
could have done. By the arrival of the 47th regiment she was
thrown much into the company of Captain Maurice St. Leger
. Farmer. She conceived an intense dislike for him, and the
Captain, perceiving it was in vain to address her personally,
applied to her parents, unknown to her, offering marriage,
with the most liberal proposals which his position enabled him
to make. Mr. Power was in embarrassed circumstances, and
he insisted upon the union. He was seconded by his wiſe,
and in spite of tears, prayers, and entreaties, the unfortunate
girl was compelled to yield to the commands of her inexorable
parents. At fourteen-and-a-half she was united to a man who
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
49
inspired her with nothing but feelings of terror and detesta-
tion. Mr. R. R. Madden, who compiled, in three volumes,
The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Bless-
ington, gives many details touching this ill-assorted union. I
may say in passing that Mr. Madden is about the most be-
wildering biographer of whom there is any record. His method
is simply research run mad. He has not only laboriously
compiled accounts of every man to whom Lady Blessington
wrote or spoke, or to whom she was introduced, but wherever
possible he has traced 'his sisters and his aunts, his uncles and
his cousins.' Consequently, a work containing more irrelevant
matter was probably never seen, and yet candour compels one
to state that many of the details the author has raked together
are very entertaining.
C
Mr. Madden gives in Lady Blessington's own words the
story of her miserable first marriage. Her father told her,' he
says, 'that she was not to return to school, as he had decided
that she was to marry Captain Farmer. This intelligence
astonished her; she burst out crying, and a scene ensued in
which his menaces and her protestations against his determina-
tion terminated violently. Her mother unfortunately sided
with her father, and eventually, by caressing entreaties, and
representations of the advantages her father looked forward to
from this match with a man of Captain Farmer's affluence, she
was persuaded to sacrifice herself and to marry a man for whom
she felt the utmost repugnance. She had not been long under
her husband's roof when it became evident to her that her
husband was subject to fits of insanity, and his own relatives
informed her that her father had been acquainted by them that
Captain Farmer had been insane; but this information had
been concealed from her by her father. She lived with him
about three months, and during this time he frequently treated
her with personal violence; he used to strike her on the face,
pinch her till her arms were black and blue, lock her up when-
ever he went abroad, and often left. her without food till
E
50
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
she felt almost famished. He was ordered to join his regiment,
which was encamped at the Curragh of Kildare. Lady Bless-
ington refused to accompany him there, and was permitted to
remove to her father's house, to remain there during his absence.
Captain Farmer joined his regiment, and had not been many
days with it, when in a quarrel with his Colonel, he drew his
sword on the latter, and the result of this insane act (for such
it was allowed to be) was, that he was obliged to quit the ser-
vice, being permitted to sell his commission. The friends of
Captain Farmer now prevailed on him to go to India; Lady
Blessington, however, refused to go with him, and remained at
her father's.'
It is but just to say that some of these details were after-
wards controverted by Captain Farmer's brother, but as to the
substantial accuracy of the statement there cannot be any
doubt. In October, 1817, after his return from India, Captain
Farmer met with a tragical death. He was killed by falling from
a window in the King's Bench Prison, London, where he had
been carousing with a party of friends. They were all intoxi-
cated, and when the Captain rose to go home he was prevented
by his associates. Throwing open the window, he got upon
the ledge, and while expostulating with them, he lost his
balance and fell to the ground. The fall was from a second
story, and he was so injured that he died from his wounds. An
inquest was held, and a verdict returned to the effect that the
deceased came to his death by accidentally falling from a
window in the King's Bench Prison, when in a state of intoxi-
cation. A miserable ending to a miserable career! Attempts
were made to blacken Mrs. Farmer's character, both before and
after marriage. Idle persons gossiped about her alleged love
of ball-room distinction, and intimacy with persons remarkable
for gaiety and pleasure ; but one who knew her at this time de-
clares there was no ground for the rumour, while nearly all
persons were unanimous as to the hardships of her married
life. The end of Mr. Power himself—although he lived to be
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
51
seventy years of age- is not much better to contemplate than
that of his son-in-law. He had long been bankrupt in fortune,
character, and domestic happiness, although he had contracted
a second marriage after the death of his first wife. 'A youth
passed without the benefit of experience, had merged into man-
hood without the restraints of religion, or the influences of
kindly home affections, and terminated in age without wisdom,
or honour, or respect, and death without solemnity, or the sem-
blance of any becoming fitness for its encounter. The day
before he died, the only thing he could boast of to a friend
who visited him was, that he had been able to take his four or
five tumblers of punch the evening before.' Those who feel
inclined to judge too severely the character of Marguerite
Power would do well to remember the sordid and vicious sur-
roundings of her early life.
After her separation from Captain Farmer, Lady Blessington
travelled from place to place. In 1807 she was living at Cahir
in the county of Tipperary; in 1809 she was sojourning in
Dublin, and a little later she was residing in Hampshire. She
next fixed upon London for a residence, and in 1816 she es-
tablished herself in a house in Manchester Square, where, with
her brother Robert, she remained for the next two years. In
spite of the troublous scenes through which she had passed,
the beauty denied to her childhood had gradually budded and
blossomed into a degree of loveliness which Lawrence painted
and Bryon sung. Among the visitors at the house in Man-
chester Square was the Earl of Blessington, then a widower.
This nobleman, who was born in 1781, was originally the
Right Hon. Charles John Gardiner, second Viscount Mount-
joy. He was educated at Oxford, was elected a representative
peer for Ireland in 1809, and in 1816 was advanced to the
Earldom of Blessington. When he came of age, he inherited
a large fortune, a considerable portion of which he spent upon
actors and actresses, and private theatricals. He was self-
indulgent, and fond of gorgeous ornaments, gaudy dresses,
E 2
52
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
theatrical costumes and military uniforms.
He formed an
attachment to the wife of a Major Browne, and married her on
the death of her husband in 1812. Two years later, however,
the lady died at St. Germains, and Lord Blessington's grief
manifested itself in a funeral pageant of extraordinary magnifi-
cence, on the occasion of the removal of her ladyship's remains
first to England and then to Ireland. The lying-in-state, the
obsequies, and other expenses, brought up the cost of the
funeral to £4,000.
Lord Blessington seems to have become infatuated with
Mrs. Farmer as soon as he saw her, and they were married on
the 16th February, 1818, by special licence, at the church in
Bryanston Square. Lady Blessington was at this time twenty-
eight years of age, and in the perfection of matured beauty;
but according to the impressionable and worshipping Madden,
it was a kind of vivid loveliness which is never found where
some degree of genius is not. I cannot do better than quote
the enthusiastic chronicler's description of this paragon of
female grace:-'Her form was exquisitely moulded, with
an inclination to fulness, but no finer proportions could be
imagined; her movements were graceful and natural at all
times—in her merriest as well as in her gravest moods.
"The peculiar character of Lady Blessington's beauty seemed
to be the entire, exact, and instantaneous correspondence of
every feature, and each separate trait of her countenance, with
the emotion of her mind, which any particular subject of con-
versation or object of attention might excite. The instant a
joyous thought took possession of her fancy, you saw it trans-
mitted as if by electrical agency to her glowing features; you
read it in her sparkling eyes, her laughing lips, her cheerful
looks; you heard it expressed in her ringing laugh, clear and
sweet as the gay, joy-bell sounds of childhood's merriest tones.
"There was a geniality in the warmth of her Irish feelings,
an abandonment of all care, of all apparent consciousness of
her powers of attraction, a glowing sunshine of good-humour,
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
53
and of good-nature in the smiles and laughter, and the sallies
of the wit of this lovely woman in her early and her happy
days (those of her Italian life, especially from 1823 to 1826),
such as have been seldom surpassed in the looks, gestures, or
expression of any other person, however beautiful.'
Soon after their marriage, Lord Blessington took his bride
over to Ireland, to visit his Tyrone estates. Preparations had
already been made on a most lavish scale for her reception at
Mountjoy Forest. Speaking of these extravagant arrangements
at a later date, Lady Blessington said, 'The only complaint I
ever have to make of his taste, is its too great splendour; a
proof of which he gave me when I went to Mountjoy Forest on
my marriage. I found my private sitting-room hung with crim-
son Genoa silk velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe, and
all the furniture of equal richness—a richness that was only
suited to a state-room in a palace.' With the most bitter and
grinding poverty in the immediate vicinity, no wonder that
'the great folly' of his lordship and his 'terrible waste of
money' were strongly inveighed against. His passion for luxury
has been described as insanity. But his tenants all concurred
in one statement, that 'a better landlord, and a kinder man to
the poor, never existed than Lord Blessington. A tenant never
was evicted by him, he never suffered the tenants to be dis-
tressed by an agent; however much he might himself stand in
need of money, he would not suffer them to be pressed for
rent, to be proceeded against or ejected.' His Lordship's
normal rent roll was about £30,000 a year; but at the time of
his second marriage his affairs were not in a satisfactory state.
Owing to the advice of Lady Blessington, nevertheless, his
difficulties were to some extent diminished, and his rental con-
siderably increased. At his house at Rash, near Mountjoy,
Lord Blessington for years gave the most expensive entertain-
ments and theatrical performances; but not long after his
second marriage he made London his chief home, and Mount-
joy Forest and the theatre at Rash were allowed to go to ruin.
54
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
For some reason or other, notes her biographer, Lady Bless-
ington took a strong antipathy to Mountjoy Forest as a place of
residence. Surely the reason is not far to seek. To one so
fond of gaiety and society it was almost equivalent to being
buried alive. No wonder that when she found herself in the
noble family mansion in St. James's Square she became
thoroughly in her element. She found herself suddenly, as if
by the magic wand of an enchanter, surrounded by luxuries,
gorgeous furniture, glittering ornaments, and pomp and state
almost regal. But what she liked better than these was to find
herself in a short time the centre of an intellectual circle, a
kind of literary queen. For three years the house in St.
James's Square was the centre of social and literary enjoy-
ments of a high order, being nightly thronged by men of dis-
tinction. There were other coteries of course, including those
of Holland House and Charleville House; but Lady Blessing-
ton 'had certain advantages over all Aspasian competitors in
society--she was young and beautiful, witty, graceful and good-
humoured; these advantages told with singular effect in the
salon; they tended largely to establish her influence in
society, and to acquire for her conversations in it a character
they might never otherwise have obtained.'
Towards the close of 1821 the Blessingtons became ac-
quainted with the Count de Grammont (afterwards the Duc de
Guiche) and his brother-in-law, a young Frenchman of remark-
able symmetry of form and comeliness of face, the Count
Alfred d'Orsay. He was then in the prime of life, was highly
gifted, possessed many accomplishments, and -had most pre-
possessing manners. Altogether he answered Byron's desig-
nation of him, a Cupidon déchaîné.' The friendship now
initiated between d'Orsay and the Blessingtons was terminated
only by death. Besides distinguished foreigners, 'two royal
English dukes condescended, not infrequently, to do homage
at the new shrine of Irish beauty and intellect in St. James's
Square. Canning, Lord Castlereagh, the Marquis of Lans-
(
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
55
downe, Lords Palmerston and Russell, Burdett and Brougham,
Scarlett and Jekyll, Erskine, and many other celebrities paid
their devoirs there. Whig and Tory politicians and lawyers,
forgetful of their party feuds and professional rivalries for the
nonce, came there as gentle pilgrims. Kemble and Mathews,
Lawrence and Wilkie-eminent divines too, Dr. Parr and
others. Rogers, Moore, and Luttrell were among the votaries
who paid their vows, in visits not angel-like, for theirs were
neither few nor far between. But among all the distinguished
persons who visited Lady Blessington, none were more dévoué
in their attachment, or more ardent in their admiration of the
talents and traits, intellectual and personal, of the fair lady than
the late Earl Grey.'
But Lord Blessington, who had not yet attained middle life,
was already palled and satiated with pleasure. Nothing gave
him happiness or content, his mental energies were exhausted,
and he had constant resource to stimulants. When there
seemed nothing wanting that wealth or society could give, he
determined to abandon his magnificent abode in London, and
to seek excitement and distraction in travel. Accordingly, in
August, 1822, the Blessingtons, accompanied by Miss Mary
Anne Power, the youngest sister of Lady Blessington, and Mr.
Charles James Mathews, the comedian—and son of one more
celebrated still-set out on a Continental tour, with the inten-
tion of spending some years in the South of Europe. While
delighting in travel Lady Blessington regretted leaving her
home. 'What changes!' she exclaimed. 'What dangers may
come before I again sleep beneath its roof!' And her fore-
bodings proved prophetic. Her husband made his prepara-
tions in Paris for a tour in Italy, and very formidable they were.
The commissariat department was amply provided for ; it could
boast of a batterie de cuisine on a most extensive scale, which
had served an entire club, and a cook who had stood fire in
the kitchen of an Emperor. 'No Irish nobleman, probably,
and certainly no Irish king, ever set out on his travels with
56
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
such a retinue of servants, with so many vehicles and appli-
ances of all kinds for ease, comfort, and luxurious enjoyment in
travel.' At Paris, Tom Moore spent a good deal of time with
the Blessingtons. Anacreon the Second was very fond of the
homage and adulation of lovely women.
After leaving Paris, the travellers set out for Switzerland.
They visited the birthplaces of Voltaire and Rousseau, and
the temporary homes of Gibbon, Shelley, Byron, De Staël,
and John Philip Kemble. At length they came to Avignon,
where they saw a good deal of fashionable society, and visited
the palace of the Popes and the buildings of the Inquisition.
In her Idler in Italy, Lady Blessington speaks of the repug-
nance of 'a native of dear, free happy England' at the sight of
such a place as the Inquisition, and in the heat of her ab-
horrence at the crimes committed in it, her spirit goes out to
her native land. At Genoa, on the first of April, 1823,-
ominous day-the greatest wish of Lady Blessington's heart
was gratified, and she saw Byron. Neither the noble poet nor
the noble lady seems to have been altogether pleased with this
first meeting. Byron was either preoccupied or he failed to
pay that homage to the lady's beauty and talents to which she
had been accustomed. Still, at her departure, he is said to
have expressed warmly the pleasure which the visit had
afforded him.
As for Lady Blessington herself, lamenting over the disap-
pointment she felt at finding her beau ideal of a poet by no
means realised, she remarks in the work above quoted---
'Well, I will never allow myself to form an ideal of any
person I desire to see, for disappointment never fails to ensue.'
Byron, she admits, had more than usual personal attractions,
'but his appearance nevertheless had fallen short of her
expectations.' There is no commendation without a concomi-
tant effort at depreciation. For example, her ladyship ob-
serves His laugh is musical, but he rarely indulged it
during our interview; and when he did, it was quickly followed
-
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
57
by a graver aspect, as if he liked not this exhibition of hilarity.
Were I asked to point out the prominent defect of Byron's
manner, I should pronounce it to be a flippancy incompatible.
with the notion we attach to the author of Childe Harold and
Manfred; and a want of self-possession and dignity that
ought to characterise a man of birth and genius. Notwith-
standing this defect, his manners are very fascinating-more
so, perhaps, than if they were dignified; but he is too gay, too
flippant for a poet.'
Lord and Lady Blessington were accompanied on their visit
to the poet by Miss Power (afterwards Countess de St. Mar-
sault) and Count d'Orsay. Byron thus described the interview
in a letter to Moore: 'Your other allies, whom I have found
very agreeable personages, are Milor Blessington and épouse,
travelling with a very handsome companion, in the shape of a
French count (to use Farquhar's phrase in the Beaux Strata-
gem) who has all the air of a Cupidon déchaîné, and is one of
the few specimens I have seen of our ideal of a Frenchman
before the Revolution, an old friend with a new face, upon
whose like I never thought that we should look again.
Miladi seems highly literary, to which, and your honour's ac-
quaintance with the family, I attribute the pleasure of having
seen them. She is also very pretty, even in a morning—a
species of beauty on which the sun of Italy does not shine so
frequently as the chandelier. Certainly English women wear
better than their continental neighbours of the same sex.
Mountjoy (Blessington) seems very good-natured, but he is
much changed since I recollect him in all the glory of gems
and snuff-boxes, and uniform, and theatricals, and speeches.'
The acquaintance ripened rapidly between Byron and the
Blessingtons, and her ladyship obtained a good deal of
material for her work Conversations with Lord Byron. The
Countess of Guiccioli asserted that their intercourse was slight,
but this cannot have been the case. Lady Blessington must
have spent many hours in literary converse with Byron, and
58
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
she seems to have exercised a beneficial influence over him by
drawing him for a time out of his misanthropic moods. From
the first Byron took to d'Orsay as a man of talent, original
withal and unpretending, and the poet sat to him for his por-
trait, which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine, and after-
wards as a frontispiece to the Conversations. Lady Blessington
told Madden that on the occasion of a masked ball to be given
in Genoa, Byron stated his intention of going there, and asked
her to accompany him. Joking en badinant about the character
she was to go in, some one suggested that of Eve, upon which
Byron said, 'As some one must play the devil, I will do it.'
Shortly before Lady Blessington left Genoa the poet composed
a series of stanzas upon her.
In his Life of Byron, Moore thus speaks of the happy in-
fluence which Lady Blessington exercised over the poet's
mind :-' One of the most important services conferred upon
Lord Byron by Lady Blessington during this intimacy, was
that half reviving of his old regard for his wife, and the check
which she contrived to place upon the composition of Don
Juan, and upon the continuation of its most glaring immor-
alities. He spoke of Ada; her mother, he said, "has feasted
on the smiles of her infancy and growth, but the tears of her
maturity shall be mine." Lady Blessington told him that if he
so loved his child, he should never write a line that could
bring a blush of shame to her cheek, or a sorrowing tear to
her eye; and he said: "You are right, I never recollected
this. I am jealously tenacious of the undivided sympathy of
my daughter; and that work (Don Juan) written to beguile
hours of tristesse and wretchedness, is well calculated to loosen
my hold on her affections. I will write no more of it—would
that I had never written a line." In this gentler mind, with old
loves, old times, and the tenderest love that human heart can
know, all conducing to soothe his pride and his dislike of Lady
Byron; he learned that a near friend of her ladyship was in
Genoa, and he requested Lady Blessington to procure for him
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
59
through this friend, a portrait of his wife. He had heard that
Lady Byron feared he was about to come to England for the
purpose of claiming his child."
In requesting the portrait, Byron strenuously denied the
report about claiming his child. He declared his intention
not to interfere with her in any way on the subject during her
life; and even afterwards nothing would be done except that
which was in strict conformity with Lady Byron's last wishes and
intentions. The parting of Byron and the Blessingtons, in
June, 1823, shows the poet in one of his desponding moods:
'On the evening before the departure of his friends, Lord and
Lady Blessington, from Genoa, he called upon them for the
purpose of taking leave, and sat conversing for some time.
He was evidently in low spirits, and after expressing his regret
that they should leave Genoa before his own time of sailing,
proceeded to speak of his own intended voyage in a tone full
of despondence. "Here," said he, "we are all now together,
but when, and where, shall we meet again? I have a sort of
boding that we see each other for the last time, as something
tells me I shall never again return from Greece.” Having
continued a little longer in this melancholy strain, he leaned his
head upon the arm of the sofa on which they were seated, and,
bursting into tears, wept for some minutes with uncontrollable
feeling. Though he had been talking only with Lady Blessing-
ton, all who were present in the room observed, and were
affected by his emotion, while he himself, apparently ashamed
of his weakness, endeavoured to turn off attention from it by
some ironical remark, spoken with a sort of hysterical laugh,
upon the effects of nervousness. He had, previous to this con-
versation, presented each of the party with some little farewell
gift--a book to one, a print from his bust by Bartolini to
another, and to Lady Blessington a copy of his Armenian
Grammar, which had some manuscript remarks of his own on
the leaves. In now parting with her, having begged, as a
memorial, some trifle which she had worn, the lady gave him
60
WOMEN OF RENO WN.
one of her rings, in return for which he took a pin from his breast
containing a small cameo of Napoleon, which he said had long
been his companion, and presented it to her ladyship.'
On the following day, Byron sent a note requesting the
return of the pin, as he was superstitious with regard to mem-
orials with a point, and he forwarded a chain instead, of Vene-
tian manufacture. He also enclosed a ring which he wished
d'Orsay to keep. 'It is too large to wear; but it is formed of
lava, and so far adapted to the fire of his years and character.'
Lord Blessington purchased Byron's yacht, the Bolivar, and
it was subsequently considered by Lady Blessington that the
poet drove a hard bargain with her husband.'
t
On the 2nd of June, 1823, the Blessingtons set out from
Genoa for Naples, via Lucca, Florence, Vienna, and Rome,
and they arrived at Naples on the 17th of July. Florence
moved her ladyship deeply, with its artistic treasures and his-
toric memories; but she was less struck by the Eternal City
than might have been expected from her literary tastes and
erudition. It was, above all, Naples which she regarded as the
appropriate locality for an elysium that was to last for ever.
And it was at Naples, in the palace or villa Belvedere, on the
Vomero-one of the most beautiful of residences-that she
and her husband now made their home. 'How light and
elastic is the air!' she exclaims in the Idler in Italy. Respi-
ration is carried on unconsciously, and existence becomes a
positive pleasure in such a climate. Who that has seen Naples
can wonder that her children are idle, and luxuriously disposed?
To gaze on the cloudless sky, and blue Mediterranean, in an
atmosphere so pure and balmy, is enough to make the veriest
plodder whoever courted Plutus, abandon his toil, and enjoy
the delicious dolce far niente of the Neapolitans.'
Lady Blessington lingered over all the places of historic and
antiquarian interest, and she was especially happy in the com-
panions who escorted her, and expatiated upon the wonders
of the old world. Pompeii and Herculaneum were visited
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
61
with the accomplished Sir William Gell; her study of the
Museums and Art Galleries was facilitated by Mr. Uwins, R.A.,
or Mr. Richard Westmacott; at the Naples Observatory she
was in the company of Piazzi or Sir John Herschel; and when
she went to Pæstum she had with her Mr. Millingen the anti-
quary, Mr. C. Mathews, and Lord Morpeth. At the Palazza
Belvedere the society was very distinguished, English and
foreign aristocracy predominating. Lords, archbishops, abbés,
scientists, politicians, men of letters, &c., were 'thick as leaves
in Vallombrosa.'
At the close of February, 1826, the Blessingtons suddenly
left Naples and journeyed to Rome. Here they remained for
a few weeks, and then proceeded to Florence. For nine
months they resided in the City of Flowers, and in the ensuing
winter they went first to Genoa and then to Pisa. They saw a
good deal of Lord John Russell, who-with the Duke of York,
Lord Grey, and Lord Durham-occupied a high place in the
regard of Lady Blessington. That her ladyship was an acute
reader of character is shown in her sketch of Lord John,
wherein, singularly enough, she hits the defect which prevented
him from ever becoming a great popular statesman, like Pal-
merston or Gladstone. 'Good sense,' she remarks, 'a consid-
erable power of discrimination, a highly cultivated mind, and
great equality of temper, are the characteristics of Lord John
Russell; and these peculiarly fit him for taking a distinguished
part in public life. The only obstacle to his success seems to
me to be the natural reserve of his manners, which, by leading
people to think him cold and proud, may preclude him from
exciting that warm. sentiment of personal attachment, rarely
accorded, except to those whose uniform, friendly demeanour
excites and strengthens it; and without this attraction it is
difficult, if not impossible, for a statesman, whatever may be the
degree of esteem entertained for his character, to have devoted
friends and partisans, accessories so indispensable for one who
would fill a distinguished rôle in public life.'
62
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
At Florence, in 1826-7, amid a host of other people, Lady
Blessington became acquainted with Demidoff, 'the Russian
Croesus'; the Prince Borghese, husband of the beautiful but in-
constant Pauline Bonaparte; Lamartine, 'very good-looking
and distinguished in his appearance, who dressed so perfectly
like a gentleman that one would never suspect him of being a
poet'; Mr. Francis Hare, 'gay, clever, and amusing'; Walter
Savage Landor, 'one of the most remarkable writers of his day,
as well as one of the most remarkable and original of men';
Hallam the historian; and Lord and Lady Normanby, the former
bitten by the common aristocratic craze of distinguishing him-
self in literature.
When Lord Blessington left England in 1822, he had four
children, two of whom only were legitimate. One of these,
his son and heir, young Lord Mountjoy, died in March, 1823.
The other, Lady Harriet Gardiner, who was born in 1812,
was—with her elder sister-left in the guardianship of General
Comte d'Orsay, and Lady Harriet Gardiner, the Earl's sister.
A codicil to his will arranging this, furnished some evidence of
Lord Blessington's mind being not so strong as it might be,
for one of its provisions stated that a marriage had been agreed
upon for one of the Earl's daughters (both were mere children)
with Count Alfred d'Orsay, son of the General. Subsequent
to this codicil to an existing will, on the 31st of August, 1823,
Lord Blessington executed his final testamentary disposition.
By this will the provision previously made for the Countess,
of an annuity of £3,000, inclusive of a preceding marriage
settlement of £1,000, was reduced to £2,000 a year, including
the marriage settlement of £1,000, so that in after years,
when Lady Blessington was generally believed to have a
yearly income of £3,000, it was in reality only £2,000.
Count Alfred d'Orsay was appointed one of the executors. It
was provided that if Lady Harriet Gardiner married him she
was to have the sum of £10,000; if she did not marry him,
then she was to have the Earl's estates in the county and city
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
63
of Dublin. The Earl's other daughter Emily or Lady Mary
Gardiner, as she was commonly called, was to have £20,000,
but if she were to marry the Count then the estates in the
county and city of Dublin were to go to her. To his son
Charles John, the Earl left all his estates in the county of
Tyrone, subject to certain charges. The testator thus provided
better for his illegitimate children than he did for his only
legitimate daughter.
The Blessingtons took up their abode in Rome in Decem-
ber, 1827. They engaged the two principal floors of the
Palazzo Negroni at the rate of 1,200 guineas a year, and spent
about 240 more in additional articles of furniture, &c. All
the time this enormous expenditure was going on in Italy, the
Earl was keeping up the mansion in St. James's Square, London,
and his Irish residence, Mountjoy House, on the Tyrone estate.
If he had any idea at all with regard to money matters, it was
a case of 'After me, the Deluge.' On the 1st of December,
1827, Count d'Orsay was married to Lady Harriet Frances
Gardiner, who was then but fifteen years and four months old.
The marriage proved a very unhappy one, Lady Harriet being
compelled to marry without having her inclinations or her
interests consulted. She was taken from school, transferred to
the care of strangers, and borne away to a distant land, to wed
a man she had never seen.
From Rome the Blessingtons went to Loretto in May, 1828,
and thence to Ancona and Ravenna. At the latter place the
travellers were terribly shocked on suddenly coming upon
three bodies dangling in mid-air at the corner of a street. 'A
party of soldiers of the Pope guarded the place of execution,
and paced up and down with gloomy looks, in which fear was
more evident than disgust. Within view of the spot stood the
tomb of Dante, whose Inferno scarcely offers a more hideous
picture than the one presented to our contemplation. The
Papal uniform, too, proclaiming that the deaths of these un-
fortunate men had been inflicted by order of him who professed
64
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
to be the Vicar of the Father of Mercy on earth, added to the
horror of the sight.' By way of Ferrara and Padua, the party
next proceeded to Venice, where they found their friend
Landor. Verona and Milan were afterwards visited, and at
the latter place the Abbé Bentivoglio, keeper of the Ambrosian
Library, presented Lady Blessington with a small tress of the
golden hair of Lucretia Borgia. Another brief stay at Genoa
concluded the Italian life of Lady Blessington.
Paris was the ultimate destination of the travellers, and
here they arrived towards the end of June, 1828. They
rented the splendid Maréchal Ney mansion, in the Rue de
Bourbon, the principal apartments of which looked on the
Seine, and commanded a delightful view of the Gardens of the
Tuileries. The mansion was a type of that magnificence
which marked the dwellings of the Imperial noblesse, and the
Earl decorated and furnished it with Oriental luxury and
magnificence. More lavish waste was never seen than the
wealth squandered over the private apartments. Madden was
remarkably sensible for once in observing that 'Lord Blessing-
ton, when fitting up the Hôtel Ney in this sumptuous manner,
was co-operating very largely indeed with others of his order-
equally improvident and profuse-in laying the foundation of
the Encumbered Estates' Court jurisdiction, in Ireland.' What
the painter Haydon said of Napoleon's palace of Fontainebleau
might equally be said of the Blessington mansion, 'No palace
of any Sultan of Bagdad or monarch of India ever exceeded
the voluptuous magnificence of these apartments.'
In 1829, in consequence of an urgent summons from Lord
Rosslyn, Lord Blessington went over from Paris to London,
expressly to give his vote in favour of Catholic Emancipation.
He deemed this measure of the highest importance to the true
interests of Ireland, and while he had many faults, he had at
any rate the virtue of patriotism. A few days after his return
to Paris, the Earl rode out in the heat of the day, along the
Champs Elysées. He had not proceeded far before he was
C
聊
​COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
65
seized with apoplexy, and was carried home in a state of
insensibility. Everything possible was done to restore him,
but in vain, and he died on the 23rd of May, in the forty-sixth
year of his age. His remains were conveyed to Ireland, and
deposited in the family vault in St. Thomas's Church, Marl-
borough Street, Dublin. Judging from letters written by
Landor and others, there were those who regarded the Earl
with feelings of deep affection, notwithstanding the lighter and
vainer aspects of his character. His lordship. left his affairs
greatly embarrassed in consequence of his reckless expenditure
through a long series of years. He had been compelled to sell
or mortgage large portions of his estates, and to raise further
sums he gave eight valuable annuities. Among the vast
number of his gifts and legacies was a settlement of £40,000
on the marriage of his daughter, Lady Harriet, with Count
d'Orsay. In accordance with an Act of Parliament passed in
1846, the Blessington estates were vested in trustees for sale,
for the payment of debts due, and for other purposes.
A sum
of £350,000 was required to pay off all incumbrances and
claims, and when this was done, there remained of the vast
properties of the Mountjoys a remnant producing about £6,000
a year. Verily this was a sorry apotheosis for Blessington the
Magnificent!
Undeterred by the evil example of her husband, soon after
Lady Blessington returned to London from the Continent, in
November, 1830, she rented a house in Seamore Place,
Mayfair, which she fitted up in the most lavish and luxurious
style. The Count and Countess d'Orsay came to reside with
her, and her salons 'were opened nightly to men of genius and
learning, persons of celebrity of all climes, and travellers from
every European city of distinction. Her abode became a
centre of attraction for the beau monde of the intellectual
classes, a place of réunion for remarkable persons of talent or
eminence of some sort or another; and certainly the most
agreeable resort of men of literature, art, science, strangers of
F
66
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
distinction, travellers and public characters of various pursuits
--in fact, the most agreeable that ever existed in this
country.'
When Lady Blessington was in the zenith of her fame, that
bright and gossipy American writer, Nathaniel Parker Willis,
received an introduction to her. He was on his travels
through Europe, and in May, 1834, found himself in London.
Her ladyship gave him an appointment, and this is how he
describes in his Pencillings by the Way-their meeting and
conversation :—
In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly-bound
books, and mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of
the room, opening upon Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington
alone. The picture to my eye as the door opened was a very
lovely one.'-Oh! Nathaniel! Nathaniel! could you not see
that the feminine effects were carefully rehearsed? 'A woman
of remarkable beauty, half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin,
reading by a magnificent lamp suspended from the centre of
the arched ceiling; sofas, couches, ottomans, and busts
arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room;
enamelled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles, in
every corner; and a delicate white hand relieved on the back
of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of its
diamond rings. As the servant mentioned my name, she rose
and gave me her hand very cordially; and a gentleman enter-
ing immediately after, she presented me to Count d'Orsay, the
well-known Pelham of London, and certainly the most splendid
specimen of a man and a well-dressed one that I had ever
seen. Tea was brought in immediately, and conversation
went swimmingly on.
'Her ladyship's inquiries were principally about America, of
which, from long absence, I knew very little. She was ex-
tremely curious to know the degrees of reputation the present
popular authors of England enjoy among us, particularly
Bulwer and D'Israeli (the author of Vivian Grey). "If you
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
67
will come to-morrow night," she said, "you will see Bulwer. I
am delighted that he is popular in America. He is envied and
abused- for nothing, I believe, except for the superiority of his
genius, and the brilliant literary success it commands; and
knowing this, he chooses to assume a pride which is only the
armour of a sensitive mind afraid of a wound. He is to his
friends the most frank and noble creature in the world, and
open to boyishness with those whom he thinks understand and
value him. He has a brother, Henry, who is also very clever
in a different vein, and is just now publishing a book on the
present state of France.”
"Do they like the D'Israelis in America?"
C
I assured her ladyship that the Curiosities of Literature by
the father, and Vivian Grey and Contarini Fleming by the son
were universally known.
"I am pleased at that, for I like them both. D'Israeli the
elder came here with his son the other night. It would have
delighted you to have seen the old man's pride in him, and the
son's respect and affection for his father. D'Israeli the elder
lives in the country, about twenty miles from town; seldom
comes up to London, and leads a life of learned leisure, each
day hoarding up and dispensing forth treasures of literature.
He is courtly, yet urbane, and impresses one at once with con-
fidence in his goodness. In his manners D'Israeli the younger
is quite his own character of Vivian Grey; full of genius and
eloquence, with extreme good nature and a perfect frankness
of character."'
During the conversation the clever and enterprising littéra-
teur was busily imprinting on his memory a portrait of the
celebrated and beautiful woman before him. He thus gives
his impressions of her fascinating person: "The portrait of
Lady Blessington in the Book of Beauty is not unlike her, but
it is still an unfavourable likeness. A picture by Sir Thomas
Lawrence hung opposite me-taken, perhaps, at the age of
eighteen--which is more like her, and as captivating a represen-
F 2
68
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
C
tation of a just-matured woman, full of loveliness and love-the
kind of creature with whose divine sweetness the gazer's heart
aches—as ever was drawn in the painter's most inspired hour.
The original is no longer dans sa première jeunesse. Still she
looks something on the sunny side of thirty.'-Oh! Nathaniel,
we are again compelled to exclaim, the bewitching creature
was at this time forty-five! Her person is full, but preserves
all the fineness of an admirable shape; her foot is not pressed
in a satin slipper for which a Cinderella might long be looked
for in vain; and her complexion (an unusually fair skin, with
very dark hair and eyebrows), is of even a girlish delicacy and
freshness. Her dress of blue satin (if I am describing her like
a milliner it is because I have here and there a reader in my
eye who will be amused by it), was cut low and folded across
her bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round and sculp-
ture-like curve and whiteness of a pair of exquisite shoulders,
while her hair, dressed close to her head, and parted simply on
her forehead with a rich feronier of turquoise, enveloped in
clear outline a head with which it would be difficult to find a
fault. Her features are regular, and her mouth, the most
expressive of them, has a ripe fulness and freedom of play
peculiar to the Irish physiognomy, and expressive of the most
unsuspicious good humour. Add to all this a voice merry and
sad by turns, but always musical, and manners of the most
unpretending elegance, yet even more remarkable for their
winning kindness, and you have the prominent traits of one of
the most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen.
Remembering her talents and her rank, and the unenvying
admiration she receives from the world of fashion and genius,
it would be difficult to reconcile her lot to the doctrine of
compensation.'
Willis describes many of the habitués of the Blessington
Salon, including James Smith of the Rejected Addresses, Dis-
raeli the younger, the two Bulwers, Moore, &c., &c. Writing
in his diary for February, 1835, Haydon says, 'Everybody goes
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
69
to Lady Blessington's. She has the first news of everything,
and everybody seems delighted to tell her. No woman will be
more missed. She is the centre of more talent and gaiety
than any other woman of fashion in London.' One night in
the summer of 1833 her ladyship had some visitors who did
not belong either to fashionable or literary circles, and whom
she could easily have spared. The house in Seamore Place
was broken into by thieves, and plate and jewellery to the
value of about £1,000 were carried off, and never afterwards
recovered.
In the early part of 1836 Lady Blessington removed from
Seamore Place to the spacious mansion of Gore House, Ken-
sington Gore. This famous abode had in succession three
very different tenants, namely, William Wilberforce, the philan-
thropist, Lady Blessington, and Alexis Soyer the celebrated
cook. Although she must have known she could not stand
the expenditure, Lady Blessington carried on her new establish-
ment on a scale of magnificence exceeding even that of Sea-
more Place. A life of excitement was already beginning to
tell upon her ladyship, but she did not relax her feverish efforts
after brilliant society, and she feasted and fêted as though a
day of reckoning would never come. Madden credits her with
a sincere desire to assuage, or put an end to, the party warfare
that was waged in art, literature, and politics; and it may be
that she did something to soften the asperities of public life by
bringing together in friendly converse those who were supposed
to be mortal enemies. Occasionally an unmistakable charla-
tan found his way into her gatherings. Of this type was one
of her foreign guests, M. Julien le Jeune de Paris, who in his
youth was a secretary to Robespierre. He was said to be a
regicide and a terrorist, a philanthropist, a poet and a senti-
mentalist; but one thing was quite certain, he was an unmiti-
gated bore. He would recite the most doleful poems in a
lugubrious voice, and he had a copious supply of tears, ready
at a moment's notice. This Monsieur Julien carried a little
70
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
instrument which he called his horloge morale, on the circum-
ference of which, in opposite directions, moral and evil tenden-
cies were marked, and to these a movable index pointed,
showing the virtue to be cultivated when any particular defect
in character was alluded to. With this precious instrument he
managed to victimise poor L. E. L. for an unconscionable time
on one occasion.
Living at the rate of £5,000 or £6,000 per annum, when
her income was only £2,000, Lady Blessington indulged the
hope that the precarious profession of literature would enable
her to overtake her expenditure. The failure of Charles Heath,
the engraver, by which she incurred a loss of £700, might have
shown her the folly of such castle-building. She at the same
time defied the conventionalities of life in a way which not
unnaturally led to grave scandals. D'Orsay had separated from
his unhappy child-wife, and taken up his quarters at Gore
House. He had already undergone one arrest for a debt
of £300 to his bootmaker, and now his unjustifiable ex-
penditure added in no small degree to Lady Blessington's
pecuniary difficulties. For years the evil day was staved
off, indeed it is said that for two years previous to the
break-up at Gore House Lady Blessington lived in the
constant apprehension of executions being put in; extra-
ordinary precautions were taken as to the admission of
visitors; and the handsome Count d'Orsay - the adored
of the ladies-was obliged to confine his appearances abroad
to the house and grounds, except on Sundays. On the
other days he chose the poetical hours after dusk for his per-
ambulations. But the crash came in the spring of 1849, when
with one consent all the creditors-bill-discounters, money-
lenders, jewellers, lace-vendors, tax-collectors, gas company
agents, &c.—all began to press her ladyship heavily. At last
an execution for a debt of £4,000 was put in by a house
largely engaged in the silk, lace, Indian shawls and fancy
jewellery business. This was arranged by effecting a life insur-
For
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
71
ance, but it was only a temporary expedient, and it soon
became necessary to determine on a sale of the whole of the
effects for the benefit of the creditors generally. Several friends
offered to assist Lady Blessington, but, as she was sick at
heart, and worn down with cares and anxieties, she allowed
things to take their course. It was a long time before the gay
Count could be persuaded that the game was up, but when at
last he realised the fact he set out for Paris, attended by his
valet, with a single portmanteau. Sic transit gloria d'Orsay!
The rise and fall of Lady Blessington as a brilliant leader of
society were described in scathing terms by a writer in the
North American Review for 1855. In the graphic passage I
am about to quote, her ladyship's career is briefly summed up.
I do not know whether every statement would have been
accepted in its entirety by Lady Blessington's contemporaries,
but there is more than sufficient truth in this vigorous por-
trayal to point a stern moral: 'A lady whose early career is
surrounded by a mythical cloud, from which she emerged into
the false glare of a middle-age of extravagance and vanity,
leading to disastrous overthrow and flight, can hardly be an
object of permanent interest to sober, thinking people. She
first became known in this country by the glowing descriptions
in Mr. Willis's Fencillings by the Way. Others have still further
helped to blazon her personal and mental charms, and her
literary genius. She aspired to be a leader of society; but her
circle included only men. The ladies of England may be, as
they have been, accused of prudery, by those who desire to
lower the tone of society by lessening the rigour of its moral
laws;
but to their honour be it said, they have steadily main-
tained the dignity of their sex, by withholding their counte-
nance socially from those who have tarnished the jewel of their
souls. Literary and accomplished Aspasias may gather around
themselves men of talent and genius; they may dazzle by their
luxury, and fascinate by the graces of their conversation; but
there is a barrier of womanly displeasure which hems them
72
WOMEN OF RENO WVN.
in, and which, in English society, they cannot overpass. Lady
Blessington—after many years of more than Oriental extrava-
gance, passed on the Continent, in which her husband, a
weak-minded absentee Irish landlord, squandered the revenues
drawn from his wretched tenantry, on costly palaces, and
gilded furniture, and sybaritic dinners--returned to London
with Count d'Orsay, the separated husband of her husband's
daughter, and there, upon a moderate jointure, made a
vain attempt to keep up the splendour to which she had
been accustomed in her husband's lifetime. We find her house
frequented by eminent persons, from the aristocracy of England;
we find great historical names gathered around her, as if she
were really the star which her flatterers would have the world
believe. Noblemen and gentlemen, authors and artists, add
their presence to the fascinations of the scene; but noblemen's
wives, gentlemen's wives, authors' wives and artists' wives, are
never mentioned in this gay and brilliant company. And when
the bubble bursts, and the pageant is over, what sorrowful
scenes are disclosed to the eye of the moralist! An execution
put into the glorious palace, where such revellings have been ;
crowds of curious and gossiping people filling the elegant
salons and lounging on luxurious divans; scarcely one truly
sympathising friend to lament the dire catastrophe; the splendid
vagabond, Count Alfred d'Orsay, first imprisoned, like Dick
Swiveller, in the house, except on Sundays, and then obliged to
flee to France, with a single valet and valise,—a fugitive, and a
swindler of honest tradesmen, whose patience had been
exhausted by broken promises and eternal failures to pay;
and the gorgeous furniture, the silken hangings, the works of
art, the sumptuously bound books, that surrounded the goddess
of the place, knocked down by the hammer of the eloquent
auctioneer, George Robbins. A hurried flight to France,
whither the battered Adonis had preceded her, a few brief
days of disappointment, and sorrow, and desertion, a sudden
death, close the melancholy history'
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
73
The net sum realised by this historic sale at Gore House
was short of £12,000-a sorry result considering the vast
variety of treasures which passed under the hammer. Lawrence's
portrait of Lady Blessington fetched a fairly large sum in
comparison with other things; being sold for £336 to the
Marquis of Hertford. The same artist's portrait of Lord
Blessington went for only £68, while D'Orsay's portrait of the
Duke of Wellington went for £189, and Landseer's sketch of
Miss Power for £57. Lady Blessington's French valet
wrote to his mistress that Thackeray was amongst those present
at the sale, and that he was affected to tears. The author of
Vanity Fair was the only person who seemed to be really
affected by her ladyship's downfall.
After reigning in London society in a style almost un-
paralleled for nineteen years, Lady Blessington, sick at heart
and almost friendless, left Gore House for Paris on the
14th of April, 1849. By a strange, and some may say a retri-
butive coincidence, Lady Blessington realised in 1849 those
painful effects of extravagant and reckless living which she had
minutely described in her very first work published in 1822,
where she relates the fall of a family in one of the fashionable
London squares, and the sale of all its effects, after a career
of indulgence and luxury. Her ladyship took apartments
in the Rue du Cerf, close to the Champs Elysées, and
although some friends held aloof, a few visited her, including
the de Grammonts, and Prince Louis Napoleon, with whom
she had for years been on intimate terms of friendship. On his
escape from Ham, the Prince had gone straight to Gore House
on his arrival in London.
Plans were formed by Lady Blessington for literary work,
but they were never realised; and in her death there was some-
thing almost of the suddenness which marked her husband's
end in the same city twenty years before. A British peeress,
anxious for Lady Blessington's spiritual welfare, reminded her
of a promise she had extorted from her to remember her
74
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
religious duties, and to attend to them. So far as the outward
observance of the promise was concerned, once or twice on the
Sabbath she accompanied the Duchesse de Grammont to the
Church of the Madeleine. Inwardly she entertained no
serious thought of abandoning her old mode of life, though
she had a great fear of death, and sometimes spoke vaguely of
turning to religion in her old age, and making amends for her long
neglect of its duties by retiring from society, and withdrawing
her thoughts and affections from the vanities of the world.
Within two brief months, however, of her settlement in
Paris, she was brought face to face with the Enemy whom she
had always sought to banish by pleasure and excitement. On
the 4th of June she was seized with alarming symptoms, chief
of which was a distressing difficulty in breathing. The face
then became swollen and purple, the eyeballs were distended,
and utterance was almost wholly denied, while the extremities
gradually became cold and livid, in spite of every attempt to
restore the vital heat. Although some little relief was obtained,
she gradually sank, and expired quite tranquilly. She was in
her sixtieth year. An autopsy revealed that enlargement of the
heart to nearly double the natural size-which enlargement
must have been in progress for a period of at least twenty-five
years-was the cause of death, though incipient disease of the
stomach and liver had complicated the symptoms.
The body
was embalmed and deposited in the vaults of the Madeleine,
while a mausoleum was being prepared by the Count d'Orsay.
Three years later, viz., on the 4th of August, 1852, the
Count himself followed her to the grave, he being then in his
fifty-fourth year. Their remains lie in the same resting-place,
in the village of Chambourg beyond St. Germain-en-Laye,
where the Count built a monumental pyramid in the rustic
cemetery adjoining the domains of the family of De Gram-
mont. In the sepulchral Chamber are two sarcophagi, one on
either side, surmounted by tablets of white marble. The one
on the left contains the remains of the Countess, the one on
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
75
the right those of Count d'Orsay. Though a man of fashion,
it would be unjust to class D'Orsay with such profligates and
libertines as Buckingham, Queensberry, and Hertford. He
had abilities of no common order, and while he was vain,
frivolous, and pleasure-loving, he had undoubtedly better
qualities to set against these. He was far from being a wholly
vicious man, or a simply vicious man; and Charles Dickens
referred to him as one 'whose name is publicly synonymous
with elegant and graceful accomplishments; one who, by those
who knew him well, is affectionately remembered and
regretted, as a man whose great abilities might have raised him
to any distinction, and whose gentle heart even a world of
fashion left unspoiled.'
The writings of Lady Blessington now demand attention.
They were voluminous, but they revealed no creative genius, no
originality of thought, no imaginative power. They were just
such productions as might be expected from a bright, clever,
observant woman of the world. Her first work, The Magic
Lantern, published in 1822, was a kind of key to the whole.
It consisted of scenes and sketches in the metropolis,
written with some humour and sensibility, and manifesting a
certain quickness of perception, with average powers of de-
scription. She surveyed, with suitable comments, the auction
room, the Park, the tomb, and the Italian opera,—so that there
was at least versatility of subject. Sketches and Fragments,
which succeeded, was a less sprightly but more conventional
volume. The writer dealt with such topics as blighted hopes,
marriage, coquetry, egotism, fastidiousness of taste, sensibility,
friendship, &c. Being met by the necessity of augmenting her
income by the use of her literary talents, Lady Blessington
now became a writer of fashionable novels, which were then so
much in voguc. According to one critic whose judgment I
regard as too high, her novels are strongly characterised by
the social phenomena of the times; they are peculiarly the
romans de société ; the characters that move and breathe
76
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
throughout them are the actual persons of the great world;
and the reflections with which they abound belong to the
philosophy of one who has well examined the existing
manners.' Not having lived in the times depicted may have
made some little difference perhaps, but my complaint against
the novels is that the characters do not move and breathe,' and
that the reflections, though sometimes sparkling and amusing,
are rather superficial.
Byron, in his Diaries and Letters, pays frequent tribute to
Lady Blessington's intellectual and personal gifts; and his
collected poems contain more than one effusion addressed to
her. The Countess, on her part, gives us the substance of her
intellectual intercourse with the poet in her Journal of
Conversations with Lord Byron, which originally appeared in
Colburn's New Monthly Magazine for 1832. The Conversa-
tions were afterwards published in volume form, and had a
very extensive sale. They undoubtedly show the author at
her best they are vigorously written, and have more
intellectual grip and substance about them than her other
writings. The Repealers, a novel in three volumes, appeared
in 1833. Political novels are an abomination generally, and
this was not one of the exceptions to the rule. Grace Cassidy,
the young Irish wife, was well drawn, but the novel as a whole
had little plot, and few delineations of character.
It was
chiefly occupied with dialogues, criticism, and reflection. The
puerile was sometimes mingled with the sarcastic, and the
personal with the moral. As one friend had the courage to
tell her, she praised great ladies and small authors too much.
But there were plenty of flatterers, and one actually wrote to
the author, 'You have all the tact, truth, and grace of De
Staël!' Meredyth, a novel, appeared in 1833. It was a dead
failure with the general public, and the publisher plaintively
said that although £45 had been spent in advertising, only
380 copies were sold, of which 300 had been subscribed. The
Follies of Fashion and The Belle of the Season were sketches of
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
ΤΟΝ.
77
fashionable society in London, in which the peculiarities of
life in the upper circles were happily hit off.
The Two Friends, published in 1835, had less of exaggera-
tion in it than most of the author's compositions. It was
written in a thoroughly good tone and spirit, and with con-
siderable knowledge of character; nor was it without excellent
situations. This work was followed by The Victims of Society,
a story in which the darker side of high life is laid bare with an
unsparing hand. The author must have acquired some strange
and terrible experiences before she could have written this
novel. One correspondent remarked of it, 'You have
attacked only persons whom the general world like to hear
attacked; the few who wince, will pretend not to understand
the application.' In the course of four years only, 1838-42,
the following novels and records of travel appeared: The
Confessions of an Elderly Lady, The Governess, Desultory
Thoughts and Reflections, The Idler in Italy, The Idler in
France, The Lottery of Life and other Tales. The travels were
by far the best and most successful. In 1845 appeared
Strathearn, or Life at Home and Abroad, and here again
fashionable foibles were exposed to view, and not
a few
objectionable characters were handled with the gloves off.
The Memoirs of a Femme de Chambre, as the title would imply,
had a good deal to do with piquant intrigues, the trials of
unfortunate governesses, and the vicissitudes in the career of
a lady's maid. The heroine became the wife of a rich but
bilious nabob. Lionel Deerhurst, published in 1846, was a
tale of fashionable life under the Regency, and Marmaduke
Herbert, issued in 1847, dealt with a 'fatal error' with some
skill and power.
'It reminds me greatly of Godwin's earlier
writings,' wrote a friend. "The same minute and faithful
analysis of feeling, the same patience in building up the
interest, and the same exhibition of strength and weakness in
one motley volume.' Country Quarters, the last lengthy novel
by Lady Blessington, was published posthumously. It is
78
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
'illustrative of a state of society and of scenes in real life, in
provincial towns, in which young English military Lotharios,
and tender-hearted Irish heroines, speculative and sentimental,
are the chief performers; for the delineation of which Lady
Blessington was far more indebted to her recollection than to
her imagination.'
In addition to her more ambitious works of fiction and
travel, Lady Blessington wrote a great number of fugitive poems;
but her verses are 'of that intolerable kind to which neither
gods nor columns grant permission to exist; and what is sin-
gular, all the verses made by poets and poetasters under the in-
spiration of her society have a leaden dulness about them which
is almost preternatural.' Moore was no more successful than
Wilson Croker, and Byron himself no more successful than
'Dr. William Beattie, M. D.', who discharged three or four heavy
pieces at Lady Blessington and himself. I have gone through
a great deal of her ladyship's own poetry-I mean verse-and
can honestly find none of it worthy of quotation. Her
contributions to Annuals, Books of Beauty, Flowers of
Loveliness, Children of the Nobility, Keepsakes, Tableaux, and
drawing-room Scrap-books were as the sand upon the sea-shore
for multitude, and their fame is written in the same shifting
material.
In Lady Blessington's prose works, however, we do some-
times meet with notable thoughts, and it is only just to give a
few examples of these. 'Genius,' we are assured, 'is the gold in
the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.'
"Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure or
unostentatious.' In many minds great powers of thinking
slumber on through life, because they have never been startled
by any incident calculated to take them out of the common
routine of every-day occurrences.' 'Memory seldom fails when
its office is to show us the tombs of our buried hopes.' 'Society
seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its
pleasures, and who can live independent of it and of them.’
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
79
Great men direct the events of their times, wise men take ad-
vantage of them, weak men are borne down by them.' 'Those
who are formed to win general admiration are seldom calculated
to bestow individual happiness.' 'A man with common-sense
may pass smoothly through life without great talents, but all
the talents in the world will not enable a man without com-
mon-sense to do so.' 'Men's faults will always be better known
than their virtues, because their defects will find more persons
capable of forming a judgment of them than of their noble
qualities.' 'A young woman ought, like an angel, to pardon
the faults she cannot comprehend, and an elderly woman, like
a saint, because she has endured trials.' 'People are seldom
tired of the world till the world is tired of them.' 'It is not
sufficient for legislators to close the avenues to crime unless
they open those which lead to virtue.' 'Love often re-illumines
his extinguished flame at the torch of jealousy.' 'A generous
mind identifies itself with all around it, but a selfish one iden-
tifies all things with self.' 'Advice, like physic, is administered
with more pleasure than it is taken.' 'The genius and talents
of a man may generally be judged of by the large number of
his enemies, and his mediocrity by that of his friends.' 'Some
people seem to consider the severity of their censures on the
failings of others as an atonement for their own.' 'Men who
would persecute others for their religious opinions only prove
the errors of their own.' 'Superstition is the fear of belief,
religion is the confidence.' 'It is easier to pardon the faults.
than the virtues of our friends, because the first excite feelings
of self complacency in us, the second a sense of humiliation.'
'It is difficult to decide whether it is most disagreeable to live
with fanatics who insist on our believing all that they believe,
or with philosophers, who would have us doubt everything of
which they are not convinced themselves.'
The letters of Lady Blessington were better than her more
pretentious writings. They were more natural, more accurately
expressed, and had a greater freshness of tone and feeling. But
80
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
occasionally they furnished either an astounding example of the
immortal practice of 'log-rolling' or a strange lack of literary
acumen. For example, there was a certain Sir William
Drummond, who wrote a certain poem called Odin, and Lady
Blessington said of this poem that 'passages in it are of such
transcendent merit as to be above all comparison, except with
Shakespeare and Milton. In the sublimity and harmony of
your verses you have equalled, if not surpassed, the latter; and
in originality of ideas and variety you strikingly resemble the
former.' Where is Sir William now? and what are the gods
doing with the fame of one who, in comparison with Shakes-
peare and Milton, is like those two single gentlemen rolled
into one'?
<
(
In summing up the literary character and position of Lady
Blessington, it must not be ignored that a truly great man in
English literature, Walter Savage Landor, could write a Latin
epitaph for her tomb, of which this is a translation: Under-
neath is buried all that could be buried of a woman once most
beautiful. She cultivated her genius with the greatest zeal, and
fostered it in others with equal assiduity. The benefits she
conferred she could conceal-her talent not. Elegant in her
hospitality to strangers, charitable to all, she retired to Paris in
April, and there she breathed her last on the 4th of June, 1849.
Landor also wrote these lines to her:
'What language, let me think, is meet
For you, well called the Marguerite.
The Tuscan has too weak a tone,
Too rough and rigid is our own;
The Latin-no-it will not do,
The Attic is alone for you.'
The truth must be that Landor, under the witchery of the
lady's beauty, and out of that good nature which frequently
leads literary men captive, suppressed his faculty of criticism
to put in the fore-front that of admiration and appreciation.
Barry Cornwall, who knew her ladyship equally well with
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
Sr
Landor, was much more judicious and accurate in his eulogy.
This is his inscription to his friend: 'In her lifetime she was
loved and admired for her many graceful writings, her gentle
manners, her kind and generous heart. Men, famous for
art and science in distant lands, sought her friendship; and
the historians and scholars, the poets, and wits, and painters of
her own country, found an unfailing welcome in her ever hos-
pitable home. She gave, cheerfully, to all who were in need,
help, and sympathy, and useful counsel; and she died lamented
by her friends. They who loved her best in life, and now
lament her most, have raised this tributary marble over the
place of her rest.' With this epitaph we may take leave of
this famous, but by no means great woman. She was a woman
with some pronounced failings, but with many equally pro-
nounced virtues. Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, was a
fashionable luminary, a brilliant meteor of society, and a clever,
beautiful, and accomplished woman; but she will occupy no
enduring place in English literature.
G
+
GEORGE ELIOT.
A
G 2
85
GEORGE ELIOT.
THE generation which witnessed the literary activity of George
Eliot was remarkable for many intellectual developments.
Amongst these, none was more striking than the advance made
by woman in the various fields of mental effort. In art, science,
poetry, and fiction, she probably attained a fuller expression
than in all previous ages. The noble poetic gifts of Mrs.
Browning, the clear and speculative intellect of Harriet
Martineau, the intense human feeling and tragic power of
George Sand, the scientific grasp of Mary Somerville, the
passionate energy of Charlotte Brontë, and the philosophic
depth and wide-reaching sympathies of George Eliot these are
surely evidences of genius which would shed lustre upon any
age. I do not think it probable that we shall ever see
developed in woman the expansive imagination of a Shake-
speare, or the kingly intellect of a Bacon-but we have
ample evidence that she is capable of attaining any but these
great creative heights.
Nor is it only in occasional instances that woman is demon-
strating her power; there is a wide diffusion of literary talent
generally among the sex. In most branches of authorship
they are able to hold their own; and while during the last
twenty years it was only in fiction that the greatest of English
writers was a woman, the progress made in other directions has
been so rapid that the philosophic and scientific talent of
women during the next generation may be fully abreast of that
86
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
of men.
Let us gladly hail this sign of the times, and have no
fear that it will strike at the root of masculine ascendency: but
even if it should have that terrible result, let us capitulate with
composure and dignity.
It should not surprise us that there is a great capacity for the
written language amongst women, seeing that they are so easily
first in the spoken language-at least, there is a tradition to
this effect in many English households. Whether it is right
that they should enjoy a monopoly of both is an interesting
question. It may be that with the rapid spread of the written
word among women there will be a diminution in the monopoly
of the spoken, so that after all the sterner sex may find in
this a wise and providential arrangement. In the new
Earthly Paradise, perhaps, all things will be nicely adjusted:
the balance of speaking power will be restored; and Mrs.
Caudle will be content occasionally to let Mr. Caudle have the
· last word.
Yet the spread of literary talent amongst women is by no
means an unmixed good in the province of fiction. George
Eliot and other female writers have given us some of the best
and noblest books of our time, but the sex has also deluged us
with a large proportion of the very worst. The growth of this
evil has indeed become somewhat alarming; but I look forward
to the time when two classes of novels, instead of coming up like
a flower, will be cut down like a weed, and utterly perish from
the field of literature. The first is that class which is beneath
contempt for its literary incompetency; the second is that still
more dangerous class, which clothes vice in the most attractive
forms, and saps at all that is good and true in human nature.
And as regards the work to be done, we must look to woman
to redeem woman. Such writings as those of George Eliot will
do much to redress the wrong, by lifting her sex, and mankind
generally, into a higher and a purer atmosphere.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the present age is
its restless activity. It is seen in a thousand forms, and all our
GEORGE ELIOT.
87
movements are as rapid as those of the giant steam. Com-
merce, social and political rights and privileges, the national
wealth, and national education, have largely increased, and yet
there has been a great dearth of master spirits. It may be
doubted whether we have one writer who completely grasps
the significance and the tendencies of the age-one who can in
the fullest sense be called its interpreter, or the prophet and
pioneer of its successor. It is not that we ask for, or have
need of, a Shakespeare: he would have been the natural
heritage of any century since the world began, and belongs to
all. It may be that we desire a more restricted genius; but men
have certainly long looked for the appearance of one who shall
gather together, as it were, the tangled threads of our con-
sciousness, and of our new conditions. Never was there a
time when the industries of the world were so welded together
for the physical good of man, and for the common welfare.
But what of those things which belong to the emotional and
the spiritual? Labour and wealth will never satisfy the immortal
craving within us. Work and Duty are noble, but they present
no solution for those yearnings of the spirit, which are the
same in all ages and climes. Some have discovered in the
spiritual force of George Eliot's writings that complemental
influence which is necessary to satisfy the inner desires of
humanity. It is certainly a deeply interesting question to
inquire in what sense or degree her genius answered to the
real need of the time.
Concerning the personal history of this gifted woman there
is little to tell. George Eliot's life was of the uneventful type-
if by that we refer to outward and exciting incidents; but if we
refer to the growth of the mind and the soul, then indeed hers
must have been a life surpassingly rich and eventful. Mary Ann
Evans for so she was named, though she usually signed
herself Marian Evans-was born at Arbury Farm, a short
distance from Nuneaton, on the 22nd November, 1819. The
county of Warwickshire has thus had the honour of giving
88
WOMEN OF RENO IN.
birth to the master-mind of all literature, William Shakespeare,
and to one who, more than three centuries later, so faithfully
reflected some of his qualities, though not his infinite scope,
that in certain aspects she has been not inaptly compared with
him. The sun of Shakespeare will brook no other sun, but, if
I may pursue the simile, George Eliot might well be compared
with that light which cheers the earth when the great orb of
day has run its course. The one does not rise to the grandeur
and power of the other; but as the moon, serenely calm and
beautiful in the heavens, is handmaiden or sister to the sun, so
is George Eliot sister to the majestic Shakespeare.
The family from which George Eliot sprang belonged to the
middle-class. Mr. Robert Evans, the novelist's father, was a
land-agent on the property of Mr. Francis Newdigate, whose
seat, Arbury Hall, is the original of Cheverel Manor in Mr.
Gilfil's Love Story. Mr. Evans was a man of unusual strength
of character, and many of his distinctive qualities have been
depicted in Adam Bede, the hero of the novel of that name,
and in Caleb Garth, one of the most striking individualities in
Middlemarch. Mrs. Evans, whose maiden name was Pear-
son, had quite as distinct a personality as her husband. She
had not a little of the caustic wit we find in Mrs. Poyser and
Mrs. Hacket-characters in fact suggested by her. I hope, for
her husband's sake, that the stream of her wit was turned into
foreign rather than into domestic channels. We are assured,
however, that she had a very tender heart; but, naturally, a
sharp tongue, and a chronic liver complaint, would be likely to
interfere with the play of the softer emotions. One who knew
her states that George Eliot's gift of pointed speech was mother-
wit in the true sense, and that her rich humour and marvellous.
powers of observation were derived from the same side ; while
her conscientiousness, her capacity, and that faculty of taking
pains which is so large a factor in the development of genius,
came more directly from the father. When Marian Evans was
but a few months old, her father moved to Griff-on the same
GEORGE ELIOT.
89
Newdigate property--an old-fashioned dwelling, half manor-
house, half farm.
The life at Griff Farm has been roughly sketched in the
Mill on the Floss. The writer's own brother Isaac, who was
three years her senior, was the original of Tom Tulliver. At
five years of age Marian Evans went to school at Attleboro,
where she remained for four years. Then she went to a
boarding school at Nuneaton, where she formed a close friend-
ship with the principal governess, Miss Lewis, with whom she
subsequently corresponded. Later she went to school at Miss
Franklin's, at Coventry, where she became for a time a fervent
Evangelical. In 1836 she lost her mother, whom she devotedly
loved; the following year witnessed the marriage of her elder
sister Christiana; and from this time forward Marian Evans
undertook the charge of her father's house. Masters came
over from Coventry to instruct her in German, Italian, and
music, and she was also an omnivorous reader of works in
general literature. She was passionately fond of music, and
attained considerable proficiency in rendering the works of her
favourite composers, of whom Beethoven and Schubert were
the chief. In 1841 Mr. Evans and his daughter removed to
Foleshill, near Coventry, where Marian Evans established a
firm friendship with Mr. Charles Bray, a philosophical writer,
and his wife, and also with Mrs. Bray's sister and brother, Sara
and Charles Hennell. Mr. Hennell was the author of a
rationalistic work entitled An Inquiry concerning the Origin of
Christianity. These new relationships had a destructive effect
upon her religious views. She abandoned evangelicalism for
scepticism, and it was with the utmost difficulty that her father
persuaded her for a time to conform to the usual rules of public
worship. At length she entirely threw off the old faith for
shadowy opinions and cold negations which could ill satisfy
such spiritual cravings as hers.
For nearly three years Marian Evans now devoted herself to
a scholarly and able translation of Strauss's Leben Jesu, which
90
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
was published in 1846 by her friend, Dr. John Chapman. At
a later period she translated Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-
Politicus, and later still his Ethics. Losing her father in 1849,
in order to mitigate the blow she went abroad, and resided with
the Brays for some months at Geneva. Returning to London,
in March, 1850, in September of the following year she became
assistant-editor of the Westminster Review. About this time
she translated Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, the only
work to which she appended her real name. She was thrown
into contact with many literary celebrities of the time, who
were co-contributors to the Westminster. Her own contribu-
tions were not numerous, but there was an unmistakable
vigour and originality in all she did. The most sarcastic paper
she ever penned was one on "Worldliness and other Worldli-
ness," in which she described the Poet Young, of the Night
Thoughts, as "a being who languished at once for immortal
life and for fat livings, who had a fervid attachment to patrons
in general, but on the whole preferred the Almighty."
Thrown into friendly relations with Herbert Spencer and
George Henry Lewes, Marian Evans's intimacy with the latter
-who was separated from his wife-grew so rapidly that in
1854 they defied the usages of society by forming a non-legal-
union, which lasted until the death of Lewes, in 1878. This
lamentable step was injurious to Marian Evans-or George
Eliot as I shall now call her-from many points of view. If I
have rightly read the works of George Eliot I find running
through them, like a golden thread, the duty of self-sacrifice.
She teaches again and again that there is nothing higher or
nobler than this. I therefore regret the loss of her personal
moral influence, through this ill-advised step, on two grounds :
first, because here was the one central opportunity of her
career for carrying into effect her own noble doctrine of personal
sacrifice; and, secondly, because however friends might con-
done such an union, it deprived her of all moral hold upon the
suffering and unfortunate members of her own sex, while it
GEORGE ELIOT.
91
was in contravention of those doctrines of social order upon
which—notwithstanding their breach in individual cases—the
safety and well-being of a nation depend. There are some
matters in which even the greatest of mankind cannot be a
law unto themselves.
In July, 1854, Lewes and George Eliot visited the Continent,
making a considerable stay at Weimar, where Lewes was
engaged upon his Life of Goethe. Then they proceeded to
Berlin, where they made a still longer stay. On their return to
England they resided successively at Dover, East Sheen,
Richmond, and London. For some years George Eliot had
been drawn towards imaginative literature, and in 1856 she re-
solved to make her first attempt at fiction, being urged thereto
by Lewes. For this, posterity will owe that brilliant and ver-
satile, if cross-grained man, a large debt of gratitude. The
appearance in Blackwood's Magazine of that pathetic sketch,
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton-the first story
in Scenes of Clerical Life-created the deepest interest in
literary circles. I think that George Eliot never wrote any-
thing more absolutely true to human nature than this moving
transcript of life, while the whole volume of which it forms a
part was never surpassed by the author in skill and delicacy of
workmanship. Thackeray was greatly enamoured with the
Scenes of Clerical Life, and on the publication of the whole
series, it was another great novelist, Charles Dickens, who first
expressed the conviction that the writer was a woman. There
was something amusing in the guesses made at the real author,
guesses which ranged from Professor Owen on the one hand to
so widely different a man as Lord Lytton on the other. But
there was one person not credited with the authorship who
actually came forward and claimed it. This was a Mr. Joseph
Liggins, of Nuneaton, who thought he saw a good thing for
Liggins in the closely-veiled anonymity of the writer who had
suddenly leapt into fame. When Adam Bede appeared it was
still more strongly asserted that he was the new author, and a
92
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
warm controversy arose in The Times. A good many people
believed in Liggins, and for some time all went well with his
trade as an impostor. It was not until the publishers inter-
vened that the bubble burst; but so difficult is imposture to
kill that there were still a few who pinned their faith to Liggins.
And even after the brilliant series of novels which George Eliot
subsequently wrote, it is said that there was still one venerable
gentleman, in the Isle of Man, who clung to the exploded Lig-
gins. Credulity such as this, like the cultured stupidity we
sometimes meet with, must require great pains to bring it to so
high a degree of perfection.
As I shall endeavour to deal with the works of George Eliot
in their natural succession, I will recite here a few remaining
biographical facts in connection with the novelist. The closing
years of her life were almost wholly spent at the Priory, a house
near Regent's Park, which came to be the resort of men
eminent in art, literature, and science. Besides the delight
experienced in receiving her friends, this great writer found
keen enjoyment in visiting the picture galleries, the Exhibition
of Old Masters, the Saturday Afternoon Concerts, and last but
not least, the Zoological Gardens, where she was fond of study-
ing the habits and dispositions of the various animals. She
also relished a visit to the theatre, and was a strong admirer of
the genius of Salvini-which will not be surprising to those who
had the felicity to listen to that great actor. In struggling
talent of all kinds she was much interested, and she wrote a
flattering letter to that strange and unhappy genius, the author
of The City of Dreadful Night. During a stay in Hampshire,
George Eliot saw the late Lord Tennyson occasionally, the
Poet Laureate being then a comparatively near neighbour. It
is stated that on one occasion the poet became involved with
the novelist in a conversation on evolution, and matters of a
kindred nature-Tennyson taking the orthodox and George
Eliot the unorthodox side. After much close argument they
bade each other farewell, and as George Eliot made her way
GEORGE ELIOT.
93
down the hill the Poet Laureate called out, 'Well, good-bye,
you and your molecules.' The novelist replied in her deep low
voice, 'I am quite content with my molecules.'
With regard to the religion of George Eliot, one who knew
her affirins that while she had the highest regard for Mr. Lewes's
opinions on this all-important question, she held firmly to her
Own. 'One of the chief subjects of difference consisted in
their attitude towards Christianity: whereas he was its uncom-
promising opponent, she had the greatest sympathy with its
various manifestations, from Roman Catholic asceticism to
Evangelical austerity and Methodist fervour. Her reverence
for every form of worship, in which mankind had more or less
consciously embodied its sense of the mystery of all this unin-
telligible world, increased with the years.' Yet while she recog-
nised the beneficial element in every form of religion, she did
not accept Christianity as her own spiritual guide. She
admired, but did not embrace it, at least after attaining woman-
hood. There seems to be no doubt that in its broad principles
she accepted the doctrine of Auguste Comte; yet she was not
a Positivist in the strict sense of the word, for concerning
Comte's later speculations she said, 'I cannot submit my intel-
lect or my soul to the guidance of Comte.' The assumption
of the title, 'The Religion of Humanity,' by the Positivist,
appears to me to be an arrogant one. The true religion of
humanity is the religion of Jesus Christ, which embraces all
that there is of good in Positivism, and much more. All the
refinements of the modern philosophers have failed to add
anything to the Sermon on the Mount; while their systems
come infinitely short of the divine simplicity, the sublime
grandeur, and the all-embracing love and beneficence mani-
fested by the Founder of Christianity.
The death of Mr. Lewes was a severe shock to George Eliot.
As soon as the survivor had partially recovered from the blow,
she devoted herself to founding the George Henry Lewes
Studentship. It was intended to be a lasting and a worthy
94
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
memorial of his high literary talent, his philosophical studies,
and his scientific researches. The value of the studentship is
slightly under £200 per annum, and persons of both sexes are
admissible as candidates. Its object is to promote the pro-
secution of original researches in physiology, the science which
Mr. Lewes, who was originally intended for the medical pro-
fession, had, during many years of his life, cultivated with
patient toil and assiduous observation.
In May, 1880, George Eliot was united in marriage to Mr.
John Walter Cross. This step somewhat surprised the world,
but Mr. Cross had long been one of the novelist's warmest and
most faithful friends, and in her loneliness she doubly appreci-
ated his unselfish devotion, his sympathetic appreciation, and
practical efficiency. But the union was destined to be of only
very brief duration. After some months spent in. foreign
travel, Mr. and Mrs. Cross settled in their new home at Cheyne
Walk, Chelsea. Towards the close of the year 1880, that is
on the 17th of December, George Eliot was present at the
performance of the Agamemnon by the undergraduates of
Balliol College. On the following day she attended the
Saturday Popular Concert at St. James's Hall, and on Sunday
received her friends at the house in Cheyne Walk. She com-
plained of a slight affection of the larynx on the Monday, and
by the following Wednesday imflammation had arisen in the
heart. On the evening of the last named day, December 22nd,
George Eliot passed calmly and painlessly away. The whole
reading world was stricken with sorrow when it became known
that this great writer had gone to solve for herself the mysteries
of the unseen. She was buried by the side of Mr. Lewes in
Highgate Cemetery. In 1883 her essays contributed to the West-
minster Review were collected and published, and in 1884 Mr.
Cross issued her Journals and Letters in the form of a biography.
There is a natural curiosity on the part of mankind to know
something of the personal appearance of those who have be-
come distinguished in any sphere. Fortunately this can be
GEORGE ELIOT.
95
gratified in the case of George Eliot. In her youth she was
far from being beautiful in the generally-accepted sense. She
had a quantity of soft pale brown hair worn in ringlets. Her
head was massive, her features were powerful and rugged, her
mouth was large but shapely, and her jaw was singularly square
for a woman. It was not a head for a poet to rave about, but
it might be safely inferred that it was a head which would give
its owner a commanding position in the world. The head was
indeed very large, and has been compared with Napoleon's for
weight of brain. In shape, however, it strongly resembled
that of one of her own heroes, Savonarola; it has also been
compared with that of Dante, but it was of a square type, and .
lacked the fine arch which the head of the great Italian pos-
sessed. Late in life, those who knew George Eliot would see
her grey eyes lighting up from time to time with a sympathetic
glow, would note the sensitive and spiritual countenance, with
mind and music breathing from it. Her general demeanour was
composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but
somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving
evenly, as it were in a monotone, though now and then with a
sort of quiet eagerness, into a higher note. While not above
the middle height, she gave the spectator the impression of
being much taller, as her figure was thin and slight, and well
poised. She never enjoyed robust health, and was of a highly
nervous temperament. In youth she was sometimes wayward
and hysterical. Her susceptibilities were extremely keen, and
it will overthrow the traditions of some to know that one who
was apparently above the weakness of her sex, was so emotional
that she was known by her friends to shed floods of tears.
But in truth, with all her philosophy, this illustrious woman had
that which will ever ennoble her sex beyond all other gifts—a
yearning, brooding heart. Much more happiness would have
come to that heart than there did, could but its owner have
clearly grasped and realised the consolations of religion.
With regard to the position of George Eliot as a writer, she
ý.
96
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
certainly stands alone in England among her own sex as a
novelist. From the lofty niche she occupies she looks down
upon mankind with sad but benignant eyes. Comparisons
between her and other writers of fiction must always fail. In
what sense does she resemble those mighty brethren of her craft,
Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens? These writers are equally
great, but cannot be compared with each other.
Of course,
the one central leading power, without which no novelist will
ever attain to eminence, is as conspicuous in the author of
Middlemarch, as it is in the author of Vanity Fair-namely,
the power of perception. But there the comparison almost
entirely ends. Like Thackeray, George Eliot is able to sound
the depths and gauge the motives of men, but the insight acts
upon the two minds in quite a different way, and the genius
consequently works in a different groove. The speculation as
to which is the superior is a thankless one, for as some minds
will continue to be more deeply moved by George Eliot, so
others will continue to recognise a finer literary skill in
Thackeray. Then, too, as regards Dickens-while it is true
that George Eliot exhibits a deeper penetration than Dickens,
there has on the other hand never been a writer in the world
who has given us such portraits as Dickens drew by simple
touches of personal appearance. Dickens got to the inner by
means of the outer. If he did not go beneath the surface,
and probe his characters to their depths, he has yet left us a
large portrait gallery of very distinct and striking creations.
Perhaps more points of resemblance might be discovered be-
tween Sir Walter Scott and George Eliot, but here again the
points of difference are very pronounced. Scott is full of life
and action, George Eliot of thought and reflection. Both can
individualise character, but Scott at his best is a finer character-
painter than George Eliot. And with regard to making us
realise the historic scenes and personages of the past, Scott
had no compeer. It may be conceded that George Eliot has
written two-perhaps three-works which entitle her to a place
GEORGE ELIOT
97
in the first rank of novelists, but considering her life's work as a
whole, there are several names which must remain higher than
her own. However, such pitting of novelists against each
other is like comparing Homer with Virgil, Byron with
Tennyson, or any others whose genius presents as wide a
dissimilarity.
When the Scenes of Clerical Life appeared, competent judges
at once perceived that the originalities had received an acces-
sion-though it was left for the authoress's next work to create
that popular fervour which ever afterwards attended the publi-
cation of her various novels and poems. The power of the
Scenes of Clerical Life lies, I think, beyond doubt in their
absolute truthfulness—a truthfulness which embraces situation
and character alike. The artist is seen carefully at work,
labouring with the minuteness of a Flemish painter, and only
in Middlemarch is there to be witnessed the same Teniers-like
detail and effect. The picture is complete. Behind the ob-
servant eye, which has preserved for us all the minutiae of
natural scenery, there has been the heart engaged in sympathy
and fellowship with the human character. Shepperton church,
with its vicar, its clerk, and its choir, is as real to the reader as
that little village church or meeting house of his own, of which
he has reminiscences stowed away in some far corner of his
memory. But better than this, the finest emotions of our
nature have been stirred by the pitiful fortunes of the Rev.
Amos Barton and of Janet Dempster. The book thrills us,
saddens us, almost makes us partake in the agony of its
subjects, yet we cannot lay it down. We must go on till we
have seen each character drink its last drop of the cup of
bitterness. Probably no story in real life ever moved us more
than did that of 'Janet's Repentance.' Yet many such tragic
lives are being led around us every day, of which the world has
no cognisance-perhaps does not care to have cognisance.
But the terrible individualisation of suffering in these sketches
moved the most careless. This achievement of art remains
H
98
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
one of the most indelible of the kind in the language. George
Eliot in these Scenes established herself as a writer from whom
the very highest work might be expected; and she had done
this with a choice of topics in themselves decidedly unpleasant.
Treated by most other writers, such fearfully painful experiences
would have proved a failure; here they were sublimated by
genius. Thus it was that George Eliot laid the broad basis of
her career. This work formed one epoch in her literary life.
a
The promise held forth in these sketches was fully redeemed
in Adam Bede. "The large conception, the vivid colouring, the
earnest purpose, the austere and noble ethic, the marvellous
humour, the ample culture, the delicate selective and creative
talent of the new novelist 'all testified to the truth of the
prediction that a writer of great and unusual power had arisen.
Yet how simple, nay even commonplace, are the incidents and
characters in this novel! An impulsive and ignorant girl with a
pretty face; a high-souled and high-tempered workman; a
selfish young squire; an enthusiastic female evangelist
betrayal; a quarrel; a homicide; a reprieve--these are the
every-day elements into which genius has breathed a vital
force. They become the constituents of a moving tragedy,
whose various acts, as enthralled spectators, we see passing
before us.
The lesson or retribution for human deeds, first
taught in the Scenes of Clerical Life, is again enforced. 'We
reap what we sow,' observes the author; 'but nature has love
over and above that of justice, and gives us shadow and
blossom and fruit that spring from no planting of ours.' In
Adam Bede there is that jostling of comedy with tragedy which
is so characteristic of real life. The wit and the pathos are
alike human. If the book were to live for nothing else, it
would be immortal for the sweet Methodist saint, Dinah, and
for that unapproachable humourist, Mrs. Poyser.
The Mill on the Floss, notwithstanding its tragic scenes, its
strongly-marked characters, and its many passages charged
with true poetic beauty or with human passion, leaves the
GEORGE ELIOT.
99
reader in a sad and despondent state. This may be life, but
is it the whole of life? In Maggie of Dorlcote Mill,' says
a writer in Blackwood, we find revealed many of the feelings
and stages of thought and temperament through which George
Eliot herself must undoubtedly have passed. The imaginative
girl, seeking for a more refined sympathy than that which she
found around her; disposed to quarrel with surface conven-
tionalities; full of love to all, but too sensitive to show it;
happy in her own world, but still striving after a more ideal
life, of which she gets fitful glimpses through the few books
that come to her hand—Maggie Tulliver must surely have been
of kindred blood to the girl that was to be one day George
Eliot.' Despair, which seems to be written by our author
upon all human life and all human endeavour, broods over
Dorlcote Mill. Nothing is allowed to end happily. Poor,
crippled Philip, with his keen susceptibilities and brilliant
talents, sees in Maggie Tulliver the goal for which his spirit
craves but the great compensation of life is snatched from
him. He is brought near enough to have a glimpse of
Paradise, and then thrown back into the vortex of bitter dis-
appointment. And Maggie, with all her wild impulses, fares
little better. But for a few brilliant gleams of sunshine, her
life is one of continuous gloom. All the characters in this
terrible drama seem from their first appearance to be working
against each other for evil. The cross purposes of the world
are displayed in all their wretched and calamitous perfection.
Little by little, the meshes are wound about that large-souled,
noble, good-desiring, but wrong-doing Maggie Tulliver, till at
last there is but one ending for her failures and mistakes. She
asks in her agony for death—'But how long it will be before
death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have
patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall, and repent
again?-has life other trials as hard for me still?'
No, the
end comes, though in real life this is not always the case when
the soul feels that it has touched the extreme limit of suffering.
:
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
It is sometimes left to perfect itself in resignation. This story
conveys the impression that the author swerved from her
original purpose that as it progressed she drifted into that
current of sadness which is all-potent with her. One rather
desires an ending which should leave the spirit of Maggie
Tulliver to purify itself, and grow strong in the same world
which had witnessed her failures. Moral strength had already
begun to return to her, and her fine spirit might have worked
out its fuller conclusions; but her history is abruptly closed,
and the real heroism of her nature is not suffered to manifest
itself.
After a brief story called The Lifted Veil-which revealed
extraordinary insight-the mastery of George Eliot in depicting
broken lives, and the affection with which she hovers round
them, were again exhibited in Silas Marner. From a literary
point of view, this is a beautiful and almost perfect idyll. The
pathos of common life is here admirably illustrated, while the
It is the
elements of the story are simple in the extreme.
record of a humble weaver, belonging to a small Dissenting
community which assembled in Lantern Yard, in the back
streets of a manufacturing town. This lonely man has lost his
faith in everything, human and divine: but see how he is
recovered. 'In old days there were angels who came and took
men by the hand, and led them away from the City of
But yet
Destruction. We see no white-winged angels now.
men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put
into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and
bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the
hand may be a little child's.' Such is the story of the weaver
of Raveloe: a little child is to lead him back again to the faith
which he has lost-is to be the connecting link between him
and an over-ruling Providence, whose existence he had begun
to doubt. The golden head of Effie, as he sees her lying upon
the floor, seems to him to be his gold, which had been stolen,
come back to him again. This is a fantastic idea, yet it is very
}
AT
GEORGE ELIOT.
ΙΟΙ
striking. But the child was something more than Silas
Marner's gold; it was a messenger from the Unseen, and
stirred in him feelings which had long lain dormant. The
whole gist and philosophy of the history of Silas Marner is
given in these words, spoken by one of the characters: 'It's
the will o' Them above as a-many things should be dark to us;
but there's some things as I've never felt i' the dark about, and
they're mostly what comes i' the day's work. You were hard
done by that once, Master Marner; and it seems as though
you'll never know the rights of it; but that doesn't hinder
there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and
me.'
This brief but finished work-which bears in its chief
incident a remarkable resemblance to a Polish story-was the
prelude to a much greater venture. A second epoch in George
Eliot's literary career was reached with the publication of
Romola. Upon this the authoress had expended enormous
labour, and an almost unexampled wealth of erudition. It is
undoubtedly true that this is the most ambitious, the most rich
in culture, the most daring in effort, and the most Miltonic in
conception, of all the writer's works. While readers differ very
much as to the masterpieces of George Eliot, all must agree
that Romola is one of two or three works upon which her fame
will chiefly rest. Yet with all the lavish effort bestowed upon
this novel, the authoress has not been quite successful in
transferring us into the midst of that Italian life which she
professes to depict. Mazzini found fault with the introduction,
and the handling, of the great figure of Savonarola. He con-
sidered that it compared unfavourably with the character of
Adam Bede. Another competent judge, Dante Rossetti,
expressed himself to a similar effect. He did not think that
the tone and colour of Italian life in the fifteenth century were
caught with that intuitive perception of a bygone age which
distinguished a Walter Scott or a Meinhold. Yet it is a
marvellous book, notwithstanding; and its profound, its un-
G
102
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
dying interest centres in the painting of Romola and Tito. In
these individualities George Eliot surpassed herself, and she
scarcely approached them in power in her later works.
Tito is probably the most subtly-devised and most con-
sistently developed of all George Eliot's creations. 'His
serpentine beauty, his winning graciousness, his esthetic
refinements, his masculine energy of intellect, his insinuating
affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his
cowardly recoil from pain, his apparent serenity and
treacherous calm, as of a faithless summer sea, make up a
being that at once fascinates and repels, that invites love, but
turns our love into loathing almost before we have given it.'
Selfishness and treachery gradually encrust his spirit, and he
who seemed a beautiful personification of spring becomes a
hateful and a pitiable thing. The suffering which such an evil
spirit entails upon others is painfully shown in the cross which
Romola is called upon to bear. But it brings out the true
nobility of her spirit; and the degradation of the one thus be-
comes the crown of glory of the other. But the lesson is
bitter. The guilt of Tito is not only the curse of his own soul,
but it draws others into misery, despair, and vengeance.
Baldasarre, who had made an idol of the youth, it transforms
into a murderer. With Romola the ending was different ;
but she only came off bearing the scars of sanguinary moral
battles. She conquered, as by her life. And when the tumult
of existence subsided, and she was able to take up the thread
of her history and interpret its significance to the world, this
is what she said to the youth Lillo: 'It is only a poor sort
of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about
our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest hap-
piness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having
wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as
well as for ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings
so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its
being what we would choose before everything else, because
GEORGE ELIOT,
103
our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and
difficult in the world that no man can be great-he can hardly
keep himself from wickedness—unless he gives up thinking much
about pleasure or reward and gets strength to endure what is
hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs
to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than false-
hood. And there was Fra Girolamo-you know why I keep
to-morrow sacred-he had the greatness which belongs to a
life spent in struggling against powerful wrongs and in trying to
raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so,
my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly, and seek to know the best
things God has put within the reach of man, you must learn to
fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you
because of it. And remember, if you were to choose some-
thing lower and make it the rule of your life to seek your own
pleasure and escape what is disagreeable, calamity might come
just the same; and it would be a calamity falling on a base
mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it,
and that may well make a man say, "It would have been
better for me if I had never been born." It seems to me
that this speech is as noble as though pronounced by a monarch
over his fallen crown and dismantled palaces-one who has lost
the material symbols of royalty, but preserved the richer sceptre
of a conquering spirit.
English provincial life formed the basis of George Eliot's
next novel, Felix Holt. In this story, aided by an address to
working men by Felix Holt, we can arrive at some understand-
ing of the writer's social and political principles. While she
heartily rejoiced in progress of every kind, and welcomed the
enfranchisement of the operative class, she laid great stress
upon the development of the individual-his mental and
moral growth. As we are the sufferers for the wrong-doing of
our ancestors, she earnestly implores every man to leave behind
him a better inheritance for posterity. Even the most advanced
political privileges would be unable to cure all the evils of the
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
body politic-it rests with the man himself, by constant and
laborious effort and by noble living, to lift the race in the scale
of being. The novel of Felix Holt is entertaining as a link be-
tween a dying and a coming generation; and the way in which
social revolutions affect village existence is told with much
humour, shrewdness, and truthfulness. The acerbities of
Felix are softened by the sweet influence of the refined Esther ;
while, on the other hand, the unsuspected heroism of Esther
is made manifest by the power of the vigorous intellect and
iron will of the Radical workman. Rufus Lyon, the saintly
old minister, is powerfully drawn; his large heart shines
through his quaint religious phrases. But in spite of its
many excellences, the novel is but an adumbration of the
power which produced Romola. From the general, and also
from the artistic point of view, it is the least successful of all
George Eliot's works.
It was followed, however, by a novel which deservedly
ranks as her greatest literary offspring, Middlemarch. This
signalises the third and crowning epoch of George Eliot's
literary career. It is to its authoress what Hamlet is to
Shakespeare. In reading it one scarcely knows which to
admire most—its literary execution, its philosophy, or its pro-
found studies of character. It is one of the finest and most
finished productions of our time. The whole of its parts may
be taken as eight separate canvases, on which the most admir-
able and perfect paintings have been executed-each a com-
plete representation in itself, but, if desired, forming a series
around which as a whole the most intense interest clings. As
a portrait gallery alone, without any reference to the narrative,
what high rank does this work take! Dorothea Brooke, the
heroine, is worthy to rank with Romola and Fedalma, and in
all these we find lofty and stately souls-women more after the
type of the grand Greek heroines. Dorothea viewed life from
the highest possible standpoint. She was 'enamoured of great-
ness and intensity, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to
GEORGE ELIOT.
105
her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make
retractions, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter
where she had not sought it.' Such a combination of talent
and aspiration as met in Dorothea Brooke is rarely found in
human life. With all her failures-and she had her failures-
she was moved by grand ideas, and such a nature must always
shine upon the race like some splendid star. Next in vigour
of drawing comes Mr. Casaubon, the learned rector- a man
who fulfilled to the letter one of the cardinal principles to be
deduced from George Eliot's writings-'Plain living and high
thinking.' It is amusing to note the attitude of the two sisters
with regard to Mr. Casaubon.
"It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human
beings as if they were mere animals with a toilette, and never
see the great soul in a man's face.”
"Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul?" Celia was not with-
out a touch of naïve malice.
"Yes, I believe he has,” said Dorothea, with the full voice of
decision. "Everything I see in him corresponds to his
pamphlet on Biblical Cosmology."
""He talks very little," said Celia.
"There is no one for him to talk to."
}}}
The result is inevitable: Dorothea accepts the fusty student,
with his moles, his deep eye-sockets like those of John Locke,
and his unfinished Key to all the Mythologies. Nay, she
almost idolises Mr. Casaubon for taking her, and perhaps her
enthusiasm is not altogether wrong-it is only a little blind.
Her mistake finds her out. She discovers that learned re-
searches, however elevating and satisfying in themselves to the
person chiefly concerned, are not sufficient to meet the cravings
of a warm and enthusiastic nature. Dorothea cared little for
what the world might say about her marriage, but to learn that
her ideal was not so lofty as she had anticipated, was, to her,
like drinking of the Wells of Marah. It is said that an
undiscriminating friend once condoled with George Eliot on
106
- WOMEN OF RENOWN.
the melancholy experience which, from her knowledge of Mr.
Lewes, had taught her to depict the gloomy character of
Casaubon. There was really nothing in common between the
two, and when the novelist laughingly assured her friend of his
mistake, he asked-'From whom then did you draw Casau-
bon?' She pointed with earnestness to her own heart.
We will say over Dorothea Brooke what she herself said to
the brilliant but shallow artist, Ladislaw, 'Failure after long
perseverance is much grander than never to have had a striving
good enough to be called a failure.' I cannot linger over the
other inhabitants of the town of Middlemarch-but many of
them are indelibly stamped on the memory: Lydgate, with his
lofty ideal, shattered by the frivolous Rosamond; Sir James
Chetham, blessed with all the blessings of mediocrity;
Bulstrode, the banker, a marvellous creation; Bambridge, the
horse dealer, who was given to indulgence-chiefly in swearing,
drinking, and beating his wife; and certainly not least, Caleb
Garth, one of the most admirable, solid characters in fiction-
an upright and downright Englishman.
Middlemarch, like other novels from the same hand, has
repeated references to religious beliefs; and there is the utter
scorn of cant, which distinguishes George Eliot, visible again
and again. The satire is not malicious, but it is very effective.
There is also a deep sympathy for those who are fighting
inwardly with the deepest of soul-problems: yet the lesson of
the whole work for such is dispiriting. With all its compassion.
the
and sympathy, there is little substantial aid in clearing away
dark clouds of doubt. There are but a few vague references to
some kind of faith. Dorothea herself is without an anchor,
and although there are comparisons to St. Theresa, this is only
the more surprising ; for who can conceive of an exalted woman
without that higher kind of religiosity which lifts her away from
the world and up to the Highest? Woman is naturally more
reverential than man-taking the sex as a whole-and accept-
ing George Eliot's portrait of Dorothea-and she has nothing
GEORGE ELIOT.
107
better to offer us it does seem strange, remembering her
cravings after the highest good, that she should not have turned
to that Fulness, whose existence and accessibility George Eliot
teaches in works which are in every other respect inferior to
this.
No life with Faith can be a failure. I do not mean by Faith,
belief in any special, dogmatic creed, but that influence.
operating upon the human soul, which causes it to say in the
moments of its supremest anguish,-
'Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.'
And, indeed, in the closing words of her masterpiece in
fiction, George Eliot points almost to the same thing, though
in a shadowy and indistinct manner. This is the passage,
beautiful and eloquent in expression, referring to Dorothea, as
we lose sight of her in the two concluding sentences--possibly
correcting an opinion which the authoress herself might think she
had previously germinated as to the aimlessness of life :- Her
finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which.
Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which
had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being
on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing
good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and
that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have
been, is half owing to the number of those who lived faithfully
a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.'
The wit and the profound philosophy of Middlemarch must
have been appreciated by every reader, as well as that marvel-
108
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
lous faculty of being able to get at the heart of things. And
all this reflectiveness is united to practical talent. The novelist
has not only the power of thought, but the genius of interpre-
tation. The happy blending of these two was never seen in
greater perfection. This study of provincial life remains almost
unequalled. It shows again the old power of true genius
touching with undying interest the people of common life.
Master-spirits need never go in search of the bizarre or the
extraordinary their materials are at hand; they are found in
the daisy, the cornfield, the woods, the cattle, and in unnoted
and unnoticeable fellow-men. Potentially, human nature is not
greater than its poorest unit : the emotion of the peasant is as
true and touching as that of the king; and our masters are
those who can make us feel the dignity of the one as truly as
that of the other. George Eliot conspicuously possessed this
power. It shines forth, with other qualities I have named,
in Middlemarch—and I think that work is worthy to be called
the great epic of English middle-class life.
Daniel Deronda, the last of the brilliant series of novels by
this writer, has fine qualities, but it was not the equal of its
predecessor. The remarkable impression, however, upon the
Jewish mind was 'a strong testimony to the author's power,
from a race that has never been easily influenced by Gentile
writings; while their acknowledgment of the accuracy and
thoroughness with which she had grasped Jewish sentiment and
culture, was a striking tribute to the breadth and depth of her
studies.' A Jewish professor wrote, that 'in the Valhalla of
the Jewish people, among the tokens of homage which the
genius of centuries has offered and laid down, Daniel Deronda
will take its place as the proudest testimony of English recog-
nition.' There are many people who never think of the Jews
without collateral ideas of usury and extortion, forgetting that
this ancient race can lay claim to one of the most illustrious of
human records. George Eliot resolved that a Gentile should
do full justice to their noble aspirations and their unswerving.
:
GEORGE ELIOT.
109
faith, and eloquently did she fulfil her task. Yet the book in
which she achieved this is in some other respects disappointing.
The character most cleverly drawn-the cruel and supercilious
Grandcourt-is the most repulsive. He combines the maximum
of pride with the minimum of humanity. In Gwendolen, the
authoress herself states that she wished to drawa girl of the period.
'Fascinating, accomplished, of syren-like beauty, she has every
outward grace, combined with a singular inward vacuity. The
deeper aspects of life are undreamed of in her philosophy. Her
religion consists in a vague awe of the unknown and invisible,
and her ambition in the acquisition of rank, wealth, and
personal distinction. She is selfish, vain, frivolous, worldly,
domineering, yet not without sudden impulses of generosity
and fits of affection.' Deronda himself is no doubt clever, and
moved by the highest aspirations and emotions, but he poses too
much, and creates a suspicion that he is something of a prig.
He has a bad habit—or at least this is the result of the way in
which he is drawn-of calling attention to his own surpassing
perfections. As Lord Beaconsfield said of Mr. Horsman, ‘He
is a very superior person indeed.' But for this defect, Deronda
would have been a great character. Mordecai is in many
respects more finely drawn, and affords scope to the authoress
for her apotheosis of the Jewish race. But the work as a whole
is too psychological for a novel-its analytical skill is astonish-
ing, but minute almost to painfulness. It is a record of inner
life long drawn out, and of the fight with opposing circum-
stances. There are also inconsistencies of character, especially
in regard to Deronda and Gwendolen-but then, George Eliot.
delights in cross-purposes; and in avoiding the semblance of
partisanship sometimes sins against probability. Several indi-
viduals in Daniel Deronda are, nevertheless, worthy of the
highest praise, on the ground of their truth and faithfulness
in delineation--Lapidoth, for example, Mirah, and Mrs.
Glasher.
But the book is due to a philosophical rather than to a
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
spiritual influence, and this will account for its partial failure.
The reader gets no help toward the solution of moral and
spiritual problems. There is no vital, permeating faith in the
work. In its philosophy it is suggestive, discriminating, acute;
but it is not helpful, satisfying, and triumphant. The highly
gifted should not only prove a fountain of wisdom, but a source
of consolation to mankind. The streams which have flowed
from George Eliot's genius have rather been those of wisdom.
If her spiritual force had been equal to her intellectual, then
indeed she would have ranked with the greatest writers of the
time. To take a parallel in illustration of my meaning. The
astronomer may impart to me his knowledge-may tell me the
properties of the sun, may even measure its distance from the
earth, and its dimensions, with the greatest accuracy-but
while I am lost in wonder at his facts, I feel they are little after
all compared with that other knowledge I possess-that the
sun gives to the myriad beings who inhabit this earth, their
light, their power, and their life; and that he is the everlasting
re-creator of all the multitudinous forms of being.
One more volume, The Impressions of Theophrastus Such,
closed the list of George Eliot's prose works. In this series of
papers, which, on the whole-notwithstanding their brilliant
wit—are hard and laboured in thought and expression, is one
beautiful essay, entitled, 'Looking Backward.' With some
little necessary change, the writer gives here tender remini-
scences of her own life, as it first opened out with its great
possibilities. There is also a second admirable study, 'Debas-
ing the Moral Currency,' which enters a wholesome protest
against the degradation of whatever is noble in art and heroic
in action.
The poetry of George Eliot now demands some attention.
High as she herself ranked this class of effort, and deep as was
her affection for the poetic offshoots of her intellect-I for one
cannot regard her as a fine poet, much less a great one. A
calm study of her most ambitious poem, The Spanish Gypsy,
GEORGE ELIOT.
III
must, I think, inevitably lead others to the same conclusion.
It is not spontaneous and natural. Neither, too, is there that
fire which should burn through the form of words in which a
poet's ideas are clothed. Strong as the assertion may seem, a
few lyrics of Shelley or of Burns, or of any others who possessed
the real bardic fire, are worth the whole of The Spanish Gypsy.
George Eliot was too self-possessed to be a poet: she lacked
the abandonment, I had almost said that touch of divine mad-
ness, necessary to the production of that character. Her poems
stand in the same relation to true poetry as statues do to living,
breathing human beings. The form is there, graceful and
regular, the features are beautifully chiselled, but the soul is
absent. Her creations are like the marble, cold; they are life-
like, but without life. The fact is she was too critical, and her
ear was not attuned to the eternal harmonies of the heavenly
choir. Poetry is very largely melody, song-and a poet with-
out music may be-compared to a lark without voice-only the
name of the thing for which we have sought. It is not perfect
measure even that makes the poet, else George Eliot would
come into that category. Her blank verse is perfect as regards
form; it is also in some instances sonorous and majestic--but
it never masters us. She does not reach the deepest chords
of our being, whereas the real singer can play upon them at
will. Occasionally, there is a passage to remind us of the
quaint old poets, for its conceit and beauty, as when Fedalma
says: —
Perhaps the wind
Wails so in winter for the summers dead,
And all sad sounds are Nature's funeral cries
For what has been and is not.'
But if Hamlet be a great poem, or Faust be a great poem,
then assuredly The Spanish Gypsy is not. The rush of life is
absent from the drama as a whole, and the lyrics, though care-
fully constructed, lack spontaneity. Jubal and Armgart come
nearer to the true inspiration; but even these are rather con-
II 2
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
tinuous bursts of rhetoric, which, having one grand idea as
their basis, seem now and then to glow with poetic fire. When
their writer attempts more she fails. She begins to construct
and ceases to create. It is this creative power which singles
out the great poet. It never fails of recognition. The illiterate
can perceive it as well as the learned. It is the patent of the
Divine. All lofty singers have it, and it becomes their passport
to immortality. This patent George Eliot did not possess.
+
I pass on now to a consideration of the main characteristics
of this gifted woman as a writer, and also to the ethical value
of her works. And first the fact of her varied culture is borne
in strongly upon us. She was not only acquainted with the
literatures of various modern languages, French, German,
Italian, and Spanish, but she had high classical attainments.
Homer, the great Greek tragedians, Plato, and other philosophers,
and the Latin poets, were all familiar to her. Yet this wealth
of erudition is never offensively obtruded in her works, while
in her conversation also she wore all her 'weight of learning
like a flower.'
As regards the salient features of her genius or spirit, I have
already touched upon that dominant element of sadness which'
broods over all her works. She is moved with a profound
sorrow for the whole human race: she individualises humanity,
and declares it to be miserable and unhappy. Her books are
almost overweighted with sadness. Do what she will, the
world's burden is ever pressing heavily upon her-till her wit
is now and again tinged with bitterness, and more frequently still
with melancholy. The projection out of self, which should
distinguish the highest artist, is only rarely exhibited in George
Eliot. I do not say that her yearning and her deep sympathy
are not very true and very beautiful. Moreover, it is only the
good or the great who know how to feel the 'infinite pity and
the pain.' The sadness of a philanthropist or a philosopher is a
very deep feeling-one of the strongest of all emotions. George
Eliot is a mixture of the philanthropist and the philosopher :
GEORGE ELIOT.
113
she perceives the weight of human misery, and her powerless-
ness to lift it from the sufferers afflicts her. Many writers are
able to strike the principal chords of human feeling, but she
possesses the uncommon power of touching those minor subtle
tones out of which springs the truest pathos. At one time there
gleamed through all her sadness the bright star of faith: when
she was less philosophical she was more hopeful. Two charac-
ters are strongly typical of these states of feeling-Janet
Dempster and Dorothea Brooke. Janet was no learned
woman, no sophist, but a simple, suffering human being. Yet
when old Mr. Tryan, the dying minister, said to her, 'I shall
not look for you in vain at the last,' she could reply, 'I shall be
there. God will not forsake me.' This was a higher condition
of mind than Dorothea-that yet grand and noble character—
ever attained. It is some such looking for the light, and not
apprehending it, which has begotten in all readers such a sub-
lime pity for her. If Dorothea Brooke, in addition to her
splendid nature, had possessed that one element given to Janet
Dempster, she would have been one of the most perfect, as
she is now one of the very noblest heroines in fiction.
Another striking characteristic of George Eliot, scarcely less
conspicuous than her sadness, is her power of observation.
Although she makes no parade of this faculty, nothing escapes
her, and her skill is equally noticeable when dealing with the
aggregate or the single. The scenery of the Midlands affords
little scope for sublime descriptions: the massive is almost
entirely absent, but the beautiful is everywhere, and of this
George Eliot is cognizant. What better descriptions can be
found than those of Raveloe, Milby, Stone Court, and Shep-
perton? And this remarkable faculty is equally apparent when
she deals with village life. Yet this power of description is
equalled if not transcended by a more extraordinary endowment
still, namely, her humour. Its quality is entirely her own, as
in the case of every genuine humorist. We should never, for
instance, confound the humour of Dickens with that of
I
I 14
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Į
Thackeray, or that of George Eliot with either. In her pages,
it is generally like a silver stream, meandering through the lovely
meadows of her thought-bright, pleasant, and beautifying.
Now and then it is deep, scathing, and searching, but never
coarse. We laugh without malice at the weaknesses of her
creations, and at their personal and distinctive qualities. Mrs.
Poyser is in her way equal to any humorous conception in the
language. She is truer than Mrs. Gamp, and quite as original.
Her sayings alone suffice to make Adam Bede one of the most
mirth-suggestive books in the language. I will add here a few
examples of the wit of George Eliot :—
'There's allays two 'pinions,' observes one character; 'there's
the 'pinion a man has o' hissen, and there's the 'pinion other
folks have on him.'
.
'I aren't like a bird-clapper,' says Mrs. Poyser, 'forced to
make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my
own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.'
'I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made
'em to match the men.'
'I know what the men like, a poor soft, as 'ud simper at 'em
like a pictur' o' the sun, whether they did right or wrong. That's
what a man want's in a wife mostly: he wants to make sure o’
one fool as 'ull tell him he's wise.'
'Some folks' tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not
to tell you the time o' day, but because there's summat wrong
i' their own inside.'
Such examples could be multiplied a hundredfold. And
there is nothing forced in this writer's wit: it seems to flow as
naturally from her mind as music does from the throat of a
bird. Occasionally she gives us a whole scene which is satu-
rated with humour, as when she describes the conversation at
the Rainbow, in Silas Marner. Her humour is nearly always
of the rich and mellow kind.
Among other distinguishing features of George Eliot is her
marvellous insight into the character of women, for there are few
GEORGE ELIOT
115
types of her own sex which are not to be found in her pages.
Then there is her exquisite touch in depicting children and
their ways. Mr. Swinburne expressed but the general sentiment
when he said that no man or woman, so far as he could recol-
lect, outside the order of poets, had ever written of children
with such adorable fidelity of affection as the spiritual mother
of Totty, of Effie, and of Lillo. And through all her creations,
with their reflex action upon each other, there breathes that one
great lesson of charity which all should learn to translate into
action. The novelist beseeches us, in the name of this noble
charity, not to hand over our fellow-men to God's mercy while
we show none ourselves.
My last word shall be upon the great ethical value of her
works. Although she has the power of stirring the human soul
to its depths without being able completely to satisfy it, she is
yet not without her rich consolations. Her ideal of life is an
exalted one, and she tells us, improving upon a sentiment of
Emerson, that what makes life dreary is the want of motive.
'I am lord of this moment,' she exclaims, 'and will fill it with
good and honest work. None can afford to be idle in this age.
Deeds are the pulse of time, and the Godhead in us wrings our
noble deeds from our reluctant selves.' To those who are slack
in the race she says :—
The time is great. What times are little? Royal deeds
May make long destinies for multitudes.'
walk high with
The striving, the aspiring soul chooses to
sublimer dread rather than to crawl in safety. Again, all have
work to do, and in God's war slackness is infamy. And that
which is best for the individual is best for the State. 'The
eminence, the nobleness of a people, depend on its capability
of being stirred by memories, and of striving for what we call
spiritual ends-ends which consist not in immediate material
possession, but in the satisfaction of a great feeling that animates
the collective body as with one soul.' And in doing right, men
I 2
116
women of renown.
must be prepared for opposition. Copernicus and Galileo were
immovably convinced in the face of hissing incredulity, and we
must cultivate their heroic spirit. 'Let my body dwell in
poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler, but let me
not yield up my courage and my efforts after the right and the
true. Let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the
treasures of knowledge enter, and the inner sanctuary is hope.
And, moreover, let the excellence I see in others encourage me
about life generally, for it shows the spiritual wealth of the
world. But in all this striving do not let men forget that there
is in him a higher than mere love of happiness; he can do with-
out happiness, and instead thereof he may find blessedness.'
Such is my brief epitome of the teaching of this eminent writer,
who held it to be nobler to suffer and to conquer than never to
suffer at all. We may well emulate her charity, her breadth of
human sympathy, her tenderness towards all human short-
comings, and that aspiring spirit which caused her to ex-
claim:
'O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.'
The grand influences of a writer like this are imperishable.
If she has no new gospel to communicate, she has illumined
old truths with vivid and matchless skill. Humanity, too, with
all its stern reality, endeavour, and failure, she has realised with
truthfulness and power. She will leave an indelible impression
upon the century, for her work has been uniformly pure, true,
and noble. While England has had no other age which in lofty
genius can compare with that of Shakespeare 'the spacious
GEORGE ELIOT.
117
times of great Elizabeth '—we yet live in an era which may
fairly be called illustrious, whether in respect to the domain of
science, of art, or of letters; and in the eyes of posterity no
small share of the glory that must attach to the Victorian age
of literature will gather round the name and the works of
George Eliot.
JENNY LIND.
121
JENNY LIND
ONE can scarcely conceive of a career which left a higher per-
sonal impress than that of the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny
Lind. In the records of musical and dramatic art such a pure
and lofty realisation of the greatest artistic success with the
noblest ideal of womanhood is probably unexampled. We
marvel how one who sprang from the ranks of the poor should
have risen to give the keenest delight to all who were privileged
to listen to her, from the monarch to the peasant, and yet have
preserved the same child-like and beautiful simplicity of char-
acter with which she set forth on her marvellous and adventurous
course. The sceptic, who believes nothing of a future existence,
and accepts only the philosophy of selfishness in this, may dis-
cover another object lesson in the life of Jenny Lind; for here
he will find the Christianity he so much deprecates the moving
spring of her actions, the tempering force when she had attained
the giddy heights of public recognition, and the strength and
consolation of her soul until it left its earthly tenement of clay.
Her smile was heavenly at all times, and, according to Dean
Stanley, was only 'equalled by Pusey's.' The elevation of her
moral character and her deeply religious nature impressed all
who knew her. The endowments of Nature she held in trust
for others; as she made she gave, so that her life was twice
blessed--it was blessed in the dower of song and blessed in the
sacred gifts of philanthropy.
The power of Jenny Lind's genius was such, that while she
I22
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
became one of the most popular artists that ever lived, and car-
ried by storm such musical centres as Berlin, Leipzig, Copen-
hagen, Munich, Vienna, and London, she also fascinated the
highest and best minds of Europe. As her biographers, Canon
Holland and Mr. Rockstro, have pointed out, in their admirable
narrative of her early art-life and dramatic career, men of genius
recognised in her something akin to themselves. In her native
land her warmest admirers included Geijer, the historian, and
the highest intellectual authority in Sweden, Topelius, the poet,
Fredrika Bremer, Bishop Thomander, and Lindblad, 'the Schu-
bert of Sweden ;' in Copenhagen they included Hans Christian
Andersen, Thorwaldsen, Jensen, Melbye, and Ehlenschlager;
in Berlin Tieck and Kaulbach; and in other cities Meyerbeer,
Moscheles, Thalberg, Taubert, Schumann, Grillparzer, and
last, but not least, Mendelssohn, who declared, 'she is as great
an artist as ever lived, and the greatest I have known.' She
was not merely one of those musical luminaries who appear
for a season, or at the most two or three seasons, and whose
comet-like splendour is soon extinguished, but a brilliant fixed
star in the higher regions of dramatic art. She not only more
than maintained her own upon the lyric and operatic stage,
but attained a supremacy in the domain of sacred oratorio
which has never been questioned or rivalled.
Jenny Lind was born of poor parentage at Stockholm, on
the 6th of October, 1820. Her father, Niclas Jonas Lind,
was the son of a lace manufacturer, but he had been unable to
continue this business, and acted as accountant or clerk to a
private merchant. He was only twenty-two years of age when
his daughter was born. At her baptism she received the names
of Johanna Maria. Lind was a shiftless kind of character, but
with some talent for music, and he joined with great gusto in
the musical festivities associated with the song-writer, Bellman,
who was a kind of Swedish Burns, and whose stirring composi-
tions were held in high honour long after his death. The best
practical qualities in the Lind household were furnished by
JENNY LIND.
123
Jenny's mother, who came of a good stock, and who had
already been married at the age of eighteen to a Captain
Radberg. He was a worthless and vicious character, and she
obtained a divorce from him, the court granting her the
custody of her child Amelia Maria Constantia. Mrs. Lind
was energetic and intelligent, and at the time of Jenny's
birth was keeping a day-school for girls. She boarded two of
her pupils, and one of them, Louise Johansson, who was nine
years older than Jenny, afterwards became of great service to
her as a companion and friend.
For the first three years of her life, Jenny Lind was placed
under the care of Carl Ferudal, organist and parish clerk of
Sollentuna, which was about fifteen English miles from Stock-
holm. As a child she seems to have imbibed some of the best
of the national characteristics of Sweden—its home-love, its
music, its simplicity, depth, and dignity-and she revelled in the
natural beauties of the country. In 1824 she was taken back
to her home in Stockholm; and during the next few years
those profound spiritual influences which ruled her throughout.
life were first stirred and moulded within her by her grand
mother, who was also the earliest to discover her musical
gifts. This is how the child Jenny's talent was first made
known: 'Coming up from the country to the town, she was
struck by the music of the military bugles that daily passed
through the street; and one day when she fancied herself
alone in the house, she crept to the piano on which her half-
sister used to practise her music, and, with one finger,
strummed out for herself the fanfare which she had caught
from the soldiers. But the grandmother was at hand, and
hearing the music, called out the name of the half-sister,
whom she supposed it to be; and little Jenny, in her terror
at being found out, hid under the square piano; she was so
small that she fitted it perfectly; and the grandmother, getting
no answer to her calls, came to look, and presently discovered
her and dragged her out, and was astonished, and said,
124
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
'Child, was that you?' and Jenny, in tears at her crime, con-
fessed; but the grandmother looked at her deeply, and in
silence; and when the mother came back she told her, and
said, 'Mark my words, that child will bring you help.' And,
after that, the neighbours used to be called in to hear her play.
As she told the story in later years, she would reproduce most
vividly the frightened look of the child creeping away to hide ;
and the significant look of the wonder-struck grandmother as
she took in that it was indeed the tiny creature of three years'
old who had played the tune.
Mrs. Lind, being driven to go out as a governess in 1828, her
daughter was taken care of by the steward of the Widows'
Home and his wife, a childless couple who had advertised for
such a charge; and as Jenny's grandmother had rooms in the
home, this suited admirably. Mdlle. Lundberg, a dancer at
the Royal Opera House, heard of the child's wonderful sing-
ing- which was generally addressed to a pet cat with a blue
ribbon round its neck-and desired her mother to bring her to
sing to her. When she had heard her she said, 'The child is a
genius, you must have her educated for the stage'; but Mrs.
Lind had an inveterate prejudice against the stage. Then you
must, at any rate, have her taught singing,' said Mdlle. Lund-
berg; and the mother was at length persuaded to accept a
letter of introduction to Herr Croelius, the Court Secretary and
singing master at the Royal Theatre. How Jenny Lind was
at length launched upon a musical career has thus been told
by herself. Off with the letter they started; but, as they
went up the broad steps of the Opera House, the mother was
again troubled by her doubts and repugnance. She, no doubt,
had all the inherited dislike of the burgher families to the
dramatic life. But little Jenny eagerly urged her to go on;
and they entered the room where Croelius sat. And the child
sang him something out of an Opera composed by Winter.
Croelius was moved almost to tears, and said that he must take
her in to Count Puke, the head of the Royal Theatre, and
JENNY LIND.
125
tell him what a treasure he had found. And they went
at once; and Count Puke's first question was, 'How old is
she?' and Croelius answered, 'Nine years' old.' 'Nine!'
exclaimed the Count; 'but this is not a crèche! it is the
King's Theatre.' And he would not look at her, she being,
moreover, at that time, what she herself (in her letter
to the Biographical Lexicon) called, a small, ugly, broad-
nosed, shy, gauche, under-grown girl!' 'Well,' said Croelius,
"if the Count will not hear her, then I will teach her
gratuitously myself, and she will one day astonish you!"
Then Count Puke consented to hear her sing; and when she
sang, he too was moved to tears; and, from that moment
she was accepted; and was taken, and taught to sing, and
educated, and brought up at the Government expense.
One sentence alone will show the natural bias of Jenny
Lind. 'As a child,' she said, 'I sang with every step I took,
and with every jump my feet made.' The directors of the
Royal Theatre made an immediate offer to relieve the mother
of her child's education and maintenance, taking her into the
School for Pupils, and looking to her future success for repay-
ment; and this offer was accepted. In the letter-written late
in life-to the editor of the Biographical Lexicon, Jenny Lind
said, 'the person whom alone I have to thank for the first
real discernment of my gift of song, was the Court Secretary
Croelius. He told me all that which in latter years came to
pass.' And in 1842, when the little nursling of the Drama
had already become famous, he wrote to his early protégée,
'Your honour, your success will be the comfort of my old age
and a balm for my sufferings.'
It was in 1830 that Jenny Lind passed under the charge of
the authorities of the Royal Theatre, and two years later a
contract was made for her as an actress-pupil, from which she
could not be released until by her after efforts she had 'made
restitution for the care and expense bestowed on her educa-
tion.' Jenny Lind appears as the formal name, even in the
126
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
official document. The artiste herself said she was never
called anything else, and only in her confirmation certificate
in 1836 did her full name of Johanna Maria Lind appear.
There was something both humorous and touching in the
articles of Jenny's engagement with the Theatre directors.
'During her growing years, and until she is competent to be
allotted a fixed salary, she is to receive at the expense of the
theatre, food, clothes, and lodging; together with free tuition.
in singing, elocution, dancing, and such other branches of
instruction as belong to the education of a cultivated
woman, and are requisite for the theatrical profession.' The
carrying out of this instruction was committed to Jenny's
mother, who engaged to teach her the piano, religion, French,
history, geography, writing, arithmetic, and drawing. She was
also to see to all the matters of food, fire, furniture, and cloth-
ing, bedding, and washing; and was 'to have a mother's
tender care.' For these purposes she would receive from the
directors twenty guineas, while Jenny herself would be
given about three shillings and sixpence every month for
pocket money, out of which she was to pay, poor child, for
her own needles and tape, as well as for silk and cotton
towards the mending of her clothes. It may be imagined that
this left very little for girlish treats or purchases.
But on
the other hand she was to be allowed the use of a piano-
forte belonging to the Royal Theatre, of which her mother
pledged herself to take proper care; while after the 1st of July,
1835, she was actually to be supplied with a chest of drawers,
as well as a bedstead and bedclothes at the special cost of the
Royal Theatre. The mother, on her part, was to see to it
that the actress-pupil carefully observed the hours for lessons,
rehearsals, and representations. The directors were to judge
when the little creature would become competent to enter as
actress with a salary from the Civil List, after which a new
contract would be made, by which she would be pledged to
remain for ten years in the service of the Royal Theatre, for
JENNY LIND.
127
such a salary as the directors, having proper regard to her
talent and usefulness at the time, should decide to grant her ;
but in case 'the actress-pupil Lind, contrary to the good
hopes entertained on her behalf, were for one reason or
another to prove of no use to the Royal Theatre, or, again,
if she were to fail in that obedience she owes to the Royal
Directors, they shall have full right to discharge her from
the theatre after three months' notice, in which case the con-
tract is to lapse.'. It will be seen that Jenny was pretty well
hemmed in by restrictions and obligations, though of course
the patronage of the Royal Directors was of the utmost im-
portance to her artistic development. There is no doubt that
the completeness of her early theatrical training left excellent
and indelible results upon Jenny Lind. Her extraordinary
musical gift was supplemented by a grace of motion and
dignity of carriage which remained with her throughout life,
constituting her the finished artist.
Although the object of the training was to impart to Jenny
Lind 'the full education of a cultivated woman,' there were a
few aspects of course in which this phrase of wide meaning
could scarcely be carried out. Her intellectual studies were
not conducted on a systematic and scientific basis, so that her
judgments on books, for example, in later years, depended on
her own rapid perceptions, and were not the outcome of
accurate knowledge or trained intellectual discipline. But in
all essential matters her training was perfectly satisfactory.
For the rest, it really did not matter, and wholly irrelevant
studies remind me of an answer with which a candidate electri-
fied his examiner on one occasion. Being asked how many
millions of miles the sun was from the earth-which had about
as much connection with the post he was seeking as the history
of Julius Cæsar or the siege of Troy-the candidate replied,
'I don't know, and I don't care a brass farthing; but I do
know that it is so jolly far away that it cannot possibly interfere
with the discharge of my duties.'
128
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
}
While some of the branches of study imposed upon Jenny
Lind were, therefore, touched on in an elementary manner, in
others she was thoroughly grounded. Religion, for instance,
which was oddly placed between French and the piano, was so
well taught that she passed her confirmation ordeal, 'with
distinction;' over the piano she gained a complete mastery;
her study of literature and drawing was fairly good; but in one
womanly accomplishment, sewing, she was highly successful,
and years afterwards her maid paid her the best possible
compliment on this when she said, 'Madame's stitches never
come out.'
French she learnt quickly and fluently, but it was
only by slow degrees that she acquired proficiency in German
and English.
Jenny Lind got on well with her instructors and fellow-
pupils, but alas! trouble from an unexpected quarter shadowed
her young life. Her mother became harsh and severe, and if
there be a mitigating excuse to be found for her, it must be
sought in the fact that life had been one long and hard struggle
with her. She had been compelled for years to fight for her-
self, and circumstances had embittered her existence, making
her tenacious of her rights and unkind in her treatment of her
daughter. Some of the pupils left Mrs. Lind's rooms, in
consequence of her stern treatment, and boarded with Mdlle.
Bayard, the lady superintendent, at the top of the Theatre.
Jenny visited them there, and the contrast between their happy
lot and her own led to her throwing in her lot with them. The
Directors approved of this, but Mrs. Lind demanded her
return, and at last applied the pressure of the law against the
Directors. She was aided by her husband, and together they
made good their parental claims over the child. The Royal
Upper Town Court decided that she must return to the custody
of her mother, and the matter ended. From letters which were
afterwards written by mother and daughter there must have
been many happy seasons in the family, notwithstanding the
miserable incidents just referred to. With her girl-friend,
JENNY LIND.
129
Mina Fundin, Jenny soon forgot her sorrows, and entered
into the youthful enjoyments of life. Before leaving this
delicate subject, I must refer to the death of Mrs. Lind, which
occurred in 1851, while her daughter was in America. After
that melancholy event, Jenny Lind thus wrote to an old friend
in Sweden, Herr Carl Forsberg, of the War Office: 'My
mother's death I have felt most bitterly; everything was now
smooth and nice between us; I was in hopes that she would
have been spared for many a long year
. and that, now
she was quieter and more reasonable, I might have surrounded
her old age with joy, and peace, and tender care. But the
ways of the Lord are often not our ways. Peace be with her
soul !'
When only ten years old, Jenny Lind gave evidence that
her dramatic gift was as original and spontaneous as her
musical. On the 29th of November, 1830, she appeared at
the Royal Theatre in a play called The Polish Mine. In the
character of Angela, a child of seven, she had to take part in a
series of exciting adventures, during which she assisted her
father to escape from the mine, and to fly to a place of safety
with his wife. The play was 'full of occasions for the brilliant
little dancer, whose ingenuity and skill were the key to the
plot.' In the following year, she made a still more marked
sensation as Johanna in Testamentet, or The Will, a drama by
Kotzebue. One of the leading literary and art periodicals
referred to the extraordinary significance of her child-efforts.
'She shows, in her acting, a quick perception, a fire of feeling,
far beyond her years, which seem to denote an uncommon
disposition for the theatre.' The part was one exactly suited
to her arch and winning manners, and the play altogether
depended more for its success on this one character than on
any other. Every word in it would suit her the merry
quickness of the child, the sudden turns from gaiety to tears,
and back again to gaiety, the mysterious confidences, the
prattling innocence, the brimming affection,-in all this she
C
K
}
1
130
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
would instinctively revel.' For several succeeding years she
now appeared frequently in dramas and comedies, astonishing
her auditors by her skill and precocity. Occasionally the
authorities were to blame for choosing pieces tainted with
French corruption; but though perilous was her path she
moved along scatheless, safe in her innate purity of heart.
Herr Berg, who succeeded Croelius as head of the School of
Singing, took great pride in Jenny's musical training. Berg
was a clever and cultivated musician, and he had more to do
with preparing her for the Swedish stage than her first master,
though he had not of course the merit of discovering her.
They were friends to the end, and in 1849 Jenny Lind wrote,
Herr Berg is one of my nearest friends, and gratitude is a
feeling that I love, and desire to cultivate.
Old friend
Berg is interwoven with the history of my whole life.' In 1837
the talented young artist was awarded a regular salary—about
£60 per annum, with a bonus added for each performance.
But she had a great deal of work to do, and appeared ninety-
two times during the year, in twelve new characters. In
addition to lighter parts, she sustained rôles in dramas by
Delavigne, Victor Hugo, and Schiller. Although she was thus
gaining wide dramatic experience, the critical moment which
comes to every great actor or actress, had not yet arrived in
her own career. It came on the 7th of March, 1838, when
she was in her eighteenth year. 'I got up that morning one.
creature,' she often said afterwards; 'I went to bed another
creature. I had found my power!' The character in which
she achieved this, and in sustaining which she first felt the full
flow of that inspiration which never afterwards left her, was
that of Agatha in Weber's Der Freischütz. The Directors of
the Royal Theatre themselves were so astonished and
delighted by her triumph that they presented her with two
silver candlesticks, suitably inscribed in memory of the event.
This was the first of thousands of gifts showered upon her, but
nothing ever touched her like this. She always held these
(
"Bakery"
JENNY LIND.
131
silver candlesticks in especial affection, and bequeathed them
to her daughter.
Her appearances now became fewer because she assumed
more important parts. The event of the year 1839 was her
assumption of the traditional part of Alice in Robert le Diable.
By this role she was 'destined to win her most memorable
triumphs. It was a character in which her splendid dramatic
power fused itself with her gifts of voice, so as to leave an in-
delible impression of force and beauty on the imagination of
those who saw and heard. It was a part which drew on her
own vivid personality, with its intensity of faith, its horror of
sin, its passionate and chivalrous purity. Voice, action, ges-
ture, and living character were all combined into a single jet of
dramatic individuality.' She opened in this part on May 10th,
1839, with overwhelming effect, and from that date until Dec.
30th, 1843, when she gave her last performance of it in the
Royal Theatre, she appeared in it altogether sixty times. She
now appeared at concerts in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Up-
sala. It was at the last-named place that she enjoyed for the
first time the fascinating delight of an escort home, accom-
panied by the students' song; but it was here also that atten-
tion was drawn to the danger of over-straining her voice until
it had had time to range itself.
The conduct of Mrs. Lind now made it extremely difficult
for Jenny to conduct her labours with comfort and success.
While the daughter was thinking how she could best cultivate
her divine gift, the mother was wrapped up in such questions
as raising the price of seats. She had pride in her daughter,
but her wonderful success seemed rather to aggravate than to
soothe her sense of wrong, her irritability, and her suspicion.
There was nothing for it but to leave the old home-life entirely,
but the initiative came finally from her mother, who told Jenny
and her friend Louise Johansson that they were welcome to
leave her roof. This they accordingly did, and Jenny ſound a
home near the theatre, in the house of Adolf Fredrik Lindblad,
}
1
K 2
132
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
the chief of Swedish song-writers, and her warm admirer and
friend. Into his family she was received: she found in Madame
Lindblad a second mother; and from Herr Lindblad himself,
and from the society into which he brought her, she inhaled
an influence which affected her entire development, artistic, in-
tellectual, and moral. She remained with the Lindblads until
her departure for Paris in July, 1841, and she again found.
her home there on her return to Stockholm in 1842. As her
biographers have pointed out, there was something in Jenny
Lind's nature which ardently called for sympathy. She was
passionately domestic, and greatly needed an atmosphere of
affection to encourage her genius and give her confidence and
security. She indulged such a lofty idealism, that the assur-
ance of love was necessary to her, to save her from the miseries
of suspicion and distrust. 'It was not that she did not have
affection for her parents; on the contrary, she held them very
deep in her heart. But it was impossible for them to enter
into her motives and aims.' Her daily surroundings were now
no longer in collision with her artistic inspiration, and her
spirit breathed a congenial and bracing air.
In 1840 she added two important characters to her score—
Donna Anna in Don Juan and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor.
The latter became one of her famous rôles, and she appeared
After
in it twenty-eight times in the course of twelve months.
the thirteenth performance, June 19, 1840, the actors, orchestra,
and chorus gathered before her dressing room and serenaded
her; and on her return home she was presented with a silver
tea and coffee service, which was highly valued by her, and
was left, by specific direction in her will, to her eldest son.
Among the subscribers were a number of the most distinguished
men in Sweden.
The personal character of Jenny Lind, as she now steps
Canon
forth upon the world's stage, is of profound interest.
Holland well observes with regard to this:
sal consent, in all who record her influence,
C
There is a univer-
that what they ex-
JENNY LIND.
133
perienced was the effect of a character, whose genius penetrated
every corner of her being, so that her unique gift of song
appeared but as an incidental illustration of the originality
which was everywhere in her. Even those who felt her singing
most profoundly, felt ever as she sang, that she was more than
her singing, while those whose lack of musical perception
made them impervious to her special talent, experienced
as much as any the full fascination of her personality. This
impression of her belongs to her early, as well as to her
after years; and it cannot be better given than in an ex-
pressive phrase, used long after our present date, indeed, but,
which vividly and exactly embodies what was already so
characteristic of her. "After all, I would rather hear Jenny
talk than sing, wonderful as that is," writes Mrs. Stanley, the
wife of the Bishop of Norwich, to her sister, Mrs. Augustus
Hare, in September, 1847, after a rapturous account of what
her singing had been. Surely, a most striking remark to make,
and one which cannot be too emphatically reiterated, as giving
a cue to the indescribable impression left by this great artist on
the memory and the hearts of those who came nearest to her.
"I would rather hear her talk than sing!" And at the very
moment when the words were written there was another person
in that palace at Norwich who gave a cordial adhesion to this
sentiment. There could be no better instance of Jenny Lind's
social impressiveness than her intercourse with Arthur Penrhyn
Stanley, son of the Bishop of Norwich, afterwards the famous
Dean of Westminster. He was a man of the highest type of
culture, of sensitive imagination, of most delicate intellect-a
man, too, who was habitually in contact with all the finest
minds and the richest experiences of his day—and yet he was
absolutely excluded from even the slightest sympathy with all
that made her "the greatest artist whom Mendelssohn had
ever known," for he was unable to enjoy one note of her music;
and still, though her voice is no more to him than an inexplic-
able interruption to their conversation, he was absorbed under
}
134
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
the sway of her personal fascination, and became her life-long
and intimate friend.'
Jenny Lind, therefore, was not just a woman with a wonder-
ful voice, and nothing more. Her nature was full and rounded,
her sympathies keen and wide. N. P. Willis, in his volume on
Famous Persons and Famous Places, has given his impressions
of her as she appeared in the first flush of her career. Like
everyone else, he was enthralled by the magic of her singing,
but when he came to know her personally, he was unable to
resist the impression that she could have written as brilliantly
as she sang.
He notes her 'singularly prompt and absolute
power of concentration,' and laments a 'poetess whose song
has hindered and misled.' After listening to a speaker, 'the
graphic suddenness with which she would sum up, could receive
its impulse from nothing but genius.' Finally, writing as he
did in 1850, he owns to 'a conviction that her present wonder-
ful influence is but the forecast and shadow of a different and
more inspired exercise of power hereafter. Her magnetism is
not all from a voice, and a benevolent heart. The soul while
it feels her pass, recognises the step of a spirit of tall stature,
complete and unhalting in its proportions. We shall yet be
called upon to admire rarer gifts in her than her voice.'
There was something in her which appealed to universal
humanity, and it was through her voice that she spoke to
humanity, as great poets have done through their writings.
Music was the medium by which she expressed her feelings
and ideas, and she was able to use that medium of inter-
pretation in a way such as few artists have ever rivalled. Men
of the highest stamp of intellect found kinship in her; and at
Stockholm, where her humble upbringing was known to all,
she was able to break down the barriers of social caste by the
innate strength and depth of her character, and to pass un-
questioned into circles where birth and position were supposed
to be of vital importance. A lady who witnessed her reception
at a soirée given in 1839 by the first leader of society in
}
JENNY LIND.
135
Stockholm, published an account of it years afterwards in a
periodical published by the Fredrika Bremer Association-an
Association whose object is to further the cause of women who
are anxious to obtain their own livelihood. After describing the
entry of Ministers of State, of beautiful patrician ladies, or
bearers of historical names, the writer proceeds to say: 'On
the threshold stands the host, and by his side, shaking hands
with him, a young girl, with an abundance of curls round the
pale cheeks; a gown in simple style softly clings round the
maiden figure, and there is a dreamy, half absent, and fasci-
nating look in the deep-set eyes.
'The hum is increasing still more when the old nobleman
leads the visitor into the midst of his guests, but he has not
time to pronounce her name, it is already on everybody's lips,
and is now flying round the room with a subdued sound :
Jenny Lind! Jenny Lind!
'The beauties of the season are forgotten, and, what is more,
they forget all about themselves; flirtation is suppressed;
etiquette is sinned against unpunished; and as soon as the
new guest has been cordially welcomed by the hostess, and
by, her, personally, introduced to the principal ladies, a
crowd of the high assembly gathers round the plain-looking
young girl, thus for once justly conceding the preference of
genius to birth-of beauty of soul to beauty of features.
'A singular liveliness is breathing through the hitherto
rather formal company. The hostess attracts the young and
old to her animated conversation with the honoured guest ;
and everyone is gratified who catches a word or a look from
this Jenny Lind, who for the last few weeks has, as Alice in
Robert le Diable and Agatha in the Freischütz, captivated
and enchanted both themselves and the whole Stockholm
public.
'In the memory of the writer of this paper, Jenny Lind
stands out a unique apparition-like no one else, simple, un-
pretending, but dignified-penetrated by a sort of sacred
I
136
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
responsibility for her mission-the mission of Art in its lofty
purity and which she felt that God had confided to her.'
It has been truly remarked that it was the lofty sense of her
artistic mission which placed Jenny Lind at her ease in these
as in other circles. She never lost her spiritual sense of re-
sponsibility; indeed she told Mrs. Stanley that 'every morning
when she got up she felt that her voice was a gift from God,
and that, perhaps, that very day might be the last of its use.'
This invested life with solemnity for her, and gave her that
aspect of independence and of detachment that was so vital to
one in her position. For the society of mere fashionables and
flatterers she had a wholesome detestation, but for the com-
panionship of those of kindred sympathies, or those who could
help her morally, intellectually, and spiritually, she had a
ceaseless yearning. Yet in some respects 'her soul was like a
star and dwelt apart,' independent and self-contained.
'In this temper of moral independence,' observes Canon.
Holland, 'she passed up, out of the struggles and clouds of
her childhood, into the full sunlight of success, with absolute
ease, without a shadow of encumbering consciousness, without
a breath of worldliness ever crossing her spirit. She retained,
without even an effort, all her inherent and native simplicity,
her freshness, her undaunted sincerity. Never did she slacken,
for a moment, her demand that the worth of men should be
estimated, wholly and utterly, according to their moral value.
Never, for one instant, did the mists of conventionalism dim
her vision, or confuse her insight. She had one set of
balances, and one only. She never even seems to have been
tempted to exchange them. Swept up in the sudden rush of an
overwhelming success, out of obscurity into the company and
the friendship of princes and kings, this girl, in her simple-
hearted virginity, kept a conscience as true and firm as steel.
No illusion bewildered her, no worldly splendour ever suc
ceeded in beguiling her. Failings of another type might be laid
to her charge. She could be hasty, and hard, sometimes, in
JENNY LIND.
137
her judgments. She was liable to misunderstand people. She
had vehement impulses, and equally vehement reactions, which
were apt to gain for her, from those who knew her little, the
character of capricious fitfulness. She could magnify slight
lapses into great sins. A certain spiritual haughtiness there
was in her; a certain suspicion of the motives on which she,
by bitter experience, learned that men too often act. All this
might be said. But one thing it was for ever impossible, even
for an enemy, to imagine, that Jenny Lind ever condescended
to lower the steady standards by which she tested all human
worth, high or low, rich or poor.'
Those whom Jenny Lind liked she could make at home
immediately, those whom she disliked for their frivolousness
or hollowness, on the contrary often wished themselves at their
own home. In conversation she was direct, simple, pure. She
was not one of the talkers of society, who can go on in a
never-ending stream, but she would drop out a vivid sentence
or a pungent epithet which spoke volumes. She was, in truth,
in her conversation as in her performances, dramatic, abrupt,
intense. In personal appearance she was homely,-plain some
would have called it, until her face was irradiated by the ideas
at work within. Her features were far from being of a classic
order, indeed, they were large and homely, but also pliable and
expressive in an unusual degree, so that when she became
animated there was such a grace about her that all thought of
plainness was lost. It was a face that could express vividly
either the humorous or the tragic emotions. In height, she
was from five feet three to four inches, but her carriage was
such that in standing and walking she appeared to be con-
siderably taller. The elements of her character were typically
Swedish. 'She was fond of dwelling on the artistic capacities.
of her people, to whom she owed her own quick sensibilities,
her alert and receptive imagination, her vivacity of tempera-
ment. She believed them to have all the artist's possibilities
in them, with all the attendant perils. And, in view of these
}
138
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
perils, to which all such gifted natures must be liable, it is
remarkable that she should have included within this national
groundwork of her character, a profound moral stability, a
depth of seriousness, such as would be rare in any race; and
moreover, with this she had a persistence, a stubbornness, which,
among Scandinavian races, is traditionally attributed to the Finn.
And if she had the vivacity of her people, she inherited also
from it the strong passionate feelings and affections which
make the home-relationships in Sweden so rooted and so deep;
and also that undertone of melancholy, into which such artistic
sensitiveness is prone to react,-an undertone which seems to
creep, like the sighing of a wounded spirit, out of the black
heart of Swedish pine-woods, and to hover over the wide
surfaces of her inland waters. Such notes of pathos underlie
the songs of her people: and she was a true Swede when she
wrote of herself, "When I am alone, you have no idea how
different I am so happy, yet so melancholy that tears are
rolling down my cheeks unceasingly."
Jenny Lind's residence with Lindblad produced the happiest
results. Besides the fatherly care which he exercised over her,
he introduced her to the best instrumental music then being
produced in Europe, and it was he who opened up a new
world to her in the music of Mendelssohn, whose Songs without
Words had just taken everyone by storm. What she owed to
Lindblad she thus expressed in 1882, after the appearance of
his biography: 'I have to thank him for that fine compre-
hension of Art which was implanted by his idealistic, pure, and
unsensual nature into me, his ready pupil. Subsequently
Christianity stepped in to satisfy the moral needs, and to teach
me to look well into my own soul. Thus it became to me,
both as an artist and as a woman, a higher chastener.' But
while she received much from Lindblad she also returned not
a little. She impressed the individuality of her genius upon
his songs, and conferred upon them a European fame.
In 1840 she was made member of the Royal Swedish
>
JENNY LIND.
139
Academy of Music, and the same year was appointed Court
singer. Her musical preceptors had nothing more to teach
her, and the directors of the Royal Theatre, now that her
popularity was at its height, were unwisely anxious to use her
great powers to the full. They proposed a new contract, under
which she would receive £150 per annum, a benefit, and other
advantages. But Jenny Lind had already taken her resolution
for the future. She declined the offer of the directors on the
ground that she had decided upon a journey to, and a sojourn
at, some place abroad, which, through furnishing the finest
models in art, would prove to her of the greatest profit. While
she had herself felt the necessity for this step, she had been
chiefly moved to it by that eminent man of letters, Geijer, who
insisted that she belonged to mankind rather than to Sweden,
and pressed upon her the necessity of widening her range of
knowledge and skill. Belletti, also, the famous baritone at the
Royal Theatre, impressed upon her vividly 'what scientific
singing in the great Italian manner really meant.' Besides
doing her work at the theatre, in 1840 Jenny Lind gave a
provincial round of concerts to help her to pay for her projected
studies in Paris, and this too-constant use of her voice un-
fortunately somewhat strained it. While she was half-way
through this tour, we find her writing to a friend in Stockholm,
begging her to go and search out a painter named Bruhn, a poor
sick man, who had been ill in bed for fourteen years.
She was
to give him on her behalf eight rix-dollars banco, and to tell
him this was for the months of July and August. This little
incident throws light upon the noble benevolence of Jenny
Lind, which began thus early, and continued throughout life.
Her charity was natural and spontaneous, and the source of
her deepest happiness. She delighted in it when she received
her first humble stipend, and it brought joy to her when wealth
enormously increased.
Reaching Paris in the summer of 1841, with introductions
to several influential personages, Jenny Lind was received by
140
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
ܐ
the Duchess of Dalmatia, wife of Marshal Soult. At a little
réunion at the duchess's house, at which Signor Manuel
Garcia, the most renowned singing master in Europe, was
present, she sang a number of Swedish songs. Owing to her
nervousness, however, and the real injury done to her voice by
its ceaseless use, and the fatigues of travel, she came through
the ordeal so unfavourably that Garcia afterwards told a friend
she was at that time altogether wanting in the qualities needed
for presentation before a highly-cultivated audience. Soon
after this Jenny Lind called by appointment at Signor Garcia's
residence, and as she now formally requested the great Maestro
to receive her as a pupil, he thoroughly examined and tested
her voice. After putting her through the usual scales, he
requested her to sing the well-known scena from Lucia di
Lammermoor—Perche non ho?' Although she had rendered
this scena brilliantly no fewer than thirty-nine times at the
Stockholm Theatre, she now, from some cause or another,
broke down completely. Thereupon Garcia pronounced his
terrible verdict-'It would be useless to teach you, Made-
moiselle; you have no voice left.' This sentence was
frequently misquoted to the effect that she had no voice at all,
a statement which would neither be just to master nor pupil.
Garcia's exact words were: 'Mademoiselle, vous n'avez plus de
voix.' She had once possessed a voice, but it had been so
strained by over-exertion and a faulty method of production,
that for the time being she practically had one no longer.
The blow was a bitter one to the artiste, but she knew that the
power was there, though not now available, and she promised
the Maestro to give her voice six weeks of perfect rest. At the
end of this period, Garcia found the voice so far re-established
that he was able to give good hope of its complete restoration,
provided that the faulty method of production which had
nearly destroyed it were abandoned; and he agreed to give
her two lessons weekly, for which she was unfeignedly grateful.
She learned quickly under Garcia, and although into the
JENNY LIND.
141
higher life of her art no master could enter, in other respects
his training was invaluable. Of the management of the
breath, the production of the voice, the blending of its registers,
and a thousand other technical details upon which the most
perfect of singers depends, in great measure, for success, she
knew nothing-and but for Signor Garcia in all probability
never would have known anything.' But the inner part of her
art, the soul-training if I may so express it, was all her own.
She did but sing as the bird does, because it must, and she
had ever before her the ideal which God had plainly written
upon her heart. Her studies under Signor Garcia lasted for
ten months, and by that time she had assimilated all technical
instruction which any master could give her. The artiste was
now complete, and the goal was in sight.
Mdlle. Lind made a new and slightly better arrangement
with the directors of the Royal Theatre, Stockholm, but her
friends regretted this when they found that the great composer
Meyerbeer was manifesting a special interest in her career.
Having arrived in Paris for the purpose of making arrange-
ments for the production of Le Prophète, Meyerbeer heard her
sing, and predicted great things for her in the future. His
only doubt was whether her voice would be powerful enough
to fill the salle of the Grand Opéra. A trial was consequently
made, and Meyerbeer was still more enthusiastic, although the
singer was nervous, and by no means did justice to herself.
The composer felt that Berlin would offer a better field for
Jenny Lind than Paris; and in this his judgment was perfectly
correct, for besides the fact that no Northerner could hope
perfectly to satisfy a Parisian audience-especially on the score
of pronunciation-neither the style nor the tastes of the singer
would have found a congenial home at the Grand Opéra.
Many false reports subsequently arose out of these circum-
stances such as that Jenny Lind had vowed a profound
artistic dislike to France in remembrance of the check she had
experienced there, that she constantly refused engagements in
142
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Paris because she had been heard there without success, &c.
These reports were afterwards publicly contradicted on the
highest authority. Jenny Lind was persuaded that she was not
fit for Paris, nor Paris for her, and therefore she decided not to
make an appearance there. This is the whole case, and the
story of the famous début that was a failure was a myth. Nor, on
the other hand, did the artiste ever make such a declaration as
that often attributed to her, that she would never sing in
France. In 1866 she gave a concert at Cannes for the benefit
of the Hospital, and the enthusiastic reception accorded to
the singer was equal to that awarded to her in other coun-
tries.
Returning to Stockholm, she appeared at the Royal Theatre
in October, 1842, in Norma, when the critics were amazed at
her musical development. She had not only acquired a soprano
voice of great sonority and compass, capable of adapting itself
with ease to every shade of expression, but a technical
command over it great enough to be regarded as unique in the
history of the musical world. Before the close of June, 1843,
she had made one hundred and six appearances in thirteen
important operatic parts. In her usual spirit of forbearance
and generosity, she now effected a settlement of her domestic
difficulties. Establishing her father and mother in a home of
their own in the country, she obtained their consent to transfer
the guardianship over her which the law allowed to a duly-
appointed official guardian. The gentleman chosen was Herr
Henric M. Munthe, Judge of the Court of Second Instance, a
man of high character and distinguished position, on whose
judgment she could rely with absolute confidence. He was
also a man of strong musical proclivities. From this time forth
Jenny Lind's domestic troubles ended. The spring of 1843
witnessed a national event of deep interest, viz., the celebration
of the twenty-fifth year of the reign of King Carl Johan. The
musical and dramatic celebrations, in which Jenny Lind took
the leading part, were in every sense worthy of the occasion,
JENNY LIND.
143
and the Royal Family showed their high appreciation of them.
A visit to Copenhagen confirmed the impression she made at
Stockholm. Her success was so tremendous that she gained
in Denmark a second Fatherland. 'The ice was broken,'
wrote her early friend, Bournonville, the composer. 'Jenny
Lind discovered that she could get her living out of Sweden;
and also she learned that the artist, in reality, should not settle
down on the native soil, but, like the bird of passage, should
go there only in search of rest.’ Copenhagen marked an
eventful period in her destiny; and Bournonville, in empha-
sising this, said: 'Her name soon became of European fame;
gold and praise were showered upon her; princes and nations
vied with one another in their offerings to her; poets sang of
her; in the midst of winter she never wanted flowers.' Hans
Christian Andersen, who heard her at this time, was absolutely
fascinated by her. Passages in his Life are devoted to record-
ing her triumphs; and in one place he observes: On the
stage she was the great artist, towering above all around her;
at home, in her chamber, she was a gentle young girl, with the
simple touch and piety of a child.
The spectator
laughs and weeps, as she acts; the sight does him good; he
feels a better man for it; he feels that there is something
divine in Art. One realises, at her appearance on the stage,
that the holy draught is poured from a pure vessel.'
In the following extract, M. Bournonville has not only de-
scribed the hopelessness of his own efforts to write something
worthy of the celebrated vocalist, but he has enshrined an
anecdote which will deservedly keep Jenny Lind's name green.
for ever:
Again and again have the delights of Nature, the glory of
Art, the enthusiasm for the true and the beautiful, inspired in
me some attempts at verse. How, then, is it, that to-day the
sweet singing of Jenny Lind has left my lyre mute? How is
it that I fail to find even an echo within me which might pass
on into the distance the sound of that music which laid open
144
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
1
to my soul a world as yet unknown? Alas! To paint in words
the tones of a voice steeped in all the uttermost tenderness of
the human heart is as vain as to seek shadows in the darkness.
Moreover, the sound of my voice would be lost in the thunders
of a people's praise. The little flower that alone I could offer
to the artist, in the midst of her triumphs, would be crushed
under the feet of the crowds that press round her. No! Rather
let me treasure up the memory of her gifts, and of her story
within my home, and let me leave, as a legacy, to those that
come after, one trait of her life, which will serve to bring her
honour in the day when the loud applause will have died away,
and when the poets will be singing the praises of other and
newer names.
'I had a friend who enjoyed all the privileges of happy com-
fort, of public esteem, of cultivated taste, of the affection of his
family, of the love of his fair, young wife. A cruel sickness
brought him down to the very edge of the grave; but by God's
mercy he was saved. He was lying, still weak and faint, in
his bed, when the thrill of excitement which Jenny Lind had
kindled in Copenhagen reached even to his sickroom; and
bitter were the regrets of the young wife at the sick man's loss
of that which would have been to him such a delight. Jenny
heard of her desire, and offered, at once, to sing to the invalid.
And so, in the very heart of her triumphs, when the Court
and the town were anxiously craving to know whether they
could yet keep her one day more, she found time to charm,
with her heavenly voice, the hearts of the two young people.
It was on a Sunday, the 16th of September, 1843, at the hour
when all the churches were filled with the praises of God, that
Jenny, without any strangers to observe her, without any pub-
lic notice, did this act of charity; and the tears of gratitude
which flowed from the eyes of Mozart and Mathilde Waage
Petersen were the waters in which they christened her with the
name of "Angel." The emotion, and the pleasure of the visit,
served to help the recovery of my friend.
JENNY LIND.
145
(
May God ever bless Jenny Lind!
'May she receive the reward of her charity, if, one day, she
be wed.
'And if God grant her children, may it be given them to
know of this, their mother's act.'
From October 4, 1843, to July 5, 1844, Jenny Lind made
sixty-six appearances at the Stockholm Theatre, in sixteen dif-
ferent characters. Six of these were new, and included Armida,
in Gluck's famous work, and Anna Boleyn, in Donizetti's opera
of that name. She also gave a concert for the benefit of the
Swedish composer, J. Axel Josephson, who had long been yearn-
ing for such an opportunity of placing his works before the
public. Soon afterwards she set out for Dresden in order to
perfect her German before appearing in one of Meyerbeer's new
pieces. At a farewell audience the Queen Dowager of Sweden
presented her with portrait medals of herself and the late king,
and with a watch, which, she said, 'is to remind you not to
forget the time of your return to us.' In less than two months,
however, she was recalled to Stockholm, to assist, in her capa-
city of Court singer, at the festivities which marked the coro-
nation of King Oscar I. Returning to Germany in October,
she went to Berlin to meet Meyerbeer, and through him was
privately presented to the Royal Family. At a reception given
by the Princess of Prussia (afterwards the Empress Augusta)
her singing gave unbounded delight and satisfaction. On the
21st of October, at an evening party, she met Mendelssohn for
the first time, and this meeting laid the foundation of a friend-
ship which terminated only with the death of the composer.
Meyerbeer had intended that Jenny Lind should assume the
part of Vielka in his new opera of Das Feldlager in Schlesien,
written for the opening of the Court Theatre. He had
expressly designed the part for her, but unfortunately it was
claimed by Fräulein Tuczec, the privileged prima donna, who
was ill-suited to the character. Jenny Lind, therefore, chose
for her début the part of Norma, in Bellini's masterpiece. It
L
146
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
was a bold choice, for the part was associated with all the
mighty operatic stars, from Pasta to Grisi. But the performance
was an unequivocal success. The public was in raptures-the
critics were disarmed. The heroines of the past and present
were forgotten. Mdlle. Lind gave an entirely new reading to
the character, and 'presented the impassioned Druidess before
the world in the character of a true woman. The critics of
Berlin, familiar with every tradition of the stage, yielded at
once to the logical consistency of this beautiful though unfa-
miliar conception, and accepted the new ideal as the highest
impersonation of the character of Norma that had as yet been
presented to the public.' The part became one of her three
most perfect creations, the other two being Alice, in Robert le
Diable, and Amina, in La Sonnambula. She was now accepted
as the greatest singer and actress then living; and Meyerbeer
would not rest content until she had interpreted the part
written for her in his new opera as she only could interpret it.
Accordingly, Das Feldlager in Schlesien was reproduced, and
so far from being a comparative failure it was now an
astonishing success. The most influential critic of the day
declared that Mdlle. Lind, in Vielka, had proved that her talent
fulfilled the highest conditions, not in one direction only but
in many. Sontag herself had not enjoyed so great a triumph.
Mdlle. Lind performed seven times in Norma and five in Das
Feldlager in Schlesien, and then appeared in Weber's remark-
able opera, Euryanthe. This strange composition, with its
many brilliant and moving passages, is a curious blending of
the natural with the supernatural. When Madame Schroder-
Devrient undertook the interpretation of the title rôle she sang
the music splendidly, but treated the heroine as moved by
human passions only, and entirely ignored the supernatural
element. The Swedish actress, on the contrary, seized upon it
as the leading motive of the whole impersonation, and thus
gave to the character the significance which the composer
originally intended. She next appeared in La Sonnambula
JENNY LIND.
147
and created such a profound sensation that when a repetition
was announced the prices of admission rose to an unprece-
dented figure. Finally, in February, 1845, she made her first
public appearance in the concert-room, and achieved a success
as brilliant as that won on the operatic stage. Three Court
performances followed, with flattering attentions from the King
and Queen, and she took her farewell for the season at a con-
cert given in aid of the Asylum for Blind Soldiers. Among
the friends whom she made in Berlin were the Earl and
Countess of Westmoreland, who ever affectionately cherished
her memory, the aged poet Tieck, and Prof. Ludwig Wich-
mann, the well-known sculptor, who, with his wife, afterwards
received her into relations of genuine sympathy and affection.
After singing at Hanover, and also at Hamburg-where her
whole figure was so bestrewn with flowers that she stood upon
an improvised carpet of blossoms -she reached home once
more, and gave eighteen performances at Stockholm. But we
are told that while there was the wildest excitement on one
side, there was feverish yearning for retirement on the other.
It was the quiet of home that the wanderer longed for-not the
shouts of the admiring multitude.
From Sweden, however, she was speedily summoned again,
and by no less a personage than King Frederick William IV.
of Prussia, who was preparing to entertain Queen Victoria and
the Prince Consort at Brühl, and afterwards at Schloss Stol-
zenfels, a restored castle on the banks of the Rhine. She
accordingly journeyed thither, and her singing filled with grati-
fied astonishment an exacting connoisseur, the late Lord
Liverpool. The Queen and Prince Albert also were enchanted
over the treat provided for them. Her Majesty paid Jenny
the most cordial compliments, expressing a 'hope of seeing her
one day in England.' Mdlle. Lind descended the Rhine as
far as Cologne, from whence she travelled to Frankfort.
During this journey she first met Mr. and Mrs. Grote, of whom
she had frequently heard through Mr. Edwin Lewin and others.
L 2
148
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Mrs. Grote and Jenny Lind soon became attached friends, and
the former wrote an unpublished Memoir of the songstress,
which contained many passages of genuine interest. Almost
from the first, Jenny assured her friend that her earnest desire
was to have done with the stage, and to retire into private life
as speedily as was consistent with pecuniary independence.
Frankfort was scarcely less enthusiastic over the singer than
Berlin, and further successes awaited her at Darmstadt,
Copenhagen, and Christiansborg. Andersen and Ehlensch-
läger celebrated her in verse, and artists and musicians in
the kindred arts.
Returning to Berlin in the autumn of 1845, she took up her
abode with Professor Wichmann and his wife. In a room of their
house in the Hasenheger Strasse she frequently sat up till late
in the night conversing with Mendelssohn and Taubert. Dur-
ing the five months from November, 1845, to April, 1846, she
appeared at the Opera House twenty-eight times. Among her
new characters was Donna Anna in Mozart's Il Don Giovanni,
which was rendered with such independent judgment and skill
that it was at once accepted as one of her most striking imper-
sonations. Again in Weber's Der Freischütz she created an
equally favourable impression, for she gave to the character of
Agatha a rounded fulness and completeness which even she had
not associated with it before. Jenny Lind conceived a deep ad-
miration for Mendelssohn. Writing to her guardian in January,
1846, she says: 'Felix Mendelssohn comes sometimes to Berlin,
and I have often been in his company. He is a man, and at
the same time he has the most supreme talent. Thus should it
be.' It has been observed as absolutely certain that 'these two
artistic spirits exercised a notable influence over each other in
all that concerned the Art they worshipped; insomuch that the
Elijah itself owed something to Mendelssohn's familiarity with
her ideal treatment of the voice, while her interpretation of his
loveliest melodies was undoubtedly penetrated with the spirit
he infused into the harmonies with which he accompanied her
JENNY LIND.
149
on the pianoforte.' The two artists appeared together in con-
certs given at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, and rarely have mortal
ears listened to such glorious sounds as those which thrilled
the enraptured audiences. Herr Brockhaus, referring to these
concerts in his Diary, says: 'Soul and expression so intimately
associated with so beautiful a voice and so perfect a method
will never be met with again; the appearance of Fräulein
Lind is, therefore, truly unique.' And so nobly did the
character and the genius blend together that her fellow artists,
male and female, were among the most enthusiastic in loving
and admiring her.
Spontini's opera, the Vestale, in which Jenny Lind had ap-
peared on a few occasions at Stockholm, was a very favourite work
in Berlin, and the principal character of Julia had been sustained
by all the leading prime donne for twenty-five years past. Jenny
Lind now undertook this arduous part, the opera being pro-
duced on the 30th of December, 1845. The critics recorded
that the close of the year had witnessed a true elevation of the
artistic spirit, as well as one of the most memorable achieve-
ments which ever graced the annals of the Berlin stage. On the
evening after this splendid triumph, Jenny Lind and her friend
and companion, Louise Johansson, prepared a Christmas-tree
for Hans Christian Andersen, who was then staying at Berlin.
His Christmas had been lonely, and they resolved to surprise
him; so Jenny dressed a little tree, with lights and pretty pre-
sents, for her 'brother,' as she called him. Andersen observes
in his Autobiography: 'We three children of the North met
together on that Sylvester-evening, and I was the child for
whom the Christmas-tree had been lighted up. With sisterly
feeling she rejoiced over my success in Berlin, and I felt almost
vain of the sympathy of so pure, so womanly a being. Her
praises were sounded everywhere, the praises not of the artist
only, but of the woman. The two united awoke for her a true
enthusiasm.' The friends met again at Weimar, both having
been invited thither by the Grand Duke, and Jenny made five
150
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
appearances in this city so closely associated with the immortal
poets, Goethe and Schiller.
Returning to Berlin in February, 1846, she appeared in her
last new part for this season, that of Valentine in Meyerbeer's
powerful opera of Les Huguenots. In the first and second acts
she does not seem to have deeply impressed the critics; but
'her third act was a touching prayer in view of her bitter fate;
her fourth a mighty battle waged against it; her fifth a splendid
victory over it. She sang the last scene under the truest in-
spiration of faith.' She rivalled in the originality and merit of her
interpretation her great predecessor in this character, Madame
Schroder-Devrient. Later performances of the opera were
suspended owing to an accident which befell the singer and
which enforced a complete rest for several weeks.
She was
cheered during this illness by charming letters from Mendels-
sohn and other friends, and Professor Magnus, at her request,
utilised the time by painting a fine three-quarter length portrait
of her, which she presented to her friends the Wichmanns.
This important work is now one of the treasures of the Berlin
National Gallery.
After some further performances at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig
-where she sang with Madame Clara Schumann, accompanied
by Mendelssohn-Mdlle. Lind proceeded to Vienna. She was
to appear at the great theatre, but its dimensions so startled
her that her nerves were quite shaken, and she felt that she
could not appear. The representations of Herr Hauser, how-
ever -a friend to whom Mendelssohn had given her an intro-
duction-convinced her that her refusal to appear would be
seriously mis-interpreted, and she bravely went through the
rehearsals. The regular performances proved an unexampled
success, and never within the memory of the Viennese had
such crowds assembled at the theatre. A clique of three prime
donne was formed against her, which was cleverly satirised by
the poet Grillparzer. She appeared in Norma, and triumphed
over all opposition, critics who came with hostile purpose being
JENNY LIND.
151
completely disarmed and carried away by her artistic power
and genius. The audience were so excited that they called
her back sixteen times at the close, and twelve or fourteen be-
fore that. Various other operas followed, and for her benefit
night she chose La Sonnambula, when every available seat
in the house was filled with the élite of the Austrian capital.
The ablest representatives of Art and Literature, the highest
of the nobility, and the various members of the Imperial family
assembled en masse to do honour to the occasion. When
flowers fell in showers upon the stage, the Empress mother,
with her own hand, dropped a wreath at Mdlle. Lind's feet.
After the performance crowds thronged the streets near to her
residence until day broke.
In May and June, 1846, Mdlle. Lind and Mendelssohn
assisted at the Lower Rhine Musical Festival, held at Aix-la-
Chapelle. In the Creation and Alexander's Feast the Swedish
vocalist was heard at her best; but the greatest success she
achieved was in Mendelssohn's Auf Flügeln des Gesanges and
Frühlingslied. She produced in these an effect wholly unpara-
lelled, insomuch that the meeting became known as the Jenny-
Lind-Fest. Mdlle. Lind next appeared at Hanover, where she
was brought into the most friendly relations with the Crown
Prince and Princess subsequently the unfortunate King
George V. and Queen Marie. Bremen, Hamburg, Darmstadt,
and Munich were afterwards successively taken.
England had for some time been looming in the distance as
a field for Mdlle. Lind's efforts before arrangements were
finally made for her debut in London. In 1845 Mr. Alfred
Bunn, the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, made overtures to
her for his next season. Mr. Bunn was a very astute gentle-
man so far as the interests of Mr. Bunn were concerned, and
he managed to get Jenny Lind's signature to a contract which
she afterwards regretted, and desired to be absolved from. She
was inexperienced in contract-making, and offered generous
terms for her release, but Mr. Bunn was obdurate, and at length
152
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
took the matter into court, when he was awarded a solatium
somewhat higher, though not a great deal, than Mdlle. Lind
had offered him. But he had the satisfaction, as I suppose it
must have been to him, of having caused great pain and annoy-
ance to the sensitive artiste.
Later on, being pressed thereto by Mendelssohn, Mrs. Grote,
and other friends who were most anxious for her appearance
in London-Mdlle. Lind concluded a contract with Mr.
Lumley, of Her Majesty's Theatre. The vocalist would not
enter into the question of money, regarding only her art; but
Lumley had a larger soul than Bunn, and he gave her splendid
terms. Here are the main points of the Lumley-Lind con-
tract, which was formally signed on October 17, 1846-1.
An honorarium of 120,000 francs (£4,800) for the season,
reckoned from the 14th of April to the 20th of August, 1847.
2. A furnished house, a carriage, and a pair of horses, free
of charge, for the season. 3. A further sum of £800 if Mdlle.
Lind wished to spend a month in Italy before her debut, ſor
the purpose of studying the language or for rest. 4. Liberty
to cancel the engagement if, after her first appearance, she felt
dissatisfied at the measure of its success and wished to dis-
continue her performances. 5. Mdlle. Lind was not to sing
at concerts, public or private, for her own cmolument. This
contract was the prelude to the finest episode in the career of
the great vocalist.
At Munich, Mdlle. Lind was welcomed into the family of
Professor Von Kaulbach, the famous Bavarian painter. She
appeared at the Theatre in four of her favourite operas, but it
was impossible for her to sing at Court, as the reigning spirit
in the household of King Ludwig I. was the notorious Lola
Montez. Between this woman and Jenny Lind lay a moral
gulf that was impassable, and the pure young artiste could not
have accepted an invitation to a Court Concert where contact
with her would have been inevitable. So no appearance was
made at Court, and the visit proved a happy as well as a
JENNY LIND.
153
successful one. In deference to the strongly-expressed wishes
of Mendelssohn and Herr Hauser, she now abandoned her
project of going to Italy in order to study the language. She
had already acquired a sufficient familiarity with the Italian
language to answer all necessary purposes, and any difficulty
which might arise in London could easily be overcome with
the aid of Signor Lablache. Mr. Lumley generously met the
singer on a point in the contract raised by Mendelssohn. He
agreed that the clause forbidding her appearance at concerts
should not extend to any concert given by the Queen, or to
gratuitous singing at private parties of friends.
Towards the close of 1846, Mdlle. Lind appeared at Stutt-
gard, Carlsruhe, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Nuremberg, Augsburg,
-and Munich once more. The reception was everywhere
marked by the same enthusiasm; and at her rooms in the
picturesque old town of Heidelberg she was greeted with a
serenade, and by a torchlight procession of students.
When she left next day the inhabitants of Heidelberg pre-
sented her with a poetical address, printed on a long narrow
filet of delicate sea-green satin, fringed at each end with gold.
Wherever she appeared her songs seemed to make poets of her
auditors. In January, 1847, she returned to Vienna, and the
opera chosen for her re-appearance was the ever popular La
Figlia del Reggimento. She never gave a performance in this
bright and graceful opera without exciting thunders of applause
for her charming and natural rendering of the principal char-
acter. She also appeared at several concerts, one of which
was given by Madame Schumann, and another for the benefit
of the little Wilhelmina Neruda-now Lady Hallé-who had
made a great reputation in Vienna as a child-violinist, although
she was then little more than six-and-a-half years old.
both these occasions her singing was gratuitous, as it was also
at a third concert, arranged for the benefit of the Children's
Hospital and the Home for Little Children. On the 18th of
February, 1847, Meyerbeer produced his Das Feldlager in
On
154
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Schlesien for the first time in Vienna. It had been revised for
the purpose, and achieved a triumphant success. The Viennese
art-lovers were so enthusiastic that they had struck a valuable
medal, with a portrait of Jenny Lind on the obverse, and a
swan, the emblem of song, with a branch of laurel, on the
reverse. This was presented to her, together with an address
encircled by a silver laurel wreath. By command of the
Emperor Ferdinand, she was invested with the title of Imperial
Royal Chamber Singer. As an example of the singer's
generosity, although the Vienna season was short, she made
no fewer than ten gratuitous appearances on behalf of charities
and private individuals.
Meantime, the period was approaching for Jenny Lind's first
appearance in England. Things were in a somewhat critical
condition operatically at Her Majesty's Theatre. Mesdames
Grisi and Persiani, and Signori Mario and Tamburini, had
thrown up their connection with the old house, and started the
Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden. Signor Lablache was
the only great singer who had remained honourably faithful to
Mr. Lumley; and it was with the liveliest feelings of hope
mingled with anxiety that that worthy manager now looked
forward to the appearance of Mdlle. Lind. The singer arrived
in London in April, 1847, where she found Mendelssohn had
preceded her for the purpose of conducting four performances
at Exeter Hall of his new oratorio, the Elijah. Again, the old
feeling of nervousness overcame Jenny Lind for a time, and
she begged her friend Mrs. Grote to intercede with Mr.
Lumley for a withdrawal of the contract. However, the
feeling passed away when she attended the rehearsals, and
realised what was expected of her, and that her non-appearance
would involve the absolute ruin of the house.
The part she chose for her first essay was Alice in Robert
le Diable, partly because it was one of her most successful
rôles, and partly because her first entrance upon the crowded
stage in the dress of a pilgrim, with no important passages to
JENNY LIND.
155
sing until after the departure of the chorus, would give her
time to collect her energies. The performance was fixed for
the 4th of May, and on that evening the excitement of the
public exceeded anything that had ever been witnessed by the
oldest frequenter of Her Majesty's Theatre. In two or three
minutes after the doors were opened the vast theatre was filled.
Ladies were carried off their feet and pressed against the
barriers in their efforts to obtain admission, and the theatre
might have been filled three times over. The Queen, the
Prince Consort, the Queen Dowager, and the Duchess of
Kent occupied the Royal boxes to the left of the stage.
Mendelssohn sat in the stalls with his friend George Grote, the
historian. The house was crowded with the most brilliant
representatives of the talent, the fashion, and the wealth of
London. Mdlle. Lind enjoyed the greatest triumph of her
life. The most experienced critics were taken by surprise by
the new prima donna's conception of the part of Alice, which
exceeded in poetic beauty no less than in genuine dramatic
power, the finest impersonation of the character that had
hitherto been seen on the stage. 'Her sudden transition, in
the third act, from the childlike simplicity of the little Norman
peasant-girl, half jealous at the imaginary inconstancy of her
humble brother, to the devoted courage of the woman who
had vowed to rescue her Royal foster-brother from the toils of
the Evil One; the terror of the mysterious being whose secret
she had surprised by listening to the unholy sounds that issued
from the cavern; her faith in the power of the wayside Cross
to which she clung for protection; her dread of involving her
lover and her aged father in the destruction with which she
herself was threatened by the Fiend; all the stronger emotions
successively called forth by the development of the situation,
no less than the surbordinate traits needed to unite them into
a consistent whole, were delineated with a truthfulness that
carried everything before it, reaching its natural climax in the
terzetto which immediately precedes the finale to the fifth
156
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
act -a scene which Mdlle. Lind made peculiarly her own, by
singing the thrice-recurring phrase in B major, Sommo Iddio
che, appien comprendi, quale a lui sovrasti orror, not in the
cantabile style in which it is usually delivered, but, with a
breathless eagerness which almost took away the hearer's
breath as he listened to it.' Many years afterwards, the writer
ventured to remind Madame Goldschmidt that she had sung
this passage with an expression with which he had never heard
it invested by any other artist. "How could I tell how I
sang it?" she said, "I stood at the man's right hand, and the
Fiend at his left, and all I could think of was, how to save
him."
The Queen was profoundly impressed by the performance.
Her Majesty is well known as an accomplished musician and
a sensitive critic, and she appreciated to the full the qualities
of Mdlle. Lind's voice, at once delicate and powerful, round,
soft, flexible; the charm of her appearance, her touching
natural acting, and the grace of her movements. When the
fair cantatrice was summoned before the curtain, the Queen,
carried away like the rest, cast a superb bouquet, which lay
before her in the Royal box, at the feet of the débutante. Again
and again during the evening she had expressed her admiration
to the manager, and Mr. Lumley states in his Reminiscences of
the Opera, that he had never seen Her Majesty moved to such
enthusiasm.
The
Describing the memorable scene, and the singing of Mdlle.
Lind, one of the leading critics of the day wrote: 'If the
expectations were great, we must say that they were more
than realised. The delicious quality of the organ-the rich
gushing tone-was something entirely new and fresh.
auditors did not know what to make of it. They had heard
singers over and over again; but here, that wondrous thing,
a new sensation, was actually created. The sustained notes,
swelling with full richness, and fading down to the softest
piano, without losing one iota of their quality, being delicious
$
JENNY LIND.
157
when loud, delicious when whispered, dwelt in the public ear,
and reposed in the public heart. The shake, mezza voce, with
which she concluded the pretty air, "Quand je quittais la Nor-
mandie," was perfectly wonderful from its rapidity and equality.
This air was rapturously encored, with the most enthusiastic
waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Even the way in which
she uttered the first two or three notes of her romance,
" Va
dit-elle," so completely took the audience by surprise, that they
interrupted her progress, and forced her to stop by their tumul-
tuous applause.
'While Mdlle. Lind raised her audience to enthusiasm by
the exquisite nature of her organ, and her perfect execution,
the impression she made as an actress was no less profound.
There is no conventionality about her, no seizing the strong
points of a character and letting the rest drop. She acts
thoroughly, with a perfect naturalness, and an infinite variety of
gesture. All seems dictated by the moment, yet all is graceful.
There is no stereotyped form for love, or anger, or what not,
but all the impulse of immediate inspiration. As striking
points, we may mention the clinging to the cross when attacked
by Bertram, and the expression of rapture just before the final
descent of the curtain, when she feels that she has saved
Robert from perdition. Her whole conception of Alice is a
fine histrionic study, of which every feature is equally good.'
Another critic of equal eminence thus recorded his impres-
sions: 'An excitement almost unparalleled in theatrical annals
has prevailed as to the appearance of the Swedish cantatrice.
The highest expectations were formed; while on the other
hand, there was a fear-not an unnatural one-that she could
not equal her immense reputation, or come up to the ideal of
those with whom she had been for so long a period the topic
of conversation, and the object of extraordinary interest.
This fear has proved to be groundless. Jenny Lind has
surpassed all expectation, because it had been impossible to be
prepared for something so startlingly new-so unlike all we have
158
WOMEN OF RENO WN.
heard before. Each one, it is true, formed his own idea of the
vocalist, yet this always bore a certain resemblance to some
by-gone favourite, or to some existing prima donna. Most
people expected, indeed, a marvellous superiority in degree,
but were unprepared for the superiority in kind of talent which
she possesses.
'To have attained the perfect control over her voice-that
faultlessness, purity, and delicacy of execution that she pos-
sesses--Mdlle. Lind must have studied arduously; but, to such
profit have been her studies, that there is nothing in her sing-
ing to remind one of them. Everything she does appears
spontaneous, and yet there is never a fault. The same thing is
remarkable in her acting. Every movement seems the impulse
of the moment; yet, not for a second does she lose sight of
the identity of the character she impersonates-not for a
moment are her gestures otherwise than expressive, and grace-
ful. Art, by her, has been only used to cultivate nature—not for
a moment to disguise it. Were it even possible to detect a flaw
in the voice, or a slip in the execution of Jenny Lind, her
singing would still be resistless; for it reaches the heart and
touches the deepest chords of human feeling; but she has,
perhaps, never a weak moment. At the instant the listener,
from the habit of hearing other artists, expects the voice to
become weak and fatigued-at that moment it bursts forth in
greater beauty than ever. Her voice is astonishing. To the
fullest, purest, sweetest tone imaginable, it unites a vibrating
and penetrating quality, that makes its softest whisper audible,
no matter where the listener is seated, and that, when exerted
to its full extent, is truly glorious; and it may be distinctly
heard above the loudest din of the orchestra and of the voices
of the other artists.
'We are not afraid of being considered extravagant in our
praise, at least by those who have witnessed Mdlle. Lind's per-
formances; for the delight of hearing something so new and
so natural has taken the most phlegmatic by storm. Seldom
JENNY LIND.
159
has any theatre presented such a scene of excitement and en-
thusiasm as Her Majesty's on the night of her dêbut. Her
reception was overpowering. That said much for the fame
that had preceded her; and also, we think, for the universal
good-will which Mdlle. Lind, as an individual, has succeeded
in inspiring. The feeling of enthusiasm, warmed, as it was,
by the striking, timid attitude of the young artist, as she was
led forward to receive such an unusual welcome, continued
unabated all the time that she remained upon the stage, show-
ing that public expectation, after being raised so high, was fully
gratified, and even surpassed.'
The 'Swedish Nightingale,' as she was now called, settled
down in a picturesque residence at Old Brompton, called Clair-
ville Cottage, but the whole district has since made way for the
bricks and mortar of London. The name of the singer be-
came a household word at a bound. Not alone the metropolis
raved about her, but the 'Jenny Lind fever' spread to the
remotest parts of the kingdom. Portraits of the 'Nightingale'
were sold on snuff-boxes, on match-boxes, on bon-bon boxes,
on tea-boards, and on pocket handkerchiefs. Horses, dogs,
cats, singing-birds, were all named after her; little children
gave her name to the objects dearest to them in the world;
songs were sung about her in the streets of London. Night
after night crowds collected round the theatre, and the strug-
gles for admission were violent beyond precedent. Albert
Smith drew a humorous but by no means exaggerated picture
of an enthusiast who, appearing first in all the glories of irre-
proachable evening costume, passed afterwards through a suc-
cession of changes which caused him to figure, in the final tableau,
with his dress-coat torn open from top to bottom, the bow of
his cravat protruding behind his neck, his lorgnette crushed be-
neath a fellow-enthusiast's foot, and his Gibus-represented in
six successive stages of deterioration-reduced to a wiry skele-
ton. Through all this popular furore, the singer herself pur-
sued her way 'unaffected by the admiration lavished upon her;
1.60
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
as modest, as gentle, as thoughtful for others, as conscientious.
in her endeavour to do justice to the music she sang, as she
had been in the early days of her student life.'
Jenny Lind's next great triumph was as Amina, in La-SonL-
nambula, and critics and public alike thought that in this she
had surpassed herself. Lablache assured the Queen that he
had never seen such acting in his life, and Her Majesty, as
appears from the notes in her Diary, cordially agreed with him.
From first to last of this performance the Queen was rapt in
her attention, and unable to take her eyes from the singer,
whom she felt to be speaking from heart to heart. After this
came that wholly different work, La Figlia del Reggimento, in
which the vocalist thoroughly entered into the spirit of the
merry and the innocently child-like vivandière. She even re-
moved this creation out of the conventional and the common-
place by her thorough and original treatment. The picture of
Mdlle. Lind as Maria was shortly to be met with everywhere,
and no portrait was ever more familiar to the English populace
than this. On the 15th June, 1847, the Queen and the Prince
Consort paid a State visit to Her Majesty's Theatre. By Royal
command Mdlle. Lind appeared for the first time in England
in the opera of Norma. The entertainment was a magnificent
and a memorable one. But a considerable portion of the
press and the public were disappointed with the prima donna's
rendering of the character of Norma. Mdlle. Lind made her
a woman with a human heart in her bosom, but Grisi had
always represented her as a beautiful tigress, and the public
were so accustomed to the latter rendering, that the part was
not one of Jenny Lind's unquestionable triumphs.
Mendelssohn had long desired to write an opera in which
Jenny Lind should sustain the chief character, but their mutual
friend Madame Birch-Pfeiffer failed to produce a satisfactory
libretlo. Lumley now suggested a new plan, in accordance
with which M. Scribe, the well-known French author, prepared
a libretto on the subject of Shakespeare's Tempest. Writer
JENNY LIND.
161
and composer, however, differed as to the way in which the
subject should be treated-Scribe making changes against
which the artistic conscience of Mendelssohn rebelled—and the
project was abandoned. Lumley now applied to Verdi, who
produced a new opera under the title of I Masnadieri. It was
based on the plot of Schiller's Robbers, and was full of horrors,
while the heroine was made entirely subservient to the aged
nobleman Maximilian, whose cruel wrongs form the pivot of
the story.
Nevertheless, the opera achieved a complete.
triumph. Verdi, who conducted, received an ovation, but the
manager was not satisfied with the opera, and his judgment
received corroboration in that it was never successful on any
Italian stage. The last new part in which Mdlle. Lind appeared
during this famous season of 1847 was that of Susanna in
Mozart's Nozze di Figaro. Here again she studied the part in
the spirit of the composer, abandoning mere tradition, and
finding out for herself the vocal treasures which Mozart had to
offer. The consequence was another genuine success, and it
was seen from her rendering that there was a great deal more
in Mozart's opera than in the comedy of Beaumarchais. The
latter gave a brilliant and witty picture of manners only, but
Mozart evoked sympathy with his characters by inspiring them
with feeling and passion.
Between the 28th of May and the 9th of August, Mdlle.
Lind sang twice, by command of Her Majesty, at Buckingham
Palace, and once at Osborne ; besides taking part in a concert
given by Queen Adelaide at Marlborough House, at which
Her Majesty and the Prince Consort were present. Her
Swedish songs were new to the Royal audience, and the
exquisite softness and finish of the execution went home to
every heart. After the concert at Osborne, the cantatrice was
greatly moved when the Queen, calling her aside, presented
her with a bracelet, saying as she did so, 'I must again express
not only my admiration but my respect for you '—words which
were more precious far to her than the costliest present. Jenny
M
162
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Lind's biographers have well shown that, brilliant as were her
stage triumphs, these were not really what won for her the
heart of all England: 'The admiration for the artist, the
respect for the pure and holy life she was known to be living,
the reverence for her as a true and noble-hearted woman, all
these were won for her on the night of her first appearance
before an English audience—and she never lost them to the
day of her death. But, the Love that made the name of Jenny
Lind a "household word " in every English homestead, by
every English hearth, in every dwelling in which the English
language was spoken-the long-enduring Love was won in the
concert-room and at the Oratorio. Not even 'Ah non credea,'
or 'Deh vieni non tardar,' commanded, on the stage, the depth
of affection that was yielded, in an instant, to the 'Swedish
Songs,' in the concert-room, or the still deeper feeling born of
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and 'Holy, Holy, Holy,' in the
Cathedral. It was through the Elijah and the Messiah, through
the Lieder of Mendelssohn and Lindblad, and the Swedish
Melodies, and the thousand treasures that appeared later on, in
the concert programmes—that the beloved "Swedish Nightin-
gale" sang her way into the great heart of the British public,
and it is therefore of peculiar interest that it should be through
the warm and glowing words of our Queen that we now hear
of the first concert at which she ever sang in the country in
which she was naturalised.'
1,
Mdlle. Lind gave a series of provincial performances during
the months of August and September, 1847, undertaken on
her own responsibility. She was accompanied by Gardoni,
Lablache, Balfe, and a competent orchestra. After appearing
in all the leading English towns, she extended the tour to Scot-
land. Everywhere she was received with the same extraordi-
nary fervour and enthusiasm. The visit to Norwich during
this tour, led to the formation of a cordial friendship between
Jenny Lind and the Bishop of Norwich (Dr. Stanley) and his
wife. So deeply moved was Mdlle. Lind by the kindness
JENNY LIND.
163
extended to her everywhere, that on leaving our shores, she
was able to speak of her 'beloved England.' On crossing
over to the Continent new triumphs awaited her at Berlin.
Then she said farewell to a city in which she first met so many
kindred spirits, though she never wrote of Berlin with the same
affectionate warmth that she did of London and Vienna. King
Frederick William IV. of Prussia himself conferred the
distinction of Royal Chamber Vocalist upon her, instead of
leaving it to be done by the chamberlain. The Queen of
Prussia was so beloved by Jenny that she assured her friend
Madame Wichmann she could pass through fire for her, if
she desired it.
Returning to her native land, Mdlle. Lind made many ap-
pearances at the Stockholm Theatre, and all the monies she
received she set aside for the purpose of founding a college
where young minds should be consecrated to both art and
virtue. She also sang at many concerts for various noble
charities; and on the 12th of April, 1848, she made her last
appearance on the Swedish stage, taking her favourite character
of Norma. During this season Södermark painted his famous
picture of her as Norma, and the portrait is now one of the
most cherished possessions of Sweden. It was subscribed for
by the employés of the Royal Theatre, and presented to the
Theatre, to be placed there, on January 6th, 1849.
For some time back her spirit had been heavy by reason of
Mendelssohn's death. He passed away November 4th, 1847.
and for a long period she could neither write nor speak of the
melancholy event. At length, after two whole years had
elapsed, she thus wrote to her 'Austrian mother,' Madame
Jäger:-'Ah! mother, what a blow for me was the death
of Mendelssohn! That is why I have been silent so long. For
the first two months after it, I could not put a word down on
paper: and everything seemed to me to be dead. Never was
I so happy so lifted in spirit, as when I spoke with him; and
seldom can there have been in the world two beings who so
- -
M 2
164
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
understood one another as we. How glorious and strange are
the ways of God! On the one hand, He gives all! On the
other, He takes all away! such is life's outlook.'
Mdlle. Lind's return visit to London in 1848 was an
immense triumph. She appeared first on the 14th of May,
at Her Majesty's, in La Sonnambula. Chopin, who was
present, wrote to a friend: "This Swede is indeed an
original from head to foot. She does not show herself in the
ordinary light, but in the magic rays of an aurora borealis.
Her singing is infallibly pure and true; but, above all, I admire
her piano passages, the charm of which is indescribable.' The
songster's voice at this time has been described as a soprano
of bright, thrilling, and remarkably sympathetic quality, with
wonderfully developed length of breath, and perfection of
execution. She could sing up to high D, in rich, full tones, and
even touch higher notes; she literally warbled like a bird, and
especially striking was her rendering of the weird Swedish
melodies.
€
The year 1848 was the year of Revolution, and the Queen's
appearance at the opera, on the occasion of Jenny Lind's initial
performance, was the first time for some weeks that she had
mingled with her subjects. She was received with overwhelm-
ing demonstrations of loyalty. On May 25th, Mdlle. Lind
appeared for the first time in England in Donizetti's Lucia di
Lammermoor. The opera was a favourite one with her, and
she invested the part of Lucy Ashton with such force, that the
immense audience was roused to the highest enthusiasm.
Next came L'Elisir d'Amore, and then on the 29th of July,
Bellini's fine work I Puritani, in which, in the character of
Elvira, she achieved one of her most brilliant successes.
Jenny Lind took a deep interest in the Brompton Hospital
for Consumption, and after visiting it, she gave a grand morn-
ing concert to augment the funds for building the eastern
wing. The concert took place on the 31st of July, in the great
concert-room of Her Majesty's Theatre. It was eminently
JENNY LIND.
165
}
successful, and the recipients of the vocalist's bounty presented
her with a memorial of the event in the shape of a beautiful
silver salver, bearing an impression of the unfinished building,
and the following inscription. In the name of the sufferers
relieved by her bounty, this humble memorial of one of her
noble actions is presented to Jenny Lind, by the committee
of management of the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton,
London, as a slight token of their esteem and gratitude and
in commemoration of the concert given by her on the 31st
day of July, 1848, on which occasion, through the exertion of
her unrivalled talents, £1,766 were added to the funds of the
charity, and a solid foundation laid for completing the fabric,
the unfinished condition of which had excited her generous
sympathy. "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain
mercy." In pleading the cause of the Hospital, in the
following year, Mr. Disraeli passed an eloquent panegyric
upon Jenny Lind in connection with this beneficent act. 'It
almost reaches the high ideal of human nature,' he remarked,
'when we portray to ourselves a youthful maiden, innocent
and benignant, in the possession of an unparalleled and omni-
potent charm, alternately entrancing the heart of nations, and
then kneeling at the tomb of suffering, of calamity, and of
To me there is something most beautiful in this life of
music and charity-a life passed amid divine sounds and still
diviner deeds. A great artist sustained by virtue, upheld by
self-respect, and full of the magnificence of her mission, ranks
in the highest class of human beings and human benefactors.'
care.
During the later months of 1848, Mdlle. Lind made a pro-
vincial tour, one of her principal objects being to assist in
founding Mendelssohn Scholarships in honour of the eminent
composer. A performance of Elijah was given with the same
object at Exeter Hall on the 15th of December. Mdlle. Lind
and others gave their services on this noteworthy occasion,
and the production was faultless. A handsome sum was
raised, and this was placed out at interest. A committee
166
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
was formed, with Sir George Smart as Chairman, and it is
specially interesting to note that the first Mendelssohn
scholar elected was Mr. (now Sir Arthur) Sullivan, who has
so worthily justified his choice. Mdlle. Lind generously gave
other charitable concerts for such deserving institutions as the
Birmingham General Hospital, the Manchester Royal In-
firmary, the Liverpool Southern Hospital, the Worcester In-
firmary, and the Norwich Charities. The proceeds of the
last named concert were subsequently applied to the Jenny
Lind Infirmary for Sick Children. The singer was unresting
in her good deeds.
Early in 1849, Mdlle. Lind gave numerous provincial con-
certs in England, but she had now resolved to abandon the
operatic stage, and to devote herself to the music of the oratorio,
in which she stood equally pre-eminent. Long before the
season of 1849 opened, the sole topic discussed in the
operatic world, was the hoped-for re-appearance of Jenny
Lind at Her Majesty's. But she had made her decision, and
resolutely adhered to it. It was a serious decision for Mr.
Lumley, for neither Mdlle. Alboni nor Mdlle. Sontag, whom
he was fortunate enough to engage, could make up for the
popular favourite. After prolonged negotiation, a compro-
mise was arrived at, by which Mdlle. Lind consented to
appear at six grand classical performances at the Theatre,
at which the music of her favourite operas was to be sung,
without the attractions of the stage. The experiment was tried
on the 12th of April, with Mozart's Il Flauto Magico, but, as
might have been expected, it proved a complete failure. The
public wanted an opera with all the accessories natural to it,
and it would have nothing else; so the remaining performances
were abandoned. Sympathising with the disappointed manager,
Jenny Lind sank her own feelings, and consented to appear in
a few more operatic performances. Accordingly, when La Son-
nambula was produced on the 26th of April, she was received
with all the old fervour and enthusiasm. The opera was given
JENNY LIND.
167
once after this, and Lucia di Lammermoor was also given twice,
and La Figlia del Reggimento and Roberto il Diavolo once each.
It was as Alice, in the last-named opera, that she had made
her first appearance on the London stage, and it was in the
same character that she now took her leave. The performance
came off on the 10th of May; the Queen, Prince Albert,
and the Duchess of Kent being present. At the close the
plaudits were so universal and so continuous that they
blended with each other into one prolonged volume of sound.
The vocalist was deeply moved when she responded to the
last call. Afterwards, when all was over, and the audience
had departed, the members of the chorus presented her with
a gold bracelet, as a token of their esteem and admiration.
This touching tribute was much valued by the recipient.
Between Jenny Lind's first appearance on the operatic stage
in Der Freischütz on the 7th of March, 1838, and her last
in Roberto il Diavolo, on the 10th of May, 1849, she performed
677 times, in thirty operas, her appearances thus averaging a
little over sixty per annum. The opera in which she appeared
most frequently was La Sonnambula, with 98 representations.
Then came the following-Lucia di Lammermoor, 78; Norma,
75; Roberto il Diavolo, 73; La Figlia del Reggimento, 62;
and Der Freischütz, 51. The rest of her appearances ranged
from 27 in Berwald's Divertissement National to three in
Rossini's Semiramide-both of which she never performed out
of Sweden; indeed this was the case altogether with fourteen of
her operas. After Stockholm, she appeared more frequently
in London than in any other city.
In reply to the question, how one with a dramatic genius of
the highest order thus came to leave the stage, the manuscript
Memoir of Mrs. Grote seems to furnish the clue. Jenny Lind
quietly confided her intention to Mrs. Grote, to whom she
spoke of her intense dislike to the entourage which a theatre
necessitated; of the exhausting fatigue involved in dramatic
singing; of the physical risks; while over against all this dis-
168
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
:
tracting environment, she set her own simple tastes and humble
needs, as well as her spiritual aspirations. She saw nothing
wrong or disreputable in the drama itself, but she felt that the
conditions which belong to a triumphant dramatic career were
to her intolerable. Then, she had an intense longing for the
happiness and tranquillity of domestic life; whereas the
operatic star, though courted and applauded by the world, is
practically without a home.
Henceforth, Jenny Lind's appearances in public were con-
fined to the concert room. After a visit to Sweden, where she
made arrangements respecting her poor pensioners, she returned
to England and sang in London and other places, preparatory
to making a tour in the United States. She accepted a brilliant
engagement offered her by Mr. Barnum-the most enterprising
caterer for the public the world has probably ever seen—and in
August 1850 she set sail for America. Jenny Lind did not
retire from the operatic stage from any feeling of excessive
Puritanism, but that her nature had undergone a profoundly
religious change is shown by a letter she wrote before leaving
England to the little daughter of Professor von Jäger. 'I have
for long,' she said, 'had the most eager wish to earn, some-
where, a great deal of money, so as to endow a school for poor,
lost children, in my own country, and the invitation to America
came as a direct answer; so that I go there in this confidence ;
and I pray God in Heaven, out of a full heart, that he will
guide me thither, as ever before, with His gentle hand; and
will graciously forgive me my sins, and my infirmities. I shall
have much to encounter ; it is a very arduous undertaking. But
since I have no less an aim before me than to help in widening
God's kingdom, the littlenesses of life vanish in face of this!
'My dearest Gusti, my Bible was never more necessary to
me than now-never more truly my stay! I drink therein rest,
self-knowledge, hope, faith, love, carefulness, and the fear of
God, so that I look at life and the world in quite another
fashion to what I did before. Would that all men could come
JENNY LIND.
169
to this knowledge, and that we all daily feasted on this Divine
Book; and would that my own Gusti would take all her trouble
to this Book. Then first should we all know how to taste the
true life!'
The American tour proved an extraordinary success, Jenny
Lind's own share of the profits amounting to £35,000. All
this and more she afterwards spent in founding and endowing
musical scholarships and charities in her native country.
It was not to be expected that Jenny Lind had reached this
stage of her life without all thought of marriage. On the con-
trary, in 1847, she had become engaged to Herr Julius
Günther, the leading tenor at the Theatre Royal, Stockholm.
But as she began to feel an increasing desire to quit the stage,
he became all the more enamoured of it. They at length
recognised that there was not sufficient harmony between them
as to the motives and principles by which life should be
directed, and the engagement was broken off by the consent of
both. Then, while singing at Newcastle in the autumn of 1848,
Jenny Lind became acquainted with Claudius Harris, a young
captain in the Indian army. They had religious interests in
common, but in Harris they were so strong that he not merely
asked her to abandon her profession, but to be ashamed of it.
Matters progressed so far, however, that marriage settlements.
were discussed. But Captain Harris was too exacting. He
desired to prevent her from ever appearing in public, and ob-
jected to her considering her own earnings as a sacred trust.
Eventually, through negotiations conducted by Mrs. Stanley,
there was a mutual release from the engagement. But a happy
union was still in store for Jenny Lind, and her marriage took
place during her American engagement. The bridegroom was
Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, a young pianist whom she had known
and encouraged in Europe, and who went out to the United
States as a pianist and accompanist to Jenny Lind, on the
retirement of Julius Benedict from that post. Mdlle. Lind
was married to Mr. Goldschmidt, at the house of Mr. S. Grey
170
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Ward, in Boston, by Bishop Wainwright of New York, accord-
ing to the service of the Episcopal Church, on Feb. 5, 1852.
The bride subsequently spoke of the new strength which had
been brought to her by the chosen companion of her life,'
whom she found to be 'all that her heart ever wanted and
loved.' So that rest and home affections came to her at last.
6
From this time forward she received the active co-operation
of Mr. Goldschmidt in her performances. These were very
frequent, both in England and abroad. From December 1855
to June 1856 she made an especially successful round of
England, Scotland, and Wales, accompanied by a strong band
of supporters which included F. Lablache, Weiss, Ernst,
Sainton, Swift, and Piatti. In 1861-62 she made a tour with
Belletti, Sims Reeves, and Piatti; in 1863 she took part in the
revival of Handel's music to Milton's Allegro and Il Penseroso;
and in succeeding years she appeared on many special occasions,
including the production of Mr. Goldschmidt's Ruth. From
1876 to 1883, her main musical interest lay in leading and
training the female chorus of the Bach Choir, of which her
husband was conductor; and from 1883 to 1886 she laboured
energetically in connection with the School of Singing attached
to the Royal College of Music. The closing years of her life
were spent at Wynds Point, her picturesque cottage on the
Malvern Hills; and her last public appearance was at a con-
cert given for the Railway Servants' Benevolent Fund at the
Spa, Malvern Hills, on July 23rd, 1883. It cannot always be
said of a public singer, but in the case of Jenny Lind her voice
retained its old sweetness and fascination to the end. She
died on the 2nd of November, 1887, and a medallion portrait
of her in Westminster Abbey-appropriately placed under
the statue of Handel-will perpetuate her fame to future
generations.
A noble life, is the verdict one must conscientiously pro-
nounce upon the career of Jenny Lind. From its opening to
its close the artist was swayed by pure and lofty principles. She
JENNY LIND.
?+
171
showed by her example that it was possible to belong to the
stage and yet to take away the reproach from the stage. She
gave delight to millions, and yet kept her soul white and
unsullied through a myriad of temptations. The dazzling
success she achieved never disturbed her inward serenity.
Her gift she recognised as coming from God, and the wealth
which that gift brought she laid at his feet, to be used on be-
half of His weak, suffering, and erring children. Verily, her
name is blessed.
}
MARY SOMERVILLE.
175
MARY SOMERVILLE.
Of all women who have devoted themselves to the cause of scien-
tific research Mary Somerville was the most distinguished. There
was something sublime in her arduous zeal, and the annals of
her sex can show no parallel to it; for in her ninetieth year her
intellectual faculties were still unimpaired, and she was actively
engaged in prosecuting her investigations into one of the most
abstruse branches of scientific learning. When we add to this
that she preserved all through her long career an earnest and
devout mind, which was undismayed and undisturbed by the
advances of scepticism, and that the close of her life was
marked by a firm faith in the glorious future of humanity, it
must be confessed that her life was almost unique in its simple
greatness and nobility.
The even tenor of that life was interrupted by no startling
events. It had its personal joys and sorrows-for none born
of woman is without them-but there were no violent convul-
sions to throw the soul from its moorings, and whatever changes
or vicissitudes overtook her, they were only instrumental in
building up her character, and in enabling her to meet the
future with greater endurance and fortitude. Mary Somerville
herself, in her Personal Recollections, has related in clear and
effective language-but without a trace of vanity or exaggera-
tion—the main features of her life and work; and the slight ad-
ditions necessary to complete her narrative have been made by
her daughter Martha, the worthy daughter of a worthy mother.
176
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Mary Somerville was the daughter of Admiral Sir William
Fairfax, whose wife was the daughter of Samuel Charters,
Solicitor of the Customs for Scotland. The Fairfaxes were
descended from the Fairfaxes of Walton, in Yorkshire, the
main branch of which were created Viscounts Fairfax of Emly,
in the peerage of Ireland, now extinct, and a younger branch
Barons Fairfax of Cameron, in the peerage of Scotland. One
of the latter branch was the great Lord Fairfax, Commander-
in-Chief of the armies of the Parliament during the Civil War.
Admiral Fairfax saw a good deal of active service, and was once
made prisoner by the French, the result of attacking a vessel
vastly superior to his own. He was afterwards engaged in the War
of American Independence, and in 1797 distinguished himself
greatly at the Battle of Camperdown. Lady Fairfax seems to
have been a close reader of the Bible, sermons, and the news-
paper; but it need scarcely be said that the newspaper has
changed much in character since last century. Strong good
sense and great strength of expression in writing and conversa-
tion were among the further qualities possessed by her lady-
ship, and these and other characteristics she transmitted to her
daughter, who also inherited her father's cool composure in
moments of danger.
In the winter of 1780, Lady Fairfax, who had accompanied
her husband to London, set forth on her return journey to the
north. She had proceeded as far as the manse of Jedburgh,
the home of her sister Martha-wife of the Rev. Dr. Thomas
Somerville, minister of Jedburgh-when she was taken ill, and
gave birth to her daughter Mary on the 26th December. By a
singular coincidence, Mary Somerville was born in the house of
her future husband, and nursed by his mother. The permanent
home of the Somervilles was at Burntisland, and thither the
mother conveyed her son Samuel and her newly-born infant as
soon as she had recovered strength. Burntisland was a quiet
seaport town on the coast of Fife, immediately opposite to
Edinburgh. It was here, while quite young, that she imbibed
MARY SOMERVILLE.
177
her taste for natural history. Her mother taught her to read the
Bible and to perform her daily devotions, but otherwise she was
suffered to grow up comparatively wild. At seven or eight
years of age she began to be useful-gathering the fruit for
preserving, shelling the peas and beans, feeding the poultry,
and looking after the dairy. Mary did not care for dolls, but
she soon made friends with the birds, and knew their habits
and times of flight. In winter the robin would come in at the
window, and hop about the breakfast-table picking up crumbs.
It was a time of severe trial for the girl when she was set to
learn the catechism of the Kirk of Scotland, for it was uncon-
scionably dry, and she had a bad memory. She saw a good
deal of the old women of Burntisland, who were an acute race,
and sometimes a match for the minister himself. A capital
story is told of one of them. 'Peggie,' said the minister,
what lightened the world before the sun was made?' She
reflected for a minute, and then replied, 'Dear sir, the question
is mair curious than edifying.'
When Admiral Fairfax returned home from sea in 1789 he
was shocked to find his daughter somewhat of a savage, who
could only read such books as the Arabian Nights and Robin-
son Crusoe; so he set to work on the Spectator, making her
read a paper aloud every morning after breakfast. The con-
sequence of this discipline was that in after life she never
opened the book; and for similar painful disciplinary reasons
she did not regard Hume's History of England as the brightest
book in the world. At the age of ten she was sent to a board-
ing school at Musselburgh, kept by a Miss Primrose, where she
was utterly wretched, and wept copiously. Perpetual restraint
she found a miserable exchange for perfect liberty. Here is a
picture of boarding-school life a hundred years ago: A few
days after my arrival, although perfectly straight and well-made,
I was enclosed in stiff stays with a steel busk in front, while,
above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the shoulder-
blades met. Then a steel rod, with a semi-circle which went
N
178
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
under the chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In
this constrained state I, and most of the younger girls, had to
prepare our lessons. The chief thing I had to do was to learn
by heart a page of Johnson's Dictionary: not only to spell
the words, give their parts of speech and meaning, but as an
exercise of memory, to remember their order of succession.
Besides I had to learn the first principles of writing and the
rudiments of French and English grammar. The method of
teaching was extremely tedious and inefficient. Our religious
duties were attended to in a remarkable way. Some of the
girls were Presbyterians, others belonged to the Church of
England, so Miss Primrose cut the matter short by taking
us all to the kirk in the morning and to church in the
afternoon.'
Mary Somerville was released from this kind of slavery in
twelve months, and returned, to her inexpressible delight, to
Burntisland. Here she wandered about at her own sweet will,
becoming quite learned in fish, bird, beast, and plant lore. She
also studied conchology, as well as the flora of the district. In
wet weather every moment that could be spared from her
domestic duties she spent in devouring Shakespeare; but she
was also sometimes set to work a sampler Somewhat later
she studied history. Strange to say, her reading memory was
defective, yet she could play long pieces of music on the piano
without her book, and she never forgot her mathematical
formulæ. When on a visit to her uncle, Dr. Somerville, of
Jedburgh, she began to read Latin with him. The doctor was
the first person to encourage her passion for learning, and he
early discovered her rare intellectual qualities, which he took a
keen delight in developing. A little love episode went on at this
time relating to one of her girl cousins. The writing master of
this girl was David Brewster, afterwards the celebrated philo-
sopher. He fell in love with his pupil, but never told his love,
while she afterwards became attached to an officer in the army,
but was not allowed to marry him because her mother would not
MARY SOMERVILLE.
179
permit her to go out to such an outlandish place' as Malta
with him; so she lived and died unmarried.
The French Revolution, as is well known, created great alarm
and excitement in England. Many Liberals supported it in its
origin, though they lamented its after excesses; but the English
Tories became more violently Tory still after the Revolution.
The most frightful and exaggerated abuse was heaped upon the
Liberals, and Mary Somerville records that it was very largely
owing to this that she became a Liberal. 'From my earliest
years,' she remarks, 'my mind revolted against oppression and
tyranny, and I resented the injustice of the world in denying
all those privileges of education to my sex which were so
lavishly bestowed on men. My Liberal opinions, both in
religion and politics, have remained unchanged (or, rather,
have advanced) throughout my life, but I have never been a
Republican. I have always considered a highly educated
aristocracy essential, not only for government, but for the
refinement of a people.'
Her scientific bent received its first impetus by her accidental
discovery of certain problems in algebra in an illustrated
Magazine of Fashions. She wanted to know more, and thought
that Robertson's Navigation would assist her, but was dis-
appointed. However, she was helped to what she wanted by
overhearing a conversation between her drawing-master,
Nasmyth, and the Ladies Douglas, touching perspective. He
said, 'You should study Euclid's Elements of Geometry-the
foundation not only of perspective, but of astronomy and all
mechanical science.' Shortly afterwards she procured Euclid,
and Bonnycastle's Algebra, which she began to study alone with
courage and assiduity. It would astonish many young ladies
of the present day to hear of the various branches of knowledge,
as well as accomplishments, to which Mary Somerville devoted
herself. Besides the severer studies just mentioned, she had
made herself proficient in Latin, and acquired enough Greek
to read Xenophon and part of Herodotus. She was an ex-
N 2
180
women of renown.
cellent dancer, a fair artist, and a good performer on the piano-
forte, taking pieces by Pleyel, Clementi, Steibelt, Mozart, and
her favourite Beethoven. At the same time she took her share
in the work of the household. She was an excellent Shakes-
pearean scholar, and it was the greatest treat she enjoyed when
in Edinburgh to see Mrs. Siddons and her brother John Kemble,
Charles Kemble, Young, and Bannister in the most famous of
the great dramatist's plays. Her father seems to have been
alarmed about her mathematical studies. Peg,' said the
gallant old tar to his wife, 'we must put a stop to this, or we
shall have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days.'
I must pause here to quote an amusing anecdote about the
elder Mrs. Somerville, which Mary Somerville gives as follows:
'My mother was so much afraid of the sea that she never would
cross the Firth except in a boat belonging to a certain skipper
who had served in the Navy and lost a hand; he had a hook
fastened on the stump to enable him to haul ropes. My brother
and I were tired of the country, and one sunny day we per-
suaded my mother to embark. When we came to the shore,
the skipper said, "I wonder that the leddy boats to-day, for
though it is calm here under the lee of the land, there is a stiff
breeze outside." We made him a sign to hold his tongue, for
we knew this as well as he did. Our mother went down to the
cabin and remained silent and quiet for a time; but when we
began to roll and be tossed about, she called out to the skipper,
George! this is an awful storm, I am sure we are in great
danger. Mind how you steer; remember I trust in you!" He
laughed and said, "Dinna trust in me, leddy, trust in God
Almighty." Our mother, in perfect terror, called out, "Dear
me! is it come to that?" We burst out laughing, skipper and
all.'
(C
At the age of seventeen, Mary Somerville captivated all
spectators by her rare and delicate beauty, both of face and
figure. She was called the 'Rose of Jedwood,' and she kept
her beauty to the last day of her life. When she had become
MARY SOMERVILLE.
181
celebrated, and artists wished to commemorate her, she would
laughingly say that 'it was very hard no one ever thought of
painting her portrait when she was young and pretty.' She
always looked younger than her age, and even at ninety she
did not appear old. This was owing to her simple habits of
life, and her freshness of heart and mind. Those who danced
with her at Edinburgh in her teens said she had a graceful
figure, slightly below the middle size, a small head well set on
her shoulders, a beautiful complexion, bright, intelligent eyes,
and a profusion of soft brown hair. Hear it and tremble, O
ye ruinous damsels of London society at the present day, that
she made all her own dresses, even for balls! Mary entered
heartily into the fun of all the little partics and the dances,
did not disdain a little flirtation, and was much sought after
and admired. This blue-stocking, at any rate, was evidently
of the right sort, thoroughly girlish, beautiful, and human.
There is, perhaps, little wonder that Mary Somerville was
confirmed in her Liberal opinions by the harshness of the
political legislation of the time, by the infamous way in which
the army and navy were recruited, and by the cruelty of the
penal code. As she very justly says, 'The oppression and
cruelty committed in Great Britain were almost beyond en-
durance. Men and women were executed for what at the
present day would only have been held to deserve a few weeks'
or months' imprisonment. Every liberal opinion was crushed,
men were entrapped into the army by promises which were
never kept, and press-gangs tore merchant seamen from their
families, and forced them to serve in the navy, where they were
miserably provided for. The severity of discipline in both
services amounted to torture.' As an example of the severity.
of the penal laws, Mr. Justice Coltman said that when he first
went the Northern Circuit, he saw more than twenty people
hanged at once at York, chiefly for horse-stealing and such.
offences. Happily, owing to the efforts of the noble-hearted
Romilly, a great amelioration was secured in the criminal code.
182
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
In 1804, Mary Somerville's cousin, Samuel Greig, commis-
sioner of the Russian Navy, and Russian Consul for Great
Britain, paid a visit to Burntisland, and ultimately married
Mary Somerville. She had no fortune, for her parents were
obliged always to live economically, but on going away her
mother gave her £20 to buy warm wraps for the ensuing win-
ter. But instead of this, she bought with it a portrait of her
father, painted immediately after the battle of Camperdown, by
Sir M. A. Shee, president of the Academy. The bride's parent
would not allow the marriage until Mr. Greig had obtained the
Russian Consulship and settled permanently in London. Russia
was then governed in the most arbitrary and tyrannical manner
as indeed, when has it not been ?-and it was neither a safe
nor a desirable place of residence. A brother of Mr. Greig, Sir
Alexis Greig, commanded the Russian naval force in the Black
Sea for more than twenty years. It was through his interest that
Mary Somerville, many years after her marriage-and at the
request of Dr. Whewell, master of Trinity College, Cambridge
-obtained the promulgation of an order by the Russian
Government for simultaneous observations to be made of the
tides on every sea-coast of the Empire. It was stated in many
of the biographies current after Mary Somerville's death,
that Mr. Greig, conscious of the latent powers of her mind,
took a keen pleasure in initiating his wife into the mysteries of
mathematics and general science. This was utterly crroncous.
She was only able to continue her mathematical and other
pursuits under great disadvantages. Although her husband
did not prevent her from studying, she met with no sympathy
whatever from him, as he had a very low opinion of the capac-
ity of her sex, and had neither knowledge of nor interest in
science of any kind. After three years of married life in
London, Mrs. Greig was left a widow with two sons. One
died in childhood, and the other, Woronzow Greig, became a
barrister and Clerk of the Peace for Surrey, but died suddenly
in 1865, to the great grief of all who knew him.
MARY SOMERVILLE.
183
Returning to Burntisland, the young mother divided her
time between her children and her mathematical studies. She
had already studied plane and spherical trigonometry, conic
sections, and Fergusson's Astronomy; and she now endeavoured
to read Newton's Principia. She found it very difficult at this
time, but at a later period her assiduous study was rewarded,
and she wrote numerous notes and observations on that won-
derful work. But mathematical science was at a low ebb in
Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and few
experimenters had yet adopted the calculus, which had
already enabled foreign mathematicans to carry astronomical
and mechanical sciences to the highest perfection. It may,
perhaps, be noted here that the differential calculus is
the method of differencing quantities, or of finding an
infinitely small quantity, which, being taken an infinite number
of times, shall be equal to a given quantity. The exponential
calculus is a method of finding and summing up the differen-
tials of exponential quantities. The integral calculus is a
method of integrating or summing up differential quantities.
Although Professors Ivory and de Morgan had adopted the
calculus, it was some time before it came into general use with
mathematicians. Mary Somerville exchanged problems and
solutions with Mr. Wallace, who became professor of mathe-
matics in the University of Edinburgh. On one occasion she
solved a prize problem, and was awarded a silver medal cast
purposely with her name upon it. At the instance of Professor
Wallace, who supplied her with a list, she studied all the
French works of the first order bearing on mathematica
and astronomical science, even the highest and most abtruse
branches. These and other valuable works belonging to Mrs.
Somerville were presented after her death to Girton College,
Cambridge. When the Edinburgh Review was at its most
brilliant period, about ten years after its foundation, Mrs. Greig
-as she then was-became personally acquainted with Henry
Brougham, Sydney Smith, Professor Playfair, and other eminent
contributors.
184
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
In 1812 came her marriage with Dr. William Somerville,
son of her uncle the Rev. Dr. Somerville, who represented
the ancient family of Somerville of Cambusnethan. The
younger Somerville had been a great traveller, but could never
be persuaded to write an account of his wanderings. He was
present at the taking of the Cape of Good Hope, and pene-
trated further into the Caffre country than any white man had
yet done, but with imminent peril to his life. He was proud
of his wife's researches, and regarded no trouble or labour as
too great if he could be of service to her. The union was one
of affection on both sides, and now Mary Somerville was
thoroughly happy in her work and in her home. Her father-
in-law was likewise decply attached to her, and warmly admired
and encouraged her talents. After a stay at the Cumberland
Lakes, Dr. and Mrs. Somerville proceeded to London, and, while
there, witnessed the entry of the Emperor of Russia, the King
of Prussia and his sons, Blucher and Platoff, &c., into the
city. When Dr. Somerville was appointed head of the
Army Medical Department in Scotland, they returned to Edin-
burgh, where they settled. While attending to her domestic
concerns, Mary Somerville found time to read Homer, and to
begin the systematic study of botany, to which she afterwards
added geology and mineralogy. In 1813, to her great grief she
lost her father. He had been sixty-seven years in the British
Navy, was present at the taking of Quebec by Wolfe, in 1759,
and also at the battle of Camperdown, as we have seen, and he
died Admiral of the Red.
Sir Walter Scott, Lord Somerville, and Mrs. Somerville's father-
in-law, were near neighbours and friends; and Mary Somer-
ville gives these extremely interesting reminiscences of Abbots-
ford and its master:-'There was great intimacy between the
three families, and the society was often enlivened by Adam
Ferguson and Willie Clerk, whom we had met at Raith. I
shall never forget the charm of this little society, especially
the supper parties at Abbotsford, when Scott was in the
MARY SOMERVILLE.
185
highest glee, telling amusing tales, ancient legends, ghost and
witch stories. Then Adam Ferguson would sing the "Laird of
Cockpen," and other comic songs, and Willie Clerk amused us
with his dry wit. When it was time to go away all rose, and
standing hand-in-hand round the table, Scott taking the lead,
we sang in full chorus:
L
Weel may we a’be,
Ill may we never see,
Health to the King,
And the gude companie.'
At that time no one knew who was the author of the Waverley
Novels. There was much speculation and curiosity on the
subject. While talking about one which had just been pub-
lished, my son Woronzow said, "I knew all those stories long
ago, for Mr. Scott writes on the dinner table. When he has
finished, he puts the green cloth with the papers in a corner
of the dining room; and when he goes out, Charlie Scott and
I read the stories." My son's tutor was the original of
Dominie Sampson in Guy Mannering.
A quaint old chronicle, entitled Memorie of the Somervilles,
written by James, cleventh Lord Somerville, who died in 1690,
was edited by Sir Walter Scott, who also found in it passages
for his novels which he could not have discovered elsewhere.
In addition to many curious anecdotes and pictures of Scottish
life, the Memorie gave ample details concerning all the
branches of the Somerville family. When Sir Walter was
ordered to go abroad for relaxation, he kissed Mary Somer-
ville-who went with her husband to take leave of him—and
said, 'Farewell, my dear; I am going to die abroad like other
British novelists.' Upon this Mrs. Somerville remarks,
'Happy would it have been if God had so willed it, for he
returned completely broken down; his hopes were blighted,
his sons dead, and his only remaining descendant was a grand-
daughter, daughter of Mrs. Lockhart. She married Mr.
James Hope, and soon died, leaving an only daughter, the last
G
186
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
2
descendant of Sir Walter Scott. Thus, the "merry, merry days
that I have seen" ended very sadly.'
Dr. Somerville was appointed a member of the Army
Medical Board in 1816, and it became necessary for him to
reside in London. He and his wife accordingly left Scotland
to take up their abode in the metropolis, where they had a
house in Hanover Square. On the way to London they
broke their journey at Birmingham, in order to see Watt and
Boulton's manufactory of steam engines at Soho. Boulton
showed his visitors the engines in action, and they thought the
power exhibited was almost fearful; yet the locomotive was
only then in its infancy, and Mrs. Somerville lived to see 'this
all but omnipotent instrument change the locomotion of the
whole civilized world by sea and by land.' Not long after-
wards they visited Sir William Herschel at Slough, when the
celebrated astronomer explained the mechanism of his tele-
scopes, and showed them the manuscripts in which he had
recorded his important discoveries. They were all arranged in
most perfect order, as was also his musical library. The son,
Sir John Herschel, afterwards became one of Mrs. Somerville's
most valued friends and advisers.
In London the Somervilles were near the Royal Institution,
where they attended the lectures, and met many distinguished
scientists. Sir Humphry Davy's discoveries made this a
memorable epoch in the annals of chemical science. The
following extract recalls a very tragic incident: 'There was
much talk about the celebrated Count Rumford's steam
kitchen, by which food was to be cooked at a very small
expense of fuel. It was adopted by several people, and among
others by Naldi, the opera singer, who invited some friends to
dine the first day it was to be used. Before dinner they all
went to see the new invention, but while Naldi was explaining
its structure it exploded, and killed him on the spot. By this
sad accident his daughter, a pretty girl and a good singer, was
left destitute. A numerously-attended concert was given for
MARY SOMERVILLE.
187
She was
her benefit, at which Somerville and I were present.
soon after engaged to sing in Paris, but ultimately married the
Comte de Sparre, a French gentleman, and left the stage.
During the year 1817 the Somervilles made a Continental.
tour. At Paris they became acquainted with the brilliant men
of science who shed lustre upon this period. At the Observa-
tory M. Arago showed Mary Somerville all the instruments
of that magnificent establishment in the minutest detail—
an experience that was afterwards most serviceable to her.
He also introduced her to the Marquis de la Place, who,
though incomparably superior to Arago in mathematics and
astronomical science, was inferior to him in general acquire-
ments, so that his conversation was less varied and popular.'
Arago was the most brilliant of the French savants, and was
well versed in politics and current events. When La Place
understood that Mrs. Somerville had read his Mécanique
Céleste, he entered into conversation with her about astronomy
and the calculus, and presented her with a copy of his Système
du Monde, bearing his inscription. Among others whom she met
were Biot and Humboldt, and she had several entertaining
conversations with the great Cuvier, who took her over the
Jardin des Plantes. Cuvier was surprised that scientific
inquirers were to be found in British towns in the far north.
While science was highly cultivated in France, it was confined
to the capital. Here is a glimpse of a different character,
descriptive of the French stage :—
'The theatre was at this time very brilliant in Paris. We
saw Talma, who was considered to be the first tragedian of
the age, in the character of Tancrède. I admired the skill with
which he overcame the disagreeable effect which the rhyme of
the French tragedies has always had on me. Notwithstanding
his personal advantages, I thought him a great artist, though
inferior to John Kemble. I am afraid my admiration for
Shakespeare, my want of sympathy with the artificial style of
French tragedy, and perhaps my youthful remembrance of our
188
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
great tragedian Mrs. Siddons, made me unjust to Mademoiselle
Duchênois, who, although ugly, was certainly an excellent
actress, and a favourite of the public. I was so fond of the
theatre that I enjoyed comedy quite as much as tragedy, and
was delighted with Mademoiselle Mars, whom we saw in
Tartuffe. Some years later I saw her again, when, although an
old woman, she still appeared handsome and young upon the
stage, and was as graceful and lively as ever.'
At Geneva the Somervilles became acquainted with Dr. and
Mrs. Marcet, and through them with De Candolle, the first
botanist of Europe, and Sismondi, the historian. It was Mrs.
Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry which first opened out to
Faraday's mind 'that field of science in which he became so
illustrious, and at the height of his fame he always mentioned
Mrs. Marcet with deep reverence.' De Candolle subsequently
wrote Mrs. Somerville an elaborate letter of advice on the
scientific aspects of botany. At Venice the Somervilles saw
Lord Byron, and at Florence they were presented to the
Countess of Albany, whose proud and insolent manners,
however, greatly disconcerted and wounded the gentle English-
woman. The latter could not converse in Italian at this time,
but she acquired the language later. Rome brought many
artistic delights and distinguished acquaintances, the latter in-
cluding Thorwaldsen, Canova, and Pius VII. Mrs. Somerville
thus records her impressions :-'During this journey I was
highly gratified, for we made the acquaintance of Thorwaldsen
and Canova. Canova was gentle and amiable, with a beautiful
countenance, and was an artist of great reputation. Thorwald-
sen had a noble and striking appearance, and had more power
and originality than Canova. His bas-reliefs were greatly
admired. I saw the one he made of Night in the house of an
English lady, who had a talent for modelling, and was said to
be attached to him. We were presented to Pope Pius the
Seventh, a handsome, gentlemanly, and amiable old man. He
received us in a summer-house in the garden of the Vatican.
MARY SOMERVILLE.
189
He was sitting on a sofa, and made me sit beside him. His
manners were simple and very gracious; he spoke freely of
what he had suffered in France. He said, "God forbid that
he should bear ill-will to anyone; but the journey and the
cold were trying to an old man, and he was glad to return to
a warm climate and to his own country." When we took
leave, he said to me, "Though a Protestant, you will be none
the worse for an old man's blessing." Pius the Seventh was
loved and respected; the people knelt to him as he passed.
Many years afterwards we were presented to Gregory the
Sixteenth, a very common-looking man, forming a great con-
trast to Pius the Seventh.'
Though there was much brigandage at this time, the travellers
managed to journey from Rome to Naples without any en-
counter. They ascended Vesuvius, obtained a fine collection
of volcanic minerals at Portici, and a bronze statuette of Mi-
nerva, and a very fine rosso antico Terminus-the Roman god of
boundaries—at Pompeii. At Bologna they made the acquaint-
ance of the celebrated Cardinal Mezzofanti, the man of many
tongues. The whole tour had been a most instructive one for
Mary Somerville from the scientific and artistic points of view,
and she returned to England with her receptive mind still
further embellished and reinforced from the stores of know-
ledge.
Profoundly interesting were Mary Somerville's interchanges
of thought with distinguished English scientists after her return
from abroad. One of the foremost of these was the chemist
Dr. Wollaston, whose discoveries were the greatest up to the
time of Faraday. Amongst other things he invented an admir-
able sliding rule of chemical equivalents, and for his great
discovery of the malleability of platinum he was awarded the
gold medal of the Royal Society. By the invention of the
Wollaston goniometer he was enabled to measure the angle
formed by the faces of a crystal by means of the reflected
images of bright objects seen in them. One sunny morning
1
190
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Wollaston called on Mrs. Somerville, at Hanover Square, and
said, 'I have discovered seven dark lines crossing the solar
spectrum, which I wish to show you.' Closing the window-
shutters so as to leave only a narrow line of light, he put a small
glass prism into her hand, through which she saw them dis-
tinctly. These lines 'were the origin of the most wonderful
series of cosmical discoveries, and have proved that many of
the substances of our globe are also constituents of the sun,
the stars, and even of the nebula.' Among other discoveries
by Wollaston was that of palladium; but, indeed, there were
few branches of science with which he was not more or less
acquainted. Dr. Young was another scientific friend of Mary
Somerville's. He made himself famous by the interpretation.
of Egyptian hieroglyphics, anticipating Champollion, who was
considerably indebted to him in his researches, but ungenerously
withheld the tribute due to him. Young proved the undulatory
theory of light by direct experiment. His lectures on scientific
subjects at the Royal Institution were a mine of wealth to Mary
Somerville. In many of the astronomical observations of Sir
James South and Sir John Herschel she was also permitted to
share.
The attempted discovery of the North Pole and of an open
Polar ocean had a great fascination for Mary Somerville. She
longed, as many have done before and since her time, for the
settlement of this great geographical question, in the interests
of science and of humanity. I give one passage from her
recollections of the brave Parry, and Lady Franklin:-'Sir
Edward Parry, who had brought us minerals and seeds of plants.
from Melville Island, invited us to see the ships prepared for
his third voyage and three years' residence in the Arctic seas.
It is impossible to describe how perfectly everything was
arranged; experience had taught them what was necessary for
such an expedition. On this occasion I put in practice my
lessons in cookery by making a large quantity of orange
marmalade for the voyage. When, after three years, the ships
MARY SOMERVILLE.
191
returned, we were informed that the name of Somerville had
been given to an island so far to the north that it was all but
perpetually covered with ice and snow. Notwithstanding the
sameness which naturally prevails in the narration of these
voyages, they are invested with a romantic interest by the
daring bravery displayed, and by the appalling difficulties over-
come. The noble endeavour of Lady Franklin to save her
gallant husband, and the solitary voyage of Sir Leopold
McClintock in a small yacht, in search of his dear lost friend,
form the touching and sad termination to a very glorious
period of maritime adventure. More than fifty years after
these events I renewed my acquaintance with Lady Franklin.
She and her niece came to sce me at Spezia, on their way to
Dalmatia. She had circumnavigated the globe with her
husband when he was Governor in Australia. After his loss
she and her niece had gone round the world a second time,
and she assured me that although they went to Japan and
China (less known at that time than they are now), they never
experienced any difficulty. Seeing ladies travelling alone
people were always willing to help them.'
1
Interesting glimpses are to be obtained of many of Mary
Somerville's literary contemporaries and others, including
Joanna Baillie, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Fry, Sir Charles
Lyell, &c. Among many others,' she remarks, 'we were
intimate with Dr. and Mrs. Baillie and his sisters. Joanna was
my dear and valued friend to the end of her life. When her
tragedy of Montfort was to be brought on the stage, Somer-
ville and I, with a large party of her relations and friends, went
with her to the theatre. The play was admirably acted, for
Mrs. Siddons and her brother, John Kemble, performed the
principal parts. It was warmly applauded by a full house, but
it was never acted again. Some time afterwards The Family
Legend, founded on a Highland story, had better success in
Edinburgh; but Miss Baillie's plays, though highly poetical,
are not suited to the stage. Miss Mitford was more successful,
192
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
17-1
;
for some of her plays were repeatedly acted. She excelled also
as a writer. Our Village is perfect of its kind; nothing can
be more animated than her description of a game of cricket.
I met with Miss Austen's novels at this time, and thought
them excellent, especially Pride and Prejudice. It certainly
formed a curious contrast to my old favourites, the Radcliffe
novels and the ghost stories; but I had not come to years of
discretion.
javlja kawa
'Among my Quaker friends I met with that amiable but
eccentric person, Mrs. Opie. Though a "wet" Quakeress, she
continued to wear the peculiar dress. I was told she was pre-
sented in at the Tuileries, and astonished the French ladies.
We were so acquainted with Mrs. Fry, a very different person,
and head her preach. Her voice was fine, her delivery
admiraole, and her prayer sublime. We were intimate with
Mr. (now Sir Charles) Lyell, who, if I mistake not, first met
with his wife at our house, where she was extremely admired
as the beautiful Miss Horner. Until we lost all our fortune,
and went to live at Chelsea, I used to have little evening parties.
in Hanover Square.'
J
It is important to note that as her scientific studies became
profounder and deeper, the firmer also became the faith of
Mary Somerville in an all-wise and loving Ruler. Nothing, she
said, afforded her so convincing a proof, of the existence of the
Deity as those purely mental conceptions of numerical and
mathematical science which had been by slow degrees vouch-
safed to man; and which were still granted in latter times by
the differential calculus, afterwards superseded by the Higher
Algebra. Like every devout student of nature and science,
she perceived everywhere the marvellous workings of the
Divine Mind. But at one time she was severely attacked for
her belief in the now generally-accepted geological truth
that the formation of the globe extended through enormous
periods of time. She was even preached against by name in
York Cathedral. Dr. Buckland combated the new doctrine in
MARY SOMERVILLE.
193
his Bridgewater Treatise, but even he was obliged at last to
join the heterodox geologists, as they were considered at that
time.
Mrs. Somerville was present in Westminster Hall when
George IV. was crowned, and seventeen years later she wit-
nessed the coronation of the Queen in Westminster Abbey.
On the former occasion the Champion of England, on his
horse, both in full armour, rode up the Hall, and threw down
a gauntlet before the King, while the heralds proclaimed that
he was ready to do battle with anyone who denied that
George the Fourth was the liege lord of these realms. For
several successive seasons the Somervilles visited Sir John
Saunders Sebright at Beechwood Park, Hertfordshire. On
one of these occasions, during a battue, Chantrey the sculptor
killed two woodcocks at one shot. Mr. Hudson Gurney some
years afterwards saw a brace of woodcocks carved in marble
in Chantrey's studio: Chantrey told him of his shot, and the
difficulty of finding a suitable inscription, and that it had been
tried in Latin, and even Greek, without success.
Mr. Gurney
said it ought to be very simple, as for example—
"
Driven from the north, where winter starved them,
Chantrey first shot, and then he carved them.'
At a dinner-party in London the Somervilles met the
celebrated but erratic poet, Ugo Foscolo.
'He was ex-
tremely excitable and irritable, and when some one spoke of
a translation of Dante as being perfect, "Impossible,” shouted
Foscolo, starting up in great excitement, at the same time
tossing his cupful of coffee into the air, cup and all, regard-
less of the china and the ladies' dresses.' Genius is an incon-
venient guest sometimes.
In 1823 Mary Somerville lost her eldest daughter, a child
of intelligence and acquirements far beyond her tender age.
The blow was a terrible one, but when her grief had in some
measure abated, she wrote to her father-in-law a letter which at
the same time revealed her unfaltering trust in God and a
O
194
WOMEN OF RENO IN.
spirit of truc Christian resignation. I do not arraign the
decrees of Providence,' she said, but even in the bitterness
of my soul I acknowledge the wisdom and goodness of God,
and endeavour to be resigned to His will. It is ungrateful not
to remember the many happy years we have enjoyed, but that
very remembrance renders our present state more desolate and
dreary-presenting a sad contrast. The great source of con-
solation is in the mercy of God and the virtues of those we
lament; the full assurance that no good disposition can be lost,
but must be brought to perfection in a better world. Our
business is to render ourselves fit for that blessed inheritance,
that we may again be united to those we mourn.' This was a
higher plane of faith than many great women have attained to
in the presence of the mystery we call Death.
Among the friends of Mrs. Somerville were Lady Noel
Byron and Ada, 'sole daughter of my house and heart,' who
married Lord King, afterwards Earl of Lovelace.
Ada Byron
studied mathematics, and kept up a correspondence on this
subject with Mary Somerville. There were also Sir Henry and
Lady Bunbury, the latter a niece of the celebrated Charles
James Fox.
She had a turn for natural history, and was an
excellent conchologist. Sir William and Lady Napier were
also close friends, as well as the popular novelist, Maria
Edgeworth. 'She was one of my most intimate friends,'
wrote Mrs. Somerville of Miss Edgeworth, 'warm-hearted and
kind, a charming companion, with all the liveliness and
originality of an Irishwoman. For seventeen years I was in
constant correspondence with her. The cleverness and ani-
mation as well as affection of her letters I cannot express;
certainly women are superior to men in letter-writing.' On
her part, Maria Edgeworth thus sketched the portrait of Mary
Somerville in a letter to a friend: 'Mrs. Somerville is the
lady who, La Place says, is the only woman who understands
his works. She draws beautifully, and while her head is
among the stars, her feet are firm upon the earth. Mrs.
MARY SOMERVILLE.
195
Somerville is little, slightly made, with fairish hair, pink colour,
small, grey, round, intelligent, smiling eyes, very pleasing
countenance, remarkably soft voice, strong, but well-bred
Scotch accent; timid, not disqualifyingly timid, but naturally
modest, yet with a degree of self-possession through it which
prevents her being in the least awkward, and gives her all the
advantage of her understanding, at the same time that it adds.
a prepossessing charm to her manner, and takes off all dread
of her superior scientific learning.'
In company with that paragon of learning, Sir James
Mackintosh, the Somervilles made a Continental tour in the
year 1826.
At Brussels they were received by Professor
Quetelet, and at Bonn they met Baron Humboldt and August
Wilhelm von Schlegel, the translator of Shakespeare. Mack-
intosh must have been a delightful companion, for he was full
of anecdote and historical knowledge, and was intimate with
all the political leaders of the day. As the party went up the
Rhine he told the history of every place, and of the battles
which had been fought. A learned Professor, a friend of Sir
James's, invited them to dinner on a certain day, and Mrs.
Somerville was considerably astonished to see the lady of the
house going about with a great bunch of keys dangling at her
side, assisting in serving up the dinner, and doing all the duty
of carving, her husband taking no part whatever in it. At the
Hague they dined with the late Lord Granville, then British
Minister at the Hague. A lady who was present, on hearing
one of the attachés addressed as Mr. Abercromby, said, 'Pray,
Lord Granville, is that a son of the great captain whom the
Lord slew in the land of Egypt?'
Mary Somerville's first important contribution to science was
made in 1826, when she presented to the Royal Society a paper
on the magnetising powers of the more refrangible solar rays,
the object of which was to prove that these rays of the solar
spectrum have a strong magnetic influence. This paper led to
much discussion, which was only terminated, many years later,
0 2
196
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
by the investigations of the German electricians Riess and
Moser, who demonstrated that the action upon the magnetic
needle was not caused by the violet rays.
But while scientific men had for some years been familiar
with her talents and her researches, to the great body of the
public she was as yet unknown. Her popular fame may be
said to have been initiated in 1827, when Lord Brougham-on
behalf of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge-
wrote to ask her to prepare for the Society an account of the
Mécanique Céleste, and also an account of the Principia. Such
a description of the latter was required as would explain its
scope and purport, and unfold or methodise its wonderful
truths. While Mrs. Somerville was surprised and gratified
by this application, she distrusted her own powers and acquirc-
ments. But Lord Brougham went to Chelsea, and Somerville
joined with him in urging her to make the attempt. There-
upon she said, 'Lord Brougham, you must be aware that the
work in question never can be popularised, since the student
must at least know something of the differential and integral
calculi; and as a preliminary step I should have to prove various
problems in physical mechanics and astronomy. Besides, La
Place never gives diagrams or figures, because they are not
necessary to persons versed in the calculus, but they would
be indispensable in a work such as you wish me to write. I
am afraid I am incapable of the task; but, as you both wish it
so much, I shall do my very best upon condition of secrecy,
and that if I fail the manuscript shall be put into the fire.' It
was this wholly unexpected incident which, as she said, changed
the whole course and character of her future life.
The work was begun, not without trepidation. She had
many interruptions through constant visitors, but being gifted
with extraordinary powers of concentration and abstraction,
she could always, and at any moment, resume the thread of
her investigations. In due time the manuscript was forwarded
to Lord Brougham, with a request that it might be thoroughly
MARY SOMERVILLE.
197
examined, criticised, and, if a failure, destroyed according to
promise. It was laid before Sir John Herschel, England's
greatest astronomer, and one perfectly versed in the calculus.
All that this acute critic could discover against the work were
one or two trivial obscurities, while the letter of praise which he
wrote to the author caused her heart to bound with joy and
pride. Premising that he had read the manuscript with the
highest admiration, he proceeded to remark, "Go on thus, and
you will leave a memorial of no common kind to posterity; and,
what you will value far more than fame, you will have accom-
plished a most useful work. What a pity that La Place has
not lived to see this illustration of his great work! You will
only, I fear, give too strong a stimulus to the study of abstract
science by this performance.' Mary Somerville regarded the
great philosopher as her 'truest and best friend, one whose
opinion she valued above all others, whose genius and consum-
mate talent she admired, and whose beautiful character she
loved.' This deep regard on her part Sir John returned with
the most chivalrous respect and admiration.
C
This first important treatise by Mary Somerville, entitled
The Mechanism of the Heavens, was published in 1831, and it
immediately made its mark both in scientific and general read-
ing circles. Dr. Whewell, in acknowledging copies which had
been presented to the Philosophical Society, and to Trinity
College, Cambridge, warmly eulogised the work, and said,
'When Mrs. Somerville shows herself in the field which we
mathematicians have been labouring in all our lives, and puts
us to shame, she ought not to be surprised if we move off to
other ground and betake ourselves to poetry.' The Doctor
accordingly rendered his impressions of the Mechanism of the
Heavens and of its author in the following sonnet :
Lady, it was the wont in earlier days
When some fair volume from a valued pen,
Long looked for, came at last, that grateful men
Hailed its forthcoming in complacent lays :
198
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
As if the Muse would gladly haste to praise
That which her mother, Memory, long should keep
Among her treasures. Shall such usage sleep
who feel too slight the common phrase
For our pleased thoughts of you, when thus we find
That dark to you seems bright, perplexed seems plain,
Seen in the depths of a pellucid mind,
With us,
Full of clear thought, pure from the ill and vain
That cloud the inward light? An honoured name
Be yours; and peace of heart grow with your growing fame.'
But that which touched Mary Somerville most deeply, and
which she regarded as the highest honour, was the fact that
Professor Peacock and Dr. Whewell took immediate steps to
introduce the work into the course of studies at Cambridge.
Professor Peacock was a profound mathematician, and he had
a few years before, with Herschel and Babbage, first introduced
the calculus, as an essential branch of science, into the Univer-
sity of Cambridge. He now wrote to Mrs. Somerville to the
effect that her work must 'contribute greatly to the extension
of the knowledge of physical astronomy in this country, and
of the great analytical processes which have been employed
in such investigations.' The Professor added that he had
little doubt the work would immediately become an essential
one to those Cambridge students who aspired to the highest
places in the examinations. Nearly the whole edition of the
Mechanism of the Heavens, amounting to 750 copies, was sold
at Cambridge. Letters of congratulation from men of science
poured in upon the author, and she was elected an honorary
member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time
as Miss Caroline Herschel. The French Academy of Sciences
instructed M. Biot to draw up a report upon the work, which
proved to be of a most flattering character; and it was unani-
mously voted by the Royal Society of London that her bust
should be placed in their great Hall, Chantrey being chosen as
the sculptor. She was elected an honorary member of the
Royal Academy of Dublin, of the Bristol Philosophical Insti-
MARY SOMERVILLE.
199
tution, and of the Société de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle
cf Geneva; and last, but not the least interesting, a vessel in-
tended for the China and India trade was called after her
name.
A more substantial reward still, followed in the shape of a
Civil List pension of £200 per annum. Sir Robert Peel, in
announcing the grant, referred to the claims which science and
literature had upon the Royal favour, and said: 'In reviewing
such claims, it is impossible that I can overlook those which
you have established by the successful prosecution of studies
of the highest order, both from the importance of the objects
to which they relate and from the faculties and acquirements
which they demand. As my object is a public one, to en-
courage others to follow the bright example which you have
set, and to prove that great scientific attainments are recog-
nised among public claims, I prefer making a direct communi-
cation to you to any private inquiries into your pecuniary
circumstances, or to any proposal through a third party. I am
enabled to advise His Majesty to grant to you a pension on
the Civil List of £200 per annum; and if that provision will
enable you to pursue your labours with less anxiety, cither as
to the present or the future, I shall only be fulfilling a public
duty, and not imposing upon you the slightest obligation.'
The pension, which was conferred in March, 1835, came not a
moment too soon, for the very next day a letter arrived inform-
ing the Somervilles that by the treachery of persons in whom
they trusted the last remnant of their capital was lost. By the
kindness of Lord John Russell, when he was Prime Minister,
£100 a year was added to the pension, making it £300 per
annum, and for this additional mark of the Royal favour the
recipient was very grateful.
Hard work having its effect in shattered health, Mary
Somerville went over to Paris in 1833, on a visit, accompanied
by her husband. One of the first to renew friendly relations
with them was Arago, who was then immersed in party politics;
200
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
·
but he placed at Mrs. Somerville's disposal a mass of useful
memoirs and manuscripts, with leave to make extracts. The
venerable Lafayette was still living, and he invited the Somer-
villes to visit him at La Grange, where they found him living
like a patriarch, surrounded by his family to the fourth genera-
tion. Then follow these interesting reminiscences: 'He was
mild, highly distinguished, and noble in his manners; his
conversation was exceedingly interesting, as he readily spoke
of the Revolution, in which he had taken so active a part.
Among other anecdotes, he mentioned that he had sent the
principal key of the Bastille to General Washington, who kept
it under a glass case. He was much interested to hear that
I could, in some degree, claim a kind of relationship with
Washington, whose mother was a Fairfax. Baron Fairfax, the
head of the family, being settled in America, had joined the
independent party at the Revolution. The two daughters of
Lafayette, who had been in prison with him at Olmütz, were
keen politicians, and discussed points with a warmth of ges-
ticulation which amused Somerville and me, accustomed to our
cold, still manners. The grand-daughters, Mesdames de
Rémusat and de Corcelles, were kind friends to me all the
time I was in Paris.'
On the invitation of the Astronomer-Royal of France, Mrs.
Somerville dined at the Observatory, where she was surrounded
by illustrious French savants. Subsequently, Dr. Milne-
Edwards, the celebrated natural historian, and the first English-
man who was elected a member of the Institute, made her
acquainted with MM. Ampère and Becquerel. At the house
of the Duchesse de Broglie, Madame de Staël's daughter, she
met many personages of distinction, and she likewise was
received by M. Dupin, President of the Chamber of Deputies.
At
Talent like hers was a passport to the very highest circles,
a reception at Madame de Rumford's she encountered Teni-
more Cooper, the American novelist, who had lost the peevish-
ness he displayed when she knew him in England. 'He
-
MARY SOMERVILLE.
201
was then so touchy,' wrote Mrs. Somerville, 'that it was difficult
to converse with him without giving him offence.
He was
introduced to Sir Walter Scott by Sir James Mackintosh, who
said, in presenting him, "Mr. Cooper, allow me to introduce
you to your great forefather in the art of fiction." "Sir," said
Cooper, with great asperity, "I have no forefather." Now,
though his manners were rough, they were quite changed. We
saw a great deal of him, and I was frequently in his house, and
found him perfectly liberal; so much so that he told us the
faults of his country with the greatest frankness; yet he was
the champion of America and hated England.'
Mary Somerville's abhorrence of vivisection comes out in
this passage relating to Majendie, the famous or infamous
anatomist and physiologist: The Marquise de La Place was
commissioned by Dr. Majendie to invite me to meet her and
Madame Gay Lussac at dinner. I was very unwilling to go,
for I detested the man for his wanton cruelties, but I found
I could not refuse on account of these ladies. There was a
large party of savants, agreeable and gentlemanly; but Majen-
die himself had the coarsest manners; his conversation was
horridly professional; many things were said and subjects
discussed not fit for women to hear. What a contrast the
refined and amiable Sir Charles Bell formed with Majendie !
Majendie and the French School of Anatomy made themselves
odious by their cruelty, and failed to prove the true anatomy
of the brain and nerves, while Sir Charles Bell did succeed,
and thus made one of the greatest physiological discoveries of
the age without torturing animals, which his gentle and kindly
nature abhorred.'
1
Mrs. Somerville appears to have been in great request every-
where, and David, the sculptor, executed a medallion portrait
of her. She sometimes went to the Chamber of Deputies to
hear the debates, and was a witness now and then to amusing
and exciting scenes. Once a member happened to mention in
the course of his speech the word liberté,' whereupon the
202
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
}
President, Dupin, rang his bell, called out, 'Halte, à propos de
liberté, jumped down from his seat, sprang into the tribune,
pushed out the Deputy, and made a long speech himself. At
the residence of Baron Louis, the Somervilles were introduced
to Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, and many nota-
bilities. Baron Louis had officiated with Talleyrand at the
Champ de Mars when Louis XVI. took the oath to maintain
the Constitution. While she was in Paris, Mary Somerville lost
her mother. The fine old lady, who was ninety years of age,
had always felt the fear of death, but when it actually came,
she was perfectly composed, and prepared to meet the grim
enemy.
In 1834 Mrs. Somerville published her work On the Connec-
tion of the Physical Sciences. It was most flatteringly reviewed
in the Quarterly, and Humboldt some years after its appear-
ance referred to it as 'the generally exact and admirable trea-
tise.' A curious incident is related of this work. The author
had given 365 days six hours as the length of the civil year of
the ancient Egyptians, but Hallam, the historian, wrote to her,
proving from history and epochs of the chronology of the
ancient Egyptians, that their civil year was only 365 days.
She was grateful for the correction, and the two maintained the
most friendly relations until Hallam's death. The second
edition of the Physical Sciences was dedicated to Sir John
Herschel. The work eventually went through nine editions,
and was translated into German and Italian. Several editions
were published in the United States, though none of them to
the profit of the author. However, as the love of science and
not the love of money was the author's first object, she does not-
appear to have felt this hardship very keenly. Mary Somer-
ville was invited by the Duchess of Kent to present a copy of
her work in person at a private audience. The Duchess and
the Princess Victoria were alone and received her very gra-
ciously, conversing with her for a full half-hour.
The Preliminary Dissertation on mathematical and astro-
MARY SOMERVILLE.
203
nomical science written by Mrs. Somerville for the Society for
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was another undertaking
which called forth many warm tributes, both from the learned
and the unlearned. Maria Edgeworth was so charmed with it
that she could not cease from its perusal. It enlarged her
conception of the sublimity of the universe beyond all imagin-
ing. Some of its passages were particularly striking, as, for
example, where the author referred to the propagation of
sound: 'At a very small height above the surface of the earth
the noise of the tempest ceases, and the thunder is heard no
more in those boundless regions, where the heavenly bodies
accomplish their periods in eternal and sublime silence.' But
science had also its whimsical aspects. 'Pray let me mention
to you,' wrote Miss Edgeworth, 'a few of the passages that
amused my imagination particularly, viz., 1st, the inhabitant of
Pallas going round his world—or who might go-in five or six
hours in one of our steam carriages; 2nd, the moderate-sized
man who would weigh two tons at the surface of the sun, and
who would weigh only a few pounds at the surface of the four
new planets, and would be so light as to find it impossible to
stand from the excess of muscular force! I think a very enter-
taining dream might be made of a man's visit to the sun and
planets; these ideas are all like dreamy feelings when one is
a little feverish.' More than one imaginative work has recently
been written on the lines indicated by Miss Edgeworth. Joanna
Baillie, in acknowledging the Preliminary Dissertation, said, ‘I
feel myself greatly honoured by receiving such a mark of regard
from one who has done more to remove the light estimation in
which the capacity of women is too often held than all that
has been accomplished by the whole sisterhood of poetical
damsels and novel-writing authors.' While this tribute to Mrs.
Somerville was well deserved, the depreciation of those who
laboured in other intellectual grooves was unjustifiable.
Miss Berry, who edited the Walpole letters, wrote a very
witty letter touching the Dissertation, which she admitted had
204
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
improved her moral character in the Christian virtue of
humility. 'Humbled I must be,' she said, 'by finding my
own intellect unequal to following, beyond a first step, the
explanations by which you seek to make easy to comprehen-
sion the marvellous phenomena of the universe-humbled, by
feeling the intellectual difference between you and me, placing
you as much above me in the scale of reasoning beings as I
am above my dog. Still, I rejoice with humility at feeling
myself in that order of understandings which, although utterly
incapable of following the chain of your reasonings, calcula-
tions, and inductions-utterly deprived of the powers necessary
sic itur ad astra-am yet informed, enlightened, and enter-
tained with the series of sublime truths to which you conduct
me. In some foggy morning of November I shall drive out
to you at Chelsea, and surprise you with my ignorance of
science, by asking you to explain to me some things which you
will wonder anyone can have so long existed without knowing.
October we mean to spend at Paris, before we return
to the nebulosities of London. As my stay at Paris will now
be so short, I shall content myself with looking up, at a
respectful distance, to all your great fixed stars of science,
excepting always yourself, dear Mrs. Somerville. No "dis-
turbing influence" will, I hope, ever throw me out of the orbit
of your intimacy and friendship, whose value, believe me, is
most duly and accurately calculated by your ignorant but very
affectionate friend.'
Mrs. Somerville now began her further investigation into the
form and rotation of the earth and planets. Her plan was
extensive, for it comprised the analytical attraction of spheroids,
the form and rotation of the earth, the tides of the ocean and
atmosphere, and small undulations. Having achieved this,
she wrote a work of 246 pages on curves and surfaces of the
second and higher orders. The manuscript, however, was laid
aside for many years.
In 1830 the Somervilles lost the society of Sir John and
MARY SOMERVILLE.
205
Lady Herschel for four years, as the eminent astronomer took
his telescope and other instruments to the Cape of Good Hope,
whither he went for the purpose of observing the celestial
phenomena of the southern hemisphere. There were more
than 6,000 double stars in the northern hemisphere, in a
large proportion of which the angle of position and distance
between the two stars had been measured; and Sir John had
now determined, in the same manner, 1,081 in the southern
hemisphere; and many additions have been made to this
number since his death. In her Physical Sciences, Mary
Somerville gave an abridged account of Sir John Herschel's
most remarkable discoveries in the southern hemisphere.
Although the most intimate friendships formed by Mary
Somerville were made in scientific circles, it is astonishing to
note the number of friends and acquaintances she claimed in
other grooves. Some of these have been already mentioned,
but others may now be cited. In literature, besides Hallam,
there were Dean Milman, Thomas Moore, Malthus, Sydney
Smith, John Murray, Mary Berry, the beautiful Sheridans,
Catherine Fanshawe, Lady Theresa Lewis, Samuel Rogers, and
Thomas Campbell. An American authoress whose name is
not given-but who would seem from internal evidence to be
Harriet Beecher Stowe-behaved very brusquely to her at
Florence, forming in this respect a striking contrast to Mrs.
Browning, who was 'as much distinguished by her high mental
qualities and poctical genius as by her modesty and simplicity.'
The poet Longfellow, too, she was extremely delighted with.
He even surpassed the expectation or ideal of what a distin-
guished man ought to be; and she was 'as much charmed
with his winning manner and conversation as by his calm,
grand features, and the expression of his intellectual counte-
nance.' Americans generally greatly honoured Mrs. Somerville.
Jared Sparks gave her his finest 'autograph letter of your and our
glorious Washington,' for the great first President of the United
States was—as already stated—a distant relative of the Fairfaxes.
206
women of rENOWN.
Admiral Wilkes, Silliman, Dana, and Tuckerman were among
her other admirers; and she was elected an honorary member
of the Geographical and Statistical Society of New York and of
the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. At the houses of
her French friends, Mary Somerville heard such artists as
Pasta, Malibran, Grisi, Rubini, &c., and became acquainted
with celebrities like the Bonapartes and Madame de Monta-
lembert. The latter, by the way, was an Englishwoman, and
mother of the celebrated philosopher, Auguste Comte. She
was very eccentric, and an ultra-Protestant at this period.
Mrs. Somerville was engaged in collecting materials for her
important work on Physical Geography when her husband was
seized with illness, and they were ordered away for the winter
of 1840 to a warmer climate. They accordingly proceeded to
Rome, where, after settling down, she was enabled to resume her
researches. Rome was her favourite city. She would write in
the morning till two o'clock, then go to some picture gallery,
take a walk on the Pincio, dine at six, and in the evening
either go out or receive visitors. She tells of a party that was
arranged to see the statues in the Vatican by twilight, at which
Lord Macaulay astonished his friends by his correct knowledge
and learning as they passed through the gallery of inscriptions.
It was at Rome that Mary Somerville began a life-long friendship
with John Gibson, the sculptor, whose tinted Venus made such
a sensation. From Rome they went to the Lake of Como, and
then crossed the Alps by the St. Gothard to Basle and Baden
Baden, where they passed the summer. Once more crossing
the Alps, they reached Florence, where they spent the next
winter. Mrs. Somerville was elected a member of the Academy
of Natural Science at Florence, and she was very graciously
received by the Grand Duke, who allowed her the signal
favour of having books, at home, from his private library in
the Pitti Palace. This enabled her to go on collecting
materials for her projected book. The ensuing summer was
spent at Siena, the ancient and artistic city. Again they found
MARY SOMERVILLE.
207
themselves in Rome for the winter, and indeed for several
winters; and through the intervention of Mountstuart Elphin-
stone, Mrs. Somerville obtained from the India House works
relating to the geography of Eastern Asia, as well as the most
recent travels in the Himalaya, Scinde, Thibet, and China.
She was invited to examine the Observatory at Rome, but
as she had seen those of Paris and Greenwich, she did not
think it worth while to accept the invitation, especially as it
required an order from the Pope. I could easily have ob-
tained leave,' she remarks, 'for we were presented to Gregory
XVI. by the President of the Scotch Catholic College. The
Pope received me with marked distinction; notwithstanding,
I was disgusted to see the President prostrate on the floor,
kissing the Pope's foot as if he had been Divine. I think it was
about this time that I was elected an honorary associate of the
Accademia Tiberiana.' In the spring of 1841 the Somervilles
went to Albano, and at Monte Porzio they spent a day with
Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, who was head of a college
of young men who were being educated for the priesthood.
Mary Somerville's life at Albano was industrious in the extreme.
She rose soon after six, breakfasted at eight, wrote till three,
then dined, and wrote again till near six, when she took a long
walk, came home to tea at nine, and went to bed at eleven.
Next season at Rome saw the renewal of her friendship with
Gibson, the most amiable and guileless of men, who allowed
her daughters to overrun his studio, and draw and model to
their hearts' content. He was now at the height of his fame,
but was as simple as a child. Another friend was the ac-
complished and intellectual Duke of Sermoneta, whose brilliant
and witty conversation was unrivalled.
Here is a description of some renowned Englishwomen whose
fascinations were universally admitted: 'There was much beauty
at Rome at that time; no one who was there can have forgotten
the beautiful and brilliant Sheridans. I recollect Lady Dufferin
at the Easter ceremonies at St. Peter's, in her widow's cap,
208
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
with a large black crape veil thrown over it, creating quite a
sensation. With her exquisite features, oval face, and some-
what fantastical headdress, anything more lovely could not be
conceived; and the Roman people crowded round her in
undisguised admiration of "la bella monaca Inglese." Her
charm of manner and her brilliant conversation will never be
forgotten by those who knew her. To my mind, Mrs. Norton
was the most beautiful of the three sisters. Hers is a grand
countenance, such as artists love to study. Gibson, whom I
asked, after his return from England, which he had revisited
after twenty-seven years' absence, what he thought of English-
women, replied, he had seen many handsome women, but no
such sculptural beauty as Mrs. Norton's. I might add the
Marchioness of Waterford, whose bust at Macdonald's I took
at first for an ideal head, till I recognized the likeness.'
Visits were made successively to Perugia, Assisi, Chiusi,
Loreto, Ancona, Trieste, Venice, and by the Adriatic coast to
Gubbio and Orvieto. Venice suited the travellers better for
health than any other city, and they were made much of by
the proud though poor descendants of doges and princes.
On returning to Rome, Mary Somerville was elected associate
of the College of Risurgenti, and in the following April an
honorary member of the Imperial and Royal Academy of
Science, Literature, and Art at Arezzo. By this time she had
been awarded more scientific distinctions than any woman of
the age.
In August, 1844, the Somervilles came over to England.
One of their first expeditions was to the British Museum, in
order to see the antiquities recovered from Babylon and
Nineveh. Visits were paid to Turner, the great poet-painter,
the Herschels, the Percies of Guy's Cliff, Warwickshire, and
then the travellers went on to their beloved Scotland. After
a pleasurable stay there, they returned to Rome for the winter.
During her researches, which she now resumed with ardour, Mrs.
Somerville made some curious experiments upon the effect of
MARY SOMERVILLE.
209
V
the solar spectrum on juices of plants and other substances,
and her account of these experiments was communicated to
the Royal Society. The investigations led to the opening up
of a wide field of curious and beautiful research.
+
Mrs. Somerville's Physical Geography-the work by which
she will probably be most widely known to posterity—was
published in 1848. Just before it was issued, Humboldt's
Cosmos appeared, and the author at once determined to
put her manuscript in the fire, when her husband said, 'Do
not be rash, consult some of our friends-Herschel, for
instance.' Herschel was consulted, and advised immediate
publication, and the work was most favourably reviewed by Sir
Henry Holland in the Quarterly. As its name implies, this
treatise comprises the history of the earth in the whole of its
material organisation. A copy of one of the later editions
was sent to Baron Humboldt, and in response that dis-
tinguished savant referred to the manifest superiority of the
author in the lofty regions of mathematical analysis, to
which was united an intimate acquaintance with physics
and natural history. The author of the imprudent Cosmos
ought more than all others to salute the Physical Geography
of Mary Somerville. I know in no language a work on
this subject that is able to endure comparison with yours.
have been surprised at the justness of your views on the
geography of plants and animals. You dominate in these
regions as in astronomy, meteorology, and magnetism. Why
not add the celestial sphere, your patrimony, to the terres-
trial sphere? It is you alone who are able to give to your
beautiful literature an original cosmological work, a work
written with that lucidity and that taste which distinguish
all that has emanated from your pen.' The Physical Geo-
graphy, like its predecessor, passed through many editions,
and was translated into several foreign languages.
I
Professor John Couch Adams, of Cambridge University,
and M. Leverrier, the celebrated French astronomer, calcu-
P
210
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
lated the orbit of Neptune unknown to each other, and
announced it so nearly at the same time that each country
claims the honour of the discovery. Mr. Adams told Dr.
Somerville that the following sentence in the sixth edition
of the Connection of the Physical Sciences put him on the
track of his important discovery: 'If after the lapse of
years the tables formed from a combination of numerous
observations should be still inadequate to represent the
motions of Uranus, the discrepancies may reveal the exist-
ence, nay, even the mass and orbit of a body placed for
ever beyond the sphere of vision.' This prediction was ful-
filled in 1846, by the discovery of Neptune revolving at
a distance of 3,000,000,000 miles from the sun. 'The
mass of Neptune, the size and position of his orbit in space,
and his periodic time, were determined from his disturbing
action on Uranus before the planet itself had been seen.'
Mary Somerville enjoyed the close friendship of Michael
Faraday, whom she regarded as the greatest experimental
philosopher and discoverer next to Newton.
On visiting the Continent in 1853, the Somervilles were
unable to go into Italy, as war was raging between Charles
Albert and the Austrians. They therefore spent some time
at Munich, from whence they proceeded to Salzburg. The
picturesque situation of this town reminded them of the
castle and old town of Edinburgh. The views were Alpine,
and the flora of the district was lovely; while on returning
from their natural history expeditions in the evening, the
travellers were delighted to find the damp, mossy banks per-
fectly luminous with glowworms. On leaving Salzburg they
went by Innsbruck and the Brenner to Colà, on the Lago
di Garda, within five miles of Peschiera, where they spent a
month with their intimate friends the Count and Countess
Miniscalchi. The Count was a remarkable linguist, especially
with regard to Arabic and other Oriental tongues. He pub-
lished several works, including a translation of the Gospel of
MARY SOMERVILLE.
2 II
St. John from Syro-Chaldaic-which was probably the
language spoken by Christ-into Latin. After the death of
Mary Somerville, Count Miniscalchi 'made a beautiful and
touching éloge on her at the meeting of the Royal Italian
Geographical Society, to a numerous audience assembled in
the great hall of the Collegio Romano at Rome.' Mrs.
Somerville was an honorary member of the Society, and
was the recipient of its first gold medal, which was voted to
her by acclamation.
At Turin the Somervilles became acquainted with Baron
Plana, director of the Observatory. Plana, who was a great
analyst, had married a niece of the illustrious mathematician
La Grange, who proved the stability of the solar system. He
took his visitors to a church, from the cupola of which a very
long pendulum was swinging, that they might see the rotation
of the earth visibly proved by its action on the pendulum.
Through the Baron they obtained apartments in the Casa
Cavour, and became acquainted with both the brothers to
whom it belonged. Count Camillo Cavour, then Minister of
the Interior, was,' says Mrs. Somerville, 'the only great states-
man Italy ever produced in modern times. His premature
death is deplorably felt at the present day. He was a real
genius, and the most masterly act of his administration was
that of sending an army to act in concert with the French
and English in the Crimean War. By it he at once gave Italy
the rank of an independent European Power, which was the
first step towards Italian unity. He was delightful and cheer-
ful in society, and extremely beloved by his family and friends.'
This eulogy of Cavour is perfectly just, and his action with re-
gard to the Crimean War was so bold and independent that
Count Usedom declared it was a pistol-shot fired at the head
of Austria.
Mrs. Somerville met at Florence Frances Power Cobbe, who
afterwards became a close and attached friend. Miss Cobbe
is a warm-hearted philanthropist, whose humane
efforts have
P 2
212
women of renown.
sometimes caused her to be misunderstood; but all who have
known her will endorse her friend's eulogy as to her ability and
excellence of character. There was a certain German professor
of physiology at Florence who roused public indignation by his
barbarous vivisections, and Miss Cobbe and others drew up a
memorial against these practices, which was extensively signed.
But Italy was hard to move in this matter; indeed, while far
in advance of Russia and Poland in most aspects of civilisa-
tion, those oppressed countries could boast of societies for the
prevention of cruelty to animals long before such institutions
were established in Italy.
The unification of Italy was a subject of the keenest interest
to Dr. and Mrs. Somerville. They hailed the Revolution of
1859, but were bitterly disappointed over the peace with France.
'We were keenly interested,' observes Mary Somerville, 'in the
alliance between the Emperor Napoleon and the King of Italy,
in hopes that the Quadrilateral would be taken, and Venice
added to the Italian States. We had a map of Northern Italy
spread on a table, and from day to day we marked the posi-
tions of the different headquarters with coloured-headed pins.
I can hardly describe our indignation when, all at once, peace
was signed at Villafranca, and Napoleon received in recom-
pense for his aid Nice and Savoy, which were given up to him
without regard to the will of the people. When the peace
was announced in Tuscany it caused great consternation and
disgust; the people were in the greatest excitement, fearing that
their former rulers, so obnoxious to them, might, by this treaty,
be again forced upon them; and it required the firm hand of
Ricasoli to calm the people and induce the King to accept
the annexation, which had been voted without one dissentient
voice.' But Mary Somerville was glad that she lived to see
the Revolution accomplished by the genius of Cavour and the
sword of Garibaldi; and she was greatly moved on learning of
the entry of Victor Emmanuel into Rome as King of Italy.
Italian unity had seemed at one time to be the mere dream of
MAR
MARY SOMERVILLE.
213
poets and patriots, but her faith in its ultimate realisation never
wavered.
On the 26th June, 1860, Mrs. Somerville lost her husband,
who died at Florence. Their married life had extended over
the long period of forty-eight years, and it had been marked.
throughout by sympathy, affection, and confidence. Dr.
Somerville was entirely free from the remotest feeling of
jealousy of his wife's great talents. On the contrary, he re-
garded them with pride, and he even appreciated more than
she did herself the numerous honours conferred upon her by
English and foreign learned societies. Those who had the pri-
vilege of knowing the Somervilles in the home circle were struck
by their mutual trust and affection, and their unceasing solici-
tude for each other's welfare. Mary Somerville regretted that
her husband did not live to see the publication of his father's
Life and Times, which appeared in the year following Dr.
Somerville's death. This work amply demonstrated the liberality
of the sentiments animating its subject; and these sentiments,
both of a religious and political character, he fearlessly avowed
at a time when narrow views and bigotry made it even dan-
gerous to assert them.
After her severe loss Mary Somerville could only find solace
in work. Accordingly she formed a resolve to write her Physical
Sciences anew, but she was dissuaded from this by her daughters,
with whom she came to agree that it would have been lost time.
She therefore began an entirely new work, On Molecular and
Microscopic Science. It was a formidable undertaking for two
reasons—first, its projector was in her eighty-second year ; and
secondly, because the general character of science had recently
undergone a complete change. As she remarked, 'By the im-
proved state of the microscope, an invisible creation in the air,
the earth, and the water, had been brought within the limits of
human vision; the microscopic structure of plants and animals
had been minutely studied, and by synthesis many substances
had been formed of the elementary atoms similar to those pro-
+
214
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
duced by nature. Dr. Tyndall's experiments had proved the
inconceivable minuteness of the atoms of matter; M. Gassiot
and Professor Plücher had published their experiments on the
stratification of the electric light; and the series of discoveries
by scientific men abroad, but chiefly by our own philosophers
at home, which had been in progress for a course of years, pre-
pared the way for Bunsen and Kirchof's marvellous consum-
mation.' But the veteran student of science was not appalled
by the magnitude of her task, upon which she entered with all
the enthusiasm and energy of youth, taking as her motto the
felicitous saying of St. Augustine, Deus magnus in magnis,
maximus in minimis,' 'God is great in great things, but greatest
in the least.'
The work occupied her from her eighty-second to her eighty-
ninth year. If there be an example in literature and science
parallel with this I am unacquainted with it. She gathered
together the results of researches in all parts of the globe, and
systematised them. 'I was now an old woman,' says this ardent
devotee of science, 'very deaf, and with shaking hands; but I
could still see to thread the finest needle and read the finest
print, but I got sooner tired when writing than I used to do.
I wrote regularly every morning from eight till twelve or one
o'clock before rising. I was not alone, for I had a mountain
sparrow, a great pet, which sat, and, indeed, is sitting on my
arm as I write.' The remarkable volume, On Molecular and
Microscopic Science, was finished and published in 1869, and it
was found to be a complete conspectus of some of the most
abstruse researches of modern science.
Mary Somerville was a strong advocate for the political en-
franchisement of her sex. Her name appeared first on the im-
portant petition presented to Parliament for the extension of
the suffrage to women. For the high character and splendid
intellect of the Parliamentary leader of the movement, John
Stuart Mill, she had the greatest admiration; and when his
work on the Subjection of Women appeared she wrote to him
MARY SOMERVILLE.
215
expressing her warm thanks for it. In his letter of reply, dated
July 12th, 1869, Mr. Mill said, 'Such a letter as yours is a suffi-
cient reward for the trouble of writing the little book. I could
have desired no better proof that it was adapted to its purpose
than such an encouraging opinion from you. I thank you
heartily for taking the trouble to express, in such kind terms,
your approbation of the book—the approbation of one who
has rendered such inestimable service to the cause of women
by affording in her own person so high an example of their in-
tellectual capabilities; and, finally, by giving to the protest in
the great petition of last year the weight and importance derived
from the signature which headed it.' Mrs. Somerville lamented
'the iniquity and injustice' of the British laws as affecting
women but the laws of the United States were even worse,
for while granting the suffrage to the newly-emancipated slaves,
they refused it to the most highly-educated women of the Re-
public. Much of the unjust legislation affecting women has
been abrogated or modified during the last twenty years, and
other reforms will follow; but whether the exercise of the poli-
tical franchise and full political rights by women would prove
a national blessing is a question upon which statesmen and
others continue to be divided.
1.
2.
However, Mary Somerville was unquestionably right in com-
bating the prejudice in Great Britain against a literary and
scientific education for women; and the medical profession
and many other callings are now being opened to them. It is
only fair, however, to say that many who are opposed to female
suffrage hail all other possible reforms for women with delight./
They deprecate the suffrage as bringing, 'not peace, but a sword'
into English domestic life, and they regard the home as the
best safeguard for the nation's happiness and prosperity. But
in other respects the field for women can never be too wide.
France set the first example in modern times of encourage-
ment to the high intellectual culture of the sex ; but England
is now abreast of her in her colleges and training schools, &c.
216
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
In entering upon her eighty-ninth year, Mrs. Somerville penned
some beautiful thoughts upon life, death, and immortality.
After expressing her gratitude to God for His innumerable
blessings, and stating that she was at peace with all the world,
she went on to say: 'The short time I have to live naturally
occupies my thoughts. In the blessed hope of meeting again
with my beloved children, and those who were and are dear to
me on earth, I think of death with composure and perfect con-
fidence in the mercy of God. Yet to me, who am afraid to
sleep alone on a stormy night, or even to sleep comfortably any
night unless someone is near, it is a fearful thought that my
spirit must enter that new state of existence quite alone. We
are told of the infinite glories of that state, and I believe in
them, though it is incomprehensible to us; but as I do com-
prehend, in some degree at least, the exquisite loveliness of the
visible world, I confess I shall be sorry to leave it. I shall
regret the sky, the sea, with all the changes of their beautiful
colouring; the earth, with its verdure and flowers: but far
more shall I grieve to leave animals who have followed our
steps affectionately for years, without knowing for certainty
their ultimate fate, though I firmly believe that the living
principle is never extinguished. Since the atoms of matter are
indestructible, as far as we know, it is difficult to believe that
the spark which gives to their union life, memory, affection,
intelligence, and fidelity, is evanescent. Every atom in the
human frame, as well as in that of animals, undergoes a period-
ical change by continual waste and renovation; the abode is
changed, not its inhabitant. If animals have no future,
the existence of man is most wretched; multitudes are starved,
cruelly beaten, and loaded during life; many die under a
barbarous vivisection. I cannot believe that any creature was
created for uncompensated misery; it would be contrary to the
attributes of God's mercy and justice. I am sincerely happy
to find that I am not the only believer in the immortality of
the lower animals.'
MARY SOMERVILLE.
217
In the year 1869 the services of Mrs. Somerville to
geographical science were recognised by the award of the
Victoria medal of the Royal Geographical Society. During
the same year-and following on many other honours con-
ferred upon her by the scientific societies and universities of
Italy-she was awarded the first gold medal hitherto given by
the Geographical Society of Florence. It was specially coined,
with her name on the reverse, and it was transmitted by General
Menabrea, President of the Council, and himself a distinguished
mathematician and philosopher. At a general assembly of the
Italian Geographical Society, at Florence, on the 14th of March,
1870, she was elected by acclamation an honorary associate
of that eminent body-the President, the Commendatore
Negri, proposing her name.
The remarkable eclipse of the sun, in December, 1870, had
no more interested observer than Mary Somerville. She was
now ninety years of age, but her intellect was unimpared. She
gave her best hours daily to the study of algebra and quaternions,
and during the other portion of her time she had recourse to
Shakespeare and Dante, and also to more modern light reading,
in addition to the newspapers, which always interested her.
Her eyesight was wonderful, and she could count the threads
of a fine canvas without spectacles. In the evening she either
played bézique with her daughter or read a novel, preferring
those of Sir Walter Scott, and enjoying the broad Scotch in
them. At the same time she was able to follow, with keen
appreciation and perfect understanding, the details and argu-
ments of such works as Darwin's Descent of Man, the Duke of
Argyll's Reign of Law, and Tyler's Researches on the Early
History of Mankind, and the Development of Civilization. In
1871 she was deeply grieved and shaken by the death of Sir
John Herschel, who, though twelve years her junior, was taken
first. Nearly all her old friends were now removed, and she
began to feel her solitary position. Before the year 1871
closed Sir Roderick Murchison also passed away, while another
my
218
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
old friend, Professor Sedgwick-then in his eighty-seventh
year-was obliged to resign the chair of geology at Cambridge
from old age.
Among the last subjects in which Mary Somerville took an
interest was the despatch of Sir Bartle Frere to Africa, by the
British Government, with the object of suppressing the slave
trade. She was also delighted by the introduction of a Bill
into Parliament for the preservation of land birds, though she
lamented that 'the lark which at heaven's gate sings,' was still
thought unworthy of man's protection. It is beautiful to find
a sentence like this in the last pages she ever wrote-'Among
the numerous plans for the education of the young, let us hope
that mercy may be taught as a part of religion.'
This gifted, we might almost say great, Englishwoman,
passed away in her sleep on the morning of the 29th of Novem-
ber, 1872, and her remains repose in the English Campo
Santo of Naples. Though too religious to fear death,' writes
her daughter, 'she dreaded outliving her intellectual powers,
and it was with intense delight that she pursued her intricate.
calculations after her ninetieth and ninety-first years, and she
repeatedly told me how she rejoiced to find that she had the
same readiness and facility in comprehending and developing
these extremely difficult formule which she possessed when
young. Often, also, she said how grateful she was to the
Almighty Father who had allowed her to retain her faculties
unimpaired to so great an age. God was indeed loving and
merciful to her; not only did He spare her this calamity, but
also the weary trial of long-continued illness. In health of body
and vigour of mind, having lived far beyond the usual span
of human life, He called her to Himself. For her, Death lost
all its terrors—her pure spirit passed away so gently that those
around her scarcely perceived when she left them. It was the
beautiful and painless close of a noble and happy life.'
In addition to the enduring influence of her works, her name
has been perpetuated by the establishment of the Somerville
To
け
​MARY SOMERVILLE.
Hall, at Oxford, and the Mary Somerville scholarship in
mathematics for women. She could herself have desired no
more fitting or lasting tribute of remembrance than an institu-
tion for the advancement of the higher education of women. In
her the intellectual capacity of her sex was nobly vindicated,
while it lost nothing of its womanly tenderness, domesticity,
and affection.
+
219
GEORGE SAND.
**
223
GEORGE SAND.
THE life of George Sand was pre-eminently a full life. Into
the political history of her beloved France she entered with
the keenest sympathy and enthusiasm. She rejoiced over the
national triumphs and wept over the national humiliations.
Her earliest associations were with the overthrow of the first
Napoleon at Waterloo, and her latest with the downfall of the
third Napoleon at Sedan. She was fired with all that patriotism
which is such a distinguishing feature of the French character.
In literature she was a kind of connecting-link between Balzac
and Zola, while she hailed with delight the star of Victor Hugo.
She was herself one of the most voluminous writers of a volu-
minous race, and while her permanent influence over French
literature is not very great, she exercised an extraordinary
personal fascination over her celebrated contemporaries, which
was not confined to her own nation. Her charm was felt by
such widely-different beings as Chopin and Mazzini, Lamennais
and Flaubert, Alfred de Musset and Mrs. Browning. If she
could not lay claim to the highest genius or originality, she had
yet a power of expression and a fertility of production which are
almost unique.
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dudevant, née Dupin-who in
literature took the pseudonym of George Sand-was born in
Paris on the 5th of July, 1804. Her mother was the daughter of
a poor bird-seller, but her father, Maurice Dupin de Franceuil,
had the blood of heroes and kings in his veins. Maurice
224
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Dupin-for he dropped the suffix of de Franceuil-had for his
mother Aurore, a natural daughter of the celebrated Marshal
Saxe, who was himself the natural son of Augustus II., Elector
of Saxony and King of Poland. The sister of Marshal Saxe
was married to the Dauphin, the father of Louis XVI. Before
marrying M. Dupin, Aurore de Saxe had been previously
married to the Comte de Horn, a natural son of Louis XV.
George Sand's father was in the army. He had already
attained the rank of captain of cavalry, and was looking forward
to advancement in the Imperial bodyguard, when he was
killed by a fall from his horse in returning home late at night
from a visit to some friends. The Comtesse de Horn had been
deeply attached to her son, although she bitterly resented his
marriage as a mésalliance. After his death, however, all her
affection was transferred to his daughter; and at her request
Madame Dupin and her child took up their abode with the
Contesse at Nohant, near La Châtre, in the department of the
Indre, part of the old province of Berry. Nohant was destined
to become famous for its literary associations.
In his biographical sketch prefixed to the Letters of George
Sand, M. Ledos de Beaufort states that, until reaching the age
of fourteen, George Sand was brought up under the immediate
care of her grandmother, at the château at Nohant. Her edu-
cation was in accordance with the principles laid down in the
Emile of Jean Jacques Rousseau, of whom the aged countess,
a most intelligent, accomplished woman, was an enthusiastic
admirer, and who had at one time acted as secretary to her
second husband. Existence was not made very pleasant for
the little Aurore, as she was the subject of continual disputes
between her mother and grandmother. Prayers, fairy tales,
and La Fontaine's fables were her earliest mental pabulum, and
before she was four years old she could read fluently, but
knowledge and appreciation of what she read were to come
afterwards. Deschartres, an ecclesiastic, who had been her
ather's tutor, instructed Aurore in grammar, her grandmother
GEORGE SAND.
225
teaching her music, and likewise unsectarian sacred history.
The Comtesse was a Deist, rejecting all religious dogmas, but
Madame Dupin was an earnest Christian, though of an inde-
pendent type, and 'strongly objecting to priestly domination.
In religion Aurore inclined to the views of the latter. The
poetic and imaginative side of her nature was stirred by such
works as Madame de Staël's Corinne, the stories of Bernardin de
Saint Pierre, the Iliad, Millevoye's poems, and Châteaubriand's
Atala. But she had a great craving after knowledge, and soon
added to her reading Rousseau's works, and Lavater's system
of physiognomy. Mother and grandmother at length quar-
relled over the child, and it was with intense grief that Aurore
parted from her mother for a time, when the latter left Nohant
for Paris. The child was always passionately devoted to her
mother, as her letters show over and over again; but she also
loved her grandmother, though in a lesser degree, and inherited
her property at her death.
When nearly fourteen years of age Aurore was placed in the
English convent at Paris, one of the most aristocratic board-
ing schools in the French capital. Here she remained for
more than two years, enjoying school-life, though from the
first she threw in her lot with the diables, or madcap element.
In her Histoire de Ma Vie-a work partly fanciful and partly
real-she has graphically depicted the convent-school interior.
The tuition embraced a little of everything, but, as all the
sisters were English, Aurore soon became conversant with the
English language and character. A change came over her
general behaviour, and the careless, light-hearted girl became
known as Saint Aurore. For a time she was a fervent Catholic,
and formed the resolution of becoming a nun; but in the
spring of 1820 her grandmother, dreading the hold which
monastic ideas were obtaining over her, removed her from the
convent. But the Comtesse died shortly afterwards, and
Aurore returned to the convent. She now prepared to take
the veil, but upon the urgent entreaties of her mother she
Q
226
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
renounced her intention. She was a strange girl this Aurore.
Dupin-always rushing to extremes. Fond of horse-riding and
pistol-shooting on the one hand, she acquired the reputation of
an Amazon and a Cossack in petticoats; while on the other
hand she would plunge into the most abstruse studies, attacking
Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Leibnitz, Pascal, Montes-
quieu, and other philosophers. She said that on reading.
Leibnitz she became a Protestant without knowing it. She
further delighted in the poets-Shakespeare, Virgil, Dante,
Milton, Byron, &c.
In 1822, being then not quite eighteen years of age, she
married Lieutenant Casimir Dudevant-the natural son of
a Colonel and Baron of the Empire-who, like herself, had
some small fortune. It was not a love match, and unhappi-
ness soon resulted. The young couple settled at Nohant, and
in July, 1823, a son, Maurice--in whom the mother's deepest
affections centred-was born to them. But M. Dudevant
soon cruelly neglected his wife, in order to indulge in feasting
with his friends, with whom he ate and drank enormously,
spending the rest of his time in the hunting-field. A visit to
the Pyrenees by M. and Madame Dudevant failed to restore
the husband's affections, and Aurore sought to drown her
grief in the pre-occupation afforded her by the education of her
son Maurice, and by the maternal cares required by her daughter
Solange, born in 1829. It may be stated here that Maurice
Dudevant afterwards took his mother's assumed surname of
Sand, and became a man of letters of some note, while the
girl Solange married the well-known sculptor Clésinger. By
the year 1830 a rupture between the Dudevants became un-
avoidable. The husband not only so far forgot himself as to
ill-treat and strike his wife, but he made the most odious
imputations upon her in a letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, the
tutor of her son Maurice. Consequently, in January, 1831,
she left him, her intention being to reside one-half the year at
Nohant and the other at Paris. She had previously given up
GEORGE SAND.
227
her property to him, and he now agreed to allow her an income
of about £120 per annum. Maurice was sent to college, and
Solange accompanied her mother.
Her
Life in Paris severely exercised Madame Dudevant.
income was insufficient, and she tried to eke it out with Eng-
lish translations, but without success. Then she took up
dressmaking and millinery, but could scarcely earn fivepence
a day by working sixteen and even eighteen hours daily.
Having learned drawing and painting, she next attempted the
decoration of fancy articles, but soon gave up the occupation.
Literature, in which she was destined to achieve such glory,
came last. Her first effort was a sketch for the Figaro, written
in conjunction with her friend Jules Sandeau-the future
Academician. It was entitled La Prima Donna, and other
articles succeeded it. Then came a novel by the two colla-
borators, Rose et Blanche, being the story of an actress and a
nun, which was sold by the authors for 400 francs, and pub-
lished under the name of Jules Sand. It was not a very
original production, and gave no indication of what was to
follow. Madame Dudevant was now launched on a Bohe-
mian life in Paris, serving with Jules Sandeau, Félix Pyat, and
others, a brief apprenticeship to literature and experience;
and-as Miss Bertha Thomas has observed in her Memoir of
George Sand-sharing with the rest both their studies and
their relaxations, dining with them at cheap restaurants,
frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree; the
youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in
such collegians' pranks as parading deserted quarters of the
town by moonlight in the small hours, and chanting lugubrious
strains to astonish the shopkeepers.' Madame Dudevant had
already made the acquaintence of the great but eccentric
Balzac, who was amicably disposed towards her, without
encouraging her literary ambition.
Having agreed with Jules Sandeau to produce jointly a
novel to be called Indiana, Madame Dudevant accomplished
Q 2
228
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
most of her task whilst as yet her friend had not written a single
line. When she showed him what she had done, he exclaimed,
after reading a portion of the work, 'You have written a
masterpiece!' She was delighted, but still proposed to pub-
lish it as their joint effort. Not at all,' replied Sandeau, 'I
am too honest to rob you of your glory. My conscience
would never fail to reproach me with such an action.'
name.
De Latouche, the director of the Figaro, was applied to, who
said, 'You wrote Rose et Blanche, and gave the name of
its author as Jules Sand; Sand is therefore your common
property; Madame needs only to select another Christian
Now, Madame, to-day is St. George's day; call your-
self George Sand, and the difficulty is solved!' Madame
Dudevant assented, and soon made the new name illustrious.
Indiana appeared and proved a wonderful success—so much
so as to make the authoress herself nervous with regard to her
future work. This thrilling love story is very unequal, but it
is masterly notwithstanding. The romantic and highly-strung
heroine; the heartless, sensual egotist, Raymon; and the
noble and chivalrous Ralph, are all creations of flesh and
blood, whose sentiments and passions are deeply probed by
the writer. Sainte-Beuve, one of the most penetrating of
French critics, was enraptured by it, and spoke of George
Sand as one of those masters who have been gifted by the
enchanter's wand and mirror.'
In 1832 Valentine, George Sand's second novel, appeared.
Like its predecessor, it dealt with the domestic affections, illus-
trating in the miserable story of its girl-heroine the evils of
forced marriages. More sober in style than Indiana, it was
equally forcible in its analysis of human passion. With these
early works began that long campaign which George Sand
engaged in against the institution of marriage, as it was
generally regarded in French society. Her eloquent and
powerful denunciations were stigmatised by some as scan-
dalous, and the authoress was held up to scorn as the pro-
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229
mulgator of subversive ideas. Others, on the contrary, warmly
vindicated her, and the controversy became so warm that
several duels ensued between her adversaries and partisans.
With regard to the personal appearance of George Sand,
Delacroix's well-known portrait of her, painted in 1833,
represents her as wearing the semi-masculine attire which
greatly astonished the members of her own sex. A later
drawing by Calamatta has frequently been reproduced in
engravings. George Sand painted a curious half-length
portrait of herself at the age of twenty-seven. It is severely
stiff and formal, but the face and hair are remarkable. But
there is no likeness of her as she appeared in her first
youth. 'She has been most diversely described by her
different contemporaries,' remarks her English biographer,
Miss Thomas. 'But that at this time she possessed real
beauty is perfectly evident; for all that, she denies it her-
self, and, unlike most women, and nearly all Frenchwomen,
she scorned to enhance it by an elaborated toilette. Heine,
though he never professed himself one of her personal
adorers, compares the beauty of her head to that of the
Venus of Milo, saying, "It bears the stamp of ideality, and
recalls the noblest remaining examples of Greek art." Her
figure was somewhat too short, but her hands and feet were
very small and beautifully shaped. His acquaintance with
her dates from the early years of her literary triumphs, and
his description is in harmony with Calamatta's presentation.
She had dark, curling hair, a beauty in itself, falling in pro-
fusion to her shoulders, well-formed features, pale olive-tinted
complexion, the countenance expressive, the eyes dark and
very fine, not sparkling, but mild and full of feeling. The
face reminds us of the character of "Still Waters," attributed
to the Aurore Dupin of fifteen by the Lady Superior of the
English convent. Her voice was soft and muffled, and the
simplicity of her manner has been remarked on, by those who
sought her acquaintance, as a particular charm. Yet, like all
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
reserved natures, she often failed to attract strangers at a first
meeting. In general conversation she disappointed people
by not shining. Men and women, immeasurably her inferiors,
surpassed her in ready wit and brilliant repartee.'
Like many a great painter who was nothing without his
brush, George Sand was nothing, as a rule, without the pen,
and when wielding that she became inspired. Yet, either by
speech or pen, she could reveal herself to bosom friends,
which perhaps would point to the conclusion that she might
have gained more repute in conversation with strangers had
she cared to do so. But while she bared the inmost recesses
of her heart to those whom she loved, she closed that heart to
the rest of the world.
George Sand was an indefatigable worker, as the one hun-
dred and twenty volumes of her collected works abundantly
testify. This was a gospel of 'silence' calculated to afflict
very deeply the heart of a Carlyle, and perhaps it is a very
fortunate thing that not every woman is capable of writing
a hundred volumes or so. Even in Venice, which she found
to be the finest and most fascinating city in the world, she
did not relax her efforts. Writing to her half-brother, M.
Hippolyte Chatiron, from Venice, early in 1834, she said :
'Love of work is a great boon. I bless the memory of my
grandmother for having compelled me to acquire the habit
of it. That habit has become a faculty, which itself is for
me a necessity. I have now reached such a point that I can,
without injuring my health, work for thirteen hours in suc-
cession, although the average is from seven to eight hours
a day, whether the work be difficult or easy. Work brings me
plenty of money, and takes up much time which, had I
nothing to do, would be devoted to melancholy and depression
of spirits, the natural consequences of my bilious temperament.
If, like yourself, I were not fond of writing, I should at least
spend a great deal of time in reading. I even regret that
my needy circumstances always compel me to rake something
GEORGE SAND.
231
out of my brains without ever having the time to acquire
fresh knowledge. I long to be able to dispose of a whole
year of solitude and complete freedom, in order to hoard up
in my head all the foreign masterpieces which I little know,
or am entirely ignorant of. I expect to derive great pleasure
from their study, and I envy those who can do as they please.
But, when I have been scribbling my set task, I am only fit
to go and sip coffee and smoke cigarettes on the Piazza San
Marco, while murdering the Italian language in conversation
with my Venetian friends.'
As soon as George Sand had attained an independent position
in literature, her services were retained by the Revue de Paris
and the Revue des Deux Mondes. At the same time important
works followed each other with great rapidity. After the pub-
lication of a novelette, La Marquise, came the issue of Lélia,
perhaps the most remarkable work of her first period--that
period marked by romantic bias and social polemics. In this
novel, however, she assumed great poetic license; indeed the
whole thing might be described as a gorgeous fantasy. It
created a profound sensation, although its characters had
nothing in common with ordinary humanity. But it contained
abundance of imagery, psychology, and transcendental philo-
sophy. The authoress herself had always an affection for it,
though as a work of art she eventually pronounced it absurd.
The truth is that this work, with its successor Jacques, was
produced at a time of mental and spiritual transition. George
Sand was in revolt against the accepted canons of society;
she was a kind of female Byron, with her hand against the
world, and the world's hand against her. Feeling that the
teaching of Lélia might be, and indeed had been, misconstrued,
we find her writing as follows, some years after its production,
to a young Catholic lady who frequently consulted her on
moral questions: 'That woman, in order to escape from suffer-
ing and humiliation, should keep from love and maternity, ist
a romantic idea which I have enunciated in a novel of mine,
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Lélia, not as an example to follow, but as the picture of a
martyr who may awaken thoughts in his judges and execu-
tioners, those who declare the law and those who apply it. It
was only a poem, and since you have taken the trouble to read
it, you will not, I hope, have seen any doctrine in it. I have
never preached any doctrine; I do not feel my intelligence to
be equal to it.'
That George Sand herself could throw off the trammels of
conventional society is shown by the many Bohemian friend-
ships which she formed. These were generally Platonic, and
had their rise in a community of thought and literary aspira-
tion; but there were others which the world said were not
Platonic. One of the most notable of her friendships was that
formed with Alfred de Musset. At the close of 1833 they set
out for Italy together, where George Sand remained for six
months, and where she laid the scene of several of her best-
known novels. The friendship between two such people as
De Musset and George Sand was little likely to have the
elements of cohesion in it. The gifted but morbid and erratic
poet had scarcely anything in common with the woman of
strong individuality and methodical habits. De Musset had a
finer strain than George Sand when at his best, but he was
fitful, volatile, and weak in temperament. Both went through
a period of disillusion, and instead of being saved by his
guardian angel, the poet returned to Paris broken-hearted.
After his death, George Sand wrote her Elle et Lui-a kind of
vindication of her relations with him; but this produced a
slashing reply from Paul de Musset, the poet's brother, entitled
Lui et Elle, while yet a third work, Lui, by Madame Colet,
resulted from this unhappy business.
Speaking of her sojourn at Venice, George Sand says:
'There, alone all the afternoon, never going out except in the
evening for a breath of air, working at night as well, to the song
of the tame nightingales that people all Venetian balconies, I
wrote André, Jacques, Maltea, and the first Lettres dun Voya-
GEORGE SAND.
233
geur. These letters show that she, too, suffered in the De
Musset affair; but then she had a power of recovery, and this
was aided by the two moving passions of her life-love of her
children, and love of her art. With regard to the melancholy,
sentimental novel Jacques, the authoress wrote long after its
appearance that its hero belonged to the large family of dis-
illusioned thinkers; they had their raison d'être, historical and
social. He comes on the scene in the novel already worn by
deceptions; he thought to revive through his love, and her
does not revive. Marriage was for him only the drop of
bitterness that made the cup overflow. He killed himself to
bequeath to others the happiness for which he cared not, and
in which he believed not.' While ostensibly written as a blast
against married life, it is not a little curious that the writer
seemed to have been called in to bless, for its best passages
depict a happy married state, and in other respects the sym-
pathies of the reader are entirely enlisted on the side of the
wronged husband. In André the authoress 'put together the
vulgar elements of inferior society in a commonplace country
town, and produced a poem, though one of the saddest. If
the florist heroine, Genevieve, is a slightly-idealised figure, the
story and general-character treatment are realistic to a painful
degree. There is more power of simple pathos shown here
than is common in the works of George Sand. André is a
refreshing contrast, in its simplicity and brevity, to the inflation
of Lélia and Jacques. It was an initial essay, and a model
one, in a style with better claims to enduring popularity.'
In 1835 George Sand took legal steps to render the separa-
tion from her husband permanent and complete. Pecuniary
difficulties and disputes touching the control of their children
led to this. She obtained a judicial separation from her
husband, and this having been appealed against by M. Dude-
vant, it was confirmed by the Royal Court at Bruges. Under
the terms of this final judgment, George Sand recovered the
full possession of her ancestral estate and fortune, on agreeing
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
to pay her husband a yearly income of 3,800 francs, in addition
to his own personal income of 1,200 francs. The guardian-
ship of her daughter Solange was confided to her; and it was
arranged that her son Maurice, who was then at the Collége
Henri IV., should spend one month of his midsummer
holidays with his father, and the other with his mother. M.
Dudevant does not seem to have been a very desirable person,
and there is not a word to be said for him personally; but it
is only right to add that George Sand herself-with whom he
had no sympathies in common-could be a very trying person
in her turn. Granted that all her friendships were Platonic,
they were conducted with a freedom which could not commend
itself to a husband. What Englishman, for example, would
like to see his wife entering into Bohemian life, smoking, and
wearing men's clothes, and when remonstrated with by a friend
for her masculine escapades, stigmatising him as impertinent?
No, George Sand loved her children deeply, and was passion-
ately devoted to them, but in some respects she was by no
means a model wife.
#
However, I turn from this gladly, to quote the following
beautiful letter, which she wrote to her son Maurice while at
college in June, 1835: 'Study, be strong, proud, independent,
and scorn the little vexations inseparable from your age. Re-
serve your power of resistance for acts and facts worthy of it.
Time will come when resistance will be commendable. Should
I be no more, think then of me, who suffered and worked
cheerfully. We are alike in body and soul. I know, even
now, what sort of intellectual life yours will be. I fear much
profound grief is in store for you, but I hope that you will have
many pure joys. Keep up within yourself the treasure called
kindness. Give without hesitation, lose without regret, acquire
without meanness. Should happiness desert you, let that of
those whom you love fill your heart, and share in it as though
it were your own. Do not give up your hopes of a future life,
wherein mothers and sons will meet again. Love all God's
GEORGE SAND.
235
creatures, forgive those who are disinherited by nature, resist
those who are iniquitous, devote yourself to those who are
great in virtue. Love me! I will teach you many things if
we ever live together. Should we not be destined to enjoy
that happiness (the greatest which could happen to me, the
only cause of my wishing for a long life), you will pray to God
for me; and from the bosom of death, should anything be
left of me in the whole universe, the shadow of your mother
will watch over you.'
It was in this same year, 1835, that George Sand be-
came acquainted with the Comtesse d'Agoult, who, under the
pseudonym of Daniel Stern, wrote La Révolution de 1848,
Esquisses Morales, and other works. The novelist had heard
much of her from Franz Liszt, the eminent musician. George
Sand loved this new friend, whom she described as 'the
only beautiful, estimable, and truly noble star which I have
seen shining in the patrician sphere.' George Sand had no
jealousy of others in the literary sense, and in encouraging the
Comtesse to write she said: 'You are young, in the full pos-
session of your intellect, in all the lucidity of your unbiassed
judgment. Make haste and write before having thought much.
When you have pondered over all things you will feel no
special taste for any particular subject, and will write by habit.
only. Write while you have genius, while the gods and not
memory dictate to you.` I predict great success for you. May
God spare you the thorns which protect the sacred flowers
composing the crown of Fame! For why should they stand in
your way? You are diamond-like, you whose heart is as free
from vindictive hateful passions as is mine. Besides, you
never passed through the wilderness; you are brilliant, fresh,
and blooming.'
It was about this time, also, that George Sand made the
acquaintance of the Abbé de Lamennais, also introduced to
her by Liszt. The Abbé had become a prominent figure by
his famous work, Paroles d'un Croyant, which the Pope pro-
236
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
nounced to be 'small in size, but immense in perversity.'
With his fearlessness of thought he seemed to realise her
ideal in religion, which was faith divorced from superstition
and the doctrine of Romish infallibility. For the Abbé's
journal, Le Monde, George Sand wrote her Lettres à Marcie,
which dealt with moral and spiritual problems and trials
as affecting women. The writer desired to speak upon all
womanly duties-marriage, maternity, &c., but there were some
points on which the editor and contributor were not in accord,
and the series remained unfinished. A few years afterwards
Lamennais was thrown into the prison of Sainte-Pélagie for
writing against the Government. While he lay there George.
Sand wrote to him, expounding her views on the emancipation
of women. 'I have always,' she said, 'attributed that de facto
inferiority of women, which generally exists, to the inferiority
which men seek to establish for ever in principle in order to
abuse the weakness, the ignorance, the sanity, in short, all the
defects which our education causes in us. Half rehabilitated
by Christian philosophy, we still stand in need of further re-
habilitation. As we reckon you among our saints, as you are
the father of our new Church, we are all distressed and dis-
heartened when, instead of blessing us and raising our intellect,
you rather drily say to us, "Keep back, my good girls, you are
all regular simpletons." I reply for my sisters: "That is the
truth, master; but teach us how to be no longer simpletons !"
The remedy does not reside in telling us that the evil proceeds
from our nature, but in showing us that it is the result of the
manner in which your sex has governed us up to the present.
If we entreat God to give us intelligence, He perhaps will
accede to our request, without, for that matter, giving us a
beard; and you will then be greatly mortified in turn. I need
much courage, sir, in order to joke with you, while my heart
bleeds at the idea of the sufferings which you endure in your
prison. If I dare to do so, it is because I know your unalter-
able serenity, that fund of gaiety which you possess, and which
GEORGE SAND.
237
is, in my eyes, the most admirable proof of your benevolence
and candour. You wished to undergo that ordeal; that is an
excess of kindness on your part towards so light and cold a
generation. Whilst admiring you, I cannot commend you for
risking your health and life for that race which is not worthy
of you.
But God will not be the accomplice of your jailors,
and, in spite of yourself, He will restore you to our devotion
and respectful affection.'
George Sand was inspired with a strong passion for political
and social reform by the advocate Michel, of Bourges, who was
an eloquent exponent of advanced Radicalism.
But as
Michel was a destroyer and not a builder, she was more per-
manently impressed by the influence of the philosopher Pierre
Leroux, who, with Jean Reynaud, inspired her with Socialist.
ideas and principles. It was during this middle philosophical
and political period that she wrote Spiridion, Consuelo, the
Comtesse de Rudolstadt, and other works with similar tenden-
cies. She was also drawn towards Saint-Simonianism. Having
been presented with an address and valuable gifts by the Saint-
Simonian family in Paris, she replied in a letter full of elevated
thoughts and aspirations. Regretting that she could not come
forward as a leader in their work, for which she did not feel
herself competent, she went on to observe: As for me, poor
hermit, lost in the crowd, a kind of rhapsodist, devout preser-
ver of old Plato's enthusiasm, silent worshipper of Christ's
tears, amazed and wavering admirer of great Spinoza, a kind of
sickly and meaningless being called poet, incapable of formu-
lating conviction and proof otherwise than with narratives and
complaints, the evil and the good of human things, I feel that
I cannot be either a soldier or a priest, a master or a disciple,
a prophet or an apostle; I will be for all a feeble but devoted
brother; I do not know and cannot teach anything; I have no
strength, I cannot perform any feat. I can sing the holy war
and the holy peace; for I believe in the necessity of both. In
my poet's mind, I dream of Homeric struggles, which, with
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Septe
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
throbbing heart, I witness from the mountain-top, or in the
midst of which I rush under the feet of the horses, intoxicated
with enthusiasm and holy vengeance. I also dream of the
morrow of the storm, a magnificent sunrise, altars adorned
with flowers, legislators crowned with olive-wreaths, the dignity.
of man vindicated, man freed from man's tyranny, woman from
that of woman, a tutelage of love performed by the priest over
man and by the latter over woman, a Government whose name
would be counsel, and not sway, persuasion, and might. In the
meantime, I will sing to the diapason of my voice, and my
teachings shall be humble; for I am the child of my time, I
was subjected to its miseries, I shared its errors, I drank at all
its sources of life and death, and, although I may be more
fervent than the masses in my desires for their salvation, I am
not more competent than they to point out the road to it. Let
me weep over and pray for that Jerusalem which has lost her
gods and has not yet hailed her Messiah. My vocation is to
hate evil, to love good, to kneel before the beautiful. Treat
me, therefore, like a true friend. Open your hearts to me and
do not appeal to my brain. Minerva is not therein and could
not thence emerge. My soul is full of contemplations and
wishes which the world scoffs at, believing them obnoxious and
impracticable. If I am attracted towards you by affection and
confidence, it is because you possess within yourselves a
treasure of hope whose flame you communicated to me, in-
stead of extinguishing the faint spark glimmering within the
depths of my heart.'
To her friend Daniel Stern, George Sand thus unburthened
herself on the subject of religion: To rush into the bosom of
Mother Nature; to regard her really as a mother and as a
sister; to stoically and religiously eliminate from life all
satisfied vanity; to obstinately resist the proud and the wicked;
to be humble and meek with the unfortunate; to weep over
the poor man's misery and wish for no other consolation but
the fall of the rich; to believe in no other God but He who
•
GEORGE SAND.
239
preaches justice and equality to men ; to venerate what is good;
to judge with severity that which is but strong; to live on
almost nothing, to give up almost everything, in order to set up
again primitive equality and to revive Divine institutions-
such is the religion which I would proclaim in my humble
retreat, and which I aspire to preach to my twelve apostles
under the lime-trees of my garden.' It is to be noted that
George Sand did not allow these generous sentiments to be-
come a dead letter. All through life she was distinguished for
her benevolence and practical philanthropy, and she dis-
tributed no less than 300,000 francs in acts of untiring and
unostentatious charity. Her religious opinions became vague
towards the close of her career, but the religious spirit within
her ever prompted her to good deeds.
To M. Alexandre Weill, a sceptic who had written much
against the accepted canons of Christianity, and who was a
little uncharitable towards those who differed from him, George
Sand wrote as follows: 'You fill four pages in preaching a
good deal to one who had no need of it to be induced to reject
the idolatrous worship of your Jewish Jehovah, and of our good
God (bon Dieu) of Catholicism. But I believe in God, and in
a God that is good (Dieu bon), and all Germany and France.
combined could not remove Him from my heart.' Without
intending anything irreverent by the phrase, George Sand
would frequently confide to her friends that she was on good
terms with the Almighty. To a Roman Catholic cure who had
written to her, begging her to assist in the work of the Church,
she replied that she was out of sympathy with that Church,
and had become its adversary, though a very peaceable adver-
sary. She went on to say: 'Since the spirit of liberty has
been stifled in the Church, since there is no longer in Catholic
doctrine either discussions, councils, progress, or light, I regard
that doctrine as a dead letter placed as a political check under
thrones and above peoples. It is in my eyes a dark veil over
the word of Christa false interpretation of the sublime
240
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
gospels, and an insurmountable obstacle to the sacred equality
which God promises, which God will grant to men on earth as
in heaven. I will say no more. I am not so proud as to wish
to engage in a controversy with you, and for that very reason I
shall have little fear of embarrassing or disturbing your faith.
I must inform you of the motive for my refusal, and I wish
that it may not be imputed by you to any other sentiment than
my conviction.
On the day when you preach purely and
simply the gospel of Saint John and the doctrine of Saint John
Chrysostom, without false commentary and without concession
to the powers of this world, I will come and hear your sermons,
reverend sir, and will bring my offering to your church; but I
do not wish for it on your account. On that day you will be
interdicted by your Bishop, and the doors of your chapel will
be shut.'
C
In the autumn of 1836 George Sand paid a visit to her friend
the Comtesse d'Agoult at Geneva. Her Swiss tour is sketched
in the Lettres d'un Voyageur, and it was at this time also she
wrote Simon, a novel wherein she 'paints the triumph of true
and patient love over social prejudice and strong opposition.'
In contrast with this may be placed Léone Léoni, which ex-
hibits the infatuation of a weak-minded woman for a pheno-
menal scoundrel.' On returning to Paris, the novelist occupied
a suite of rooms in the Hôtel de France, where also resided
Madame d'Agoult. In the rooms of the latter there might
frequently be seen a galaxy of brilliant spirits, including Heine,
Mickiewicz, George Sand, Delacroix, Meyerbeer, Daniel Stern,
Chopin, Hiller, and Liszt. In the ensuing summer many of
these celebrities accompanied George Sand to her home at
Nohant. All through life she would receive visitors at the châ-
teau, which was turned into a kind of Liberty Hall, and in which
there was a marionette theatre. In 1837 the novelist wrote at
Nohant that fine story Mauprat, in which she exerts all the
force of her imagination and language to bring before us vividly
the gradual redemption of a noble but degraded nature, through
GEORGE SAND.
241
the influence of an exclusive, passionate, and indestructible
affection.' From this time, the natural optimism of her tem-
perament, not her incidental misfortunes, began to colour her
compositions.' It was in 1837 also that she wrote for her child
Les Maitres Mosaïstes, a little tale embodying the adventures of
the Venetian mosaic-workers. The authoress said it was sel-
dom she had written anything with so much pleasure. 'It was
in the country, in summer weather, as hot as the Italian
climate I had lately left. I have never seen so many birds and
flowers in my garden. Liszt was playing the piano on the
ground floor; and the nightingales, intoxicated with music and
sunshine, were singing madly in the lilac-trees around.'
Upon this happy time came a deep trouble. George Sand
was summoned to Paris, where she closed the eyes of her
mother, Madame Maurice Dupin, to whom she was tenderly
attached. After this she spent some weeks at Fontainebleau,
where she produced her Venetian story, La Dernière Aldini.
In consequence of the delicate health of her son, George Sand
resolved to spend the winter of 1838-39 at Majorca, with her
family. Chopin, who was very intimate with the novelist,
joined the party en route, and they reached Palma, the capital
of the island, in November. The scenery and climate were all
that could be desired—'a green Switzerland, under a Calabrian
sky, with all the solemnity and stillness of the East.' But
troubles soon supervened. The place was most inconvenient
to communicate with; a rainy season of exceptional severity
set in; and Chopin became dangerously ill. The villa pro-
prietor, hearing that the famous composer was suffering from
consumption-which the Majorcans believed to be infectious-
ordered the whole party to quit. After great difficulty they es-
tablished themselves in the deserted Carthusian Monastery of
Valdemosa. Writing to her friend, François Rollinat, George
Sand said: 'The place was incomparably poetical; we did not
see a living soul, nothing disturbed our work; after waiting two
months, and paying three hundred francs extra, Chopin had at
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242
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
last received his piano, and delighted the vaults of his cell with
his melodies. Health and strength were visibly returning to
Maurice; as for me, I worked as tutor seven hours a day; I
sat up working on my own account half the night; Chopin
composed masterpieces, and we hoped to put up with the re-
mainder of our discomforts by the aid of these compensations.'
Chopin's masterpieces included the finest of his Preludes.
'Several of these Preludes,' wrote George Sand, 'represent
the visions that haunted him of deceased monks, the sounds of
funeral chants; others are soft and melancholy; these came to
him in his hours of sunshine and health, at the sound of the
children's laughter beneath the window, the distant thrum of
guitars, and the song of the birds under the damp foliage; at
the sight of the pale little roses in bloom among the snow.'
The scenery was of a most inspiring character. Describing
Valdemosa, George Sand said: A poetical name and a
poetical abode; an admirable landscape, grand and wild, with
the sea at both ends of the horizon, formidable peaks around
us, eagles pursuing their prey even down to the orange-trees in
our garden, a cypress walk winding from the top of our moun-
tain to the bottom of the gorge, torrents overgrown with
myrtles, palm-trees below our feet-nothing could be more
magnificent than this spot.' But Chopin became worse and
worse, and proved a terrible responsibility; George Sand her-
self had rheumatism in every limb; and when the steamers
resumed running in the spring, it was with a feeling of thank-
fulness that the party left the island, and returned first to Mar-
seilles and then to Paris.
This disastrous expedition was not without important literary
results, however, for George Sand. In addition to her striking
little volume, Un Hiver à Majorque, George Sand completed
in the cells of Valdemosa her novel of monastic life, Spiridion.
This work has grave defects, but it comes into the higher rank
of her novels. In it she has devoted 'her most fervent ener-
gies in tracing the spiritual history, peu récréatif, as she dryly
GEORGE SAND.
243
observes, of a monk who, in the days of the decadence of the
monastic orders, retained earnestness and sincerity; whose
mind, revolted by the hypocrisy and worldliness around him,
went through the successive stages of heresy and philosophic
doubt, and to whom is finally revealed an eternal gospel, which
lies at the core of his old religion, but which later growths have
stifled, and which outlasts all shocks and changes, and is to
generate the religion of the future.' To Spiridion succeeded a
work of spiritual and mental analysis, Les Sept Cordes de la
Lyre.
The relations between Chopin and George Sand lasted for
many years, but eventually a breach occurred shortly before
the composer's death. This intimacy of two gifted spirits led
to many conflicting opinions. Some charged the novelist with
blighting Chopin's life; but others claimed that during eight
years of suffering the composer was cheered by her womanly
devotion and cheerful society. The truth is that while they
had a great admiration for each other, their social and political
sympathies were divided.
In 1840 George Sand made her first attempt as a dramatic
author. Cosima, a play in five acts, was produced at the
Théâtre Français, but it provoked roars of laughter and storms
of indignation, and was denounced by the audience as immoral.
The actors, astounded at its reception, played very badly, and
the whole thing proved a fiasco. With modern French senti-
ments, and the scene laid at Florence in the Middle Ages, it
was scarcely likely to prove successful. The writer took her
defeat with equanimity, however, though she denied that the
drama was immoral. She next wrote her novel Horace for the
Rerme des Deux Mondes, but the editor, Buloz, declined it as
being subversive of law and order, unless the authoress would
make radical alterations. This she declined to do, and the
story appeared in the Revue Indépendante, a new journal
founded by her friends Pierre Leroux and Louis Viardot.
Horace, the chief character, was a moral charlatan and mock
R 2
244
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
hero, whose attempts to pose as a great man ultimately failed
and relegated him to a deserved obscurity. This story was
followed by the Compagnon du Tour de France, an inferior
work, based on Socialist ideas. A second work of a similar
type was Le Péché de M. Antoine; but here there was a more
living interest in the characters, and the Socialist propaganda was
less pronounced. In the Preface to a later edition of this book,
she observed that its ideas, 'at which as yet but a small number
of Conservative spirits had taken alarm, had thus far only really
begun to sprout in a small number of attentive, laborious minds.
The Government, so long as no actual form of political applica-
tion was assumed, was not to be disquieted by theories, and let
every man make his own, put forth his dream, and innocently
construct his city of the future, by his own fireside, in the
garden of his imagination.' Yet a third novel of Socialist
tendencies, Le Meunier d'Angibault, appeared some years
later. Having learnt before its production, however, that the
public care little for political disquisitions unless they are
accompanied by more interesting elements, she paid in this
novel more attention to the delineation of scenery and charac-
ter, the result being that it was much more readable than its
predecessors.
While upon this question of Socialism, I will let George
Sand explain her attitude towards it in her own words. Writ-
ing to Mazzini during that year of Revolution, 1848, she said:
"The Socialists of the times we live in do not wish for the
solutions of despair. Profiting by the lessons of the past,
enlightened by a loftier comprehension of Christian civilisation,
all those who deserve that appellation, whatever the social
doctrine they may belong to, repudiate for the future the
tragical part played by the old Jacobins, and beseech, with
folded hands, the conscience of man to get enlightened and to
decide in favour of God's law. But the idea of despotism is in
its essence so identical with that of fear, that the bourgeoisie
trembles and threatens at the same time. It is so afraid of
GEORGE SAND.
245
Socialism that it wants to annihilate it though calumny and
persecution; and whenever some far-seeing one's voice is
raised in order to point out the danger, a thousand others
are at once raised to bring anathema upon the obnoxious
prophet.
"You are provoking hatred," they will say; "you are calling
down vengeance upon us. You make the people believe that
they are miserable; you point us out as objects for their fury.
You only pity them in order to excite them. You remind
them of their poverty only because we are rich." In short,
charity, brotherly love, all that which Christ used to preach to
men of His time, has become a fiery propaganda, and, were
Jesus to appear among us, He would be attacked by the
national guards as an anarchist and a factious citizen.
'That is what I fear for France, the Christ of nations, as she
has been lately very rightly termed. I fear the want of intelli-
gence in the rich and the despair of the poor.
I fear the state
of struggle which is not yet in men's minds, but which may
become acts, if the ruling class does not enter upon a frankly
democratic and sincerely fraternal path. Then, I declare,
there will be great confusion and sore misfortunes, for the
people are not ripe for self-government. They possess power-
ful individualities, intellects able to cope with any situation.
But such are not known. They do not exercise over the
people the prestige which the masses require to love and
believe. The masses have no faith in their own element, they
have just proved it at the last general election; they seek for
guides above them, they love great names and celebrities, who-
ever they may be. The people will therefore again look for
liberators among bourgeois, self-styled Democrats, Socialists, or
others, and they will once more be deceived in their expecta-
tions, for, but with few exceptions, perhaps, there does not
exist in France a democratic party sufficiently enlightened to
undertake a dictatorship of public safety. Will they rely upon
the wisdom or the inspiration of a single individual? That
246
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
**
would be a retrograde step, reversing all the progress of man-
kind during the last twenty years.'
At a much later date-that is, after the terrible war of 1870
had broken out, and the fall of the Empire and the establish-
ment of a Republic were imminent-she wrote to a friend :
'We are overwhelmed by the enormity of public misfortunes.
To-day, as ever, I am one of the reddest of Socialists; but I do
not feel that my acceptance of Socialist doctrines binds me to
adhere to the Socialist political programme. Doctrines should
never be imposed by violence—that is criminal and insane ;
for that which is begotten by violence is doomed to violent
death. If the Republic, now looming in the future, be alive to
the true interests of Republicanism, it will abstain from any but
moral action, seeing that it is dread of violence alone that bars
the way to a more moderate Republic, which might at least
have the chance of establishing itself.'
In 1842-43 George Sand's romance of Consuelo appeared in
the Revue Indépendante. It has since been published sepa-
rately in various forms, and it is the work by which the
authoress is best known in England. Taken as a whole, it is
the ablest as well as the most popular of her novels. Notwith-
standing occasional rhapsodies and high-flown passages, it is a
noble, healthy, and inspiring book. It possesses philosophic
and artistic claims, and whether the writer transports us to
Venice, to Vienna, or to the medieval castle in which much of
the scene is cast, she everywhere writes with ability, freshness,
and vigour. There is no lack of literary or personal interest in
this work. It was followed immediately by its sequel, La
Comtesse de Rudolstadt, in which there was less reality but
more adventure. 'In the rites and doctrines of the Illuminati,
an idealisation of the features of the secret sects of the last
century, she found a new medium of expression for her
sentiments regarding the present abuses of society and the need
of thorough renovation. Secret societies, at that time, were
extremely numerous and active among the Republican workers
GEORGE SAND.
247
in France.' But Madame Sand-while admitting that they
might have been a necessity for Germany in tyrannical times-
was opposed to their spirit as being out of harmony with her
own times. As she said in her Histoire de Ma Vie, such a
spirit could bring forth nothing in the future but a dictator-
ship, and the dictatorial principle was one she had never
accepted.
George Sand has been spoken of as a Communist, and the
general Communistic principle she did accept for a time, but
with such limitations that she must have seemed a very weak-
kneed disciple to ardent Communists. While she opposed
individualism in theory, her own strong personality practically
contradicted her opinions. There was also a considerable
leaven of aristocratic sentiment in her nature. She herself
remarked that in treating the Communistic idea, it is necessary
first to distinguish what is essential in liberty and work to the
complete existence of the individual, from what is collective.
Voluntary association—or what is now known in England as
the Co-operative principle, was about the actual limit of her
Communistic ideas. For the Paris Commune of 1871 she felt
nothing but horror and indignation. Writing to Flaubert she
asked 'What will be the countershock of that infamous Com-
mune? Napoleon or Henry V., or else the reign of arson
brought back by anarchy ? I, who have so much patience with
my species, and was so long optimistic in my views, am now
totally plunged in the dark. I was judging others by myself. I
had much improved my own temper, repressed my useless and
dangerous outbursts, sown over my volcanoes grass and
flowers which were growing nicely, and imagined that every-
body could get enlightened, could improve and control himself;
that the years which had passed over me and my fellow-
creatures could not be lost to reason and experience; and
behold I awake from my dream, to find a generation eaten up
with either idiocy or delirium tremens! Anything is possible
now. Yet it is wrong to despair. I will make a great effort, and
248
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
perhaps I shall again find myself just and patient; but at
present I cannot.'
In 1847 appeared George Sand's strange novel entitled
Lucrezia Floriani. It was a masterly character-study, but the
writer was severely attacked on the ground that she had intro-
duced into the work, in the person of Prince Karol, an
unfavourable portrait of Chopin. But the composer himself,
who read the work, did not complain on this score, and the
probability is that George Sand only took the novelist's privilege
of utilising in the most general way the tender passages of the
past between herself and Chopin. The story is powerful but
miserable. There is not in the whole range of George Sand's
works a more finely-drawn character than the actress-singer
Lucrezia, with her disappointed love, and second to this comes
the Prince, with his jealous and tyrannical nature. There was
reality in this work, and passionate intensity, but the narrative
as a whole was only a faint adumbration of the actual story of
Chopin and George Sand.
It was to be expected that such a Revolution as that of 1848
would draw forth all the energies of George Sand. She earnestly
associated herself with the advanced Republicans, and was
made the subject of threats by misled and fanatical opponents.
She was compelled to leave Paris for Nohant, in order to keep
at bay a numerous gang of fools from La Châtre, who daily
talked about setting fire to her house. The most ridiculous
stories were told concerning her, and at the time of the events
in Paris it was said that she had concealed Ledru-Rollin, 200
Communists, and 400 rifles in her house! Madame Sand
wrote two Lettres au Peuple, the Preface to the Bulletins de la
République, contributed articles to the Revue Indépendante,
and even founded a newspaper called La Cause du Peuple.
She wrote in collaboration with Barbès and Sobrier in the
Commune de Paris, and contributed a Preface to the serial
Conteurs Ouvriers. With that high-souled Republican Armand
Barbès she maintained a warm friendship all through life,
GEORGE SAND.
249
cheering him when in the prison of Sainte-Pélagie. Writing
to him on one occasion she said, 'I think of you when I think
of God, who loves you; that is to say, I think of you often.'
But when the Republic triumphed in 1848, and Lamartine
was installed at the head of the Provisional Government, George
Sand was not satisfied. She thought the Golden Age had
already dawned, but found it was not so; while the intrigues,
divisions, and complications at headquarters threatened the
very existence of the new order. Michel she had already
dethroned in her heart, and Pierre Leroux was useless in a time
of crisis. Lamartine, Barbès, Louis Blanc, and Ledru Rollin
were great popular leaders, but they all lacked some necessary
quality, so she fell back upon her faith in the masses. When
Lamartine showed a desire to compromise, thus placing in
jeopardy the future of the new Republic, she appealed to him
thus eloquently :
'In a few years you scaled the loftiest regions of human
thought, and, making your way through the darkness of
Catholicism, were carried by the Spirit of God high enough to
utter this oracle, which I repeat from morning till night: "The
more light there is, the better one sees God!"
'The light that sprung from you has scattered the mist of
faint smoke and light fogs in which the vanity of the world
wanted to detain you; and now you are unwilling to believe
that its Divine will, which performed that wonder with a single
individual, can cause the same lights of truth to flash upon a
whole nation? You believe that it will wait centuries before
bringing into reality the magic picture which it allowed you to
glance at? No, indeed! No! its dawn is nearer at hand than
you think, and if nearer, it is because it is inscribed upon the
dial of centuries. You have made a mistake as regards the
appointed hour, great poet, and great man! You believe your-
self to be living in a time when the duty of righteous men
and of men of genius was identical, and tending equally to
delay the ruin of societies still good and durable! You believe
250
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
that the ruin is only beginning, whereas it is consummated,
and one single stone is alone preventing the edifice from
falling to pieces! Do you then wish to be that last stone, the
keystone of that impure vault, you who hate impurity from the
bottom of your heart, and, in your lyrical impulses, deny
Mammon in the face of the world?
'If the society of the business men with whom you conde-
scend to associate were to frankly occupy itself with the
emancipation of the human race, I would admire you as a saint,
and say that to condescend to eat at the publican's table in
order to cause truth to dawn upon them, is to unite the meek-
ness of Jesus with His genius. But you know full well that
you cannot bring about such results. The miracle which con-
sists in converting and touching corrupted or ignorant souls is
in the hands of the Eternal alone, and it appears that He does
not intend thus to begin the work of regeneration, since He does
The under strata
not enlighten or soften any of those souls.
of society are alone being worked upon, and the upper strata
seem intended to be put aside as mere dross. Why are you
with those whom God does not wish to enlighten, and not with
those whom He enlightens ? Why do you place yourself be-
tween the wealthy bourgeois and the proletariat, preaching to
the one resignation-that is, the continuation of its sufferings
until a new state of things, which your business men will delay
as much as they possibly can-to the other, sacrifices, result-
ing only in insignificant concessions, themselves brought about
by fear rather than by persuasion? Do not cause posterity to
say: "That great man died with his eyes open to the future,
and closed to the present. He predicted the reign of justice,
and, by a strange contradiction-too frequent, alas! among
celebrated men,—he held to the past, and did his best to pro-
long it.
It is true that one verse from him was of more worth
and effect than all the political labours of his life; for, that
voice was the voice of God speaking with him, and to those
political labours he was doomed by human error; yet it is
GEORGE SAND.
251
cruel to think he can only be reckoned among the lights, and
not among the heroes of the period of struggle whose rapid
progress and close issue he failed to perceive.'
"""
George Sand was filled with a momentary enthusiasm by the
affecting spectacle of April 20, 1848, when at the fête of fra-
ternity a million souls agreed to bury their dissensions and for-
get all past wrongs; but this was speedily followed by the
unhappy demonstration of the 15th of May, when disorder and
riot foreshadowed the doom of the Republic. Barbès was
arrested, and her own imprisonment was expected.
She went
down to Nohant dispirited, seeing nothing but ignorance and
moral weakness preponderating on the face of the globe. Still,
she continued to give fearless expression to her sentiments in
La Vraie République; but ingratitude and political ignor-
ance discouraged her, and we find her writing to Mazzini:
'I shall keep my faith-the idea, pure and bright, the eternal
truth will ever remain for me in my heaven, unless I go blind.
But hope is a belief in the near triumph of one's faith. I
should not be sincere if I said that this state of mind had not
been modified in me during these last months.' Then came
the sanguinary insurrection of June, and her heart was crushed
by the national troubles. The frightful confusion and moral
anarchy caused her to exclaim: The majority of the French
people is blind, credulous, ignorant, ungrateful, wicked, and
stupid; it is bourgeoise itself!'
<
During the time that Louis Napoleon was consolidating his
power, first as President and then as Emperor, George Sand
took no active share in political life. She had known some-
thing of the Emperor when he was a prisoner in the fortress of
Ham, for he had sent her his work on the Extinction of
Pauperism, and she had replied in a letter expressing warm
praise, but at the same time defending her Republican ideas,
and maintaining that the party to which she belonged could
never acknowledge any sovereign but the people. But when
the Empire became an accomplished fact she looked for liberty
252
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
and reform under it with an ardent hope which was doomed to
be disappointed. She was successful, however, in procuring
from Louis Napoleon, by her warm pleadings, the pardon of a
number of political offenders. With Prince Napoleon she was
ever on terms of cordial friendship, finding in him many popu-
lar sympathies which were absent from his Imperial cousin.
The Brownings saw a good deal of George Sand while visit-
ing Paris in 1852. They had an introduction to her from
Mazzini. Mrs. Browning thus describes their first meeting, and
the personal appearance of George Sand: 'She received us
very cordially, with her hand held out, which I, in the emotion
of the moment, stooped and kissed-upon which she ex-
claimed, “Mais non! je ne veux pas,” and kissed me. I don't
think she is a great deal taller than I am—yes, taller, but not a
great deal—and a little over-stout for that height.
The upper
part of the face is fine, the forehead, eyebrows and eyes-dark
glowing eyes, as they should be; the lower part not so good.
The beautiful teeth project a little, flashing out the smile of the
large, characteristic mouth, and the chin recedes. It never
could have been a beautiful face, Robert and I agree, but noble
and expressive it has been and is. The complexion is olive,
quite without colour; the hair, black and glossy, divided with
evident care, and twisted back into a knot behind the head,
and she wore no covering to it. Some of the portraits repre-
sent her in ringlets, and ringlets would be much more becom-
ing to the style of face, I fancy, for the cheeks are rather over-
full. She was dressed in a sort of woollen grey gown, with a
jacket of the same material (according to the ruling fashion),
the gown fastened up to the throat, with a small linen collar-
ette, and plain white muslin sleeves buttoned round the wrists.
The hands offered to me were small and well-shaped. Her
manners were quite as simple as her costume. I never saw a
simpler woman. Not a shade of affectation or consciousness;
even-not a suffusion of coquetry, not a cigarette to be seen!
Two or three young men were sitting with her, and I observed
GEORGE SAND.
253
the profound respect with which they listened to every word
she said. She spoke rapidly, with a low, unemphatic voice.
Repose of manner is much more her characteristic than anima-
tion-only, under all the quietness, and perhaps by means of
it, you are aware of an intense, burning soul. She kissed me
again when we went away
A second most interesting letter from Mrs. Browning gives
these further details respecting George Sand:-
'April 7th.-George Sand we came to know a great deal
more of. I think Robert saw her six times. Once he met
her near the Tuileries, offered her his arm, and walked with her
the whole length of the gardens. She was not on that occasion
looking as well as usual, being a little too much endimanchée
in terrestrial lavenders and super-celestial blues-not, in fact,
dressed with the remarkable taste which he has seen in her at
other times. Her usual costume is both pretty and quiet, and
the fashionable waistcoat and jacket (which are aspectable
(?) in all the "Ladies' Companions" of the day) make the only
approach to masculine wearings to be observed in her. She
has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think
-and the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly
understood.
p
'Ah! but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfortunate. I
could only go with Robert three times to her house, and once
she was out. He was really very good and kind to let me go
at all after he found the sort of society rampant around her.
He didn't like it extremely, but, being the prince of husbands,
he was lenient to my desires, and yielded the point. She
seems to live in the abomination of desolation, as far as regards
society-crowds of ill-bred men who adore her, à genoux bas,
betwixt a puff of smoke and an ejection of saliva-society of
the ragged red, diluted with the low theatrical. She herself so
different, so apart, so alone in her melancholy disdain.
I was
deeply interested in that poor woman. I felt a profound com-
passion for her. I did not mind much even the Greek, in Greek
254
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
costume, who tutoyed her, and kissed her I believe, so Robert
said-or the other vulgar man of the theatre, who went down
on his knees and called her "sublime." "Caprice d'amitié,"
said she with her quiet, gentle scorn. A noble woman under
the mud, be certain. I would kneel down to her, too, if she
would leave it all, throw it off, and be herself as God made
her. But she would not care for my kneeling-she does not
care for me. l'erhaps she doesn't care much for anybody by
this time, who knows? She wrote one or two or three kind
notes to me, and promised to venir m'embrasser before she left
Paris; but she did not come. We both tried hard to please
her, and she told a friend of ours that she "liked us." Only
we always felt that we couldn't penetrate-couldn't really touch
her-it was all in vain.'
Mrs. Sutherland Orr, who publishes the above letters in her
Life and Letters of Robert Browning, states that Mr. Browning
'fully shared his wife's impression of a want of frank cordiality
on George Sand's part; and was especially struck by it in
reference to himself, with whom it seemed more natural that
she should feel at ease. He could only imagine that his
studied courtesy towards her was felt by her as a rebuke to
the latitude which she granted to other men.'
In her middle period George Sand produced a number of
novels of rural life which many of her admirers regard as
her best works. The series began with Jeanne, which has for
its heroine a peasant girl of a dreamy and visionary type.
Then came La Mare au Diable, which was suggested by
Holbein's engraving of 'Death and the Husbandman.' The
novelist presents the brighter aspect of the peasant's life, in
contrast to the dark and dismal one suggested by Holbein's
picture. An aroma of poetry is thrown over the lives of
Germain, the labourer, and his little wife Marie. François le
Champi, the third in the group, tells the story of a foundling
who was saved from the evils resulting from the lack of home
and parental influences, by the sympathetic tenderness of a
GEORGE SAND.
255
،
childless woman, Madeline Polanchet. La Petite Fadette, the
last of the series proper, was the most popular.
It is a
beautiful idyll of humble life, and well deserves the appre-
ciation it has invariably met with. It must have been a
delight to produce these works, which were composed at a
time when those who were lamenting over the calamities of
France threw themselves back on pastoral dreams, all the
inore naïve and childlike for the brutality and darkness
triumphant in the world of activity.' Of a slightly kindred
nature with the novels just mentioned was Les Maîtres
Sonneurs, though it was not so simple in conception. The
scene was the hamlet of Nohant in the eighteenth century,
and a delightful pastoral air was thrown over the whole story,
scenery and characters alike. It has more literary virtues and
ſewer defects than most of George Sand's works.
The stage had an abiding fascination for George Sand,
though her first two plays, Cosima and Le Roi attend, had but a
chilling reception. However, undeterred by this, in 1849 she
produced a dramatic adaptation of her novel François le Champi
at the Odéon. It was successful, and, as Théophile Gautier
playfully wrote, it gave all the Vaudeville writers an appetite
for rusticity. When her play of Maitre Favilla was produced
it was severely criticised by Jules Janin, who complained
generally that George Sand apotheosised the artiste and satirised
the bourgeois. The dramatist proved the charge to be utterly
unfounded. She had admirable types of the bourgeoisie as she
had despicable ones; but in the critic's eyes the great crime of
Favilla was, 'the supposing that an ex-linen-draper could be
incapable of understanding music, loving artistes, distinguishing
at a glance between an honest woman and a bohémienne, eating
up his income by alms or princely liberality, and finally of
marrying his son without hesitation to a girl whose only fortune
was her fine eyes!' This was no bitter and systematic con-
demnation of the bourgeoisie. Other plays by George Sand
represented the class favourably. In Le Mariage de Victorine,
256
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
for example, all the characters belong to the bourgeoisie.
was a modest but frank apotheosis of the virtues peculiar to
that class, when it understood and fulfilled its true duties.
In
Les Vacances de Pandolphe the chief personage was a professor
of law, bourgeois pure and simple- a beneficent misanthrope,
who lived fraternally and was the object of filial love. In Le
Pressoir the characters belonged to the working-classes. Jules
Janin thought them too virtuous, too devoted, too intelligent;
yet of the characters in Flaminio, which did not belong to the
bourgeoisie, he said, 'Well done, artiste. Artisan is better.
One of the Greek names of Minerva was Minerva Artisana.
The dramatised version of Mauprat-which was much inferior
to the novel-had in it neither bourgeoisie nor artistes. Claudie
was a touching and picturesque drama, in which the rising
young actor, Fechter, and the veteran Bocage, scored a dis-
tinct success as the representatives of youth and age. An
adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It, prepared for the
Théâtre Français by Madame Sand, was a failure, although it
was supported by such noted actors as Delaunay, Arnould-
Plessy, and Favart. A better fate attended the dramatisation
of her novel Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois Doré, in which she
had the assistance of Paul Meurice. It was produced in 1802,
and Bocage enjoyed his last great triumph in the character of
the old Marquis, who sought to preserve youthfulness of body
with youthfulness of heart. 'He did not act the Marquis de
Bois Doré, he was the personage himself, as the author had
dreamt him.' The actor said to the dramatist, on one occa-
sion, 'It is my end, but I shall die like a soldier on the field
of honour.' His prediction was fulfilled, for he continued to
perform the part until within a few days of his death.
Le Marquis de Villemer, a drama produced at the Odéon in
1864, was a strong philippic against the clerical party and the
nobility. On the night of its production the authoress was
escorted home by the students to the cries of 'George Sand
for ever! Mademoiselle la Quintinie for ever! Down with the
GEORGE SAND.
257
clerical party!' It was a furious demonstration, but at the
same time a theatrical success not often witnessed. Describing
the scene in a letter to her son, Madame Sand wrote :—
'At ten o'clock in the morning the students assembled in
the Place de l'Odéon, and, throughout the piece, a compact
mass, which had not been able to gain admittance, filled the
neighbouring streets and the Rue Racine as far as my own
door. Marie received an ovation, as did also Madame Fro-
mentin, the crowd in the street having mistaken the latter for
me. I believe that all Paris was there to-night. The work-
men and the students, furious at having been mistaken for
clericals on the occasion of About's Gaetana, were quite ready
to come to blows. Inside the theatre each scene was received
throughout with shouts and stamping of feet, in spite of the
presence of the whole Imperial family. In fact everybody
applauded, the Emperor like the rest, he being so affected as
to actually shed tears. The Princess Mathilde came to the
foyer to shake hands with me. I was in the manager's box
with the Prince, the Princess, Ferri, and Madame d'Abrantés.
The Prince applauded like thirty claqueurs, stretching far out
of his box, and shouting at the top of his voice. Flaubert was
with us, and cried like a woman. The company played well,
and were recalled after every act. In the foyer more than two
hundred persons, some known, some unknown to me, came
and completely smothered me with kisses. Not a shadow of
opposition, although a large number of unfriendly persons were
present. But even those who innocently blew their noses
were silenced. In fact, the event has kept the Latin Quarter
in a perfect uproar all day; all day long I received batches of
students, who came with their school-cards in their hats to ask
me for orders, and to protest against the clerical party by
giving me their names.'
The allusions to Mademoiselle de la Quintinie in the above
extract refer to the novel of that name by George Sand, in
which she had challenged comparison with Octave Feuillet's
S
258
WOMEN Of renowN.
Sibille. Feuillet had taken for his heroine an ardent Catholic
who stifled her love and renounced her lover for his heterodox
views. George Sand, on the contrary, took for her heroine one
who was gradually converted by her lover to liberal opinions.
This was very popular with the Parisian students, and on the
second night of Villemer they sang ironical songs to hymn-
tunes, crying, "The Jesuits are done for! Black-coated gentle-
men, where do you hail from? La Quintinie for ever! George
Sand for ever! Villemer for ever!' The enthusiasm and
excitement reached such a pitch, night after night, that at one
time riots were feared. L'Autre, the last dramatic success
achieved by George Sand, was adapted, with considerable
changes, from her novel, La Confession d'une Jeune Fille. It
was produced at the Gymnase in February, 1870, with Sarah
Bernhardt in the principal part. From the opening scenes it
was favourably received, and the success went on increasing
with every act. The triumph was a complete and spontaneous
Not a single allusion was made to politics, the attention
of the audience being wholly centred in the piece, which was very
strong both in humour and pathos. Madame Arnould-Plessy,
the actress, was in George Sand's box, sobbing, coughing, crying,
and blowing her nose; Thuillier was in a stall doing the same ;
and all the spectators in fact were overcome by their emotions.
George Sand's interest in the stage and its representatives, and
in theatrical matters generally, was shown in such works as
Pierre qui roule, Narcisse, Le Château des Désertes; yet she
had not a natural aptitude for the drama. She desired to
improve and reform it, but, notwithstanding one or two suc-
cesses, she was unable to lead the way herself, partly from a
lack of practical aptitude, and partly from her diffusive and
didactic style of writing.
one.
Some idea of the literary fecundity of George Sand may be
gained when I mention briefly the remainder of her works, in
addition to all those already cited. L'Orco, a novel, was
written in her early period. La Daniella, a novel written after
GEORGE SAND.
259
her Italian tour in 1855, showed the writer to be disenchanted
with the glories of Rome. The results of a walking tour on
the banks of the Creuse in 1857 appeared in her Promenades
autour d'un Village. In 1860 was published Jean de la Roche,
and in the preface to this work will be found Madame Sand's
reply to the strictures upon her for the publication of Elle et Lui.
A Scandinavian romance, L'Homme de Neige, also appeared in
1860. It was followed in quick succession by La Famille de
Germandre, La Ville Noire, a tale of artisan life, Constance
Verrier; the society novel, Le Marquis de Villemer, upon which
she founded her drama; and Falvèdre, with its clever character
studies. Coming to the drama, Le Démon du Foyer, a play, was
produced in 1852, and the play of Molière in 1853. There
were also slight fantasy pieces like Teverino-the original study
for the drama Flaminio—and Les Dames Vertes. Le Lys du
Japon, a one-act comedy, and Cadio, a novel, were written in
1866. The latter had for its heroes one of the obscure makers
of the revolution of 1789. He was made, as it were, the
image and the reflex of the past and the future, but the work
stirred up a good deal of political animosity. Cadio was
originally intended for a drama. It was, however, published
as a romance, with dialogues, but a reduced version of it was
subsequently played at the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre. The
novel of Malgré tout was published in 1870. The authoress
was said to have represented the Empress Eugénie in one of
the chief personages, but she strenuously denied this in a letter
to Flaubert. Le beau Laurence, a novel, appeared in 1870;
Nanon, a rural romance of the First Revolution, and Francia,
or 'A Deed of Kindness is never Lost,' in 1872; Le Château
de Pictordu, Contes d'une Grand' mère, a collection of fairy
stories; Impressions et Souvenirs, and the graphic Journal d'un
voyageur pendant la Guerre-all during 1873; Ma Saur Jeanne
1874; and Les deux Frères and La Laitière et la pot au lait in
1875. Within the last few years of her life also she composed
the following works, though several of them did not appear till
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260
WOMEN Of renowN.
after her death: Flamarande, Le Chêne Parlant--a sequel to
the Contes d'une Graud❜mére-La Tour de Percemont, Mar-
ianne, Dernières Pages, Légendes Rustiques, Fanchette, and
Nouvelles Lettres d'un Voyageur. Her last production was a
critical article for the Temps on M. Renan's Dialogues et Frag-
ments Philosophiques.
This great writer, while not destitute of a certain amount of
realism, was above all things an idealist. She maintained that
' in the abstract order of things, truth is the ideal, as reality is
the lie. God tolerates reality but does not accept it; just as
we aspire towards the ideal and do not reach it. The ideal
does, nevertheless, exist, since it is to become reality in the
bosom of God, and even- let us hope for the future of the
world-reality upon this earth.' She was always aspiring after
a nobler ideal of life and thought. A high view of art she in-
dulged from first to last. As she said, in writing to Mazzini
upon this subject: 'I am, and always have been, an artist be-
fore anything else; I am aware that purely political men feel
great contempt for artists, because they judge them after a few
types of mountebanks who dishonour art. But you, friend,
know full well that the real artist is as useful as the priest
and the warrior, and that, when respecting what is true and
good, he follows a path through which God always blesses him.
Art belongs to all times and to all countries; its special benefit
is precisely to be still living when everything else seems dying;
that is why Providence shields it from too personal or too
general passions, and grants it a patient and persevering or-
ganisation, durable sensibility, and the contemplative sense in
which lies invincible faith.' But she also exalted the emotional
element in literature, and held that the public had a right to
say to its teachers, "Be moved yourselves, or do not hope to
move us."
Critics have sometimes complained of the tone of some of
George Sand's novels. Yet she was not so great a sinner in
this respect as many of her contemporaries. At any rate she
GEORGE SAND.
261
always desired the triumph of virtue. When Edmond About,
in Madelon, depicted a woman as the personification of vice,
always young and triumphant, when the other characters who
had surrounded her were dead, she thus addressed him :
'Now that you have just written a masterpiece concerning the
victory of evil, I request and beseech you to write the master-
piece of the revival of good. Let us see a true-hearted man
crushing that vermin called vice, braving that luxury, scorning
with ease and simple logic the silly vanity which induces men
to appear strong in absurdity, and powerful in the abuse of
life; you have just proved that such vanity is always punished
by nature, which vindicates its right. Have the courage to
incarnate in an individual the triumph of virtue. Let the
wicked triumph in public opinion if you will. It is useless to
gild society, which is so silly, and so corrupt, but let Job on
his dunghill be the noblest and happiest of all, so noble that
the youthful reader would prefer to be Job rather than any of
the other personages. Ah! would that I could! would that I
had your age and strength! would that I knew all you know!'
In religious matters George Sand showed a retrograde ten-
dency towards the close of her life. She threw off all dog-
matic views, whether Protestant or Catholic, though she was
glad for her son to marry according to Protestant rites, and to
bring up his child in that communion. But for herself, as the
years passed on, she felt herself to be growing gradually less
Christian. On the appearance of M. Renan's Vie de Jesus,
she wrote to Prince Napoleon, announcing herself as one of
Renan's adherents. One recognises the weakness as well as
the impertinence of the French intellect in such a passage as
this:-
'M. Renan causes his hero, when viewed from a certain stand-
point, to fall a little; though, from another, he raises him in my
estimation. I used to delight in persuading myself that Jesus
had never believed Himself to be God, had never proclaimed
Himself specially the Son of God, and that His belief in a vin-
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
dictive God was but an apocryphal addition to the Gospel.
Such were, at least, the interpretations which I had always ac-
cepted and even sought; but now M. Renan steps forth with
deeper, more competent, and stronger duties and inquiries.
We do not need to be as learned as he, to feel in his work the
existence of an ensemble of indisputable facts and opinions.
Were it only because of the colour and life, when reading it,
we feel that it casts a clearer light on the time, the man, and
his surroundings. I therefore believe that his appreciation of
Jesus is better than the conception we had formed of Him
before the appearance of the work, and I accept Jesus as pre-
sented to us by M. Renan. He no longer appears as a
philosopher, a savant, a sage, a genius, reflecting in himself
the best essence of the systems of philosophy and the
sciences of His age. He appears as a dreamer, an enthusiast,
a poet, as one inspired, a fanatic, and a simpleton. Granted!
Yet I love him still; but how small the place He now seems
to me to occupy in the history of ideas! how diminished the
importance of His work appears! How much more, hence-
forth, does His religion appear as the result of the hazard of
human events, than as that of one of those great historical
necessities which we are agreed upon, and sometimes feel
under the obligation of calling providential! Let us accept
truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views. Jesus is
now quite demolished! so much the worse for Him! so much
the better for us! His religion had succeeded in doing at
least as much harm as it had done good.'
Voltaire vainly thought to destroy the power of Christ over
the souls of men; but Voltaire passed away, and Christ
remained entrenched in the heart of the human more strongly
than ever. Renan afterwards took up the iconoclastic work,
and it was endorsed by George Sand, but these also have
passed away, and the sublime figure of the Saviour of the World
still remains, untouched in His power, His essence, and His
influence.
GEORGE SAND.
263
When George Sand was charged with being contradictory in
her philosophy because she admired both Rousseau and
Montaigne, she wrote to M. Guillaume Guizot that there was
no real antithesis between these two great minds, though they
were corrections of each other. For my part,' she said, 'I am
not the disciple of Jean Jacques to the extent of the Contrat
Social. That, perhaps, is due to Montaigne; and I am not the
disciple of Montaigne to the extent of his indifference; that
surely is due to Jean Jacques. I venture to believe, sir, that
the crowning of a valuable and serious work on Montaigne would
be —a free, if you please even severe, criticism granted--the
establishing of a parallel between these two extreme points—the
Socialism of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Individualism of
Montaigne. The truth is surely between the two.'
Public events in France during the last seven years of her
life affected her deeply. Writing to a friend in November,
1869, she thus expressed her opinion of Rochefort, and at the
same time predicted the approaching revolution: 'I do not
admire the part Rochefort plays in politics. I dislike his
adulation of the masses, his forsaking of his own will, his
absence of principle. That is not the way we should love and
serve the people, for, by doing so, we treat them as if they were
our absolute masters. The man who respects himself does not
say: "I will take the oath or not, just as you please." If he
does not recognise anything but his constituents, if he can only
act according to their whims, any idiot could fill his place.
That ultra-democratic clique is but a political scum. But
where there is ebullition there must be scum, and those who
wish for a social revolution must not distress themselves beyond
measure because of it. That revolution would be better effected
without violence; but whether it take place with or without, it
will most certainly arrive, it must have its day. Being unable
to prevent it, we must let it take its course.' For Victor Hugo
she had a profound admiration, both as the greatest living man
of letters and as a politician.
264
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
When Napoleon III. declared war in July, 1870, George
Sand stigmatised the war as infamous, and the singing of the
Marseillaise to the tune of the Empire as a sacrilege. Soon
after hostilities began, she thus wrote to a friend from Nohant:-
'I am terrified at the consternation, the fury, the hatred
displayed here against the Government. These are not the
feelings of one class, of a party; they are shared by everybody,
principally by the peasantry. There is a frantic expression of
grief and pity for poor old soldiers, who are their children or
their brothers. My belief is that the Empire is lost; it has
lived its allotted time. The very men who confidently voted
in its favour at the plebiscite would to-day be unanimous in
voting for its overthrow. Those who start for the front are
enraged in their souls. To be compelled to resume service
when one has already served his time, is regarded as a fearful
iniquity by men who have again taken to the plough. They
proclaim themselves betrayed, delivered over to the enemy
beforehand, deprived of all help. There is not one who does
not say: "We shall let him have our first shot." They will,
however, not do so; they will prove very good soldiers and fight
like devils, but that will be because of the point of honour, and
not because of hatred of the Prussians, who, they say, did not
menace them, and were foolishly provoked.
'Alas! there is no longer the enthusiasm of the wars of the
first Republic. There is suspicion, disaffection, a resolution to
punish by a future vote. If all the rest of France is in the
same mind the result will be a revolution, if not terrible (which
may God forbid!) certainly radical and complete. In Paris
people are elated at the change of cabinet; here, it leaves them
indifferent; they have as little faith in those who come as in
those who go.'
In November, 1870, she wrote to Prince Napoleon, justify-
ing the proclamation of the Republic, and adding For
twenty years we have been lulled by the idea of a Socialist
Empire, which only proved a dream, followed up by revolting
George SAND.
265
and shameful deceptions. I know not whether you were the
dupe of such a dream; I do not think so.
A period of
calm will yet come, when, wherever they may be spoken, your
words will still be respectfully listened to. Being yourself no
longer fettered, when your words, judged before the tribunal of
history, will secure more consideration should you even be only
a simple citizen, the part you will have to play will be more
distinct, as well as grander.' When Gambetta was hailed as
the saviour of France for continuing the struggle against Prussia,
George Sand did not join in the acclamations, but severely
denounced the Dictator and his party-a party in power,
though not in a majority. 'That wretched braggart has killed
the Republic!' she exclaimed. 'He causes it to be hated and
despised throughout France, believe me—I who, while cursing
the ambitious nonentities of my party, persist in believing that
the Republican form of government, even the most levelling, is
the only one that mankind can adopt with honour and advan-
tage.' On another occasion she described Gambetta as a mad-
man, whose proceedings in defiance of his colleagues at Paris
she regarded as a provocation to civil war. At a later period
the surrender of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany wounded her
deeply, and she was too overcome by emotion to express in
writing her sorrow and indignation over the cession.
George Sand's opinions on the true aim and function of the
novelist, were made clear in a long communication addressed
to Gustave Flaubert. She had been disappointed because in
neither his L'Education Sentimentale, nor in his masterpiece.
Madame Bovary, had he openly branded evil, condemned
weakness, and pointed out efforts worthy of praise. She con-
sequently thus reasoned with him: 'Your determination in
depicting things as they are, and the adventures of life as you
notice them, is scarcely justifiable in my opinion. I do not
object to your making a realistic or poetic picture of inert
things; but, when dealing with the impulses of the human
heart, it is different. You cannot refrain from such contempla-
266
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
tion, for you yourself are man and the readers men. Though
you may try, you never shall succeed in so writing that your
production be not a chat between you and the reading public.
If you are always coolly pointing out evil to it, without ever
showing good, it will fall out with you. It will wonder which of
the two is bad--you or it. And yet you obviously intend to
move and win it, in your works; you will never succeed unless
you be moved yourself, and abstain from so concealing the fact
from it that it will be justified in judging you indifferent. The
public is right-supreme impartiality is anti-human, and a novel
must be human before everything else. If not, people are
indifferent to its being cleverly written, well got up, and faithful
in its details, for it is lacking the essential quality-interest.
'The public rejects also works and personages in which men
are represented as being all good, without any shade or blemish ;
it fully perceives that that also is not human. I believe that
the merits of art, the special art of novel writing, reside wholly
in the contrast between the various personages; but I want to
see the triumph of good resulting from their struggles; I have
no objection to facts crushing an honest man, but they must
not defile or lessen him, and he must go to the stake with the
satisfaction of feeling happier than his executioners.'
Her belief that realism was not the whole of art was further
expressed in a letter to Flaubert on the Zolaistic movement.
Having acknowledged that the introductory novel in the
Rougon-Macquart series was a book of superior worth, and a
powerful production, she went on to say:-
'But that does not alter, in the slightest degree, my views,
to wit: that art ought to be the research of truth, and that
the latter does not consist merely in representing either evil or
good. The artist who only notices defects is as deficient as
the one who only sees good qualities. Society is not composed
merely of blackguards and rogues. Honest people are not in
the minority, seeing that society subsists, enjoying a certain
order, and that few crimes remain unpunished. Imbeciles are
GEORGE SAND.
267
predominant it is true; but there is a public conscience which
over-awes them and counsels them to respect the law. It is
right and even moral that scoundrels should be scourged and
denounced, but we must also be told that there is a counter-
part, and that must be shown to us; otherwise, simple-minded
readers—that is, the general reading public--will get dis-
heartened, despondent, frightened, and deny the facts laid
before it.'
During the last sixteen years of her life, George Sand suffered
from periodical returns of severe illness. Her constitution had
been shattered in 1860 by an attack of typhoid fever, which
left behind it the seeds of future mischief. The symptoms
became more grave as she advanced in age, but she bravely
concealed the worst of her sufferings out of love for her children
and grandchildren. With great strength of mind she would
resist the summoning of a medical man until it became
dangerous longer to refuse. Among the most beautiful of her
letters was one addressed in the midst of pain to a young lady
who was beginning a new year with the dread that it would be
her last. In it she gave utterance to the same idea which
George Eliot had expressed in the well-known line, ‘To live in
hearts we leave behind is not to die.' Madame Sand wrote:
'The year that begins must not, as you seem to fear, carry
you off. No; loving souls outlive and bear up with all troubles;
they complete upon this earth the existence of their friends
gone before them; they cause them to be living still in their
affection and in their recollections. We must not advance the
hour when it will please God to unite us to those we have
loved; and, when that times comes, we will also leave some-
thing of ourselves in the hearts that shall have been devoted
to us. We do not die altogether in this world, and yet we live.
more fully elsewhere. In the bosom of God there is neither
vengeance nor torment, there is only justice and goodness; in
that bosom we shall live for ever, under whatever form, and
whatever may be our titles to that eternal life. What that life
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
will be we do not know; and it is precisely our ignorance of
the fate He reserves for us that causes the sweetness and the
merit of our confidence in Him. Rest assured that they who
believed in damnation will alone be damned; yet that damna-
tion, which we consider as eternal and terrible, can only be a
new, transient, and not unbearable ordeal. God exists; He
must be good. All religions whose aim is not confidence teach
us the fear of God, that is hatred of truth. I point out to you
the religion, thanks to which I am happy, and I wish you were
yourself calm and happy too; for you desire to be so, notwith-
standing all your troubles. Rest assured that I take a deep
interest in them, and am cordially devoted to you.'
On the last day of May, 1876, George Sand was in such a
critical condition that the doctors decided upon performing an
internal operation. This proved fatal, however, for inflamma-
tion set in, and the sufferer knew her end was approaching. It
came on the 8th of June, when she passed away in the presence
of her family and a few devoted friends. It is said that almost
her last words were, Ne touchez pas à la verdure. These words
expressed her dying wish to her children that the trees under
which she was to be buried in the village cemetery of Nohant
should remain undisturbed, and the wish was sacredly
respected. At her funeral, where the prince and the man of
letters mingled with the humbler mourners in the vast con-
course, six peasants carried the bier from the house to the
grave. Various monuments were erected to her memory, in-
cluding a statue by Clésinger placed in the foyer of the Théâtre
Français, and a public statue in one of the squares of Paris,
raised by a National Committee, presided over by Victor
Hugo.
Any attempt to appraise the position of George Sand in
literature, and the character of her genius, must be made with
diffidence. She was poet, novelist, dramatist, and letter-
writer all in one. We cannot concede her the first rank in
any of these capacities except the last, and certainly no better
GEORGE SAND.
269
letters than hers—so far as the revelation of personal character
is concerned--have been written this century. Her poetry
lacked fervour and imagination; her dramas were too much
charged with eloquence, and lacked naturalness and action,
and her novels were prolix. Still, it is marvellous how well
she wrote when we reflect upon the vast quantity produced:
had that quantity been less and her genius more concentrated,
she would have been a greater writer. Only one person in
this century has exhibited lofty genius with unparalleled fecun-
dity, and that was Victor Hugo. But two or three novels by
George Sand are worthy of being regarded as masterpieces,
and the number would have been larger but for her many-
sidedness. George Sand the politician robbed George Sand
the literary artist of a portion of her immortality. If I may so
express it, she was a woman vitalised at every pore, but this
attribute of livingness cost her something in other directions.
Of wit and humour she had little, but she had a noble idealism,
and she threw herself into all her work with an energy and
enthusiasm which were unbounded. Not truly great, perhaps,
when considered from one standpoint only, she is entitled to
the epithet of great when viewed in the light of the whole sum
of her achievements. Few of her sex can lay claim to the same
variety of gifts, and she must undoubtedly be regarded as one
of the literary glories of France in the nineteenth century.
MARY CARPENTER.
*
ot
}
3.
273
MARY CARPENTER.
IN the roll of British philanthropists the name of Mary
Carpenter deservedly occupies a distinguished place. There is
a benevolence which relieves the immediate necessities of the
individual, and there is a benevolence which seeks to reform the
character. To the future of the person, the class, or the State,
the latter is of infinitely higher importance than mere alms-
giving, and it was this form of philanthropy to which Mary
Carpenter dedicated her life. Inmates of English ragged
schools, reformatories, and prisons, as well as the down-trodden
women of India, lived to bless her name, and to hold it in
affectionate veneration. I make no apology, therefore, for
including a sketch of her good and useful life in this series of
eminent women.
The daughter of Dr. Lant Carpenter, a Nonconformist
minister who had settled in Exeter early in the century, Mary
Carpenter was born in that city on the 3rd of April, 1807.
Her mother belonged to the Penn family, and in both her
parents Mary was blessed by having affectionate natural
guardians, who were likewise remarkable for earnest Christian
zeal. When only two or three years of age, the young child
began to show clearly defined characteristics, such as a love of
order, a deeply religious bias, and a desire to be of service to
others. She had a buoyant energy of nature, and an unceas-
ing flow of animal spirits. When she was only seven years old,
her mother wrote of her: 'Mary's mind is constantly occupied
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
by some magnificent scheme or other; she may have difficulty
in getting her sum done or her multiplication table learnt, but
she does not go to sleep over it; her attention is occupied by
some plan for converting the heathen, or turning her doll's
frocks into pelisses.' Small things of this kind have frequently
tranquillised active and aspiring intellects. At the age of three
Mary Carpenter said that 'the good God had given her a
great deal of love,' and there was little wonder that this love
afterwards overflowed in ceaseless solicitude for the less for-
tunate sons and daughters of humanity.
In 1817 the Carpenters removed from Exeter to Bristol;
Dr. Carpenter having been appointed one of the Ministers of
the congregation known as Lewin's Mead Meeting. Mary
Carpenter's biographer, Mr. Estlin Carpenter, thus describes
her early years and training in the Western city: The life
at Bristol proved far more stimulating than the quieter circle
of duties and interests now left behind; and Dr. Carpenter's
activity led him into wide and far-reaching plans, with which
his eldest daughter early learned to sympathise. A lecture-
room was built adjoining the chapel, where tender associations
gathered about the familiar instruction which he gave to the
young, and the courses of lectures explanatory of the Scrip-
tures, which he delivered to the more advanced. A Sunday
school was established, in which ere long Mary Carpenter was
permitted to teach a class of boys, the management of the girls'
branch of it afterwards devolving largely upon her.
'When the Literary and Philosophical Institution was
founded, Dr. Carpenter was an active coadjutor of the little
band, which included Conybeare, De la Beche, and Prichard,
names well known in the history of English science; and his
house was long a centre of intelligent culture, which had a most
quickening effect upon its inmates, the benefits of which Mary
was the most fitted, alike by position and powers, to receive.
Her place, however, was fixed first of all in the home and in
the school, when she was associated in some classes with the
MARY CARPENTER.
275
Her studies were carried con-
youths under her father's care.
siderably beyond the range at that time usually open to girls,
and included Latin, Greek, and mathematics, with some of the
elements of physical science and natural history.
'Homer and Sophocles early roused her enthusiasm, together
with Shakespeare and Scott; and the familiarity which she
gained with the mysteries of the air-pump and the contents of
the geological cabinet, gave variety and illustration to her
teaching, long years after all opportunity of acquiring new
knowledge had ceased. The exactness which her father de-
manded in all learning, and the independence of judgment
which he strove to foster, became part of her mental habits.
In later life, indeed, her interest in intellectual pursuits was
merged in the labours of philanthropy; yet her capacity for
apprehending the underlying principles on which well-con-
sidered schemes of social reform must be based, without
neglecting minute accuracy of detail in their development,
indicated abilities of no common order. These found their
object, indeed, under the mingled inspiration of duty and
affection, among the poor and outcast of society; but first
received their training on the ground of literature and history,
of science and philosophy.'
Mary Carpenter seems to have acquired an influence far be-
yond her years, and there is a tradition that when her father
was absent from the school on account of illness, his place was
filled by his daughter, who was assisted by her schoolfellow
James Martineau, afterwards the learned Unitarian divine.
In some interesting reminiscences of this period, Dr. Martineau
thus describes Mary Carpenter: 'I well remember the kind
of respectful wonder with which, coming from free and easy
ways with my sisters, I was inspired towards the sedate little
girl of twelve, who looked at you so steadily and always spoke
like a book; so that, in talking to her, what you meant for
sense seemed to turn into nonsense on the way. In her
exterior, as in her mental characteristics, she seemed to be no
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WOMEN OF RENOWN.
longer the child. With a somewhat columnar figure and no
springiness of movement, she glided quietly about and was
seldom seen to run, and a certain want of suppleness and
natural grace interfered with her proficiency in the usual
feminine accomplishments, with the needle, at the piano, and
in the dance, and occasioned a pleasant surprise when, taking
her pencil and colour-box in hand, she revealed the direction
in which her sense of beauty could conquer difficulties and
enable her really to excel. The early maturity which is so
often reached by the eldest in a family was strongly marked in
her countenance; not by any look of frowardness or careless
ease, still less by any seeming hardness against sympathetic
impressions from others, but by a certain fixity of thoughtful
attention, and the clear self-possession which arises from self-
forgetfulness. There were traces upon that grave young face,
if my memory does not mislead me, of an inward conflict for
ascendency between the anxious vigilance of a scrupulous con-
science and the trustful reverence of a filial heart, tender alike
to the father on earth and the Father in Heaven.'
It seems that Mrs. Carpenter had an extraordinary know-
ledge of geography, which she systematically communicated to
her children; and Dr. Martineau says that in this field he
soon found himself a simpleton in comparison with Mary
Carpenter, whom he looked up to as an oracle. While she
had the world, and all that had happened in it, at her fingers'
ends, he could only blunder through the counties and the kings
of England, and could make a better map of Greece than of
Great Britain. Having referred to the Greek, Latin, and
Biblical lessons in which Mary Carpenter participated, Dr.
Martineau observes: 'The Gospels were certainly read with
critical care and faithful comparison; and if the hopelessness
of the harmonist's problem was unfelt, and the plain anachron-
isms of thought were unobserved, and its hills and valleys
were levelled to one highway of sancity, it was because an
absorbing veneration for the person of Christ as supernatural
MARY CARPENTER.
277
filled the teacher's whole mind, and excluded the finer percep-
tions of the historical sense, and even obscured the gradations
of spiritual character. I suspect that this early set of her
spiritual affections, carried out as it was through her whole
inner and outer life, rendered the newer lights of Biblical
criticism always unwelcome to Mary Carpenter, and made her
glad to seek her reforming inspirations in purely practical
directions.'
An alarming affection of the eyes, which had twice threatened
her sight, necessitated a cessation of intellectual effort, and as
Mary Carpenter was 'the bond of union to the whole family,
it will be understood how keenly her influence was missed in
the home circle, when she left it for South Devon, Wales, or
Malvern in quest of health. The sufferer herself, in her en-
forced rest, lamented her faults of temper and life-which she
ever conscientiously set before herself--and whereas she had
once thought she could never be happy without becoming dis-
tinguished, she now learnt the nobler lesson that 'the highest
and most difficult attainment of any is a resignation to be as
mean an agent, and as unsuccessful a one, as God pleases to
make us.' In 1827 she became governess to some young girls
in the Isle of Wight, and her spirit was much refreshed by her
sojourn in that beautiful island, for she had an intense enjoy-
ment in natural scenery. On quitting the place she gave
vent to her feelings in harmonious, and on the whole very
creditable verse. She next went for a time into the family of
Mr. J. G. Fordham, of Odsey, near Royston, and with these
new friends she maintained an affectionate intercourse to the
last. During a visit to London she had seen Othello acted at
one of the theatres. But the representation by no means came
up to her ideal, although Edmund Kean was the Moor. 'Kean
did not make me feel interested for Othello even at first, and
he did not at all either make my blood freeze or boil.' When
Wellington and Peel had introduced the Catholic Emancipation
Act, in 1829, and there was some talk of the former resigning,
278
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
she earnestly hoped he would not be driven from office,
although she had not much faith in the 'Iron Duke' as a poli-
tician. It is amusing to note the effect which Catholic Eman-
cipation had on many English people. 'Most of the common
people about here,' wrote Mary Carpenter from Odsey, ‘are
very much afraid of being burnt in Smithfield; but the clergy-
man at A- is so much disliked that his parishioners think
they could not be much worse off; and when he desired them
to sign the anti-petition they refused, for, as they justly ob-
served, they should not have to pay more tithes even if the Pope
did come over.'
Dr. Carpenter having relinquished his school in Bristol in
1829, Mary and her sister Anna decided upon opening a school
for girls, under the superintendence of their mother. Pre-
paratory to this, they spent a summer in Paris, where, amongst
other engagements, they attended the annual sitting of the In-
stitute, and heard Cuvier pronounce his eulogium on Laplace,
who had died the year before. This opportunity for hero-
worship gave them intense pleasure. Returning to England,
they began school life with ardour, but found it an up-hill task.
Mary Carpenter, who impressed the girls under her care as a
kind of prodigy in learning, now added conchology and geology
as subjects of tuition. At the same time she did not lose sight
of lighter intellectual recreations. Meanwhile, she was passing
through a time of severe inward conflict and self-reproach.
'The irritability which occasionally flamed out against even the
dearest of the home circle, the pride which led her to regard
the infringement of her rules as personal disrespect, her
inability to suppress a desire for admiration, her want of con-
trol over wandering thoughts, her unreadiness to make sacri-
fices for others while she knew herself to be peculiarly dependent
on their love and sympathy for her, her longing for great
intellectual attainments, these are all set down with a stern
resolve to drag every hidden weakness to the light, and leave
no guilty secret unconfessed.' This searching self-examination
6
MARY CARPENTER.
279
was no doubt profitable, but it could not have been pleasur-
able.
In 1831 she became superintendent of the afternoon Sunday
School, and her biographer states that the visits she paid to the
homes of the scholars first stirred her into consciousness of the
hapless lot of the poor and the ignorant in our large cities. The
serious Reform riots which broke out at Bristol in the above
year likewise moved her deeply, as showing the general discon-
tent of the people, and she resolved to do what she could to
ameliorate their lot. The resolve to consecrate herself to this
work took more definite shape on the Fast Day appointed in
view of the cholera visitation of 1832, when she wrote in her
diary: 'I wish, on this day appointed for public humiliation
before God, to record my earnest desire to become more useful
to my fellow-creatures, and my prayer to our Heavenly Father
to guide me by His light into the way of discovering the means,
and of rightly employing them. The first and most obvious.
way is by myself giving to others such an example as may lead
them to glorify their Father in Heaven; and I must do this by
simply and humbly, but zealously and constantly, working the
work of Him who placed us here. I must be careful never to
neglect any certain duties for others which only appear to me
useful and desirable; but when the hand of Providence does
point out any way of doing good more extensively, I must en-
gage in it with thankfulness and ardour, but with humility,
caring not at all for my own comfort or labour. These things
I have written to be a witness against me, if ever I should for-
get what ought to be the object of all my active exertions in
this life.'
From this time forward she was constantly on the watch to
give effect to her solemn vows of self-dedication. Strange to
say, the next year, 1833, was destined to witness a memorable
turning point in her career. First, the Rajah Rammohun Roy,
an enlightened Brahman of high caste, who had come over to
Bristol, and eventually died there, kindled in her a strong
280
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
desire to assist in the regeneration of India; and secondly,
Dr. Joseph Tuckerman of Boston, U.S., who was her father's
guest, interested her as deeply in the condition of destitute
children. It was at this parting of the ways that she wrote a
sketch of her own character-a task she had always resolved
upon executing on her twenty-sixth birthday. After describing
her predilections, her acquirements, her faults, and her aspira-
tions, she thus concluded this personal survey: 'Amidst all
my mournings for sins of omission and neglect, or of actual
disobedience, of unrestrained will, of irregularity and luke-
warmness in coming to God, when otherwise the heart might
sink, how delightful it is certainly to know that a time will
come when, though it may have been by the refining of the
fiery furnace, our dross will be completely purged away, when
we shall be white as wool. The time will come-but how
long it may be first is awful to think of—when every power and
emotion of the mind, every disposition implanted in us by our
Maker, shall be elevated and purified; and when this holy
spark of heavenly flame, however dimmed now by earthly
mists, shall burn forever bright and pure in the presence of its
Maker.'
Rammohun Roy was a man of wide culture, and his study
of the leading tenets of Christianity had led him to desire to
act as a mediator between Oriental and Christian faith. He
had mastered Hebrew and Greek in order to enable him to
read the Scriptures in their original languages; and he had
published in India several works in defence of Christianity.
He excited great interest in England, and especially among
the members of the Unitarian community, with whose views
his own very largely harmonised. Being invited over to
England, he became a guest of Dr. Carpenter, to whom he
had long felt united in the bonds of Christianity. Mary Car-
penter's enthusiasm was stirred by this cultured convert from
India, and she was already anticipating the achievement of a
glorious work in the East of which he was the forerunner,
1
MARY CARPENTER.
281
·
when he was suddenly taken ill with fever, and expired at
Bristol on the 27th of September, 1833. This is to all of us
a most awful and affecting event,' wrote Mary Carpenter to a
friend in Exeter; 'to have seen the person in whom we had
long felt an interest, as perhaps more likely than any other to
promote the diffusion of Christian principles in India; to have
heard him declare, in the most manly and unequivocal manner,
his belief in the unity of God and in the divine mission of our
Saviour; to have admired his noble bearing, his interesting
and intelligent countenance, and his courteous manners, all
the while looking forward to long years of continued usefulness
and happiness—and then to hear that he is no more!' As
she thought of the untrodden fields of labour in India, and
the untimely loss of this noble pioneer, her feelings found
relief in a number of memorial sonnets, one of which I repro-
duce :---
'The nation sat in darkness, for the night
Of pagan gloom was o'er it. Thou wast born
'Midst superstition's ignorance forlorn ;
Yet in thy breast there glowed a heavenly light
Of purest truth and love; and to thy sight
Appeared the day-star of approaching morn.
What ardent zeal did then thy life adorn,
From deep degrading guilt to lead aright
Thy fallen people; to direct their view
To that bless'd Sun of Righteousness, whence beams
Guidance to all that seek it—-faithful-true;
To call them to the Saviour's living streams.
The cities of the East have heard thy voice:
"Nations behold your God! Rejoice, rejoice!"
The hopes which seemed momentarily to perish with the death
of Rammohun Roy were destined to a glorious revival in later
years. Meantime, new aspirations were kindled in Mary
Carpenter by the arrival of another guest under her father's
roof--Dr. Joseph Tuckerman. This American divine had
laboured unceasingly for twenty-five years in the Ministry to
the Poor in Bost n. He was a kind of Transatlantic Pastor
282
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
C
Oberlin. Mary Carpenter was the companion of Dr. Tucker-
man in his walks through Bristol. On one occasion, while
threading their way through a squalid district, a ragged boy
darted out of a dark entry and rushed across their path.
'That child,' observed the Doctor, 'should be followed to his
home and seen after.' The incident was not without its after
effects. Between thirty and forty years afterwards, Mary
Carpenter spoke of it as one of the quickening influences of
her life. His words sank into my mind with a painful feeling
that a duty was being neglected.' She and her sister now
spoke again and again of devoting themselves to the care of
the poor; and accordingly in 1835 a society was formed called
the Working and Visiting Society, for visiting the homes of
the poor of the Lewin's Mead congregation and of the Sunday
School. Districts were allotted; regular records of cases kept;
and for twenty years Mary Carpenter acted as secretary. In
order to avoid the demoralisation consequent on indiscriminate
charity, relief was only given with the sanction of the com-
mittee, to whom each case was at once reported. Mary
Carpenter chose the poorest and worst district, and it was
there that she gained her first insight into the condition of the
perishing and dangerous classes. Her labour was not without
its reward, for many families were rescued from intemperance
and destitution. But something more was required, and
in 1838 a Ministry to the Poor, or Domestic Mission, was
established on the New England model, aid being given in its
formation by another American philanthropist, Dr. Ezra Stiles
Gannett, a colleague of Dr. Channing.
While this good work was going forward, Mary Carpenter
was wading through seas of deep personal experience. Many
of her early friends were passing away, and her emotions
found expression in the composition of an Ode on immortality,
which contained passages of true poetic feeling and pathos.
She also sought earnestly to bring her own spirit into harmony
with those around her, and in subjection to the Divine will.
MARY CARPENTER.
283
These stanzas, written in 1837-and entitled Whether in the
Body or out of the Body I kucw not-show with some beauty
of expression the mental and spiritual conflict she was waging,
together with the heights of consolation she sometimes
attained :-
Sorrow and darkness fled away,
And I beheld eternal day,
No night was ever there;
None feebly drew the parting breath,
Gained was the victory over death,
And life was ever there.
: 'I felt as ne'er I had before,
I knew that I should sin no more;
And straight within my soul
There was a calm and holy peace,
A joy so true it ne'er could cease,
A gentle sweet control.
'I knew that I was with my God,
Yet feared I not His chastening rod,
Fear dwelleth not with love;
I felt His presence ever nigh,
'Twas bliss to live beneath His eye,
As 'twas in Heaven above.
<
I was so filled with holy awe,
I nothing heard, and nothing saw;
Yet every power and thought
Were bent on that excess of light,
Absorbed in fulness of delight,
In Him whose face I sought.
'But then a mortal veil was thrown
Upon me, and I was alone!
My course was still to run,
I came from realms of endless day,
To see the dim and troubled ray
Of the earth's mid-day sun.
'Yet now, methought, a fairer glow
Was shed on all things here below;
Light from above was given;
My Father's love dispelled the gloom,
And made the valley of the tomb
Appear the gate of Heaven.'
284
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
But in the midst of her personal struggles her interest in
intellectual pursuits did not abate. She entered with zest into
her father's lectures on Mental and Moral Philosophy, and
her brother William's on Physiology, and still pursued her own
independent researches in geology. Fiction, criticism, and
poetry also claimed their share of attention. Wordsworth was
the poet with whom she was in closest sympathy, and his
influence coloured her own poetic efforts. At one time she
conceived the idea for an epic dealing with the earth's story,
man's creation and progress, and the final triumph of God's
Kingdom. Art she cultivated with taste and skill, W.
Müller and G. Fripp being among her masters, and she
acquired considerable skill in art criticism.
In 1840 came the greatest bereavement of Mary Carpenter's
life. Her father's long and arduous labours had at last severely
told upon him, and he was ordered a complete rest. He had
consequently set out upon a Continental tour, and his family
were indulging sanguine hopes of his restoration to health,
when the tragic news arrived that he had been drowned while
on the way from Leghorn to Marseilles. The loss of this wise
and good man was deeply mourned, but it especially affected
his daughter Mary, who had shared his confidences and
participated in his work to a greater degree than others.
But she set herself to comfort her mother, and before the
fatal year closed, both had found solace in hallowed memories
and sacred hopes.
Next to the painfulness of the shock caused by her father's
death, was the profound sorrow created shortly afterwards by
the death of Dr. Tuckerman. To Mary Carpenter, as her
biographer remarks, he had given a stimulus which never
faded, opening to her new modes of usefulness, and providing
for vague, though ardent sympathies a method of practical
effort. For six years he had been "a guide and rest to her
soul." The tenderness and the strength of his nature had
produced on her an ineffaceable impression; and he, too, was
MARY CARPENTER.
285
enshrined in undying communion by her father's side. "He will
live in my thoughts as long as I am here," she had written when
she was awaiting the tidings of his departure; and her words
were fulfilled with richer and richer meaning, as one institution
after another arose to testify to the devotedness of her self-
surrender to his call. Not all the labour of six times six years
could weaken the tenacity of her affection; and she regarded
the final recognition of the "feeding industrial schools" in
1876, as the completion of the scheme developed in accor-
dance with principles of action first unfolded to her by
him.'
For a time, however, her double loss seemed to Mary
Carpenter to take well-nigh all interest out of life. Neither
art, science, nor nature could make up for what she had lost,
and in the summer of 1842 she paid a brief visit to the
Continent, accompanied by an old and loved pupil and her
brother. The change proved beneficial, and she was greatly
interested in the associations of Strasburg, Heidelberg, Bonn,
Stuttgart, and other places visited. After her return to
England, she entered more into society, and in one of her
letters we meet with this description of John Stuart Mill,
and an interesting account of his views and those of Mary
Carpenter herself on various poets: 'He is a very superior-
looking man, but appears like one whose mental is crushing
his bodily strength. He considers Coleridge, Shelley, and
Tennyson the first poets of the present age, and Wordsworth
I am inclined to agree with him about Coleridge's
poetical powers, but he can never blend with my highest and
holiest imaginings like Wordsworth. With respect to the two
others, I feel myself incompetent to judge, having only seen
fragments of Shelley, and having been so disgusted with most
of what I have read of Tennyson, that I could proceed no
further. Mr. Mill says that Tennyson's poor prosaical pieces
are bad imitations of Wordsworth (I cannot imagine a real
genius imitating). He thinks that Talfourd has failed in
next.
286
women of renown.
giving a true Greek costume and character to Ion, which are
indispensable, as he has founded the piece on Greek ideas;
and he does not give him a high rank as a poet, though
admiring him much in many respects.'
It should be stated that the passion in some of Tennyson's
early poems had inspired her with aversion, but at a later
period she read with great delight his Idylls of the King. Her
literary, artistic, and historical interests were very varied. She
was much struck by David Roberts's sketches in the Holy
Land; and having been taken to see Ruskin's beautiful collec-
tion of water-colours by Turner, she said she could understand
something about the enthusiasm which artists felt for Turner.
After reading the first volume of D'Aubigné's History of the
Reformation, she wrote: 'To watch the struggle of minds that
have actually existed, to see their influence on Society, and the
progress of great events, is far more interesting to me than any
novel.' An article by Lord Mahon in the Quarterly on the
great Condé destroyed her admiration for that wonderful
soldier. She judged men from a moral standpoint, and
thought there was less even to admire in Condé than in
Napoleon. Condé's true appreciation of greatness makes one
mourn that he did not better know what greatness is; that is
almost the only point in his character one can dwell on with
pleasure. He has one advantage over Napoleon: Condé in
prison never showed the littleness of Napoleon in exile.'
Arnold's Rome, Sharon Turner's History of England, and
similar works, she read with avidity, and foreign authors like
Tasso she highly prized. In 1845 she published a modest
little volume of her own, consisting of meditations and prayers.
It was a little offering to the memory of her father, and it was
so warmly appreciated that in a short time it ran through six
editions. About this time she formed lasting friendships with
Lady Noel Byron, and Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, the well-known
authoress of a History of Port Royal and other works.
Her soul was stirred over the Abolition Movement in
MARY CARPENTER.
287
America, and she did all she could to advance it, but she
knew that the cause could only progress slowly. To one of
the most prominent Anti-slavery advocates she said: 'My
father used frequently to point out to us that great principles
take a long time to work their way, and that great and impor-
tant changes require a long course of patient effort to accom-
plish them. Thus Catholic emancipation was passed nearly
fifty years after the Gordon riots, and the abolition of slavery
cost nearly forty years of persevering labour. So you must
not be discouraged if your efforts seem at present crowned
with but little success.' So likewise with regard to social re-
forms in England, she wrote: 'I believe that never more than
at the present moment has the public mind been called to
direct its energies to the removal of the heavy burdens which
oppress our nation, and which, I am fully persuaded, are so
inwrought into our social fabric, that no Government measure,
however good, can produce more than a very partial and in-
adequate effect. Dickens has done much good, and so has
Hood, in presenting pictures which startle by their frightful
truth. I hope, however, that our American friends will re-
member that their object has been to awaken, and that they
have presented only one part of one side of the picture. They
must not, therefore, found their idea of the state of our nation
in general on the Chimes any more than we should of the
Americans from Martin Chuzzlewit.' Mary Carpenter was
deeply concerned over the slaves to the use of intoxicating
liquors. She was fully persuaded that no legislation could
raise the working classes of England so long as this evil existed
among them; and she took the pledge in order to assist those
victims brought more immediately within the scope of her own
influence.
While throwing herself heart and soul into the Anti-slavery
cause, she also hailed the educational awakening in England,
which began to take definite shape in 1843, and she was es-
pecially drawn towards the Ragged School Movement.
288
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Although she was left to work almost alone, she established a
Ragged School at Lewin's Mead, and the opening was fixed for
the 1st of August, 1846. 'It was the anniversary of the eman-
cipation of the slaves in the British dominions; and with the
peculiar observance of days which. characterised her, Mary
Carpenter loved to connect the beginning of her own work for
the deliverance of mind and soul from the bondage of ignor-
ance and sin with that earlier liberation.' Before beginning
her Ragged School work, however, she visited the English Lakes,
in company with her two sisters, and her brothers Russell and
Philip. Rydal, and the adjacent scenery, was sacred to her
through Wordsworth and Southey. Refreshed in spirit she
returned to Bristol, and entered upon her new mission with
ardour. The Ragged School now took the chief place in her
thoughts, but it had scarcely been opened before she was
again roused to enthusiasm in the cause of Abolition by the
visits of Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Elihu Burritt.
After their departure she turned to her Ragged School labours
with redoubled energy. A night school for young men and
women was soon added to the original scheme, and the atten-
dance one Sunday evening numbered 200. At first there was
great difficulty in maintaining order, but when quiet was restored
excellent results were obtained. In 1848 more than 500 children
passed through the Ragged School, the average number in daily
attendance being 160. The institution elicited the warm com-
mendation of Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. The
following entertaining picture of Mary Carpenter at her work
is furnished by her nephew and biographer :-
'The secret of the success lay in the untiring devotion of the
teachers, who could not fail to catch the enthusiasm with
which Mary Carpenter entered into their labours. Week by
week and month by month she was ever at hand to lighten the
burden, not only by ready counsel and sympathy, but by taking a
large share in the toil. The morning and evening of Sunday
were consecrated to her scripture class in St. James's Back-
MARY CARPENTER.
289
the afternoon being already pledged to the Sunday School;
two nights every week were regularly given, at no matter what
social sacrifice, to the evening school; and day after day found
her in the same haunt, ready to take a class, to preside over
the midday distribution of the soup to the most needy; or
even to bear the sole charge of management if sickness kept the
master away. By this constancy she soon acquired a complete
familiarity with the ways of the scholars, and also with the
habits of the neighbourhood. Strong in the power of a sacred
purpose, she was perfectly devoid of fear, and would traverse
alone, and at nights, courts into which policemen only went by
twos. The street quarrel was hushed at her approach, as a
guilty lad slunk away to avoid her look of sorrowful reproof;
and her approving word, with the gift of a flower, a picture, or
a Testament, often made sad homes cheerful and renewed the
courage of the wavering. Her long practice in the art of
teaching now began to stand her in good stead; and it was
well that she could bring a swift and incisive intellect to bear
upon the unformed minds with which she came in contact.
With the boys she found little or no difficulty in exciting in-
terest—their wits were active enough, though their ignorance
of the commonest facts frequently amazed her; but the girls
often presented a stolid and impenetrable front of stupidity,
which made her well-nigh desperate. It was from the boys'
classes, therefore, that she had most satisfaction. She delighted
in the quick appreciation with which the facts of Natural
History were often received by them, as well as in the ready
application to their own circumstances of the principles under-
lying the incidents of history.'
A wonderful power for good was exercised by Mary Car-
penter over the hapless boys and girls, because she brought to
her task a deep faith in the capacities for virtue even of the
most depraved. It was her aim not to break the will, but to
train it to govern itself wisely; she always strove to bring out
the good which existed even in the most degraded, and to
U
печа
290
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
make this conquer the bad. When some of her pupils fell
away and got into prison, she was ever on the watch to give
encouragement and support; nor could any number of relapses
exhaust her faith. This, and her earnest religious teaching,
had a beneficial effect in numbers of cases which were appa-
rently desperate. Many of her happiest hours were spent in
teaching these lost ones Biblical truths, and in putting before
them the beautiful life and the sayings of Jesus Christ.
In 1848, when the sufferings of the Irish people were at
their height, an American friend sought to institute a parallel
between the slaves of the Southern States and the Irish
peasants. To this charge Mary Carpenter indited the following
crushing reply: 'I cannot admit the cases to be at all parallel.
Slavery is unparalleled, both in its intrinsic wickedness and by
its collateral evils. It is not satisfied with crushing the body,
it crushes the soul as much as any human force can do it,
and reduces the image of God to a chattel. When this high
treason against the Supreme is committed, what wonder that
every conceivable and inconceivable crime follows in its train,
so that your own Jefferson trembled for his country when he
remembered that God is just. No, I cannot admit that any-
thing can be brought into comparison with that "crime above
all crime, union of all." But for argument's sake let us suppose
the slaveholder and Irish landlord equally criminal. The
victims of their cruelty are very differently circumstanced.
The Irish peasants may have the consolation of sharing each
other's sufferings, and of the supports of religion; they may
be helped and solaced by their fellow-creatures, who will be
blessed for it; and they are free-they may fly in broad day-
light and seek a less thickly-peopled country, where their fathers
have before taken refuge. In all these respects the poor
slaves must envy their lot; if they have enough food, we know
that man liveth not by bread alone; and though thousands do
annually reach our land of freedom, where they are received
and treated like men, yet it must be as a thief in the night that
MARY CARPENTER.
291
they ever regain their own. But allow that in even these
respects the cases were equal, they would be yet another grand
difference. Your Congress does all in its power to stifle any
voice that is upraised against the crying sin, and will not
attempt to put away the iniquity; our Parliaments, session
after session, are striving to amend the evil; individually and
collectively, the English are trying to benefit that unhappy
people. Do not suppose that we shut our eyes to our own
faults while opening them to those of our neighbours. You
would find generally here that those persons who exert them-
selves most in the Anti-slavery Cause, are the most earnest
in their exertions to rectify home abuses. I can say that of all
whom I know; and be assured that much as we ourselves
have at heart the great cause for which those whom we love
and honour among you are labouring, and in which they ask
our sympathy, our own poor degraded children have a deeper
place in it, and call forth more constant and zealous exertions
even than our degraded coloured sisters. You have no need
of Ragged Schools; Elihu Burritt told me that you have not
in America so great a field for martyr enterprise as we have in
these schools. Ours is beginning to give us much hope; it
will be a great happiness to have rescued some few even from
the "
dangerous" classes, and to have called forth their noble
powers in a right direction. The world is beginning to awake to
its true life, I firmly believe it. One true and strong spirit, with
the armour of faith, will destroy a whole army of selfish Goliaths.'
When the Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed fugitives to be
sent back into slavery, was passed in the United States, Mary
Carpenter's heart burned within her with indignation. 'Your
States,' she wrote to a correspondent, have now acquired a
pre-eminence which I trust they will never lose; they stand
alone in the annals of history, and I hope will always do so;
they have reached a climax of black wickedness, not of igno-
rant sin, but of daring and unblushing defiance of the laws of
God, with their eyes open, with the voice of the civilised world
U 2
292
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
against them, with the Bible before them. It is the nation
that has done this; not the general Government, but the States'
Legislature; not the rabble, but the free educated people, who
hold themselves up as examples before the world, whose
ministers of religion tell Europe to admire and copy the fair
proportions, the glorious freedom, of their adored Union.
I trust that there is still some English blood and
spirit in your nation, and that some of your rulers may be
roused to compare this Bill with the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, and to prove to the Government that an act has been
committed which is treason to the State.'
Finding the claims of the Ragged School upon her to be
increasing rapidly, Mary Carpenter finally gave up home-
teaching in 1848. She now secured a little leisure, which she
devoted to the preparation of a life of Dr. Tuckerman for the
Christian Tract Society. In the ensuing year she began a
series of papers in The Inquirer newspaper on Ragged Schools,
in which she developed her views on their proper management,
and indicated the place which they ought to hold among
existing educational agencies. As Mr. Fletcher, one of H.M.
Inspectors of Schools, declared them to be 'the best collection
of well-reasoned principles and results of experience' with
which he was acquainted, and as he urged their republication,
the writer issued them in a small volume, entitled Ragged
Schools, their Principles and Modes of Operation, by a Worker.
Two points were insisted upon, first, that the Ragged School
children formed a completely distinct class from those in atten-
dance at the ordinary National and British Schools, and
secondly, that a separate organisation was needful for them.
She furthur urged the claims of Ragged Schools to Govern-
ment aid, and pointed out that for children who had already
fallen into confirmed habits of vice, for regular beggars and
professed thieves, Reformatory Schools ought to be established.
In the course of her many self-imposed duties, Mary
Carpenter found herself watching by the dying bed of a boy of
MARY CARPENTER.
293
fourteen. The youth was of a gentle, refined disposition, in
spite of the coarse natures which had always surrounded him.
The noblest virtues may flourish amid vice and degradation Un-
known to herself, the watcher had been a help and a stay to the
suffering boy, and when she knew this she was drawn towards
him by special bonds of tenderness. Although she felt natural
sorrow for his condition, she became inspired to a loftier self-
dedication. It was at this time she wrote these beautiful
verses, to which she often recurred in later times of trial:-
'To Thee, my God, to Thee,
Teach me to live;
To Thee, my God, to Thee,
All would I give.
'Whate'er I hold most dear
I would resign,
Sure I have nothing here---
All mine is Thine
'What most my soul doth prize
The least is mine,
Naught that is lovely dies,
For it is Thine.
، The life that came from Thee
Can never die,
Teach me to yield it Thee
Without a sigh.
'For still my heart doth cling
To what is fair,
Heavenward my spirit wing,
And fix it there.
'Bear all that most I love
To heavenly rest,
Bear thus my soul above
And make it blest.
'My all, O God, to The
I would resign,
Oh fix my heart on Thee
I would be Thine.'
294
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
The spontaneous affection manifested towards her by her
Ragged School children greatly cheered the heart of Mary
Carpenter, for she had somehow imbibed the idea that her
nature was not one to call forth affection. The love of the
dying scholar ever afterwards remained with her as a precious
memory, stimulating her to fresh exertions. A study of her
character leads us to acquiesce fully in the judgment of her
biographer, that she 'united qualities very rarely found in
harmonious combination. She had the soul of a mystic, and`
the insight into affairs and the grasp of detail of a born
administrator. So it came to pass that while she was in almost
daily attendance at the Ragged School, and was carefully
collecting a mass of particulars concerning the condition of
destitute children, she was lifted at times into the highest
rapture of devotion.’
In 1850 this earnest worker acquired possession of the
whole premises of the court in which her Ragged School was
carried on. She at once began improving the dwellings, and
making them fit for occupation by selected tenants. Baths,
washhouses, and every sanitary improvement which any reason-
able heart could desire were added, while one portion of the
court was turned into a playground for the children. Later
still, a new building was erected for the accommodation of
homeless boys, who were fed, housed, and clothed.
The problem how best to deal with juvenile offenders now
began to occupy her attention. Although a Select Committee
of the House of Lords had reported strongly on this question
in 1847, and a Committee of the Commons in 1850, nothing
had been done. A Bristol magistrate assured Miss Carpenter
that for twenty years he had felt quite unhappy at going on
committing these little criminals. She now put herself in com-
munication with gaol chaplains, and many other authorities,
including Sheriff Watson, of Aberdeen, and Mr. M. Davenport
Hill, Recorder of Birmingham. The upshot was that in 1851
she wrote a book entitled, Reformatory Schools for the Children
MARY CARPEnter.
295
of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, and for Juvenile
Offenders. A portion of the title had been suggested by two
impressive sermons of Theodore Parker. The writer adduced
a formidable array of startling facts as to the numbers and
condition of juvenile delinquents. She suggested various
schools for different grades of destitution, vagrancy, and
criminality; namely, good Free Day Schools, Feeding In-
dustrial Schools, aided by rates at which attendance should be
compulsory; and Reformatory Schools in place of the existing
prison system. Having described the lot of the children whom
she sought to save, she set forth the humane and Christian
principles on which all efforts to rescue them must be founded.
Then she surveyed the work accomplished by Ragged Schools;
demonstrated the total failure of the gaols to reform juvenile
criminals; contrasted the failure of military rule in the Govern-
ment establishment of Parkhurst Prison, in the Isle of Wight,
with the noble results achieved by Christian efforts in the
French Institution at Mettrai, and pointed out the moral
triumphs in the reformation of boys in philanthropic institutions
at Dusselthal and Hamburg, and also at Red Hill, Surrey, and
Stretton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire. Finally, the results
of her investigation as a whole were stated in the following
propositions :-
'First.—That, as a general rule, all children, however ap-
parently vicious and degraded, are capable of being made
useful members of society, and beings acting on a religious
principle, if placed under right influences and subjected to
judicious control and training. The comparatively few ex-
ceptions that would occur do not invalidate the principle.
'Secondly.That the present system adopted towards offend-
ing children renders them almost certainly members for life
of the criminal class, for it neither deters nor reforms them ;
while, by checking development of their powers and branding
them with ignominy, it prevents them from gaining an honest
livelihood.
296
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
"Thirdly. That good Penal Reformatory Schools, conducted
on Christian principles, where there is a wise union of kindness
and restraint, have produced the desired effect of enabling the
most degraded and corrupt to become useful members of
society; but that such institutions cannot be efficiently carried
on or maintained without a steady income, which cannot be
certainly or justly raised by individual effort alone, and without
such legal authority as will impose sufficient restraint over the
scholars to keep them under the school influence.
▬▬▬▬▬▬
'Fourthly. That the parents being in reality the guilty
parties, rather than the children-since juvenile delinquency
usually originates in parental neglect-every parent should be
chargeable for the maintenance of a child thrown by crime on
the care of the State, as much as if the child were at large, and
should be held responsible for the maintenance of a child in
a Reformatory School, or made in some way to suffer for the
non-discharge of this duty.
'If these four results are true ones, legislative enactments
will be needed to carry the spirit of them into operation.
'A sufficient number of Reformatory Penal Schools must
be established under the guidance of enlightened Christian
benevolence, sanctioned and mainly supported by Government
inspection and aid.
'Magistrates and judges must be empowered to send all
convicted children to such schools, instead of committing them
to prison, power of detention being vested in the masters, for
such length of time as may seem needful for the reformation
of the child.
C
The parents, or, if none, the parish of the child, must be
held responsible for such weekly payment as may cover the
cost of his maintenance during his detention.'
By personal interviews with those interested, as well as by
articles in the newspaper press, Mary Carpenter carried forward
her propaganda. Then she called a Conference of workers,
being assisted in her task by Lady Byron and the Hon. Amelia
MARY CARPENTER.
297
Murray. The Conference was held at Birmingham, Lord
Lyttelton presiding over the preliminary meeting, and Mr.
M. D. Hill over the regular sittings. Resolutions were adopted
sanctioning the gradation of schools which Miss Carpenter
had already set forth in her work on Reformatory Schools. A
committee was appointed to carry out the principles affirmed,
and the resolutions carried at the Conference were laid before
the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey. Divergences of view
soon appeared amongst the workers, however, some desiring
an element of retribution to be incorporated, whereas Mary
Carpenter rested her whole case on reformation. She com-
bated the idea of retribution with great ardour, and wrote to
the chairman of the committee remonstrating on what she
regarded as a departure from fundamental truths laid down by
the Conference. It cannot be wondered at that the suggestions
for a Bill for dealing with juvenile offenders, circulated by the
Rev. Sydney Turner, filled her with alarm lest the result should
be only to introduce prisons for the young under another name.
At this juncture the promise of a Parliamentary Inquiry by Sir
John Pakington led to the suspension of the proceedings of
the committee appointed by the Conference. But time passed
on, and no advance was made. Ultimately, after many dis-
appointments, a Committee of the House of Commons was
appointed to inquire into the subject, and Mary Carpenter laid
her views before it in detail. Mr. Hill also gave evidence,
dwelling much on the importance of enlisting voluntary agency
and individual effort in the work. Miss Carpenter supple-
mented this by showing that as a necessary consequence the
religious instruction must be left to the managers of the
schools, the only concern of the Government being to in-
vestigate whether the plans adopted were calculated to trans-
form juvenile delinquents into good citizens. The dissolution
of Parliament interfered with the proceedings of the com-
mittee, and it was not until the summer of 1853 that its
recommendations could be issued.
Unwilling to delay the
*T
298
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
good work so long, Miss Carpenter-with the practical aid of
Mr. Russell Scott and Lady Byron--was successful in opening
a school upon the Reformatory principles she desired, at
Kingswood, near Bristol. A school in the country, with rural
employments for the inmates was, in her opinion, the best
training to adopt, and in this view she was supported by other
reformers.
Early in 1853 appeared a new book by Mary Carpenter,
supporting the principles adopted by the first Birmingham
Conference. It was entitled Juvenile Delinquents, their Con-
dition and Treatment. She was now able to add considerably
to the information previously published, and the whole treatise
was a powerful plea for moral influence as opposed to force
and coercion. Much good resulted from a second Conference
at Birmingham, called by Mr. Adderley, who was supported
by Sir J. Pakington, Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Monckton Milnes,
and other social reformers. Shortly afterwards, however,
troubles arose at Kingswood, but these were eventually ad-
justed, and excellent results began to be apparent, especially
as regarded the boys. The girls were much harder to reform
than the boys—a fact which has also been noted with regard to
female convicts—and, after two years' experience of the mixed
system, Miss Carpenter removed the girls to Red Lodge,
Bristol, where they were under her own supervision. In 1854
a legal sanction was given to Mary Carpenter's Reformatory
work by the passing of the Juvenile Offenders' Act. This
measure gave effect to many suggestions of the two Con-
ferences and the Select Committee, and, although it contained
the obnoxious principle of retribution by providing that every
child must pass fourteen days in prison before he could be
transferred to a Reformatory, it was warmly welcomed as a step
in the right direction. Mary Carpenter gave herself up to the
work of saving the waifs and strays of humanity with renewed
zeal, and, in treading this portion of the Master's vineyard, she
found life sanctified for herself. The Red Lodge Schoo
MARY CARPENTER.
299
passed under her sole management, and she retained to the
last day of her life the undivided responsibility and control
of its operations. At the same time she did not relax her
Sunday School and Ragged School labours. She was laid
aside by a severe illness in 1855, but she had barely re-
covered when she was back in the midst of her beloved
occupations, only to find, however, that a journey to the coast
of Devonshire was necessary in search of health.
At this time she had many interchanges of thought with Sir
John Bowring, Lady Byron, and Harriet Martineau. But the
last-named was already drifting from that Christian faith which
had long been a common centre with them. In the autumn of
1885, Mr. Barwick Baker, of Hardwicke Court, Gloucestershire,
gathered together at his house, for mutual help and counsel,
the managers of the different Reformatories in the king-
dom. They formed themselves into a united body, and were
long afterwards known as 'The Reformatory Brotherhood.'
The committee of the Kingswood institution now sought a
more public recognition of their work, and the claims of the
school were advocated by Mr. Adderley and others. Red
Lodge School did not, in some respects, fare so well, for as it
was entirely managed by Mary Carpenter, comments began to
be made upon her unorthodox creed, and her teaching and in-
fluence were distrusted. She felt this very deeply, and the
more so as she received very little assistance and sympathy
from the adherents of her own faith. The Somersetshire
magistrates, at the quarter sessions at Wells, refused to take
cognisance of the school, although a Report of Her Majesty's
Inspector, bearing testimony to the religious and other teach-
ing, was laid before them. Yet, undeterred by these trials, the
founder went on with her work; but in order that her strength
might be reserved for those who most needed it, she resigned
the office of superintendent of the afternoon Sunday School,
whose duties she had steadily fulfilled for twenty-five years. In
May, 1856, she had a visit from M. Demetz, the founder of
300
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Mettrai, and the acknowledged leader in Reformatory work.
'He addressed a few words to the girls; and the evident de-
light with which he expressed to Mary Carpenter his satisfac-
tion with their appearance-which indicated that they were at
ease with society--brought her fresh strength and encourage-
ment.'
Shortly after this, the second great sorrow of her life fell
upon her by the death of her mother, with whom she had been
so lovingly united in the common round of daily life. There
had also been an exceptionally close sympathy between them
through the memory of the husband and parent who had died
sixteen years before. The survivor felt very desolate for a
time, and would gladly have welcomed death for herself, but
she arose out of this feeling with the returning sense of the great
needs of others. Having read the newly-published Life of
Charlotte Brontë, by Mrs. Gaskell, she wrote respecting it: 'A.
most instructive record, a true picture revealing many secrets
Though I almost regretted to have past scenes of sorrow
vividly recalled by the details of her affecting bereavements,
yet, now I know that she is no longer suffering, I felt it rather
soothing to see her bearing up so bravely while enduring
agonies which I could well comprehend. Her life is a warn-
ing. Her novels now form part of her biography. It was
very touching for her to go as soon as she desired to stay. But
I am glad there was that sunshine at the end.'
An intense longing came over Mary Carpenter for a home of
her own, where she might shed around loving sympathies,
and order, beauty, and happiness. This being denied her,
she took up her abode near the scene of her labours at Red
Lodge, a house having been purchased by Lady Byron. Not
long afterwards, a cottage adjoining the Red Lodge was also
purchased by Lady Byron, and this was fitted up as a Home
for eight or nine girls under a matron, and there the older girls
who were qualified by their behaviour in school were specially
trained for domestic service. Besides attending to this matter
MARY CARPENTER.
301
Mary Carpenter was preparing a number of papers on Re-
formatory work, which were read at Educational and Reforma-
tory Conferences in England and America. The Social Science
Association was founded in 1857, and during the first twenty
years of its existence she systematically prepared papers for its
annual Congresses.
As the result of much effort, Mary Carpenter succeeded in
obtaining an extension of Government aid for free days in
addition to other concessions. Next, owing largely to her
action, the Industrial Schools Act was carried; but it was un-
fortunately hampered by one or two restrictions, which for a
time prevented the Act from being properly carried out.
Meantime, the Ragged Schools were imperilled by the con-
templated withdrawal of Government aid. By the most
arduous exertions she secured the continuance of the grant,
but only under such stringent conditions that she had prac-
tically to fight the battle of the schools over again. When the
Social Science Congress assembled in 1858 at Liverpool,
under the presidency of Lord John Russell, she read two
papers on the Disposal of Girls from Reformatory Schools, and
the Relation of Ragged and Industrial Schools to the Parlia-
mentary Grant.
Before the close of the year this indefatigable
reformer welcomed as a resident with her at Red Lodge
House a kindred spirit, Miss Frances Power Cobbe.
Early in 1859 Mary Carpenter opened in Park Row,
Bristol, a Certified Industrial School, which completed the
round of her agencies for neglected children and children
needing detention. She sought, by this institution, to lay hold
of those children who would not go to the Ragged Schools, and
who were qualifying to become 'children of the State' in
Reformatories unless rescued in time. She found benevolent
friends who supplied the sinews of war, and began the new
enterprise with hope. As soon as it was floated, she resumed
her crusade on behalf of the children, whose needs were still
unrecognised. She had already published a pamphlet on 7he
302
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Claims of Ragged Schools, dealing especially with the pecuniary
Educational Aid from the annual Parliamentary Grant, as an
integral part of the educational movement of the country.
She appealed to Sir Stafford Northcote, as the original author
of the Industrial Schools Bill, to sustain her principles, and
pointed out that it had become a question whether the Edu-
cational Grant was to be virtually withheld from those who
wanted it most. And she asked whether it was good for the
country that between one and two millions at least of the
population should grow up without education. Then she
pleaded her cause at the Bradford meeting of the Social
Science Association, where she read papers on both groups of
schools, the Ragged and the Certified Industrial. Subse-
quently, at Frystone Hall, the seat of Monckton Milnes (after-
wards Lord Houghton), she met Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth, Mr.
Edwin Chadwick, and other friends of education, and she had
the satisfaction to behold the principles for which she had
striven winning recognition at last.
We now read of sympathising letters to Mary Carpenter from
Theodore Parker, and of her renewed Abolition efforts follow-
ing the death of John Brown, of Harper's Ferry. But she still
had her hours of loneliness, and these were accentuated by the
departure of Miss Cobbe, and the placing at school of an
orphan girl whom she had adopted. She now sought to bring
Parliamentary pressure to bear on the Committee, of Council,
to obtain aid for those who were perishing for lack of knowledge;
but for the time her efforts were in vain. Then she advocated
her cause at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in
1860. The same year she gladly accepted the measure of Sir
G. C. Lewis, transferring the Certified Industrial Schools from
the control of the Committee of Council to that of the Home
Office. But, as there were defects in the Act, she obtained,
with the aid of Sir Stafford Northcote, an amended Act in
1861, and this widened the range within which children under
fourteen might be sent to Industrial Schools, so as to include
MARY CARPENTER.
303
those who had committed offences punishable with imprison
ment, as well as vagrants and begging children. While thus
engaged she was called upon to endure another severe trial by
the death of her faithful and trusted friend, Lady Noel Byron,
to whose memory she inscribed some touching memorial
verses. Lady Byron appointed Miss Carpenter one of her
three literary executors, and a legacy which she bequeathed to
her enabled her to purchase the Red Lodge property.
A third Conference on Ragged Schools was held at Birming-
ham in January, 1861. Papers were read by Mr. M. D. Hill
and Miss Carpenter. The former dealt with the obligations of
the State to ensure education for all children for whom their
parents were through poverty unable, or through ignorance un-
willing, to provide it; and the latter was devoted to proving the
existence in large masses of the class for whom Ragged Schools
were designed, and to demonstrating that voluntary benevo-
lence was inadequate to deal with them; and it concluded
with an appeal for the restoration of the Minute of 1856, with-
out the feeding and industrial grants. Dr. Guthrie and Canon
Miller eloquently supported the arguments in the papers. But
although the Conference was a most successful one, and the
question was again brought before both Houses of Parliament,
no progress was made. Going over to Dublin for the meeting
of the Social Science Association, Miss Carpenter spent a week
there in examining the prison system and institutions associated
with the name of Sir Walter Crofton. The Crofton principle
was that a very large percentage of criminals could by a system
of Reformatory training, introduced towards the termination of
their sentences, be restored to the society they had outraged,
as industrious and useful members. The general plan of action
harmonised with her own, but the details of the system were
superior, and she saw them in their operation upon adults when
the conditions were less favourable for success.
After a brief holiday spent at Killarney, she returned to
England, when her attention was directed to the condition of
304
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Workhouse Schools. She had been impressed by the evils she
had herself seen in the Bristol Union, and she proposed that it
should be made unlawful to take children into workhouses.
She suggested that the management of pauper children should
be placed in the hands of a school committee, to be chosen
annually by the ratepayers, and that all schools intended for
pauper children should be certified as fit and proper by the
Secretary of State. The Bristol guardians resented her criti-
cisms, and passed resolutions of condemnation against her, and
she was subjected generally to such unfair and ungenerous
treatment that her ties to Bristol were temporarily jeopardised.
Other troubles followed, and the responsibility in connection
with her institutions rapidly increased. Before the year 1861
closed, the death of the Prince Consort came upon her as with
a shock of personal sorrow. 'Our poor dear Queen!' she ex-
claimed; 'since we lost our mother I have felt nothing so much
as this, except dear little M's death. It seems a deep personal
grief, for I have always felt a warm sympathy with her beautiful
domestic character.' She uttered a prayer for the royal widow:
Give her still to us to be our ruler, and the mother of her
children.'
(
In the year 1862 a severe struggle over the Revised Code
secured some benefits for the Ragged Schools, and then Mary
Carpenter turned her attention to the convict system, which
she carefully studied. This study, however, she suspended, in
order to assist her brother Philip with his emigration projects,
which were the result of the Lancashire Cotton Famine. Then
she interested herself in establishing a Workmen's Hall at
Bristol. Returning to her previous task, in 1864 she published
her work entitled Our Convicts. In this elaborate treatise, as
Mr. Carpenter has pointed out, the author first described the
actual moral condition of the convict class, and then proceeded
to inquire what were the influences which produced the fearful
moral degradation thus revealed, special stress being laid upon
the facilities afforded by imprisonment for corruption and
MARY CARPENTER,
305
training in crime. The third chapter was devoted to an expo-
sition of the principles of convict treatment, the chief of which
was stated to be the necessity that "the will of the individual
should be brought into such a condition as to wish to reform
and to exert itself to that end, in co-operation with the persons
who are set over them." This, it was urged, can never be done
by mere force, or by any mechanical appliance. But that
reformation, even of the most hardened offenders, was possible
was proved by the remarkable results attained by Colonel
Montesinos at Valencia, by Herr von Obermaier at Munich,
and by Captain Maconochie in Norfolk Island. How far, then,
did the English convict s, stem fulfil the conditions of the true
Reformatory discipline? The answer was given in an elaborate
inquiry, occupying the rest of the first volume, into the arrange-
ments of various prisons, the disposal of criminals, tickets-of-
leave, and, finally, transportation.
'From the English convict system the reader was carried to
Ireland, where the treatment of prisoners was founded on the
same Acts, but had been carried out to very different results.
Intermediate establishments were instituted between the
prisons and the world. The freedom of agency of the
inmates was gradually enlarged as they showed themselves
deserving trust, and strict supervision was exercised over those
who went out on licence. The details of this method were
exhibited with convincing wealth of illustration. The history
of the system was set forth; and to the evidence of personal
observation, and the witness of official reports, there was added
the testimony of other critics from England, from the Con-
tinent, and from Canada, in its support. Was the Irish system
applicable to women as well as to men? The question was
discussed in a chapter on Female Convicts," and, after a con-
trast between the prison experiences on both sides of the
Channel, it was unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative.
CC
'In conclusion, various suggestions for improvement were
laid down, including the strict registration of criminals, greater
X
306
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
certainty and uniformity of judicial sentences, cumulative
sentences, and changes in the county gaols in the direction of
the principles of the Irish system, such as were already being
carried out at Winchester and Wakefield. The next chapter,
headed "Prevention," afforded opportunity for a survey of the
principal agencies available for the diminution of the causes of
crime, such as temperance, the diffusion of pure literature,
the improvement of the dwellings of the labouring classes. The
most important, however, was education, which gave occasion
for a review of the progress of Reformatory and Industrial
Schools since the Conference of 1851, a plea for the separation
of pauper children from workhouse management, and a renewed
appeal on behalf of Ragged Schools.
'Finally, in brief but earnest words, the co-operation of
society was invoked, and different channels for voluntary effort
were marked out. "Thus may all labour together, Govern-
ment and people, for the regeneration of the misguided and
neglected in our country, and for the restoration to society of
Our Convicts.""
The civil war in the United States was painfully followed by
Mary Carpenter, who never remitted her Anti-slavery efforts.
President Lincoln's address on his re-election excited her
warmest admiration, while the assassination which followed
filled her with horror. She looked for the establishment of the
equal rights of man, irrespective of colour, and recommended
perseverance to her American friends until this was made a
fundamental law of the Union. But her own peculiar work was
not forgotten. She planned an exhaustive work on Our
Children, and even contemplated a sojourn in New England
and in Canada, so that she might further her principles of
Reformatory treatment. But these and other projects gave way
to a greater undertaking which had long exercised her spirit,
and which I shall now briefly explain.
Her heart had first been drawn towards India, as we have
seen, through her friendship with Rammohun Roy. Again and
MARY CARPENTER.
307
•
again the subject rose afterwards in her mind unbidden; a visit
from a Hindu gentleman, Mr. G—, greatly impressed her;
and when, in 1864, two gentlemen from Bengal-Mr. S. N.
Tagore and Mr. M. Ghose-visited her, with introductions
from Mr. Hodgson Pratt, she welcomed them with ardour,
and listened to their pleadings on behalf of female educa-
tion in India. The result was that on the 12th of January,
1864, she recorded her solemn resolve henceforth to de-
vote herself, heart and soul and body, to the elevation of the
women of India. She would not do this until she had placed
her English labours on a secure basis, but she felt that she had
a remarkable call to India. The opportunity for obeying this
call came in 1866. Her purpose in going out was thus ex-
plained in a letter to her friend, the Rev. Charles Wicksteed:
'In Bombay, as you state, the Parsees are awakened, and are
actually establishing good schools in concert with English
ladies. I therefore do not propose staying long there, but have
a promise of welcome from Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor, and
Mr. Cursetjee, who is now returning with his daughter. In
Calcutta many of the Theists, at least all whom I have seen
here, are more than three-quarters Christians; in fact, I tell them
I reckon them Christians, for they hear nothing they object to
in Lewin's Mead. They have, after coming to England, an
intense feeling about the elevation of their countrywomen.
They have an extreme prejudice against “Christian converts,
and the orthodox missionaries, male or female, in general. I
have their full confidence and friendship, because they see that
I have no proselytising objects, and treat them as friends and
equals. I have, therefore, a peculiar talent granted me; and
as I tell them that I go simply to show my sympathy, and to
use my experience in any way that can help them, they will
cordially co-operate with me.'
Mary Carpenter left England on the 1st of September, 1866,
Her brother, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, the celebrated biologist,
escorted her to Paris, and her travelling companions to India.
""
X 2
308
WOMEN Of renowN.
were Mr. Ghose and two young ladies, one of whom was
returning to her home in Calcutta. There were many Anglo-
Indians on board the vessel out, including the Secretary of
Public Works at Lahore, from whom Miss Carpenter obtained
much information concerning India. Yet there was consider-
able divergence of view among the Anglo-Indians. Mary
Carpenter bore with her introductions from the present Mar
quis of Salisbury, then Secretary for India, Lord Stanley, Sir
George Grey, and Florence Nightingale. She landed at Bom-
bay early in October, and almost immediately proceeded on
a visit to Mr. S. N. Tagore, then assistant-judge at Ahmeda-
bad. Here she began her inquiries into the social needs of
India, visiting the different Government institutions-prisons,
hospitals, lunatic asylums, schools, and normal training insti-
tutions. Female education first engaged her attention, but the
way to reform was blocked by indifference, religious customs,
and the system of early marriages. Education after marriage
could only be carried on in the Zenana, under difficulties
almost insuperable. She found it impossible to engraft
English culture straight upon Hindu family life; and as the
existing girls' schools were conducted by male teachers, she
desired to establish a female normal school, in which to train
female teachers for the work of education. Prison reform
was another important matter broached; but on conferring
with Sir Bartle Frere, and with the Director of Public In-
struction, Sir Alexander Grant, she found that the changes
which she desired, and the new institutions for which
she pleaded, required the legal sanction of the Supreme
Government, which alone also could grant the needful outlay.
Journeying to Madras, she there carefully studied the dif-
ferent educational institutions of the city, and the work of the
missionaries of various Christian churches. She came to the
conclusion that in seeking to improve the condition of Indian
women, she must begin from the principle of non-interference
with religion. At Calcutta she was welcomed by the cultured
MARY CARPENTER.
309
leader of the Brahmo Somaj, Keshub Chunder Sen. With
deep interest she examined into the beliefs and devotion of
those who had abandoned idolatry, and accepted the doctrine
of the unity and spirituality of God. She attended services and
prayer meetings held by and for ladies of the upper classes,
and established a free school for the lowest of the poor.
On the return of the Governor-General, Sir John Lawrence,
and Lady Lawrence from Simla to Calcutta, Mary Carpenter
was assigned rooms in the Government House, and here she
continued her labours, receiving all those who could aid or
sympathise in her work. She was delighted with the success
of her mission, which called forth genuine enthusiasm for social
reform both among English and Hindu gentlemen. Under
her auspices, and with the presence and sanction of the Vice-
roy and Sir Cecil Beadon, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, the
Bengal Social Science Association was inaugurated. She next
drew up a report to the Governor-General detailing the general
result of her inquiries in India, and pointing out the necessity
for prison reforms, and for the establishment of female normal
training schools and reformatory schools. She witnessed the
initiation of some of her reforms before she set sail from
Bombay for England on the 20th of March, 1867. The success
she achieved among the natives was due in a great measure to
the noble spirit of self-sacrifice in which she went out, all alone,
to demonstrate her affection and sympathy for her less fortunate
sisters of the East. The heart of the native population was
touched into responsive action.
Soon after her arrival in England she sought to awaken
public opinion to the responsibilities attendant upon British
rule in India-especially as affecting female education and
the condition of the Indian prisons. Addresses, memorials,
and speeches followed each other in quick succession. As the
Government authorities were dilatory, however, she resolved to
go out to India again, and herself begin the work. Before
doing so she was honoured with an interview by Her Majesty
310
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
the Queen. On being asked afterwards whether she was
nervous, she replied, 'Not in the least so. I was not going
for myself, but for the women of India.' The Queen presented
her with her Leaves from our Journal in the Highlands, on
the fly-leaf of which was written, Mary Carpenter, from
Victoria R.' This book and its inscription formed a potent
factor with numbers of Hindu friends, who wonderingly
examined it years afterwards.
In July, 1868, the Indian Council passed a new Educational
Minute, granting £1,200 per annum to each of the three
Presidency capitals-Calcutta, Madras and Bombay-for the
furtherance of the objects recommended by Mary Carpenter;
but nothing was done for the provinces. Sir John Lawrence
did not adopt any particular scheme, but wisely left it to cach
district to do what was best. Miss Carpenter felt herself
loudly called upon to return to India, and on the 7th of
November ensuing she landed for the second time at Bombay.
She began to labour arduously in connection with the training
of native ladies as teachers, but an alarming attack of illness
compelled her to suspend her efforts, and to return to England.
A two months' rest at Weymouth restored her to health, and in
the following autumn she paid a third visit to India. She
found her principles taking root, and she now helped to extend
or render more stable institutions already in existence. In
returning to England she no longer had any doubt of the suc-
cess of her philanthropic projects in the East. With the aid
of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, who visited her at Bristol in
1870, she founded the National Indian Association, for the
advocacy of social reforms in India.
Her work suffered a painful interruption in October, 1870,
when her beloved sister Anna, Mrs. Herbert Thomas, passed
away, after a few hours' illness. Their mutual affection had
been life-long, close, and tender. Writing to the survivor,
Florence Nightingale said: 'I know how heavy is the loss of
one with whom one has worked as with one heart and mind,
MARY CARPENTER.
311
and whose useful day on this earth one does not yet think
over. Such a loss one feels more and more every day one
lives. And time only makes it the more irreparable. But I
must have two hearts, one to rejoice with her who is now in
the joy of her Lord, and who, we are very sure, does not wish
to come back, who is not dead but living; and the other to
grieve with you over this "insupportable and touching loss."
God's design, when He deprives us of what is dearest, is no
doubt to fill the blank Himself. And she would reproach us
if we were to lament too bitterly that, after a life of generous
usefulness on earth such as is given to few, she is gone to yet
higher and better work in another world, to "prepare a place”
for us.
God bless you.'
Mary Carpenter found consolation in the progress of her
Indian and home work. She declined to become a candidate
for the new Bristol School Board, as she felt there was much
still to do in connection with Ragged Schools, while she also
contemplated founding a Boys' Home. After a time she
came to the conclusion that the Ragged School on the old
lines must be given up. Accordingly, on New Year's Day,
1872, she re-opened the premises as a Day Industrial Feeding
School. In the spring the new Boys' Home was opened, by
the side of the Workmen's Hall in St. James's Back, Bristol.
She was next engaged in preparing a little volume on the
Crofton System of Convict Reform, for the use of the
members of the International Prison Congress, which assem-
bled in London in July. She likewise contributed a paper
on English Reformatory and Certified Industrial Schools' to
the Congress; and delivered an address at a ladies' meeting
on Woman's Work in the Reformation of Women Convicts.'
She made many foreign friends at the Congress. She was
proud of the designation of 'Mother,' which had first been
given to her by the natives of India, because it indicated the
spirit of affection which she sought to import into all her
beneficent labours.
(
312
WOMEN Of renowN.
Baron von Holtzendorff, Professor of Jurisprudence at
Berlin, and one of the most earnest of social reformers, thus
happily described Mary Carpenter and her labours, shortly
after her death: 'There cannot possibly be two different
opinions about the incomparable value of Miss Mary Car-
penter's merits, and the admirable activity she has displayed
in improving education, reforming criminals, raising the
general standard of womanhood in public life, and connecting
Eastern civilization with European manners. She appeared
to be Argus-eyed in discovering the manifold moral plagues
of our times, and devising practical means with a tendency
to their gradual extirpation. Her notions about the final ends
of popular education were most complete, and, besides,
without that sentimental tincture of philanthropy which often
leads Christian charity into the direction of barren work. She
clearly understood that the highest aim of individual as well
as national education ought to be placed in attaining the
unity of three powers in every one, by closely connecting clear
reasoning with kind feeling and strong acting, all of these
capacities being essential to human happiness. I have no
doubt whatever that she will occupy a prominent place in
the history of modern philanthropy. Of the entirety of her
life one could well say, All her public writing and speaking
was action, and all her actions were preaching the work of
Christian charity.'
Miss Carpenter was contemplating a visit to the United
States, to inquire into the condition of the prisons there,
when she received a summons to Darmstadt from the Princess
Louis of Hesse-Princess Alice of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Princess was organising a Conference to deal with
questions relating to woman's work, and she felt Mary
Carpenter's presence to be necessary. She was received as
a guest at the Palace, together with her friend Miss Florence
Davenport Hill; and she rendered valuable service in visit-
ing schools, attending meetings, and advising the Princess
MARY CARPENTER.
313
generally. 'The more I saw of the dear Princess,' she wrote
to her brother Russell, 'the more did I admire and love her.
She feels that she owes much to her father, of whom she
thinks as we do of ours.' The Princess Alice herself after-
wards addressed a letter to Mary Carpenter, in which she
said: 'I would like all to know and share my admiration
for such a benevolent and useful life as yours, which has
influence far beyond the limits of its sphere. To know you
has strengthened me and done me good, and made me feel
how little I have yet done, and how your example will ever
incite me to try and do better.' From Darmstadt, Mary
Carpenter went on to Neuchâtel, where she carefully examined
the prison system of Dr. Guillaume, noting the many reforms
he had instituted, and even addressing the inmates in French
on the parable of the Prodigal Son.
She resolved, in 1873, to pay a visit to the United States,
and having made arrangements for the continuance of her
Bristol work, and sent out to India many useful gifts as well
as educational appliances, she sailed for Boston. On landing
she was warmly welcomed by friends, and she at once began
visiting schools and prisons, giving addresses on India,
Education, and Reformatories, and expounding to experts.
the principles of prison discipline. She also attended the
meetings of the Social Science Association and the Unitarian
Festival. At Hartford she delivered an eloquent address on
'Prison Reform' to a vast audience which filled the Centre
Church. Proceeding to New York she visited the two great
prisons, Sing-Sing and The Tombs, which filled her with
horror. She next journeyed to Virginia, where she attended
the Commencement at the Hampton College for coloured
people. Washington was visited, and at the Howard Uni-
versity she gave an address 'in sympathy with the coloured
people.' At Philadelphia, by request of the Board of State
Charities, she expounded the principles of Reformatories for
the Young, and Prison Discipline. By way of Newark,
314
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
{
where she lectured, she made her way to Montreal, where
excursions on the St. Lawrence, inspection of gaols, addresses
to Sunday Schools and Churches, kept her constantly on
the alert. The City Prison of Montreal she found to be the
worst she had ever seen, and she memorialised the Governor-
General, Lord Dufferin, on the subject with excellent effect.
In the Indian communities of Canada and the United States
she took a deep interest, and she introduced this subject at
the Liverpool Social Science Congress not long before her
death. The committee of the Aborigines Protection Society
were grateful to her for the practical interest she displayed in
the welfare of the Indians, and deeply lamented her death.
Miss Carpenter's American tour was instrumental in rousing
the people to a knowledge of the evils of prison life; and the
results of her observations, and her suggestions for reform,
were embodied in a Report addressed to Dr. Harris, corre-
sponding secretary of the Prison Association of New York, and
in a paper communicated to the Prison Congress held at St.
Louis in 1874. After Mary Carpenter left the United States,
Mrs. Gannett Wells thus wrote of her character and methods, in
the Christian Register :-
'She had a wonderful faculty of separating the various parts
of her work; and, both in this country and abroad, each one.
with whom she held a conference felt that the particular busi-
ness under consideration was her only one.
'She formed a National Indian Association to promote her
cherished objects; and whilst in Boston established a branch
society; for her broad spirit made charity international. Some
of us may remember her address on India; it was more than an
Was this an
hour and a-half long, yet without any notes.
indication of approaching age? Pleasant welcomes were given
her here by specialists in various departments; but the
Unitarian ministers and the prison reformers received her
warmest greetings. Men came from many States to consult
her. She quickly saw excellences in our institutions, and
MARY CARPENTER.
315
reluctantly pointed out deficiencies. Severely simple herself,
she deprecated the lavish expenditures in some of our chari-
table buildings, as the same amount otherwise expended would
have benefited a larger number. Luxuries are not needed, she
argued, to help the self-respect of the criminal or the recovery
of the sick.
'Her English loyalty was conspicuous. Her photograph
album of the Royal Family with some of their autographs; her
letters from the children of her beloved Princess Alice; the
recollection of the hamper that the Princess had put up for her
departure from Hesse Darmstadt; the interview with her
Queen, and two or three slight gifts from Her Majesty--one a
Scotch pebble bracelet-were to our American eyes oddly
valuable. When in Boston she never but once trusted that
album out of her own hands, and then on an emergency, to a
most careful friend.
'She was very simple in her tastes and habits, and yet most
precise in the hours and frequency of her meals, that thereby
her physical vigour might be maintained. When here she
would see friends all the morning, address a meeting in the
afternoon, and go out to dinner in the evening; but twice be-
tween times must come the fifteen minutes' rest and beef-tea.
One evening, when two or three gentlemen had each an
appointment with her, she said to the first, after the business
part of his visit was ended, "I think that is all you need of me,
sir"; and, bowing to the puzzled man, went to obtain a few
minutes' rest, before the arrival of her next visitor. Afterwards,
speaking of it apologetically, she said, "I must do so, or I
should accomplish nothing." She wanted all to be interested
in Reformatories, yet appreciated the intellectual and esthetic
work of others. Few knew how strong and able were her own
capacities for such work, nor how keenly she loved science and
nature, whilst her religiousness shone over all she did. She
was practical and keen in all matters of business and domestic
economy, and observant of people's ways.
316
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
at
'Many emulate Miss Carpenter's sympathy, patience and
hope, and laboriousness; but not all, her intelligence, and com-
prehension in philanthropy. It was her knowledge that gave
her power, and her gentle tact that held as friends those who
were forced to believe in her principles.'
The three or four years of life still remaining to her after
her return from America were full of work. The Higher
Education of Women, the Temperance cause, and the repeal of
the Contagious Diseases Acts, were all matters to which she
gave emphatic countenance and personal support. Undeterred
by the attacks of the Press, she joined Mrs. Butler, Harriet
Martineau, Miss Nightingale, and other ladies, in forming a
Ladies' National Association to agitate for the repeal of the
obnoxious Acts just named; and she was a member of the
committee formed at Bristol for securing the same object. On
the question of Women's Suffrage her early opinions were
rather against, than in favour of it; but in her later years ‘she
frequently expressed her belief that legislation would not be
established on its true basis until women had the power of
voting on the same terms as men.' The campaign of the Day
Industrial Schools was finally fought and won in 1874. A
volume of Sermons, a brief Memoir of Dr. Carpenter, and a
reprint of the Last Days of Rammohun Roy were prepared by
Mary Carpenter in 1875, for the purpose of expressing her idea
of the manner in which Christianity might be presented to, and
accepted by, the educated Hindu mind.
In September, 1875, she set sail on her last journey to India.
The Princess Alice had become President of the National
Indian Association, and native princes gave in their adhesion to
its objects. Some of the Female Normal Schools had been
closed, but others had been opened, while progress was being
made in all the ordinary girls' and day schools. Imperial
legislation was set on foot for the establishment of Reformatory
Schools in India, and a Factory Commission was appointed at
Bombay. Miss Carpenter landed at Bombay on October 14th,
"
MARY CARPENTER.
317
!
and she visited in succession Kurrachi, Hyderabad, Poona,
Madras, Calcutta, Dacca, Benares, Allahabad, Baroda, and
Bandora, finally returning to Bombay in March, 1876. During
this extended tour four subjects had especially engaged her
attention—the Education of Women, Prison Discipline, Re-
formatory and Industrial Schools, the Hours of Labour and the
Employment of Women and Children in Factories. The results
of her observations were recorded in letters addressed to Lord
Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, which letters were sub-
sequently laid before Parliament. Legislation was initiated to
carry out many of the reforms which she suggested, and future
years will doubtless bear fruitful testimony to the far-sighted-
ness of her ameliorative projects on behalf of the people of
India.
Mary Carpenter was back again among her Bristol friends in
June, 1876, and in the following month she gained another
legislative victory by securing the incorporation of a clause in
Lord Sandon's Elementary Education (Amendment) Act,
which authorised School Boards to establish Day Feeding
Industrial Schools. Thus, the work which she had begun as
far back as the year 1846, was at length crowned, and she felt
grateful to God for making her an instrument in the elevation
of the poor and degraded classes of society. When she had com-
pleted her seventieth year she still took an interest in public
affairs. We find her signing the memorial to the Senate of
London University in favour of the admission of women to
mcdical degrees; and then delivering a course of six lectures
on her past labours, her principles and experiences, at the
Bristol Philosophical Institution. At the same time she was in
active correspondence respecting a second International Prison
Congress.
Her own end came as such a noble woman would have it
come--in the midst of service for others. In May, 1877, she
received tidings of the death of her youngest brother, Dr.
Philip P. Carpenter, at Montreal. She had nursed him as an
318
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
infant, and followed his course with deep affection for fifty-
seven years.
Like herself, he had devoted his life to the ser-
vice of God and man, and she felt his loss keenly. When she
had partially recovered from the shock, she again turned to her
multifarious interests, and on the 14th of June she wrote to her
brother, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, proposing to visit him in London
for the purpose of furthering her Indian work. But the same
night, after retiring to rest, she entered upon the endless life,
dying quietly in her sleep. On the 19th her remains were laid
beside those of her mother and her sister Anna, in the ceme-
tery of Arno's Vale, and the day of her funeral was a me-
morable one in Bristol.
The good which such a lover of her species does cannot
perish with her. The nature of her work was beautifully de-
scribed by Dr. Martineau in his inscription written for the
monument erected to her in Bristol Cathedral. It thus
runs: 'Sacred to the memory of Mary Carpenter, foremost
among the founders of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in
this City and Realm. Neither the claims of private duty, nor
the tastes of a cultured mind, could withdraw her compas-
sionate eye from the uncared-for children of the streets. Loving
them while yet unlovely, she so formed them to the fair and
good as to inspire others with her faith and hope, and thus led
the way to a national system of moral rescue and preventive
discipline. Taking also to heart the grievous lot of Oriental
women, in the last decade of her life she four times went to
India, and awakened an active interest in their education and
training for serious duties. No human ill escaped her pity, or
cast down her trust. With true self-sacrifice she followed in the
wake of Christ, to seek and to save that which was lost, and
bring it home to the Father in Heaven. Desiring to extend
her work of piety and love, many who honoured her have
instituted in her name some homes for the houseless young,
and now complete their tribute of affection by erecting this
memorial.'
MARY CARPENTER.
319
Happy is that nation which has its Mary Carpenters, to
succour the needy, to feed the hungry, and to raise the fallen.
While they are a rebuke to the greed and selfishness of the
age, they are a bright ensample of virtue and excellence to all
who desire to lift up the submerged masses of the community
into a higher and purer state of being.
o'
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
徽
​Y
A
323
SYDNEY
MORGAN.
THIS clever, vivacious, and erratic woman-who made a stir
in the world altogether disproportioned to her talents--was
born in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but her life
and work practically belong to the nineteenth. She was a
strange being, bold in resource, unconventional in action, and
indefatigable in her literary labours. The date of her birth
is unknown to this day. She would never reveal it, and in her
Autobiography entered her protest against dates. 'What has a
woman to do with dates?' she asked. 'Cold, false, erroneous,
chronological dates.' Even her arch-enemy John Wilson
Croker could never ascertain the exact year of her birth,
although he instituted a formal commission of inquiry. She is
generally believed, however, to have been born about the year
1780; some have said three years before, and some three years
after that. Be that as it may, it has been clearly ascertained
that she was fulfilling the duties of a governess in 1798. Her
warm advocacy of liberal opinions, and the stand she made
on behalf of civil and religious liberty at a time when both
were in jeopardy at home and abroad, caused her to be assailed
with bitter invectives by reactionary Tory writers. But the
height of grandiloquent bathos was surely reached when her
eulogistic biographer Fitzpatrick exclaimed: 'That brilliant
woman, however, grappled with the arm which sought to
destroy her fair reputation, and possibly her life; and, like
the good fairy crushing the Evil Genius in a pantomime, she
smote the arch-foe to the earth, and placed her tiny foot,
cased in white satin, upon his ponderous coat of mail!'
LADY
1 2
324
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
The adoring Fitzpatrick calls upon us to admire Sydney
Morgan because she refused to bare that heart which blazed
with pure patriotism to the dastard stab' of the cold, malignant
critic, and because she absolutely declined 'to submit her dead
body to be trampled upon,' as Aristotle, Racine, Montesquieu,
and Keats—and a few other weak spirits of that stamp--
suffered themselves to be trampled upon. Well, she is cer-
tainly to be commended for her bravery in resisting 'the
poisoned shafts of ambushed antagonism'; but a much saner
service was rendered to Lady Morgan by that well-known
man of letters Hepworth Dixon than by the discursive but
enthusiastic Fitzpatrick. Mr. Dixon allowed Lady Morgan to
be substantially her own biographer, and with the aid of Miss
Jewsbury he produced a most readable work on the novelist—
her life, her works, her aims, and her acquaintances.
Lady Morgan's father was an Irishman named Robert Mac-
Owen, a land steward who was fonder of Shakespeare than of
managing estates. Determined to go on the stage, he quitted
In or
the soil for the buskin, making his way to London.
about the year 1771 Oliver Goldsmith introduced him to David
Garrick, and he also got him elected into the famous literary
club in Gerrard Street. Through Garrick's influence he procured
an engagement at Covent Garden Theatre, having now changed
He chose for his
his name for the English form of Owenson.
appearance the ambitious part of Tamerlane in Rowe's tragedy
of that name. Some of the newspapers praised his 'com-
manding figure, and marked histrionic passion'; but as the
leading organ of theatrical criticism took an opposite view,
and pronounced his assumption of Tamerlane to be 'a gross
insult to common sense and good taste,' the budding tragedian
was obliged to convey his commanding person and histrionic
advantages into the provinces. At the Shrewsbury Theatre,
among other places, he acquired some celebrity—so much so
that a young lady named Jane Hill, the daughter of a country
Her parents
gentleman in the district, fell in love with him.
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
325
"The attachment
discovered this, and forbade him the house.
was dying, as Mr. and Mrs. Hill thought, a natural death, when
Miss Jane-bathed in the silver light of an autumnal moon--
suddenly appeared one night at her casement, and descended
into two colossal arms below. In less time than it takes to
record it, the devoted pair were flying along the banks of the
Severn in quest of happiness and a parson.' They were
married at Lichfield; Mr. Hill, overcome with rage and
perspiration, arriving too late to forbid the banns.
From this comedy in real life Mr. Owenson turned to
comedy on the stage, and attained considerable success both
as a comedian and a vocalist. He had been trained by Dr.
Worgan, under the advice of the famous Dr. Arne; and as
Incledon and Braham had not yet appeared on the musical
horizon, Owenson was much sought after. The Owensons
travelled about, and in 1776 found themselves in Dublin,
where the future novelist was born.
Two other children were born after her-namely, Robert, in
1783, and Olivia, afterwards Lady Clarke, in 1785. Owenson
became joint proprietor of Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, in
1777. His partner was soon bankrupt, however, and Owenson
was driven to fresh fields. He first tried the trade of a wine
merchant, alleging as a proof of his fitness, his intimacy with
all the great wine drinkers of the day, gentle and simple. But
the new venture did not answer, and he returned to the stage.
He appeared at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, with the beautiful
and celebrated Mrs. Billington, who was then just beginning
her career, and he made such an impression on her heart, that
Mr. Billington repudiated her. In 1785 Owenson left the
Theatre Royal and opened a new house in Fishamble Street,
where he played a round of characters. One of the most
creditable things in Owenson's life was his steadfast friendship
for the unfortunate young poet, Dermody, who has been
called the Chatterton of Ireland.
During Owenson's many vicissitudes, the greatest anxiety of
326
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
his wife was for the education of her little girls, and her next,
for the salvation of mankind, through the influence of the
Countess of Huntingdon. Sydney caused her a good deal of
solicitude, for she had a strong power of mimicry which fre-
quently got her into trouble. She would figure away in all the
trades and occupations which came within her scope. Thus,
she imitated her father's hairdresser to the life, and could go
through the whole arduous process of hairdressing, from the
first papillotes to the last puff of the powder machine. Then
she became a chimney-sweep from her observation of a den of
little imps who inhabited a cellar on the opposite side of the
way. In order to keep her quiet, and check her various enter-
prises, she was sent to a day-school near her home. The irre-
pressible girl had many favourites among cats, dogs, and birds
-her mother's aversion and the servants' nuisance--and when
only a few years of age she could celebrate her little menagerie
in rhyme. On the death of Mrs. Owenson, her daughters
were placed at school with a Madame Terson, of Clontarf
House, near Dublin. Madame Terson was a descendant of
the French Huguenots, many of whom crossed over to Ireland.
Her discipline and tuition seem to have been thorough, and it
was under her that Sydney Owenson acquired her command of
the French language. With regard to her religious training,
Lady Morgan says: 'Religion was "taught us," as the
phrase goes, in all the purity of the Reformed Church of
Geneva, and with perhaps fewer of the external forms and
formulas of that eldest daughter of St. Peter-the Church of
England. We kept no fasts or festivals, and I don't think
we learned that "malignant riddle," the Athanasian Creed.
We repeated the Catechism on Saturdays, and bore testimony
to the false vows of our godfathers and godmothers. On
Sunday morning we went to the parish Church; and on Sun-
day evening we had Bible-reading, expounded by one of the
governesses, to the best of her knowledge and ability. We-
therefore got nearly through the Bible in the course of the
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
327
year, and if our edification was not always in proportion, at
least our memories were stored with the text.'
In course of time Madame Terson's health failed and the
Owenson girls were placed in the fashionable finishing school
of Mrs. Anderson in Dublin. At the society promenade on
Sunday afternoons in the Mall, Sackville Street, the sisters—
who were accompanied by their father-were much remarked
upon for their toilettes and their beauty. Sydney's air was
happily hit off by Leigh Hunt in describing Lady Morgan
forty years later :
'And dear Lady Morgan, see, see where she comes,
With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums,
So Irish; so modish, so mixtish, so wild;
So committing herself as she talks-like a child,
So trim, yet so easy-polite, yet high-hearted,
That truth and she, try all she can, won't be parted;
She'll put you your fashions, your latest new air,
And then talk so frankly, she'll make you all stare.'
With the assistance of Lord Ormond and other patrons,
Mr. Owenson built a theatre at Kilkenny, but it proved a dis-
astrous speculation. The daughters accompanied their father
to the historic city, and it was amongst the officers of the Irish
Brigade who were frequently to be seen there that the
future novelist found many of her characters. Owenson was
so proud of his daughter Sydney's poetical abilities that he
published a volume of her Poems, written between the ages of
twelve and fourteen. Such specimens, however, of her early
poetic effusions as have been preserved exhibit no special
merit. Poems written a short time later-such as the stanzas
composed on a tomb in the ruins of Sligo Abbey, and The
Country Post-Boy-revealed a certain promise, but the poetic
was not the writer's natural form of expression.
After Owenson's Kilkenny project came to grief, he had
equally unfortunate experiences at Sligo and elsewhere, and
was driven ultimately into the Bankruptcy Court. He retired
from the stage altogether in 1798. Sydney Owenson was fired
328
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
to exertion as the result of her father's reverses. She determined
now to do something for one who had done so much for her,
and she has herself gloried in the fact that it was necessity
which first spurred her talents into action. In 1801 she suc-
ceeded in publishing her first book-a volume of poems. It
was dedicated to Elizabeth, Countess of Moira, the leading
patroness of literature in Ireland at the close of the last, and
the beginning of the present, century. Some authorities give
1797 as the date of publication. An English edition was
afterwards issued, but as the authoress was unknown in Eng-
land, the publisher required a list of subscribers, and in this
list we find the names of Thomas Moore, the Bishop of Clon-
fert, Sir Malby Crofton, Lord Granard, the Duke of Leinster,
and John Foster, the last speaker of the Irish House of Com-
mons. The poems are brightened by a happy expression or
simile now and then, but, as a whole, they bear out the writer's
own description that she wrote what she thought rather than
thought out what she wrote. However, the poems and her
aristocratic patronage combined soon gave her a standing in
Dublin society. That she could nevertheless write a fine song
is proved by the charming Irish ballad of Kate Kearney, for
which we are indebted to her, and which holds its own to this
day. She also arranged to English words twelve of the most
beautiful and touching of Irish melodies, thus anticipating the
work afterwards achieved by Thomas Moore. In the preface
to the first edition of his Melodies, Moore observed that Lady
Morgan's patriotic genius had been employed on some of our
finest airs.
Among the officers whom Sydney Owenson met at Kilkenny
was a Captain White Benson, who seems to have fallen
desperately in love with her. When he was stationed at York
a few years afterwards, he wrote her several letters, declaring
his passion, but she made no response. These letters were dis
covered after Lady Morgan's death, and on the back of the last
of them was written, 'This elegant-minded and highly-gifted

SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
329
young man drowned himself near York, a few months after I
received this letter!' This sensitive admirer was taken as the
model for the hero in Lady Morgan's novel of St. Clair.
This story of St. Clair, or First Love, was the authoress's
earliest attempt in fiction. It appeared in 1801 or 1802, and
was a crude piece of work, though it afforded evidence of a vast
amount of miscellaneous reading. It was of The Sorrows of
Werther type, and in spite of many absurdities, and disquisi-
tions on art, music, literature, and other subjects, it was a
promising work. St. Clair was a German creation in an Irish
dress. Appointed tutor to the children of a nobleman, he met
at his lordship's seat in Connaught, Olivia, the granddaughter
of Sir Patrick Desmond. They form what they believe to be a
Platonic friendship, and end by being real lovers. This is
rather awkward, as the fair Olivia is already engaged to a
gallant Colonel. The lovers are surprised in a summer arbour
by the Colonel, who compels St. Clair to fight, and the latter
dies of his wounds. The lady suffers in reputation, and ends
her own sorrows by dying of consumption. In this, as in all
Lady Morgan's early works, 'her heroes and heroines indulge
in wonderful digressions, historical, astronomical, and metaphy-
sical, in the very midst of the most terrible emergencies, where
danger, despair, and unspeakable catastrophes are imminent
and impending. No matter what laceration of their finest
feelings they may be suffering, the chief characters have always
their learning at their fingers' ends, and never fail to make
quotations from favourite authors appropriate to the occa-
sion !'
This singular extract on love was committed to her scrap-
book by Sydney Owenson at the age of eighteen Burns
says,
"If anything on earth deserves the name of rapture or
transport, it is the feelings of green eighteen in the company of
the mistress of his heart, when she repays him with an equal
return of affection." I do not agree with Burns; at eighteen
the passion is but a simple sensation of nature, unmingled,
<

330
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
unenriched by those superadded ideas which constitute its
purer and more elevated charms. Other sentiments mingle
with love, as other metals amalgamate with gold-the sympathy
of congenial tastes-the blandishments of the imagination-the
graces of intellectual perfection--the exaggeration of fancy,
glowing with poetic images, and the refinement of taste to
apply them to the object beloved-all these heighten and sub-
limate the passion which has its origin in Nature.'
Thomas Dermody, the volatile and egotistical poet, seems to
have loved and admired Sydney Owenson as much as it was
possible for one of so shallow a nature to do. Some of his
letters show this as warmly as his heated verse. 'Conceive how
I idolise your remembrance,' he writes on one occasion. 'Were
you Venus I should forget you; but you are a Laura, a Leonora,
an Eloisa, all in one delightful assemblage! My idea of your
literary merit is very exalted indeed; this in a woman, a
beautiful woman, whom I must ever esteem, what magic can
be so irresistible in this world?' The fair Sydney did not
reciprocate these highly-wrought feelings. She pitied him, ad-
mired his talents, and was a warm friend to him because of
their old fellowship; and when he died of consumption she
sincerely mourned his loss; but beyond that she could not go.
In 1802 Miss Owenson, who had been under the parental
roof for some time, longed for a change. As Mr. Hepworth
Dixon remarks, 'In spite of her romantic love for her father,
and her sincere attachment to her sister, the beautiful illusion
of living a domestic life with them soon wore off.' As a gover-
ness, she had had a happy home with the Featherstones, of
Bracklin, and 'accustomed as she had long been to the plenti
ful comfort and regularity of the Featherstones' well-ordered
household, she felt the difference between that and the
scrambling poverty and discomfort of life in an Irish lodging.'
Accordingly she again accepted a post as governess, this time
in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, Fort William,
Nenagh. Here she mingled in the best county society. This

SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
331
is the Athens of Ireland,' she wrote to a friend; 'music and
literature carry everything before them; and Lady Clonbrock,
who is one of the leading women here, is an enthusiast in both.'
Miss Owenson was very sociable in
in her manners, and
possessed the happy faculty of adaptability. As her biographer
observes: 'The days of Sydney Owenson when she was an
instructor of youth did not pass over in sadness nor in looking
at the world out of back windows. Her genius and spirit
made her a fascinating acquisition in a country house. Few
governesses have her social talents, and possibly in a steady-
going English family they would scarcely be allowed the scope
for displaying them, if they had them. Her experiences are in
curious contrast to poor Charlotte Brontë's; but Sydney
Owenson knew how to make herself agreeable. She was always
grateful for kindness, and she possessed the rare gift of
knowing how to accept kindness gracefully, so as to make it a
pleasure to the bestower. She was not prone to take offence—
she took benefits as they were intended, and she brightened
all that surrounded her with the sunshine that emanated from
herself.'
All through life Sydney Owenson was ambitious, but it will
astonish many who have thought of her only as a volatile
creature to learn what she really aspired after. This is how she
expressed it in a letter to her friend Mrs. Lefanu-—the italics
being her own : 'I must tell you, my dear madam, I am am-
bitious, far, far beyond the line of laudable emulations, perhaps
beyond the power of being happy. Yet the strongest point of
my ambition is to be every inch a woman. Delighted with the
pages of La Voisine, I dropped the study of chemistry, though
urged to it by a favourite friend and preceptor, lest I should be
less the woman. Seduced by taste, and a thousand arguments,
Greek and Latin I resisted, lest I should not be a very
zvoman. And I have studied music rather as a sentiment than
a science, and drawing as an amusement rather than an art,
lest I should become a musical pedant or a masculine artist.
1
332
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
And let me assure you, that if I admire you for any one thing
more than another, it is that, with all your talent and informa-.
tion you are "a woman still." I have said this much to convince
you that I agree, perfectly agree with you, in all you have said
on the subject, and that when Rousseau insists on le cœur aimant
of Julie, he endows her with the best and most endearing
attribute woman can possess.'
Interesting glimpses of life and scenery in the North of Ire-
land are to be obtained in a letter written from Strabane by
Miss Owenson to Miss Featherstone of Bracklin. Here is one
passage: 'Amidst your level lawns and young plantations you
have no idea of the rude sublimity of our northern scenery.
We have no farmers, so, consequently, no tillage; all is bold,
savage, and romantic; the manners, dialect, customs and re-
ligion of the people are all as purely Scotch as they could be
in the Highlands, even the better order of people are with
difficulty understood, and the manners of the inferior class are
ferocious; there is, however, a great spirit of independence
among them; every rood of ground maintains its man," and
there are none of those wretched cabins which you perpetually
see in the other provinces. They call all strangers foreigners or
Irish people, and have not many ideas beyond their wheels and
looms. A market day presents a curious scene.
The young
women are all dressed in white, with their hair fastened up
fancifully enough and seldom covered. At the entrance of the
town they bathe their feet and put on shoes and stockings
which are constantly taken off when they are leaving it. I have
frequently seen them with flowers and feathers in their heads,
and their stockings tied up in a handkerchief. In a social sense
they are most unpleasant, and, upon the whole, they are the
last people in the world that an educated person would wish to
spend his life with.'
(C
Many of the letters written by this singular woman are by no
means so sane as the above extract. Some are gushing, and
not a few-yes, it must be said-are silly. She well hit off the
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
333
character of her correspondence generally when she remarked
of one of her epistles that 'by fits it was sad, and by starts it
was wild.'
While staying with her father and sister at Inniskillen in
1804, Miss Owenson finished her novel entitled The Novice of
St. Dominic. It was of portentous length, extending to no
fewer than six volumes: as the authoress said, 'in those days
one volume or six volumes was alike to me.' The manuscript
of this novel was copied out, in a beautifully legible and distinct
hand, by a youth named Francis Crossley, who with his parents
lived in the neighbourhood of Inniskillen. Crossley fell deeply
in love with the fascinating Sydney, but once again she proved
irresponsive. Her biographer observes that 'of honest zeal on
the part of Crossley there was plenty of passion on the part
of Sydney, none.' She received several letters from Crossley,
which she afterwards thus endorsed: 'Francis Crossley, aged
eighteen, chose to fall in love with me, Sydney Owenson, aged
eighteen. He was then intended for a merchant, but The
Novice of St. Dominic (which he copied out as regularly as
written in six huge volumes), and its author turned his head.
He fled from his counting-house, went to India, and became a
great man.' There is something deliciously cool in Miss Owen-
son describing herself as 'aged eighteen,' when she must have
been nearly twenty-four. Almost eight years had elapsed at
this time before she first went out as a governess.
Sydney Owenson took the manuscript of The Novice all the
way to London. She was
She was a determined young lady, and
travelled quite alone, first by sea voyage and then by coach
all the route from Holyhead to the metropolis. She arrived
without a friend in the place, and with very little money.
She used to say to her nieces in after life that they little
knew the struggles and difficulties she had to encounter in
her earlier years. But a publisher was found in the person
of Sir R. Phillips, of St. Paul's Churchyard, who seems to
have been struck by her talent. Only, he insisted on having
334
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
the novel cut down from six volumes to four, and it was only
regard for her feelings which prevented him from reducing
it to three. Phillips was betrayed into a liberality almost
beyond his judgment, seeing that there was considerable
risk to run. The first purchases Miss Owenson made out
of her literary earnings were an Irish harp, from Egan's, and a
black mode cloak !
The Novice of St. Dominic was successful. It is certainly
a very amusing novel,' says Mr. Dixon, but he might have
added also that it was not a little puerile. 'There is an
exuberance of fine words and ardent descriptions of the sensi-
bilities of the heroine, as well as of her personal charms; but
there is also an idea of something better-an idea of duty,
and the preference of principle to inclination. There is the
usual fault of pedantry; the heroine is terribly well educated
by her model lover, De Sorville; and they talk elegant litera-
ture together in a style that would have eclipsed the talk at
Mrs. Montagu's parties. It shows a great improvement upon
her first book; and there is a freedom of hand and a facility
of invention which give promise of entertainment to come.
The Novice of St. Dominic was a favourite with Mr. Pitt, and
he read it over again in his last illness, a piece of good
fortune for a book of which any author might be proud.'
The novelist now became a conspicuous character in Irish
circles. Incense was offered to her taste, her beauty, and her
genius, and she would have been less, or more, than the
woman she was had she not been deeply moved by this. 'At
times she may have listened to the charmer more than was
wise in a young girl; at least her elders thought and said so.
Not that she went wrong, even by implication or in appear-
ance-she had too much sense for that; but she found her-
self in a circle where every woman paid her compliments,
and every man, as the mode in Ireland was, made love to her.
She undoubtedly played with the fire; but she was too busy
with her literary projects to do more than play—a weaker
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
335
woman might have been consumed.' And, even amidst all
the adulation showered upon her, it is pleasing to note that
she had thought for others. In the bitter winter of 1806 we
find her writing letters to the Freeman's Journal, earnestly
pleading for the houseless poor, for the inmates of the debtors'
prison, and for the victims of illness and misfortune.
In 1806 Sydney Owenson published a collection of original
poems and melodies under the title of The Lay of the Irish
Harp. There was scarcely anything in it deserving of per-
manent remembrance; but it was followed the same year
by her most popular novel, The Wild Irish Girl. It is by
this story that her fame is still chiefly perpetuated. It was
written among the scenes, the circumstances, and the people
it describes. While the narrative was romantic to a degree,
it at the same time conveyed a good deal of information about
the social condition, the manners, customs, literature, and
antiquities of Ireland. There was in it a passionate pleading
against the wrongs and injustice to which the people and the
country were subjected. The work dealt with the false ideas
about Ireland which prevailed in England at that period of
misconception and misrule.' Many years after its publication,
Lady Morgan wrote: 'At the moment The Wild Irish Girl
appeared, it was dangerous to write on Ireland, hazardous to
praise her, and difficult to find a publisher for an Irish tale
which had a political tendency. For even ballads sung in the
streets of Dublin had been denounced by government spies,
and hushed by Castle sbirri; because the old Irish refrain of
"Eiren go Bragh" awakened the cheer of the ragged, starving
audience, who had much better have raised the chorus of
"Eiren go Bread." Graves were then still green where the
victims of laws, uselessly violated, were still wept over by
broken hearts, and the bitter disappointments of a nation's
hopes by the recent and sudden desertion of Pitt, the most
powerful champion of Catholic Emancipation, which gave to
ascendency new power and sunk Catholicism in deeper des-
336
women of renown.
pondency, was only slowly yielding to the benign influence of
a new and liberal administration of Irish affairs, during the
temporary return to power of the Whigs under the vice-royalty
of the Duke of Bedford.'
It was at first intended to call The Wild Irish Girl by the
title of The Princess of Innismore, but on the urgent advice
of Dr. Wolcot ('Peter Pindar'), it received the much more
attractive title by which it became known. Mr. Dixon gives
the following curious account of the way in which the novel
originated :-
'A young man, Richard Everard, had fallen violently in love
with Miss Owenson; his father discovered it and was dis-
pleased. This son had no money, no profession, and was a
very idle young man. Miss Owenson had no money either,
and it looked a very undesirable match. Mr. Everard, the
father, called upon Miss Owenson, stated his objections, and
begged her to use her influence to make his son Richard take
to some employment, and tried to obtain her promise not to
marry him.
Miss Owenson had not the least inclination to
marry him, but nobody likes to be peremptorily told to refrain
even from a course they are not "inclined to." Still, Sydney
Owenson spoke so wisely, and conducted herself so pleasantly,
that the father actually became desirous of doing himself what
he had forbidden his son to think of. Miss Owenson was no
more disposed to marry the father than she had been to marry
the son.
He became, however, a very firm and kind friend to
her father, assisting him with both counsel and money. Mr.
Everard kept up a long and earnest correspondence with Miss
Owenson, confiding to her with singular frankness all his own
concerns and private affairs; and constantly entreating her to
use her influence over his son to turn him from his idle
courses.'
The history of this curious friendship is detailed in the story.
of The Wild Irish Girl, where her father figures as the Prince
of Innismore, Mr. Everard and his son as Lord M-
and
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
337
Mortimer; though the beautiful atmosphere of romance which
clothes the story in the novel was entirely absent in the matter
of fact.
The character of the Princess of Innismore was afterwards
identified with Lady Morgan, and until her marriage she was
always known in society by the sobriquet of 'Glorvina.'
There was a contest between Phillips and another London
publisher to obtain possession of The Wild Irish Girl, and
an amusing correspondence took place between them and the
authoress. Eventually Phillips obtained it for the sum of
£300, and it proved a good speculation. Indeed, its success
was almost phenomenal for that time, as it ran through seven
editions in less than two years. Afterwards it was reprinted in
Colburn's Standard Novels, and later still in the Railway
Library. For some time nothing was talked of but this novel
in the fashionable circles of Dublin, and the name of 'Glor-
yina' was used constantly in advertisements to describe articles
of utility or ornament.
Leaving Dublin in the autumn of 1806, Miss Owenson
made a tour through the West of Ireland. The literary result
of this tour was a work in two volumes entitled Patriotic
Sketches. Connaught was the main locality described, and her.
pages contain many graphic scenes and incidents, as well as
eloquent passages, expressive of her sympathy with the miser-
able and down-trodden peasants. 'Miss Owenson,' as her bio-
grapher notes, 'had a peculiar faculty for seizing upon the
political significance of the events and circumstances which
passed before her eyes. In the Patriotic Sketches she deals
with the political problems which at that period, and for long
afterwards, were thorny subjects of debate and legislation.
She deals with those vexed questions with a vigour and clear-
ness of insight which proves her to have been both an earnest
and an understanding advocate.
'This national sympathy and political sagacity gave to her
national novels a weight and interest, at the period when they
Z
338
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
were written, far beyond what they would have obtained as
mere works of fiction and amusement. They were read,
especially in England, by those who would have shunned
graver works:
'A verse may catch him whom a sermon fails.'
'She was not a blind, unreasoning partisan. She saw the
faults of her countrymen as clearly as their opponents. She
had good sense, and had not only a love of justice, but a know-
ledge of what justice was—a qualification sometimes lacking in
popular advocates. She had generosity, also, which made her
eloquent; and she had the gift of putting her views vividly and
distinctly before her readers; the romantic accessories never
confused or veiled the main point in question.'
Ireland has improved in many respects, socially and politi-
cally, since Lady Morgan's day. Some of the reforms she
advocated have been secured, and the country generally is in
a much better condition than it was at the beginning of the
century. But it must not be forgotten that Lady Morgan's
labours to advance this object were in the burden and heat of
the day; when, to be liberal, just, and moderate in politics
(Irish politics especially), was to be exposed to every species
of unscrupulous party abuse and virulence-to be branded as
an atheist, and, if a woman, to be taunted with profligacy, and
to be considered incapable of any morality. In all she wrote,
Lady Morgan was ever conscientious and fearless. She re-
spected her own genius, and always used it to illustrate the
opinions which she believed to have grown out of great prin-
ciples; and no personal consideration of profit or popularity
ever turned her aside.' This is a tribute which could not be
paid to the most violent of her political assailants.
One attempt at stage writing was made by Miss Owenson.
She furnished the words of a little operetta, The First Attempt ;
or, the Whim of the Moment, the music being composed, or
adapted from old national airs, by Mr. Cooke, a popular
composer of the day. The operetta was performed at the
(
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
339
Theatre Royal, Dublin, the Lord Lieutenant attending in state
the first night. The work was completely successful, and it
was in this play that Mr. Owenson made his last appearances on
the stage. Miss Owenson was now mingling in the best Whig
society in Dublin, counting amongst her friends Curran, Grattan,
Bushe, Plunket, the Tighes, Sir John Stevenson, the famous
composer, and the Cramptons. She was also received as a
welcome guest in the best social and aristocratic circles. 'It
would be want of pride and gratitude,' she wrote on one oc-
casion, 'not to boast of the advantages I derived from the
attentions and hospitality of the distinguished families of
Charlemont, Leitrim, Charleville, Cloncurry, and Tighe, on my
first entrée upon life and literature.'
But although Miss Owenson was now a prominent figure in
the best society, and had the ball at her feet, she ‘never re-
laxed her labour, but held fast to her industry as her sheet-
anchor. She took all the rest at its true value -a tide that
might ebb, and not a stream that would flow for ever. To
the end of her days she always thought of her position in life
as a conquest-the titles and equipages of her great acquaint-
ance were to her what scalps are to an Indian "brave," out-
ward and visible signs of conquest, not inheritance.' After she
achieved success, she lost none of her sympathy with the poor
and the unfortunate; and as so many anecdotes have been
related exhibiting the frivolous side of her nature, I give here
one that redounds to her honour as showing her tenderness of
heart: 'A poor fellow, a letter-carrier,' wrote one who knew our
authoress well, 'of good general character, the father of a large
family, was induced, in a moment of extreme distress, to open a
letter committed to his charge, and to possess himself of a small
sum of money, with the intention of restoring it in a few days
to the owner. For this offence he was condemned to die.
In the court in which he was tried, a scene of the deepest
distress was exhibited by the presence and anguish of his aged
father, his wife, and her helpless infants; but the crime was
Z 2
340
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
one of those which society never pardons. In such cases
cupidity and apprehension are alike interested in striking terror,
and mercy and hope must be silent at their bidding. From
the gloom of the condemned cell this unfortunate criminal,
like the drowning wretch who grasps at a straw, appealed to the
imaginary influence of a popular writer, and the claim was
irresistible to one whose domestic affections were the mainspring
of her being. On the receipt of his letter Miss Owenson ad-
dressed herself to the different barristers of her acquaintance;
but the reply she received was uniform. The crime was un-
pardonable, the man's fate was sealed, and interference could
only expose her to mortification and defeat. Untimidated
by these disappointing reports, she applied directly to Baron
Smith, the presiding judge on the trial, who directed her to the
foreman of the jury with the promise that if a recommendation
to mercy could be procured from them, he would, in conse-
quence of the conviction resting on circumstantial evidence,
back it with his sanction. Miss Owenson saw the foreman,
induced him to assemble the jurymen, and to sign the recom-
mendation. She then drew up a memorial to the Duke of
Richmond, the head of the Irish government, and, in one word,
procured a commutation of the sentence to perpetual trans-
portation. It is pleasurable to add that on arriving at New
South Wales the reprieved man became an industrious and
honest member of society, and supported his family in inde-
pendence and comfort. A circumstance not dissimilar in its
events, and even more romantic in its details, occurred to
Jenner, who was the means of saving a youth condemned to
certain death under the horrible form of perpetual slavery.
The recollection of such anecdotes is a source of the purest
satisfaction. They tend to raise the literary character; they do
honour to human nature, and they relieve the dark shade which
almost uniformly obscures the political history of the species.'
Sydney Owenson, whose affections were supposed to be un-
touched, had certainly one genuine love affair when she was
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
341
between twenty and thirty years of age. The inspirer of it was
Sir Charles Ormsby, a King's Counsel and a member of
Parliament. He was older than Sydney, had buried a first
wife, and was accounted the ugliest fellow and the most ac-
complished gentleman in Dublin. When Miss Owenson was
staying with Sir John and Lady Stanley, at Penrhôs, Anglesey,
in May, 1808, she wrote a letter to Ormsby which certainly
seems to indicate that they were lovers. 'I have found a harp
and a piano here, she says, 'and Sir John has given me a
splendid little edition of Burns for singing one of his songs.
They have loaded my dressing box with perfumes and such
simple things as you know I like. All this brings you to my
recollection-oh, what does not? In all my joys and sorrows
you have a part. The flattery, the kindness addressed to me
here! I think it is all to you it is offered, and it is most grati-
fying. I have been obliged to sing Deep in Love so often for
my handsome host, and every time it is as for you I sing it—
people of true taste have but one opinion. Aimons toujours
comme à l'ordinaire.' Sir Charles's letters were those of a lover,
and Miss Owenson encouraged his addresses, and gave him the
pledge of a ring. Although there was no definite engagement,
it seemed highly probable at one time that they would marry
each other. But Ormsby was deeply in debt, and involved in
difficulties and embarrassments of various kinds. Then, the
lady was a coquette, and he was jealous of her admirers.
Eventually there was a violent quarrel between the lovers, but
it was not until after Ormsby's death that she received back
her letters and the ring. As to Ormsby's own letters, Lady
Morgan left them behind her in a packet thus endorsed in her
own hand, Sir Charles Montague Ormsby, Bart., one of the
most brilliant wits, determined roués, agreeable persons, and
ugliest men of his day.'
!
In 1809 Miss Owenson published her Ida of Athens. What
induced her to go so far afield for a subject does not appear,
but she seems to have left nothing undone to obtain all the
342
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
(
information possible, illustrative of manners and customs,
scenes and places. She even obtained through Lady Charle-
ville a detailed plan of the city of Athens, with the different
sites marked upon it to which her novel refers. Her old friend,
Sir Richard Phillips, once the prince of publishers,' having now
quarrelled with her and 'used her barbarously,' she took her
story to the house of Longmans, by whom it was published.
A difficulty arose, however, before it was issued, as Mr. Longman
thought some portions of the work were tainted with the
philosophy of the new school of French moralists, and promul-
gated deistical principles. The novelist replied in a spirited
letter denying this, and adding, 'I meant to assert that the
subjection of the selfish passions to the social or general good
of mankind constituted the perfection of human virtue; but
of human virtue, I do not believe that any peculiar mode of
faith is to be considered, as it must be admitted that a
Brahmin or Mussulman, a Catholic or Protestant, may all be
perfectly virtuous men, though they differ in points of faith,
and that a man who promotes the happiness of his fellow-
creature is a virtuous man, even though he is a Jew.' All diffi-
culties were adjusted, and the book appeared; but it met with
hostile criticism, and was severely handled in the Quarterly.
This was a foretaste of the onslaughts she was to experience at
the hands of John Wilson Croker, and other critics not so
truculent as he. But with regard to Ida of Athens, there was
some justification for the critics. The book was an unreal one,
and the heroine was a kind of pedantic Corinna, who dis-
coursed in turgid terms upon the high things of art, litera-
ture, and philosophy. Lady Morgan herself afterwards con-
demned the work as a bad one. Lady Charleville and Sir Jonah
Barrington wrote amusing letters criticising the story. It
suggests a revival of the old pot and kettle feud when we find
Lady Charleville wishing that the situations in Ida had been
less critical in point of delicacy, seeing that to her ladyship was
attributed the translation of Voltaire's La Pucelle into English.
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
343
Miss Owenson having been introduced to the Marquis and
Marchioness of Abercorn, those leaders of fashion took to her
warmly, and at their dinner parties and assemblies she carried
havoc into many hearts. It was at Stanmore Priory, their
residence near London, that Sir Thomas Lawrence painted his
characteristic portrait of Sydney Owenson. She is represented
as leaning back on a fauteuil with an appearance of enjoyment
and thorough nonchalance, dressed in a white robe, with short
petticoats, and a shorter waist; her forehead almost entirely
concealed by falling ringlets. How pleasantly,' writes Mr. Hep-
worth Dixon, 'she described the days of Stanmore Priory, and
of Lady Cork's "Blue parties," where she starred it as a lioness,
after the Thrales and Burneys of a past dynasty had vanished
from the scene! These things made her historical, and Lady
Morgan was to society and literature something of what the
Great Duke had been to state-craft and war.' One who knew
her well says that Lady Morgan's anecdotes of this brilliant
period in her varied life were told with a gracefulness and tact
always favourable to the illustrious persons with whom she was
then associated, and if she much extenuated she certainly 'set
down naught in malice.'
It was partly at Stanmore Priory, and partly at Baron's Court,
Lord Abercorn's seat in Ireland, that Miss Owenson wrote her
extraordinary novel, The Missionary, an Indian tale, which
appeared in 1811. Before publication, she gave readings of it
at Stanmore Priory. Not a few grave statesmen, disenthralled
for a few weeks from the cares and turmoil of office, loungingly
abandoned themselves to the luxury of listening to Miss Owen-
son, as she read aloud her exciting and wildly romantic story.
Among those present were Lord Aberdeen, Lord Castlereagh,
Lord Ripon (then Mr. Robinson), Lord Palmerston, the Duke
of Devonshire; and on another similar occasion, the Princess
of Wales, the Duc de Berri, and the ex-King of Sweden. It is
a remarkable fact that Lord Castlereagh, then Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, was so fascinated by the author and her frail
344
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
·
"Missionary," that he offered to accompany the young authoress
to town, and having sent for Mr. Stockdale, of Pall Mall, the
work was absolutely disposed of to that publisher for £400, in
the study of Lord Castlereagh. The good nature of this distin-
guished statesman was the more remarkable as Lady Morgan
had repeatedly, and forcibly, denounced the Legislative
Union, of which he was the chief director, as corrupt and
calamitous; atrocious in its principle, and abominable in its
means.'
The Missionary, it was well said, was only worthy of the
Minerva press.
It is true that the authoress, as usual with her,
had read up a great deal for her delineations of Indian customs,
people, history, and antiquities; but all these things were
jumbled together in a phantasmagoria of fine writing and high-
flown sentiments. 'The subject is the attempt of a Spanish
priest to convert a Brahmin priestess; but the flesh gets the
better of the spirit in this trial; they fall in love with each
other's fine eyes and elope together.' The love scenes are
warmly coloured, and the situations of the Hindoo priestess
sometimes dangerous to the peace of mind of so very suscep-
tible a person. Nevertheless, after a good many vicissitudes
in the experience of the chief characters, everything remains
much as it was in the beginning. Yet we learn that the
authoress herself indulged no slight opinion of the work.
Its pictures of Indian life and expositions of oriental lore
she considered so valuable, that not long before her death
she remodelled the whole story and revised it for the press.
The year which saw the Missionary appear, saw also the
beginning of Miss Owenson's life-long friendship with that
gifted but erratic woman of genius, Lady Caroline Lamb.
She was at this time a young wife of five or six years, 'and
the image of Byron, beautiful, and deadly as the night-shade,
had not thrown its shadow on her life.' She had everything
that heart could wish for, or beauty, youth, wealth, and
fame could supply, and yet-like Sydney Owenson she
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
345
suffered from fits of severe depression of spirits. The two
women were soon drawn together in the bonds of intimate
friendship.
Through the Abercorns, Miss Owenson was introduced to
her future husband, Thomas Charles Morgan, M.D. He was
an English surgeon and physician of considerable ability, and
a handsome and accomplished man. Dr. Morgan had treated
the Marquis of Abercorn so skilfully after an accident which
threatened dangerous results, that his lordship invited him to
become his family physician. This he did, and the Mar-
chioness admired the Doctor-who was a widower-so much,
that she set her heart upon making a match between him and
Miss Owenson. The praises of the one were so dinned into the
ears of the other, that when they met at Baron's Court they had
imbibed a prejudice against each other. Indeed, it is said
that when the name of Miss Owenson was first announced in
Dr. Morgan's presence, he sprang from his seat, and, seeing no
other way of escape, leaped through the open window into the
garden below. This proceeding piqued the lady, and bringing
all her fascinations into play, she set to work to captivate him,
and succeeded more effectually than she either desired or
designed. What seemed to begin as a joke ended as serious
business. The Abercorns promised that if she accepted
Morgan, the man upon earth they most esteemed and approved,
they would be friends to both for life. Morgan stood in the
first rank of physicians in London, having taken his Doctor's
degree at Cambridge; his connexions were excellent, &c., and
he was very distinguished looking in person. The Doctor and
the novelist finally became lovers, and notwithstanding the
former's jealousy of certain alleged flirtations between Sydney
and a Mr. Parkhurst, his letters were of a most impassioned
character, and some of hers took on the same tone. But Dr.
Morgan had a good deal of trouble with the bewitching, aggra-
vating Glorvina-as she was called by her intimate friends-
before she could be brought to the hymeneal altar.
346
IVOMEN OF RENOWN.
'
It is said that the popular Duke of Richmond invited the
authoress and Dr. Morgan to one of the private balls at the
Viceregal Court, Dublin. His Excellency, in the course of
conversation with Miss Owenson, playfully alluded to the
matrimonial report then current, and expressed a hope to have
the pleasure, at no distant day, of congratulating her on
her marriage. The rumours respecting Dr. Morgan's dévoue-
ment,' she replied, 'may or not be true, but this I can at least
with all candour and sincerity assure your Grace, that I shall
remain to the last day of my life in single blessedness, unless
some more tempting inducement than the mere change from
Miss Owenson to Mistress Morgan be offered me.' According
to the story, the Duke of Richmond, in virtue of the powers of
his office, knighted Morgan on the spot. It appears, however,
that Lady Abercorn had always proposed that when the Wild
Irish Girl married she should have a title, and the Viceroy was
ready to lay the sword on the Doctor's shoulders whenever her
ladyship pleased. Morgan himself cared nothing about the
honour of knighthood, but to win Sydney Owenson, and give
her pleasure, he would have been content to call himself by any
title or designation. One morning in January, 1812, the
lovers were quietly but somewhat precipitately married at
Baron's Court, the event coming at last upon Sydney Owenson
by surprise.
The bride was not without means of her own. Although
she had only been engaged in literature for a short time, com-
paratively speaking, she had saved about £5,000. This was
settled upon herself, and it was further stipulated in the
marriage contract that she was to have the sole and indepen-
dent control over her own earnings, whilst the reversion of Sir
Charles Morgan's fortune was settled upon the daughter of his
first marriage. The union proved far happier than could have
been anticipated. Husband and wife had very opposite
qualities, but these were controlled by mutual affection, and
brought into harmony with very excellent effect. Sir Charles
was not a man of genius, but he was wiser than his wife, and
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
347
had a firm will. His nature was open and affectionate,
upright and truthful, and while he was jealous of his wife's
love, he was a most enthusiastic admirer of her talents, and
delighted in her success. She would not have done so well
in after life had it not been for his judicious counsel and
affectionate solicitude. In the preface to the latest edition of
The Wild Irish Girl, Lady Morgan spoke of 'the long and
ennobling companionship with the great and cultivated
intellect of one who taught and prized truth above all human
good, and proclaimed it at the expense of all worldly interests.'
Such a man could not but exercise a salutary influence over
his volatile wife.
About a month after the wedding, Lady Morgan thus wrote.
to her friend, Mrs. Lefanu, describing her married life at
Baron's Court: Though living in a palace we have all the
comfort and independence of home; besides bedrooms and
dressing-rooms, Morgan's study has been fitted up with all
the luxury of a joli boudoir by Lady Abercorn' (who neither
spared her taste nor purse on the occasion). 'It is stored with
books, music, and everything that can contribute to our use and
amusement. Here,
Here, "the world forgotten, and by the world
forgot," we live all day, and do not join the family till dinner-
time; and as chacun à son goût is the order here, when we are
weary of argand lamps and a gallery a hundred feet long in
the evening, we retire to our own snuggery, where, very often
some of the others come to drink coffee with us.
As to me,
I am every inch a wife, and so ends that brilliant thing that
was Glorvina.
'N.B.-I intend to write a book to explode the vulgar
idea of matrimony being the tomb of love. Matrimony is the
real thing, and all before but leather and prunella.'
In May, 1812, a deep sorrow overtook Lady Morgan, by the
death of her father. Since he had been left a widower she
had been more to him than any other person; and while she
exercised over him the most affectionate care, she retained her
348
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
romantic admiration for him to the last. Mr. Owenson died
in Dublin, at the residence of his son-in-law, Sir Arthur
Clarke, M.D., who had married Miss Olivia Owenson
in 1808.
While at Baron's Court Lady Morgan wrote O'Donnel, her
ablest novel, and the one which gave her a recognised
standing among the writers of the age. At first she thought
of making it a historical novel of the days of Queen Eliza-
beth, but she abandoned this idea, and adopted the happier
policy of exchanging the rude chief of former times for his
polished descendant in a more refined age. In defending this
genuine Irish romance in her Introduction to an edition pub-
lished in 1835, Lady Morgan observed that the book was
'undertaken with a humble but zealous view to the promotion
of a great national cause, the Emancipation of the Catholics
in Ireland. The attempt has been made the matter of great
censure, as a step beyond the position of the author, and
foreign to the scope of the genus. To this canon of criticism
I cannot yet subscribe. Novels, like more solid compositions,
are not exempted from the obligation to inculcate truth.
They are expected, in their idlest trifling, to possess a moral
scope; and politics are but morals on a grander scale. The
appropriation of this form of composition to purposes beyond
those of mere amusement is not new. A novel is especially
adapted to enable the advocate of any cause to steal upon the
public, through the bye-ways of the imagination, and to win
from its sympathies what its reason so often refuses to yield to
undeniable demonstration. Even those sectarians who have
taken the highest measure of moral propriety, and exclude with
rigour all source of amusement from the sphere of a religious
life, have condescended thus to use the novel for the advance-
ment of their particular opinions as an organ not less
legitimate than powerful and effective.'
O'Donnel was published in 1814, and dedicated to the Duke
of Devonshire. Colburn gave the authoress £550 for the
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
349
copyright, but it did so well that he afterwards added to the
amount. The Quarterly, alarmed at the home truths in it as
touching Irish questions, again dipped its pen in gall, but the
effect was only to send up the circulation. The novel was
clever and pathetic, the hero being drawn with real power;
and, although public questions were treated occasionally at
length, as a whole the work was strikingly dramatic, and took
hold of the public. While Croker was venomous, Sir Walter
Scott-who held Croker's political views, but had nothing of
his malevolent spirit-could write of O'Donnel in his private
diary, 'I have amused myself very pleasantly during the last
few days by reading over Lady Morgan's novel, which has
some striking and beautiful passages of situation and descrip-
tion, and, in the comic part, is very rich and entertaining.'
After leaving Baron's Court the Morgans took a house in
Kildare Street, Dublin. Sir Charles established a practice,
and was appointed physician to the Marshalsea. Having
published, a few years later, however, a work entitled Out-
lines of Physiology of Life, which boldly controverted many
orthodox scientific opinions, the writer drew down upon him-
self a storm of opposition, both religious and secular. In the
end he retired from general practice, but retained his appoint-
ment at the Marshalsea. His leisure was now devoted to
literary labours, and to assisting his wife in her efforts to
extend the knowledge of the condition of Ireland, to spread
liberal opinions in politics, and to create a public conscience
to which Irish wrongs and Irish difficulties might appeal.'
They were both fearless advocates of Catholic Emancipation,
when that cause could number but few supporters in their own
rank of life.
In 1815-16 the Morgans visited France with the view of
collecting material for an elaborate work on that country by
Lady Morgan. In Paris she went everywhere and saw every-
body and everything. She was run after, entertained, and
almost worshipped in fashionable circles. She studied the
350
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
French from head to foot, from court to village, from the
boudoir to the kitchen. She observed, analysed, and de-
scribed the people minutely. The result was a vivid and
capable book, to which Sir Charles added some chapters, not
so bright, on the state of medical science, political economy,
and French jurisprudence. France, in many respects the
most important of all Lady Morgan's works, was divided into
eight books. The first treated of the peasantry; the second
and third of society; the fourth, fifth, and sixth were devoted
to an account of Paris; the seventh was occupied with les
spectacles; and the eighth comprised sketches of the leading
literary characters and eminent people of France. The work
was brilliant and incisive, and it 'was seized upon with avidity
by readers of all classes, and provoked criticism as diverse as
there were shades of opinion about Legitimacy, Bourbonism,
Liberalism, and the orthodox anti-Jacobin Church and State
true blue intolerant Toryism.' It was bitterly assailed by
Croker, whom the authoress pilloried in her next novel, while
she had the substantial satisfaction of receiving from her
publisher £1,000 for the work which her enemy traduced.
Lady Morgan's political objectors were thus ably answered
by the distinguished orator and writer, Benjamin Constant:
'If she had represented the French as a debased and depraved
nation; if she had lamented over the corruption of manners,
and the absence of morality and religion; if, in short, in
comparing the existing moment with foriner epochs, she had
presented a touching eulogium of the Gabelle and the Corvée ’
(of which she does not speak with the greatest reverence),
'it is possible that her work would have been vaunted as a
chef-d'œuvre, her literary heresies would have been passed over,
and every formula of praise would have been employed to
push her writings into public estimation. But Lady Morgan
prefers a Constitutional Government to arbitrary powers; she
elevates France, as it now is, above the France of former
times; and these are faults which no virtues can redeem. It
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
351
has been made a serious charge against her, that she has.
attempted to excuse the crimes of the Revolution. I have read
her work and find no ground for such an accusation. Where-
ever the authoress speaks of that period of mourning and
anarchy, the Reign of Terror, her language expresses the
indignation with which she is penetrated. Whence then can
this charge have originated? It is not difficult to discover.
Lady Morgan does not unite in the same proscription the
genuine lovers of liberty, and those sanguinary monsters, who,
while invoking its name, were its most bitter enemies; she
does not make it a crime in the Patriots of 1789, that they
were ignorant of the secret of futurity; she absolves Philo-
sophy from the errors of ignorance, and from the excesses of
faction—and such opinions are not to expect toleration. The
distinctions she has thus drawn between the partisans of
licence, and the sincere friends of a regulated liberty, does
honour to her discernment; it is just, and it requires all the
blindness of thwarted personal interest not to perceive it.'
A new novel, Florence MacCarthy, followed France, and it
was in this story that Lady Morgan drew her portrait of
Croker. The novel struck deeply at the social and political
abuses in Irish Government. But, as the novelist's biographer
has well observed, the heroine is as wild, fascinating,
romantic, and extravagant as ever trod the stage of a theatre or
the pages of a romance. Florence MacCarthy appears always in
disguise and masquerade-flits about like a will-of-the-wisp,
mystifying everybody-setting the wrong to rights, "con-
founding the politics and frustrating the knavish tricks" of
all who mean wrong to Ireland. Like all Lady Morgan's
heroines, she is endowed with very little money, but no end of
beauty, good sense, wit, and is the representative of a real ould
Irish noble family of decayed fortunes. It is curious that
whilst the story is wildly improbable, the accessories are all true,
not only in spirit, but in the letter. The heroine, Florence
MacCarthy, has the mission (self-imposed and followed con-
352
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
4
amore) of arousing a charming young Irishman to a sense of
what he owes to his country, and stimulating his indignation
against the oppressions and abuses especially crying for re-
dress. The sketches of character she pictures of fashionable
society in Dublin, the English fine ladies and dandies of the
period, the Irish characters both of the good and the despic-
able class-in short all the shades and varieties of the moral
and social influences at work in Ireland at the time, are given
with a subtlety and vividness which is wonderful; they are
dashed off with vigour. They live, and move, and bear their
truth to nature stamped upon them in every line. Mr. Craw-
ley, the Castle hack, and all his tribe, the toadies and servile
tools of Government, embody what were then the worst evils
of English rule in Ireland.
'All the Crawley sketches are supreme and inimitable for the
racy humour, the genuine fun Lady Morgan has thrown into
their portraits. They are etched with a sarcasm that bites like
aqua fortis; but the humour tempers and mellows the malice.
In this family sketch she paid her debt to Croker, who, rightly
or wrongly, had the credit of being the author, not only of the
attack on France, but of all the other assaults upon her in the
Quarterly.'
In March, 1818, the publisher, Colburn, offered the Morgans
£2,000 to pay a visit to Italy, and write a work upon that
country, similar in scope and design to the one which had been
so successful on France. Lady Morgan was to supply the
observations and sketches on men, manners, and incidents
worthy of note; and Sir Charles to contribute the chapters on
the state of the laws, the influence of politics, and the condition
of science and education. The offer was accepted, and the
travellers set forth from Dublin, spending some time en route in
London and Paris. Their experiences in those cities were
published forty years later in The Odd Volume. From Paris,
General Lafayette carried her off almost by force to his magni-
ficent château at La Grange. He was very communicative,
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
353
and told her many curious anecdotes-as, for example, of his
once going to a bal masqué at the Opera with Marie Antoinette
upon his arm, the King knowing nothing of it; and there were
other morceaux, illustrative of the spirit of adventure prevalent
in the Court of Versailles when the haughty daughter of Austria
pr. sided over it. Returning to Paris, Lady Morgan met
Humboldt, Talma, Cuvier, Duchênois, Denon, and Thierry.
Auguste de Staël, Corinne's son, attended her receptions, and
among others were the Princess Jablonowski, Madame de
Villetti, Baron Gérard, Jouy, Sismondi, Lacroix, De Ségur,
Constant, &c. In Italy she was well received in the most
brilliant circles; and at a reception at the Countess of Albany's
she occupied the seat of honour, being quite the queen of the
room. Thomas Moore dined with the Morgans at Florence,
and seemed astonished at the attention they received. At
Rome, Lady Morgan was presented to Pope Pius VII. But in
the midst of festivities and receptions she never forgot her work.
She had already collected material for her first volume on the
Alps, Piedmont, Lombardy, Genoa, Placenza, Parma, Modena,
and Bologna; and she was now engaged with that for the second
volume, dealing with Tuscany, Rome, Naples, and Venice.
After a sojourn abroad of two years, the Morgans returned
to England, and Italy was published in June, 1821. Notwith-
standing many faults, it was a faithful description of the con-
dition of Italy, moral and political, as it appeared at the period
of the restoration of the Bourbons. Byron, who had attacked
Lady Morgan in one of the notes to Childe Harold, laughed
scornfully when he heard she was to produce a book on Italy-
a country which of course he knew thoroughly. But when he
read the work itself he changed his tone, and wrote to Moore:
'By the way, when you write to Lady Morgan, will you thank
her for her handsome speeches in her book about my books?
I do not know her address. Her work is fearless and excellent
on the subject of Italy-pray tell her so-and I know the
country. I wish she had fallen in with me. I could have told
AA
354
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
her a thing or two that would have confirmed her positions.'
Italy created a genuine sensation, and the Press, Globe, Herald,
Statesman, &c., reviewed it enthusiastically. Several of the
prominent journals, however, were far from warm in its praise,
while the Quarterly emptied upon it all the vials of its Billings-
gate rhetoric. In a short notice of only four pages it managed
to concentrate a wonderful amount of coarse abuse. 'Italy,'
said the reviewer, 'is a series of offences against good morals,
good politics, good sense, and good taste;' and he went on to
say, 'this woman is incorrigible,' and 'her indelicacy, ignorance,
vanity and malignity, exceed all credence,' while 'every page
teems with errors of all kinds, from the most disgusting down
to the most ludicrous.' Whatever Lady Morgan was or was
not, she was certainly bright and vivacious in style, yet
the reviewer coolly spoke of the narcotic influence of her
prating, prosing, and plagiarism.' Then, in an outrageous as
well as a lying passage, he remarked that, 'notwithstanding the
obstetric skill of Sir Charles Morgan (who we believe is a man
mid-wife), this book dropt all but still-born from the press.'
Such violent criticism as this was bound to defeat its own
ends, and, in fact, it made Lady Morgan friends, instead of
estranging those she had. A criticism of another type, which
one can really enjoy, was a parody of Campbell's beautiful poem,
Lochiel's Warning. It was written by a distinguished man, and
he thus amusingly made Sir Charles Morgan address his wife :-
C
'Glorvina Glorvina ! beware of the day
When the Quarterly meets thee in battle array;
For thy volumes, all damned, rush unread on my sight,
Glorvina! Glorvina! ah, think ere you write !
See! see; where the witty and wise about town
Are struggling, who, foremost, shall trample thee down.
Proud Gifford before hath insulted the slain !
And Croker, in spleen, may pursue thee again !
Weep, Lady! thy prospects are faded-undone-
Oh, weep! but thy tears only add to this fun!
For their black ink is poison a dagger their pen,
And the book they once stab, may not waken again.'
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
355
'I
Blackwood was as severe as the Quarterly, but if the object
was to stop the sale of Italy, the critics did not succeed. Lady
Morgan defended herself in a trenchant article in the New
Monthly, while her publisher wrote to the Times saying:
am ready to prove that 500 copies of this work were sold on the
day of publication; that more copies have been disposed of
during the last month, and since the appearance of the Quarterly
Review, than in any preceding one since the day of publica-
tion; that a new edition is in preparation; that two
editions, amounting to 4,000 copies, have been printed
at Paris, and another in Belgium: and, as a further
testimony to the value of Lady Morgan's writings, I seize the
present opportunity of publicly declaring my entire satisfaction
at the result of the undertaking; and that I shall be most happy
to receive from the authoress another work of equal interest, on
the same terms.' Colburn and Lady Morgan certainly seem to
have had the best of this controversy.
The next work by Lady Morgan was the Life and Times of
Salvator Rosa. She had been drawn towards the artist during
her stay in Italy. Although she used every possible effort to
prepare a full and accurate account of Salvator Rosa's works,
it was more as the patriot than the artist that she dealt with
him. She found that he had been much misrepresented, and
in her preface to the first edition of the work-published in
1823, in two volumes octavo-she said: 'Should it be deemed
worthy of enquiring why I selected the Life of Salvator Rosa as
a subject of biographical memoir in preference to that of any
other illustrious painter of the Italian Schools, I answer that
I was influenced in my preference more by the peculiar
character of the man than the extraordinary merits of the artist.
For admiring the works of the great Neapolitan master with an
enthusiasm unknown perhaps to the sobriety of professed
virtuoso, I estimated still more highly the qualities of the Italian
patriot, who, stepping boldly in advance of a degraded age, stood
in the foreground of his times, like one of his own spirited and
AA 2
356
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
graceful figures when all around him was timid mannerism, and
grovelling subserviency. I took the opportunity of my residence.
in Italy to make some verbal enquiries as to the private
character and story of a man whose powerful intellect and deep
feeling, no less than his wild and glowing imagination, came
forth even in his most petulant sketches and careless designs.
It was evident that over the name of Salvator Rosa there hung
some spell, dark as one of his own incantations. I was referred
for information to the Parnasso Italiano, one of the few modern
works published "with the full approbation of the Grand In-
quisitor of the Holy Office." In its consecrated pages I found
Salvator Rosa described as being of "low birth, indigent
circumstances, of a subtle organisation and an unregulated
mind, one whose life had been disorderly, and whose
associates had been chosen among musicians and buffoons."
This discrepancy between the man and his works awakened
suspicions which led to further enquiry and deeper research. Iț
was then I discovered that the sublime painter was in fact pre-
cisely the reverse in life and character of all that he had been
represented. As I found, so I have represented him, and if
(led by a natural sympathy to make common cause with all
who suffer by misrepresentation) I have been the first (my
only merit) to light a taper at the long-neglected. shrine, and
to raise the veil of calumny from the splendid image of
slandered genius, I trust it is still reserved for some compatriot
hand to restore the memory of Salvator Rosa to all its original
brightness.'
It is stated that the Life of Salvator Rosa was the favourite
of all her works with Lady Morgan. If industry and brilliancy
could make a work successful, then this book deserved the
epithet, but it was written too much from the standpoint of
the advocate and the partisan, and even the Whig Review, the
Edinburgh, opened a raking fire upon it. Notwithstanding its
defects, however, it may still be read with pleasure and profit.
At this period there was actually an attempt made to de-
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
357
prive Sir Charles Morgan of his knighthood, on the ground
that the Lord Lieutenant had no power to confer this title.
While Lady Morgan and her brother-in-law, Sir Arthur Clarke,
were chiefly aimed at in this hostile and dastardly action, had
it succeeded such men as Sir Edward Stanley, Sir John
Stevenson, and that staunch conservative Sir William Betham,
would have been brought down as well. But the attempt
failed. The case was argued in England before the judges, at
the residence of Lord Chief Justice Dallas. Two judges were
unable to attend from illness; but the other ten were unanim-
ously of opinion that the Lord Lieutenant did possess the
power, and that knights created by him were knights through
out the world.
While the Salvator Rosa was in progress, Colburn offered
Lady Morgan £2,000 for a work on Germany similar to those
on Italy and France, but for various reasons nothing came of
the project. There were quarrels about remuneration at this
period-Lady Morgan complaining that she was not allowed to
participate fairly in the publisher's 'great gains' from her works,
while Colburn denied the soft impeachment as to the 'great
gains' altogether. But Lady Morgan herself had not done
badly. It appeared from her private accounts—which were kept
with all the exactitude of a chancellor of the exchequer-that
she had a nice little sum of £6,421 145. 1od. out at interest.
Many an author of greater and more deserved repute has never
been able to store such gains.
Like a
In 1824 Lady Morgan wrote her essay on Absenteeism for the
New Monthly. After opening with a rhetorical sketch of the
ancient glories of Ireland, the article goes on to allege that
'English treachery and tyranny first made Ireland uninhabitable,
and then punished its inhabitants for trying to leave.
true apologist and partisan, whilst she cannot deny the fact of
absenteeism, nor the evils which the absence of a resident
gentry entailed upon the country, she argues away the blame
from the natives and lays it upon the English Government.'
358
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Lady Morgan once declared that in all her Irish writings she
had never written with malice aforethought, and had never de-
nounced a public wrong which had not came home to her own
feelings through the spectacle of private suffering.
Lady Morgan was in London in 1825, and went a good deal
into society. Here is one out of many entertaining entries in
her diary: London.-Curious visitors-General Pepe, the Nea-
politan chieſ, and all the young revolutionary leaders of Pied-
mont and Lombardy, the eldest but twenty-nine,—with ine
every day and talking of erecting a statue to me when Italy shall
be free-hélas! Sir Robert Wilson called on me; mild and
interesting-looking; speaking well, but with gravity; must have
been, and indeed is still, very handsome. General Pepe most
affected of all the Italians I have seen by the disasters of Naples.
Lady Caroline Lamb called,-quite comical, talking religion,
and offering me half-a-dozen of her pages. Went to Miss White's
assembly; found her in the midst of a brilliant crowd, dying of
the dropsy. Many persons presented to me of notoriety,--
Washington Irving, author of The Sketch Book, the Magnus
Apollo of the bas bleus,-Hallam, author of The Middle Ages.
Moore (Anacreon) called to-day; said: "Murray raves of you,
not as an author only, entendez vous, but as a woman. When
I told this to Colburn he looked aghast. I said to him, "Col- ·
burn, I observed to Mr. Moore that I hoped my conquest would
get me a good price for my next book.” “Did you say that?"
exclaimed Colburn, in a pathetic tone. His fear of his author
is like the Irish Quaker's complaint, of "somebody having
taken his drumstick from him.
""
"" "
C
Lady Morgan's tea-parties in Dublin were quite famous.
Among those who frequented them, to partake of the cup
which cheers but not inebriates, were Sheil, Curran, Lords
Cloncurry, Charlemont, Dunsany, and Milltown, Hamilton
Rowan, Thomas Moore, Samuel Lover, Chief Baron Woulfe,
and occasionally the brilliant but erratic Charles Robert
Maturin, the author of Melmoth. On one occasion Lady Mor-
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
359
gan caught her own name in a ballad being sung by a street-
minstrel beneath her window. Sending out for the song, she
found this stanza in it:
"Och, Dublin city, there is no doubtin'
Bates every city upon the say;
'Tis there you'd hear O'Connell spoutin',
An' Lady Morgan makin' tay ;
For 'tis the capital of the finest Nation,
Wid charmin' pisantry on a fruitful sod,
Fightin' like divils for conciliation,
An' hatin' each other for the love of God.'
IO
The novel of The O'Briens and the O'Flaherties was pub-
lished in 1827. To show the popularity of Lady Morgan, it
may be mentioned that Colburn gave her £1,300 down for the
copyright, and £100 each on the second and third editions—
no edition being allowed to exceed three thousand copies.
The work was more popular than any of her former tales. The
pictures of Irish society immediately before and after the
Union, and the characters of the vice-regal court under the
Duke of Rutland, had a peculiar interest at the time the book
came out which has now evaporated; but there is still the
perennial interest of human nature, dashes of Irish humour and
Irish pathos, and traits of manners not now to be found,—for
the Irish peasant of the present day is quite a different creature.
As a repertory of the manners, customs, grievances, and
society as it existed, both in Dublin and the provinces, in the
time when Ireland was the seat of mis-government and mis-
take, The O'Briens and the O'Flaherties will always be a stan-
dard book of reference.
The novel was full of racy Irish fun and delicate satire.
Jordan was severe upon it in the Literary Gasette, but he could
not arrest its popularity. Two or three years ago,' said the
critic, when we happened to dissent from Lady Morgan on
some literary estimate, she published a replication, in which she
elegantly threatened to stir us up with a long pole. We have
360
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
53
read The O'Briens and the O'Flaher ties, and we are convinced,
by its length, that it is the identical pole which was then
menaced.' Then he proceeded to attack the book on the score
of its impurity. This caustic assault had an important result.
Colburn was so enraged at it that he opened up negotiations
with James Silk Buckingham, who started the rival organ, The
Athenæum, which has long survived its predecessor.
Sir Charles and Lady Morgan rejoiced greatly over the
triumph of the Catholic Emancipation movement in 1829, for
none had worked more indefatigably than they to achieve this
end. As soon as the carrying of a Relief Act became assured,
the Catholic Association-of which Sir Charles had been a
zealous member-was dissolved. In the last preface to her
Wild Irish Girl, Lady Morgan described the Association as
'the greatest league of genius, patriotism, and courage, that
Ireland ever had associated in her cause.'
In April, 1829, Lady Morgan published her Book of the
Boudoir, a series of auto-biographical sketches, and recollec-
tions of her friends. It was the least meritorious of all her
later productions, and even her apologists have admitted that
it was careless, flippant, and egotistical. Her ancient enemies,
the critics, endeavoured to fasten worse charges than this upon
it, but once more they were unduly prejudiced.
A second book on France, as it appeared in 1829-30, was
now undertaken by Lady Morgan, and it was issued in Sep-
tember of the latter year. It was undoubtedly superior to her
previous work, and on the whole it may be regarded as one of
the best monuments of her literary fame. The general reader
would scarcely go the length of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's
admiration for this book, but he has in the main so happily
indicated its merits in his analysis of the work, that I quote this
passage from him: The political and social shades of society in
France immediately previous to the revolution of 1830, "the
three glorious days" which have now passed into oblivion
along with much other "pomp and glory of the world," are
(
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
361
The men and
caught like a rainbow at the brightest moment.
women of the time-the politics, the pictures, the music, the
drama, the shrines of historical interest and of social associa-
tions—may be seen as in a magic mirror. The chapter on the
drama brings back the faint echoes of names which in our
youths filled the public ear. When Mademoiselle Leontine
Fay was the young, handsome, charming jeune première of the
Théâtre de Madame, "drawing fast-falling, unconscious tears
and half-stifled sobs from all Paris in the Mariage d'Inclina-
tion"; and when Dumas' Henri III. was a new piece, with
Mademoiselle Mars for its heroine, Rossini is spoken of as
"overwhelmed with his professional labours," putting the finish
to his William Tell, which had been for the last two months
the topic of conversation and expectation in the musical world
of fashion. The chapter on romanticists and classicists is very
amusing. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, St. Beuve, were then
faisant leurs épreuves, and are noticed as new authors. The
chapter on modern literature contains some excellent criticism
and sound remarks. The chapter called Mornings at Paris
is a charming resumé of people and things. Names appear on
each page with a personal sketch or a mot, which makes the
reader at once of their society. There is a visit of Béranger in
the prison of La Force; and there are two memorable dinners-
one at the Comte de Ségur's with a record of the conversation
as fresh and as amusing as if it were not on topics half
a century old; the other, a dinner of Baron Rothschild's,
dressed by the great Carême, who had erected a column of the
most ingenious confectionery architecture, on which he had in-
scribed Lady Morgan's name in spun sugar. What woman
would not have been flattered by such a tribute! The chapter
on The Archives of France contains a lively account of her
pilgrimage to shrines dear from historical associations, but not
set down in any guide book, and disappearing under the march
of imperial improvement. It would be impossible to give a
detailed criticism of these two charming volumes, but we
362
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
would advise our readers in their own interest to send for them,
instead of "something new from Mudie." The chapters by Sir
C. Morgan consist of articles on philosophy, public journals,
primogeniture, and public opinion. They are good, and the
conscientious opinions of a man whose indorsement is worthy
of respect.'
The second France led to a rupture with Colburn, and to
serious trouble for Lady Morgan. She had written to her old
publisher several times with respect to her new work without
getting a satisfactory answer, so she offered it to Saunders and
Otley, who accepted her specified terms, viz., £1,000 for the
copyright. Colburn was furious, and immediately the work
appeared, he put forth an advertisement in the newspapers
offering her previous works at half-price. The advertisement
stated that in consequence of the great losses which he had
sustained by Lady Morgan's former works, Mr. Colburn had
declined this present book on France, and that all the copies
of her books might be had at half-price. Nothing more insult-
ing to Lady Morgan or more damaging to the success of the
new work, could have been contrived.' She was helpless
against the manoeuvre, which proved most disastrous to her new
publishers. The law was called into action, and eventually
Colburn withdrew his injurious statements, and made some
proposal which satisfied his rivals. Lady Morgan, in order to
compensate them also as far as she could, gave Saunders and
Otley her next book on easier terms, but unfortunately it did
not answer expectations. Thomas Campbell, the poet, who
was editor of Colburn's New Monthly, was placed in a difficult
position by this literary quarrel, for he was a friend of the
Morgans, and yet closely associated with Colburn. To his
honour, however, he did his best to act uprightly, and to com-
pose matters between the parties.
Lady Morgan's correspondence contains interesting glimpses
of celebrities of all kinds-including a foreign Prince who pil-
loried her in his book in return for her hospitality; Paganini,
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
363
the violinist; Lady Caroline Lamb, who wrote her some of the
strangest letters about Byron and herself; the Countess of
Guiccioli, who sent her some of Byron's hair and his autograph;
Lady Cork, the Whig leader of society; Madame Patterson
Bonaparte, wife of King Jerome; Mrs. Hemans, who had a
genuine admiration for a woman who was in every respect a
striking contrast to herself; Thomas Moore, who made him-
self agreeable at her parties; and the Earl of Derby-the
'Rupert of debate '-when Mr. Stanley, Chief Secretary for
Ireland. On one occasion Mr. Stanley endeavoured to catch
her ladyship. She states that he said to her, with a half
sneer on his face, 'Oh, Lady Morgan, you are a great Irish
historian, can you give me a census of the population of Ireland
in the reign of Henry II.?' She affected confusion, and replied
'Well, no, Mr. Stanley, not accurately; but may I presume
to ask you what is the census of the English people in the
reign of William IV. ?'
A volume of Dramatic Scenes and Sketches, by Lady Mor-
gan, was published in 1833. To show the sharp difference of
opinion which always prevailed among the reviewers of her
ladyship's works, one authority pronounced these Scenes to
be 'very poor in matter and affected in style'; while another
held that they were 'written in a very forcible and effective
manner.' The truth, as usual, lay between the two. It was
t'e writer's aim to show 'the condition of Ireland as a country,
and the state of the Irish peasantry, their sorrows and ignor-
ance; the evil influence of agents and middlemen in the
absenteeism of the landlords; and the clashing pretensions of
the High Protestant Church party with the priests.' She was
anxious to demonstrate the ignorance and misconception
which prevailed in England of the real condition and necessities
of the country; the difficulties, almost impossibilities, thrown
in the way of Irish landlords wishing to do their duty, and
to see with their own eyes what measures of reform and relief
were urgently needed.' Notwithstanding the serious purport
364
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
of the sketches, however, they were by no means destitute of
humour.
Turning to social matters for a moment, here is an entry
from Lady Morgan's diary: The party at Lady Cork's had
some curious contrasts. There was Lady Charleville herself,
the centre of a circle in her great chair. Lady Dacre, author
of everything: plays, poems, novels, etc., etc.; Lady Charlotte
Campbell, author of Conduct is Fate; Miss Jane Porter
(Thaddeus of Warsaw), cold as ever, though the muse of
tragedy in appearance; Mrs. Bulwer Lytton, the muse of
comedy; Lady Stepney, the author of The New Road to Ruin;
lots of lay men and women, a crowd of saints and sinners.
The men were still more odd. Sir Charles Wetherell; Prince
Cimitelli; D'Israeli, who ran off as I skipped in; some other
remarkables, and one young man, Lord Oxmantown, an im-
personation of a "Committee of the House."
Here is an interesting sketch of Taglioni, the celebrated
dancer: 'She was brought to us by her husband, who is the
son of a peer of France, and ex-page to Bonaparte. She was
quiet, lady-like, and simple, her dress elegant but neat. She
told me her father was maître de ballet, and had early instructed
her, but she had so little vocation, that when she came to
Paris, she had no hope of success. As to her habits of life, she
said she lived temperately, dining on plain roasts at three
o'clock, never sleeping after dinner, nor taking anything till
after her exertions at the theatre were over; then, she supped
on tea. She practises two or three hours a day. She said
that the moment force was introduced in dancing, grace van-
ished; her rule was never to make an effort but to give herself
up to nature and the great delight she had in dancing. She
said she never was so happy as when dancing. The moment she
comes off the stage her ankles are wrapt in woollen socks, and
when she goes home her feet are bathed in arrow-root water.'
At one party she speaks of meeting 'Mrs. Bulwer Lytton,
handsome, indolent, and unamiable, to judge by her styl: and
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
365
manners. She and all the demi-esprits looked daggers at me.
At the Countess of Montalembert's she appears to have been
somewhat ruffled by the late Lord Beaconsfield, for she
remarks, 'That egregious coxcomb, Disraeli, was there, out-
raging the privilege a young man has of being absurd.' Again,
she meets with the Duchess of Cleveland, 'a very pleasant
woman, full of spirit and spirits. It was curious to see that
handsome head encircled with diamonds, which first attracted
notice under a basket of onions and salad. She was a garden-
girl, attending the London markets; what a romance was hers!'
To Prince Lucien Bonaparte, who had once refused a crown,
she laughingly offered the crown of Ireland, but he smiled and
said, 'Point de couronne, point de couronne. Talking with the
great Pasta, Lady Morgan said, 'I remember, one night, being
with you in your dressing-room when you had just come off
the stage in your highest-wrought scene, your woman had a
bit of cold roast beef ready to put into your mouth, and some
porter, "Ah, si," was her reply, "Mais je ne prends plus la
viande, et pour le porter, I take it half and half."" London
slang in sweet broken English from the lips of Medea had the
oddest effect imaginable. She lived to be disillusioned of the
Liberator O'Connell, for she said to an English minister, 'The
eel is a lump of lead compared with O'Connell; he has no one
fixed principle; the end, with him, consecrates the means, and
that end is-O'Connell, the beginning and the end of all
things.'
As the result of a tour in Belgium and up the Rhine, Lady
Morgan published, towards the close of 1834, a novel called
The Princess, or the Béguine. There were some pretty scenes
in it dealing with a poor young female artist, but its leading
object was to interest the public in the new kingdom of Bel-
gium, and to give a knowledge of the Belgian question and
the conditions which had obtained since the Revolution of
1830. It contained also some clever English and Irish tran-
scripts of character, and was distinctly a work beyond the
366
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
average, but from the pecuniary point of view it failed to
realise anything like her earlier profits from literature.
A touching historical incident is enshrined in this paragraph
from Lady Morgan's diary: 'Last night I met Moore at Lady
Stepney's-looking old and ill-much out of spirits, and, he
says, weary of London after a day's residence. He had come
to publish his History of Ireland, but Longman & Co. found
it was not half bulky enough, so he was sent back to enlarge it.
He would not sing. I delivered a message to him from Lady
Charleville. "Tell him he must, as an historian, rectify an
error in the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. He praises Lord
Camden (then Viceroy) for giving Lady Louisa Conolly per-
mission to see the dying Lord Edward; and he accuses Lord
Clare of cruelty for refusing her permission to do so. The case
was the reverse. Lady Louisa threw herself at Lord Camden's
feet, and he refused her petition. Then she flew, in her de-
spair, to Lord Clare, who said, 'I cannot-dare not-give you
a written permission, but I will go with you to the prison my-
self.' They went together, at night. When they came to the
door of the miserable room, Lord Clare said, 'I cannot leave
you alone with the prisoner, but I will send away the jailor
and leave the door open, and watch before it myself. I shall
hear nothing.'" Moore seemed much annoyed when I told him
this. "I have been bored to death," he said, "by the friends
of Lord Clare about this already; but I saw the letter—had
it in my hand-in which Lord Clare refused Lady Louisa
peremptorily. I have already mentioned the anecdote alluded
to by Lady Charleville in my book, but people do not read it.
It is not worth while writing for such a public. I am amazed
how I have made my way. People read with their prejudices,
not with their intellects."
") >
Continuing her ladyship's reminiscences, we come upon this
passage: 'Up comes Bob Montgomery, the poet-he bows to
the ground, a handsome little black man. I asked him if he
was Satan Montgomery? and he said he was, so we began to
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
367
be very facetious, and we laughed as if the devil was in us, till
he was obliged to make place for Sir Alexander Creighton,
physician to the late Emperor of Russia, author of a treatise on
Insanity, a most playful and agreeable old gentleman; we
knocked up a friendship for life, and should have gone on
gossiping nonsense, but for Godwin, to whom Sir Alexander
resigned his place. Alas, for Godwin! Caleb Williams Godwin,
with whom I almost began my literary life at a dinner at Sir
R. Phillips's, my first publisher! He talked of Curran, Grattan,
Hamilton Rowan, whom we had known in Ireland-wit,
eloquence, chivalry!- now all dust! Then we got on the
subject of his poor son-in-law, Shelley, and his daughter, whom
I shall go and see as soon as she comes to town.'
Now comes a little touch of feminine vanity, in which Lady
Morgan was by no means deficient: 'Last night at Lady
Stepney's, met the Milmans, Lady Charlotte Bury, Mrs.
Norton, Rogers, Sydney Smith, and other wits and authors.
Amongst others, poor dear Jane Porter; she told me she was
taken for me the other night and talked to as such by a party
of Americans! She is tall, lank and lean, and lackadaisical,
dressed in the deepest black, with rather a battered black gauze
hat, and the air of a regular Melpomene. I am the reverse of
all this, et sans vanité, the best dressed woman wherever I
go. Last night I wore a blue satin, trimmed fully with magni-
ficent point lace, and stomacher, à la Sevignć, light blue velvet
hat and feather, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds!
Voilà! The party at the Murchison's--Lord Jeffrey, of the
Edinburgh Review Lockhart, of the Quarterly; Hallam,
Middle Ages; Milman, the poet; Mrs. Somerville, etc., etc.
Lord Jeffrey came up to me, and we had such a flirtation.
When he comes to Ireland, we are to go to Donnybrook Fair
together; in short, having cut me down with his tomahawk as
a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a man and so he
comes to see me. I always say of my enemies before we
meet, "Let me at them.”›
g
368
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
When the British Association visited Dublin in August,
1835, Lady Morgan kept open house for Babbage, Lardner,
Whewell, Sedgwick, and other distinguished scientists. Her
sister, Lady Clarke, composed a song about the philosophers
to the tune of 'All we want is to settle the play,' and she sang
it to them with great effect. This clever jeu d'esprit, 'Fun and
Philosophy,' is so good that I reproduce it :-
'Heigh for ould Ireland! oh, would you require a land
Where men by nature are all quite the thing,
Where pure inspiration has taught the whole nation
To fight, love and reason, talk politics, sing;
'Tis Pat's mathematical, chemical, tactical,
Knowing and practical, fanciful, gay.
Fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
There's nothing in life that is out of his way.
'He makes light of optics, and sees through dioptrics,
He's a dab al projectiles-ne'er misses his man ;
He's complete in attraction, and quick at re-action,
By the doctrine of chances he squares every plan;
In hydraulics so frisky, the whole Bay of Biscay,
If it flowed but with whisky, he'd stow it away.
Fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
There's nothing in life that is out of his way.
'So to him cross over savant and philosopher,
Thinking, God help them! to bother us all;
But they'll find that for knowledge, 'tis at our own College,
Themselves must inquire for- beds, dinner, or ball;
There are lectures to tire, and good lodgings to hire,
To all who require, and have money to pay ;
While fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
Ladies and lecturing fill up the day.
'Here's our déjeuner, put down your shilling, pray,
See all the curious bastes, after their feed;
Lovely lips, Moore has said, must evermore be fed,
So this is but suiting the word to the deed;
Perhaps you'll be thinking that eating and drinking,
While wisdom sits blinking, is rather too gay;
But fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
Are all very sensible things in their way.
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
369
So at The Rotundo, we all sorts of fun do,
Hard hearts and pig-iron we melt in one flame ;
For if love blows the bellows, our tough College Fellows
Will thaw into rapture at each lovely dame.
There, too, sans apology, Ica, tarts, and tautology,
Are given with zoology, to grave and to gay;
Thus fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
Send ali home to England, happy and gay.'
·
In May, 1837, at the instance of Lord Morpeth, Lord
Melbourne recommended Lady Morgan to his Majesty for
a Civil List pension of £300 per annum. The amount was
the highest which could be conferred, and the honour was
doubly appreciated by the recipient, as it was entirely un-
solicited on her part. The pension was granted in con-
sideration of her literary services, and the Prime Minister, in
his letter to Lady Morgan, remarked, ‘It is a gratifying
reflection that no doubt can exist but that your talents and
exertions afford ample grounds for the advice which I have
humbly given to his Majesty, upon the present occasion.'
During the ensuing autumn, the Morgans left Dublin, and
took up their abode permanently in London. When taunted
some years afterwards with absenteeism, Lady Morgan wittily
replied that her property in Ireland was 'personal' not 'real,'
and that the tenant-farm of a drawing-room balcony, worked
for the raising of annual crops of mignonette for home con-
sumption, was the only territorial possession in Ireland she
ever enjoyed. The battle of Catholic Emancipation had
been fought and won, the Catholic Association was dissolved,
and now at the desire of her husband she accompanied him
to England, as he desired to spend his last years in his native
land. She also longed for the literary and social delights of
London.
Lady Morgan wrote the first part of her important work,
Woman and her Master, in 1839, and as she had buried the
hatchet with Colburn, it was issued by her old publisher.
The work endeavoured to assess the position which woman
PB
370
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
ought to occupy in the order and progress of society. The
writer showed that she had not only studied the works of
Bentham, Godwin, Condorcet, and others, but that she could
supplement them in many points. Giving first a graphic
sketch of the inception and progress of civilisation, she went
on to show that woman had not been suffered to advance
with the advancing intelligence of man. The work was not
complete, but in one passage Lady Morgan thus referred to
the modern position of woman: 'Even now, when supremacy
has been transferred from muscle to mind, has that most
subtle spirit-that being of most mobile fibre, that most
sensitive and apprehensive organisation-has she, whom God
placed to be a mate and a help to man, at the head of his
creation, the foundress of nations, the embellisher of races,
has she alone been left behind, at the very starting point of
civilisation, while around her all progresses and improves?
And is man still "the master"? and does he, by a misdirected
self-love, still perpetuate her ignorance and her dependence,
when her emancipation and improvement are most wanting,
as the crowning element of his own happiness?
'If, in the first era of society, woman was the victim of
man's physical superiority, she is still, in the last, the subject
of laws, in the enactment of which she has had no voice--
amenable to the penalties of a code from which she derives
but little protection. While man, in his first crude attempts.
at jurisprudence, has surrounded the sex with restraints and
disabilities, he has left its natural rights unguarded, and its
liberty unacknowledged. Merging the very existence of
woman in his own, he has allowed her no separate interest,
assigned her no independent possessions; "for," says the
law -the law of man "the husband is the head of
the wife, and all that she has belongs to him." Even the
fruit of her own labour is torn from her, unless she is pro-
tected by the solitary blessedness of a derided but innocent
celibacy.'
g
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
371
In consequence of failing eyesight, Lady Morgan was never
able to complete Il'oman and her Master, although she had
collected all the materials necessary for the task. A curious
entry appears in her ladyship's diary under date June 9, 1840:
'Just read the account of the funeral of Mary, Dowager
Countess of Cork and Orrery; she died in harness, full of
bitterness and good dinners.' In 1842 Sir Charles and Lady
Morgan published their joint work, A Book Without a Name.
The title was happier than the book, which consisted of a
collection of sketches and articles contributed to the Metro-
politan, the New Monthly, and the Athenæum. Some letters
which the Whig parson and wit, Sydney Smith, wrote to
Lady Morgan were very amusing. In one he swore by that
beautiful Christian name we both bear' to go to dinner if
possible; and here is his apology on a later occasion: 'I had
fully intended, my dear madam, to have been of your party
to-night; but I went to the Thames Tunnel, and have
destroyed myself by walking under the river, and descending
and ascending one hundred and twenty steps; there was a
suffocating heat and a want of ventilation for which I was
not prepared. I am astonished that the Thames submits to the
insult; one day or another it will come down upon the
subaqueous intruders with all the force of a basin of water
flung from the seventh story of a house in Edinburgh.'
The second great sorrow of Lady Morgan's life was experi-
enced in 1843, when her husband died of heart disease after
a fortnight's illness. The shock was great to the survivor,
but the loss of her friend and guide was felt still more as the
years went on. After a time, however, she sought to assuage
her grief by again going into society. But in the succeeding
year she lost another friend, Thomas Campbell, of whom she
gives these amusing reminiscences :—
'July, 1844.—Another gone-poor Campbell! Oh for the
day that I first saw him led in by Sir Thomas Lawrence, up
the great dining-room of the Priory' (Stanmore), 'in the middle
BB 2
372
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
of one of the great Saturday dinners! I was scated between
Lord Aberdeen and Manners Sutton-the latter gave Camp-
bell his scat beside me-opposite to us were Lord Erskine
and the Duchess of Gordon. Campbell was awkward, and
went on taking his soup as if he was eating a haggis in the
Highlands; but when he put his knife in the salt-cellar to
help himself to salt, every eye-glass was up, and the first poet
of the age was voted the vulgarest of men. His coup de grâce,
however, was in the evening, when he took the unapproachable
Marquis of Abercorn by the buttonhole that joined his star!
Oh, my stars! I thought we should all die of it, knowing
the extreme fastidiousness of the possessor of the star. Next
morning he went about asking everyone if they could "take
him into town with a wee bit of a portmanteau?" Lady
Asgill (the most charming of coquettes) gave a place in her
carriage to the man who, by a line, could give her im-
mortality.'
The greatest calamity which could befall Lady Morgan
after the death of her husband fell upon her in April, 1845,
when she lost her beloved sister Olivia, Lady Clarke. She
touchingly wrote after this bereavement, 'I cannot weep, and
have none to weep with, for I am alone. All my old friends
and new acquaintances have been to my door to offer their
sympathy, but I am beyond the reach of solace now; I almost
think this last blow has struck most home.'
Other friends quickly passed over to the majority, including
the O'Conor Don, 'one of the honestest and best men Ireland
ever had to boast of,' and a 'lineal descendant of the supreme
kings of Ireland.' When Lord Melbourne's death was
announced she exclaimed, 'How many passages of my own
life are recalled by his death! How long I knew him, how
much I owed him, what joyous days and nights I have passed
in his charming society, from my girlhood to this moment!'
Here is an entry in her diary of a different character:
'January 12, 1848.-Went to Eliot Warburton's marriage with
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
373
my friend Miss Groves—a marriage made, I do believe, on my
little balcony. All the muses assisted at the literary nuptials—
Monckton Milnes, Hayward, Eōthen Kinglake, -- I was the
only she muse there.' Little could those present at this inter-
esting ceremony foresee that in four short years from this time,
the happy bridegroom would perish at sea in the ill-fated ship
Amazon, which was destroyed by fire!
Sir Robert Wilson, another friend of Lady Morgan's-and
who chivalrously perilled his own liberty and position in
effecting the escape of Count Lavallette--died in 1849;
Horace Smith, of Rejected Addresses fame, and who was warmly
regarded both by Sir Charles and Lady Morgan, followed :
he in turn was succeeded by Lord Jeffrey; and then came the
greatest of these losses-that of Thomas Moore. 'It has
struck me home,' wrote Lady Morgan; 'I did not think I
should ever shed tears again; but I have.' As the result of
her initiative, a national Irish monument was raised to the
memory of the popular poet. Her ladyship's other obituary
reminiscences include Charles Kemble, 'the last and best of
the whole stock-beautiful, graceful, gallant, and a very fine
gentleman'; the Italian patriot, Silvio Pellico, a noble soul with
whom Sir Charles and Lady Morgan had passed many a moon-
light night in a gondola on the Lake of Como; old Colburn,
the publisher, whom she described as 'my brilliant advertiser
and publisher of thirty years! One who could not take his tea
without a stratagem'; General Pepe, 'one of the noblest men
in the contemporary history of modern Italy'; and last, but not
least, her brother-in-law and true friend, Sir Arthur Clarke.
On the first day of 1859 appeared Lady Morgan's Odd Volume.
at this time the writer was about eighty years of age, but she was
seemingly able to work with all her old enthusiasm and energy.
And although the last great enemy was approaching, she bade
him defiance as long as she could. Indeed, she once said to
Sir Emerson Tennent that she believed we might all live
just as long as we liked― that, in fact, she looked upon any-
374
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
one that would die under a hundred as a suicide.' When
asked for her autograph at an advanced age, she wittily and
instantaneously responded with this-
(
Sydney Morgan, her hand and pen-
She will be good, but God knows when.'
She was vain of her work, and remarked to Mrs. S. C. Hall
that she had a right to be, seeing the number of books she had
written. As Mr. Jeaffreson has shown in his Novels and
Novelists, these amount to some seventy volumes.
At an age
when some would have quailed at the task, she had a spirited
literary passage-at-arms with Cardinal Wiseman on the subject
of St. Peter's Chair-the visible relic at Rome, not the office.
It might be said of her that 'age could not wither her, nor
custom stale her infinite variety.' Down to the week of her
death she continued to give receptions every night, and there
probably never was a more winning or popular hostess She
had a remarkable freshness of memory, an inexhaustible wealth
of anecdote, and a lively wit. As she had travelled so much,
and her friends ranged from princes to peasants, she was always
able to contribute interesting material at her conversaziones.
Her spirits were brilliant, and the enjoyment and love of life
strong in her to the last.
On the 11th of April, 1859, Lady Morgan dictated a letter
to her friend Lady Combermere, which proved to be her last ;
yet it was full of interest in things personal and political. She
was, however, suffering from illness. Five days later painful
attacks of spasmodic breathing began, and during one of the
paroxysms she said to her niece, 'Sydney, is this death?' It
proved to be so, and on the evening of the same day she
calmly and patiently passed away.
It has been observed by her biographer that 'Lady Morgan's
house was the resort of all who were best worth knowing in
London society, and she had the art of drawing out all the
best faculties of those who came to her.' She softened in her
SYDNEY LADY MORGAN.
375
speech as she grew older, and she was always a steady friend
of those who cared for her, or who served her in any capacity.
Strong good sense was another of her characteristics, and she
could courageously tell the truth to her friends when necessary.
Everybody can do this to an enemy, but not always to a friend.
Lady Morgan enjoyed a full measure of prosperity, as her
bank-book showed, and she allowed those whom she loved to
share it. She delighted to be with the young, saying that
'living with the young kept her young.' As a writer, she set an
excellent example to certain authors of this later generation, for
she was destitute of the least taint of literary jealousy. She
displayed an unstinted admiration for the works of Banim,
Carleton, Davis, and others of her own nationality, and hailed
and encouraged the rising genius of Charles Lever. If she
loved flattery on the one hand, and knew how to drive a good
business bargain on the other, the former trait did no one any
harm, while the latter was first exercised to free her father from
his embarrassments, and to secure a provision for his old age.
Her foibles, which no doubt were many, were all on the sur-
face; while underneath was a brave heart, capable of endurance,
and one which had its due share of sufferings and of joys. As
for the works of Lady Morgan, they may still be read with
interest for their vivid pictures of Irish life, as it existed at the
beginning of the nineteenth century.
F
RACHEL.
"
t
379
RACHEL.
ALL accounts concur in regarding Rachel as one of the greatest
artists who ever trod the tragic stage. Her conceptions were
sublime; her power of expressing them was well nigh un-
equalled; and her gestures and appearance were commanding,
dignified, and majestic. In her life as a woman, also, there
was something of that tragic element which the actress SO
magnificently represented on the stage. Her career began in
penury and squalor; but before it ended she had conquered
both wealth and fame. Her affections were fierce and strong,
yet it was through them she was most deeply wounded, and
the burning intensity of her mimic passion had been first
rehearsed within her own bosom. Such experiences as hers
were incompatible with long life, and she died at thirty-seven-
an age which has proved fatal to many men and women of
genius.
Élisa Rachel Félix, for such was her full designation, was
the daughter of an itinerant Jewish pedlar named Abraham
Félix, and his wife Esther Haya. Félix was originally intended
for a rabbi, but he abandoned the Church and became a
travelling commission agent and merchant. Falling upon evil
times, he sank lower and lower, until his position became that
of a wandering pedlar, who travelled from fair to fair. Although
the Félix family was of German origin, Rachel's father had
been naturalised as a Frenchman. In 1821 he found himself
at Munf, in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland, and in the
principal inn of that village, and on the 24th of March in the
380
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
above year, the future actress was born. An entry by the bur-
gomaster of the town of Aarau was the only record of the birth.
It is a curious circumstance that the six children of Abraham
Félix who grew up to maturity were all born in different places
-a striking commentary on the nomadic habits of the parents.
Sarah, the eldest, was born in Germany, Rachel in Munf,
Raphael in Maçon, Rebecca, or Rosalie, in Lyons, Charlotte
or Leah, in Marseilles, and Dinah, or Emilia, in Paris. After
a time, the Félix family settled down in lodgings at Lyons.
They were very poor, and to eke out a subsistence, the child
Sarah sang through the streets, while her younger sister Rachel
collected the small gifts of the charitable. The theatrical
instinct was developed early in Rachel, for once when she and
her sister were extremely low in funds, she pretended to faint
in front of a café. It proved an excellent speculation, for the
proprietor took her inside, fed her, and warmed her with
wine, and then collected ten francs for the sisters amongst his
customers.
About 1830 the Félix household removed to Paris, but the
struggle for life was still acute. Rachel often sang with her
sister through the streets, and Arséne Houssaye says she would
relate how one day in the Place Royale, a benevolent-looking
man with kindly eyes, who was evidently attracted by her look
of intelligence, dropped a five-franc piece into her hand. As
she watched his retreating figure, a bystander said, 'That is
Victor Hugo.' A strange meeting between the acknowledged
head of the romantic drama and the future exponent of the
classical. Étienne Choron, teacher of a music class in the
Rue de Vaugirard, also encountered Rachel on the Boulevards,
and was astonished by the promise she gave. He took both
girls to the School of Sacred Music, and trained their voices;
but after a time Rachel manifested more talent for declamation
than singing. She therefore left the school in December, 1834,
and passed under the care of M. Saint Aulaire, for the purpose
of being prepared for the stage. Under him her dramatic
RACHEL.
381
gifts were first developed, and he made her read the best
French authors, both of comedy and tragedy. With the per-
versity of genius, Rachel desired to shine in comedy, for which
she had little adaptability, and it was long before she yielded to
the conviction that her real forte was tragedy. On a certain
day in 1836, Saint Aulaire called on the Director of the
Comédie Française, Jouslin de la Salle, and told him of his
extraordinary pupil, whom he called La petite Diablesse.
Jouslin thus described the interview: 'Saint Aulaire entered
my office one morning, and spoke with extreme animation
about a poor Jewish girl, whom he described to me as the ideal
of tragedy, and the only person capable of recalling the chefs
d'œuvres of our tragic repertory. It was Rachel for whom the
Professor demanded an audience, which I granted on the spot.
Mademoiselle Mars, myself, and Mademoiselle Anaïs were the
only persons present. Sainte Aulaire recited with the débutante,
who was then very small. She had selected Hermione in
Andromaque, and Mariette in the Dépit Amoureux. She com-
menced with the latter, in which she showed no remarkable
talent; but she had hardly finished, in Andromaque, the ironical
passage, "The Farewell to Orestes," than we uttered exclama-
tions of surprise. For a very long time we had not heard the
verses declaimed with so much precision or such energy. The
performance over, Mademoiselle Mars kissed the young girl
(who was quite moved by the success she had just achieved),
and evinced great interest in her. Upon the remark that she
was very short for the parts of queens and great heroines, the
characters she had decided on playing, Mars reminded us that
Mademoiselle Maillet, the great tragic actress, was still shorter.
Besides," she added, "it is a good fault; the child will
grow."
}
८८
'What a scene for a picture!' exclaims Mrs. Kennard, in her
very readable memoir of Rachel. 'Mars-the beautiful and
successful Mars-- who had reigned a queen for so long, and
who still retained a great deal of the grace and beauty that
382
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
enchanted the France of the latter end of the preceding century,
and the pale, dark faced Jewess, with the eyes of flame, who
was destined to take the sceptre that was dropping from the
elder woman's grasp.' Rachel was given an engagement at the
Comédie Française to play children's parts at a salary of Soo
francs a year; but for some unexplained reason the contract
was never fulfilled, and the young aspirant went to the Conserva-
toire. Here, however, she was not without her difficulties.
Samson, who had then great influence, hazarded no judgment
upon her; Michelet declared her voice to be too unmusical
for the stage; and Provost offensively told her that she was
only fit to sell flowers in the streets, as she had done before.
From the Conservatoire she went to the Gymnase, where she was
given a profitable engagement by M. Poirson. Accordingly,
on the first of May, 1837, Rachel appeared in a new play called
La Vendéenne, written for her by Paul Duport. The ground-
work of the drama, and its most pathetic scenes, were borrowed
from Scott's novel, The Heart of Midlothian; but the Vendean
peasant girl, who journeyed to Malmaison to implore the
Empress Josephine to save her father, was Rachel's own
creation. Jules Janin, in reviewing the performance in the
Débats, said: "This child, thank heaven, is not a phenomenon,
and will never be cried up as a wonder. Rachel has soul,
heart, intellect, and very little skill. She possesses an intuitive.
preception of the feeling she is to express, and her intellect.
suffices to understand it. She needs lessons and advice from
no one. In her acting there is no effort, no exaggeration; she
utters no screams, makes no gestures; there is nothing like
coquetry in her countenance or manners, on the contrary, there
is something abrupt, bold and savage in the attitude, walk, and
look--such is Rachel. This child, whose instinct tells her
what is truth in art, dresses with scrupulous attention to local
costumes; her voice is harsh and untutored like that of a
child; her hands are red like those of a child; her foot, like her
hand, is scarcely shaped yet; she is not pretty, yet she pleases ;
RACHEL.
383
in a word, there is a great future for her young talent, and for
the present she excites tears, emotion, and interest.'
Within the brief space of twelve months the eminent critic
contradicted his own assertion that Rachel was not a prodigy.
The distinguished American actor, Edwin Forrest, witnessed
one of her performances, and remarked to the manager, ‘That
Jewish-looking girl, that little bag of bones, with the marble
face and the flaming eyes-there is demoniacal power in her.
If she lives, and does not burn out too soon, she will become
something wonderful.' But Rachel's style was not suited to
the Gymnase, the home of comedy, and she again offered her-
self to the Comédie Française. She now studied with an
industry and an energy to which she had hitherto been a
stranger, and it is said that she would ponder one short sentence
for three hours, giving to it every possible intonation and ex-
pression. Samson, who had discerned the latent talent within
her, became her master, and in the course of a few months she
stood confessed as one of the most accomplished and marvel-
lous of actresses.
On the 21st of June, 1838, Rachel made her first appear-
ance at the Théâtre Français as Camille in Corneille's '
tragedy of Les Horaces. So little did the event interest the
public that the takings were only 753 francs, but when she
played Camille for the sixth time in the ensuing November,
the takings were 6124 francs, thus rivalling the palmy days of
Talma and Mars. The management saw that they had found a
treasure, and raised her yearly salary from 4,000 to 8,000 francs.
Rachel followed up Camille by appearing as Emilie in Cinna,
Hermione in Andromaque, and Aménaïde in Tancrède. Critics
like Souliè could still see nothing in Rachel, but Jules Janin
wrote thus enthusiastically about her after seeing her Camille:
'Let me tell you there exists at this moment, at the Théâtre
Français, an unexpected victory, one of those triumphs of
which a nation such as ours has reason to be proud. Those
works of art, lost for so long, are at length given back to us.
384
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
We possess the most marvellous actress (although only still a
child) that this generation has seen on the stage. This actress is
Mademoiselle Rachel. About a year ago she first appeared.
at the Gymnase, and I maintained then that she possessed
talent of no common order, and that a great future lay before
her. I was not believed; people said I exaggerated, and
I alone was not strong enough to support this little girl on the
stage. A few days after her first appearance, the actress disap-
peared from the Gymnase and I, perhaps, was the only
person who had remembered her, when suddenly she reappears
at the Théâtre Français in the great tragedies of Corneille,
Racine, and Voltaire. Now she is listened to, encouraged,
applauded.
'She has found the legitimate development of her precious dra-
matic genius. It is nothing short of marvellous, this uneducated
child, without art, without preparation of any kind, thus be-
coming the interpreter of our grand old tragedies! She blows
their ashes into a flame by her genius and her energy; and
remember, she is small, ugly, with a narrow chest, and insignifi-
cant appearance, and common speech. Do not ask her who
Tancrède, Hermione, are, or about the Trojan war, or Pyrrhus
or Helen. She knows nothing, but she has that which is better
than knowledge. She has that sudden illumination, which
she throws around her; she grows ten inches taller on the stage ;
she raises her head and extends her chest ; her eye brightens ;
she treads like a sovereign; her voice vibrates, instinct with the
passion that agitates her. Nothing grander can be conceived
than this Camille. To my dying day I shall hear that voice and
see those tears. She is a priestess, a pythoness, this child of
seventeen. The imprecation is the first revelation of Rachel's
power. The storm raging in her grief-stricken breast is terrific.
We tremble before it as before something superhuman—God-
like.'
As Jules Janin was practically the dramatic arbiter of his day,
his powerful support was everything to Rachel; and when
RACHEL.
385
he followed up his first article by a still more eulogistic one on
her Hermione in Racine's Andromaque, her position was made,
and she became the talk of all Paris. Yet another great suc-
cess was achieved by the actress as Monime in Racine's Mith-
ridate, and she likewise played with much acceptance Eryphile
in the same writer's Iphigénie. The popular excitement was
now so great that crowds waited for hours to obtain admission
to the theatre. The saying was that 'on tragedy nights the
box office clerks wore a comedy expression, and on comedy
nights a tragedy one.' After the performance of Mithridate
the managers presented Rachel with splendidly-bound copies
of all the plays in which she had appeared, and shortly after-
wards they added the gift of a gold circlet set with precious
stones. They further added a monthly gratification to her
salary, which raised her total income to 20,000 francs a year—
a larger sum than had been paid to any actress before. As
Rachel was a minor, her father took charge of the pecuniary
arrangements. He became so grasping that he urged demands
upon the management computed at upwards of 50,000 francs
per annum. Janin was so annoyed at this that he made a
personal matter of it, and inflicted the first serious rebuff upon
the artist whom he claimed to have made.
When it was announced that Rachel proposed to essay the
part of Roxane in Racine's tragedy of Bajazet the desire to
see her was extraordinary. On the first night she suffered from
stage fright, and the audience was cold and unsympathetic.
The critics also commented unfavourably on the performance.
The Débats asked how a child actress-for this delicate girl
was no more—could represent the stalwart lioness Roxane, in
whom lust, energy, and violence reigned supreme? At first
Rachel felt dispirited, but this roused all her courage, and on
her second appearance as Roxane she secured a signal triumph,
carrying all before her. Rachel's biographer, Madame de B--
in describing the scene, says: Everyone seemed possessed by
a frantic admiration, which was vented in a storm of applause.
CC
•
386
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
The ovation contrasted strongly with the chill, sulky aspect the
same audience presented on the foregoing night. But though
envy was foiled it was not disarmed. The critics cavilled at
her peculiar delivery of certain passages, more especially that
of the famous "Sortes," in the second act, when Roxane offers
the throne to Bajazet, and the latter refuses it, alleging specious
reasons in order to conceal the real one--his love for Atalide.
While Rachel listened to his answer the rage she refrained
from uttering was most vividly depicted on her expressive coun-
tenance; when he had ended, her look was such as no other
woman could assume : it spoke, not so much the fury of the
offended woman, loud, stormy, tearing passion to rags, as that of
the insulted sovereign, deep, concentrated, implacable, ferocious
in its very calmness. Bajazet had evidently scorned the love
of a tigress, not a dove. With extended hand she motioned
him to the door, and with her harsh voice uttered the "Sortez"
that brought down enthusiastic applause from judges of refined
taste. In that little word the sentence was signed, the dumb
executioner summoned, the death knelled! No rant, no vio-
lent gesture, no loud burst of passion accompanied it. The
utterance was as calm as that of a god delivering the fiat of
fate.'
Rachel had now conquered indeed, and from this time forth
she was independent of both friends and foes, for she had the
great public with her. Nor was it only on the stage that she
reigned, but in society. Great ladies caressed her, and her
bearing was so dignified, and yet so attractive, that Théodore
de Banville said, 'Her most marvellous creation was neither
Hermione, nor Phèdre, nor Tisbé. It was that chef d'œuvre,
worthy of Balzac and Gavarni, Rachel Parisienne.' Louis
Philippe went to see her act several times. Once he took
her trembling hand in his, and expressed his constantly-in-
creasing admiration of her powers. In her confusion she ad-
dressed him as 'Monsieur,' and being afterwards reproved for
it by her companion, she replied that 'being in the habit of
RACHEL.
387
conversing only with the sovereigns of Greece and Rome, she
was ignorant of the forms of speech used towards the monarchs
of our day.' When she appeared with the illustrious ladies of
the day in the gallery of the Chamber of Deputies, she was the
cynosure of all eyes. Yet when moving in the highest circles.
she never forgot her kinship with the poor, and more than one
anecdote is told of her sympathy and aid being given to the
flower girls in the street. Mrs. Kennard thus reproduces an
incident which has been variously given in the biographies of
the actress :
'Rachel was admitted at this time into the exclusive society
of the Abbaye aux Bois, where Madame Récamier, although
no longer rich, beautiful, or young, succeeded in keeping a large
circle of illustrious and respectful admirers: La réunion des re-
fusés, as profane outsiders called it, but which was looked upon
by those who were admitted to the sacred precincts of the old
convent as the tribunal of art and æstheticism. Here Rachel
met Chateaubriand, and listened to the chapters of the Memoires
d'Outre Tombe read aloud by the author. The young actress
astonished and charmed these apostles of culture by her simple
dignity, unassuming manner, and ready wit. When introduced
to Chateaubriand the venerable poet said to her in a melan-
choly tone, "How sad it is to think, mademoiselle, that such
as you should be born as we are about to die." "Sir," she
replied, "there are some who never die.” On one of
these literary afternoons, which were of frequent occurrence at
the Abbaye aux Bois, Rachel had been requested by Madame
Récamier to recite the celebrated scene from Corneille's
Polyeucte-
"Mon époux, en mourant, m'a laissé ses lumières
Son sang, dont les bourreaux viennent de me couvrir.
M'a dessillé les yeux, et me les vient d'ouvrir.
Je vois, je sais, je crois !"
'As she spoke the lines, the Archbishop of
nounced.
was an-
CC 2
388
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
"Monseigneur," said Madame Récamier, slightly em-
barrassed, "allow me to present Mademoiselle Rachel, who
was good enough to recite some verses of Polyeucte for our
benefit."
"I should be sorry to interrupt Corneille's poetry by my
prose; pray continue,” said his Eminence.
'Unwilling, as a Jewess, to speak the words "Je vois, je
sais, je crois," before a Christian prelate, Rachel replied,
diffidently, "If Monseigneur will allow me, I should prefer
to recite some verses of Racine's Esther.
'When the young girl had finished, the archbishop
addressed her in terms of the highest praise.
CC
"We priests," he added, are not often allowed the
pleasure of meeting great artistes. Twice, however, in my
life I have had that privilege. At Florence I heard Madame
Malibran sing in a drawing-room, and I now owe to our
hostess the pleasure of hearing Mademoiselle Rachel. To
recite as I heard you when I entered, you must have felt
deeply the pathos of the situation.”
'Mademoiselle Rachel made a graceful curtesy, and an-
swered, with downcast eyes, "Monseigneur, je crois !""
It was currently reported after this that Rachel had become
a convert, but as a matter of fact she left the Abbaye aux Bois
as much a Jewess as when she entered it.
Rachel was one of those rare actresses who are not entirely
made by preceptors, however talented. She had a firm will
and an independent judgment in theatrical matters. She
never would accept any rendering of a character merely
because it was the conventional one. On the contrary, she
introduced original points into every one of her impersona-
tions, and it is said that she studied Phèdre for three years,
and during those three years she never played it twice alike.
New renderings and incidents came to her as it were by
intuition. In her humble dwelling in the Rue Traversière—
where she acted as cook for the household even after she
RACHEL.
389
had attained celebrity-she would brood for hours in the
silence of her bedroom over her great parts, again and again
drawing from them fresh insight and inspiration. When the
theatrical censors adversely criticised her methods, Alfred de
Musset stepped forth in her defence, and in the Revue des Deux
Mondes showed that she was building herself up as a great
tragédienne. In the fourth act of Bajazet,' he said, 'during
the monologue, I heard someone in the pit exclaim, "What
a little devil!" The individual who thus expressed his
feelings did not know that he was giving a masterly analysis
of what most of us felt, and that his exclamation was worth
columns of newspaper criticism.' In the Posthumous Iorks
of De Musset is a graphic account of a supper given to the
poet by the actress. De Musset was greatly impressed by her
originality, and he even began a play for her on the story
of Frédégonde and Chilperic, but it was never completed.
The whole friendship of the poet and the actress was of a
romantic character. Another eminent poet, however, Heine,
could never be brought frankly to acknowledge the genius
of Rachel, though he admitted her talent and sharpness of
understanding in classical drama. Rachel was so changeable
and capricious that she had more than one quarrel with
De Musset. These were composed, and for the second time
he began a five-act drama for her, of which the scene was
laid in Venice. Then arose some further misunderstanding,
upon which the poet shut up his manuscript in his desk, with
the words, Adieu, Rachel; c'est toi que j'ensevelis pour
jamais.' With that incident was lost all hope of collabora-
tion between these two children of genius.
(
In 1840 the critics and the public began to complain that
Rachel remained too long in her old grooves, and they
clamoured for something new. When Mithridate was re-
vived at the Odéon, even the Débats only registered the fact
with the slighting remark that she had appeared in one of
her three characters.' Consequently, the Polyeucle of Cor-
•
390
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
neille was revived for her on the 15th of May. It had not
been played on the French stage for twenty-two years. The
character of Pauline in this famous tragedy combines within
it the noblest passions of the human heart-love, duty, faith,
and enthusiasm; but it is not a character revealing violent
paroxysms of feeling and action. The heroine appears at
once half Pagan and half Christian. Rachel did what she
could with this very difficult part, but the whole represen-
tation was at first rather tame, and lacking in colour and
energy.
The tragédienne now went on a provincial tour. At Rouen
and Lyons she was received with enthusiasm, and the muni-
cipality of the latter city presented her with a gold crown
valued at 7,000 francs. After her return to Paris, the Marie
Stuart of Lebrun was revived for her, but she was not
successful with her first attempt, as she had not clearly
grasped the spirit of the character, nor the manners and
circumstances of the age. Later representations exhibited
a manifest improvement, but Rachel never achieved such
success as Duchesnois in this part. In April, 1841, Rachel
entered into an engagement for one year with the Théâtre
Français, she engaging to study new parts. She was to
receive 60,000 francs per annum, with three months' leave,
and it was further stipulated that at the close of the year
she should be received as sociétaire with a full share and a
fixed salary of 42,000 francs. It was laughingly said that
these terms were equal to those paid to M. Guizot to govern
the most ungovernable nation upon earth!
The personal appearance of Rachel at this period has thus
been described: 'It has been said that Rachel was not
beautiful; perhaps she was not to the eye that sces beauty but
in certain conventional forms, in a certain colour; but while
none can pronounce her to have been plain, she possessed that
higher degree of beauty imparted by the radiant light of genius
illuminating the countenance.
RACHEL.
391
'The head was perfectly shaped, rather small, rather broad,
not high, and covered with dark chestnut hair, neither thick
nor thin, but beautifully fine, soft, and silky. The brow,
endowed with such extraordinary power of expression, was
prominent and wide, but low; her eyebrows were exquisitely
drawn; the eyes, the same colour as the hair, were neither
large nor small, but so deep-set that they had the appearance
of being intensely black; they were fringed with very long
silky lashes. The mouth, neither large nor small, was filled
with teeth all perfect and beautifully white, the under lip was
long and thick, not suggestive of sulks, but of storms, and
though so defective in point of beauty, extremely expressive.
The nose was beautiful, the curve indicating the race very
slightly inclining at the tip, but it was perfect in its proportions,
with thin, transparent, veiny nostrils. The chin was small and
pretty. The delicate little ear was compared by a soft-hearted
bon vivant to an Ostend oyster, and lay close to the head.
From the tip of the ear to the chin the face was a long oval.
The skin was fair and extremely delicate. In size Rachel was
rather above the middle height, her figure had the litheness,
the grace, the flexibility of a reed, and, in repose, gave the
impression of a very delicate constitution, but when she was
acting an energetic part, the long, slight arms seemed to change
to steel, so powerful was the character of inflexibility they
presented. The hands, which were rather pretty, were objects
of continual care and solicitude with Mademoiselle Rachel ;
her feet might have served as models to a modern Praxiteles.'
Rachel came over to England in 1841, having accepted a
proposal made by Lumley, of Her Majesty's Theatre, to play
there for one month. It was thought that fresh laurels gained
abroad would help her on her return to Paris, and the expec-
tation was completely realised. London went frantic with
admiration over her. The Queen and the Prince Consort
attended the representations, and all classes united in paying
their homage to the gifted actress. Means had no doubt been
392
WOMEN WOME
OF RENOWN.
taken to make her visit a financial success, but these precau-
tionary measures were unnecessary, as Rachel took London by
storm. Speaking of these appearances at Her Majesty's, Mrs.
Kennard says: 'Her genius was for all time; she unerringly
interpreted human nature in its grandest and truest forms. She
took the stately Alexandrines, and made them the vehicle of
her own love or hate, joy or grief. She became, as it were,
the abstract expression of whatever passion she sought to
portray, and by that portrayal she had the power of enchaining
the attention of her audience, to the forgetting of all acces-
sories and surroundings.
'Long afterwards men remembered with a thrill her speaking
a certain sentence, or her look at a certain moment, when even
the play itself was completely forgotten, such as her tender
despair when, in Les Horaces, she utters the reproach, "Baiser
une main qui me perce le cœur!" or her look when, in that
terrible rôle of Roxane, she stalked silently upon the stage,
approached the front, and remained gazing at the audience. A
hush came over them, women involuntarily turned away from
that glance, men breathed more heavily and wished that she
would break that painful silence. Subdued by the power of
that fierce look, the awful reality of vengeful power which it
expressed, they shivered and grew uncomfortable. Then, when
the silence seemed wholly intolerable, the pent-up rage, the
anger of the wronged woman, burst forth with the irresistible
force of a torrent. The tall figure drawn to its utmost height,
the heaving breast, the swaying arms, the pale face, the firmly-
compressed mouth, were so intently fierce that the actress and
her artificial surroundings were forgotten, and the audience
deemed it true.'
Rachel was received at Marlborough House by the Queen
Dowager, and she was also invited to Windsor, where she
rendered, without accessories, the principal scenes from Marie
Stuart, Orestes, and Les Horaces. The Queen was enchanted,
and as a token of her goodwill and admiration presented the
RACHEL.
393
actress with a bracelet, composed of two wreathed serpents
with diamond heads. To show how history is written, one
biographer says there was graven on the inside of the bracelet
the inscription 'A Rachel, Victoria Reine.' In the public
prints the inscription was given, Victoria to Rachel; but a
second biographer says the truth stood thus, Victoria to
Mademoiselle Rachel,' the insertion of that word 'Mademoiselle'
making, of course, a vast difference.
Her English visit was a signal triumph in every respect.
She was received in the houses of the great, and her every
movement was chronicled like that of a sovereign. When she
paid a second visit in 1842, she even captured the veteran
Duke of Wellington as one of her admirers. The excitement
when she left our shores was remarkable, and it is even said
that her own manager so caught the Rachel fever that he
made her the offer of his heart and hand. If he did, they
were not accepted. Frances Ann Kemble, in her Records of
Later Life, thus records her impressions of the actress:
'Mademoiselle Rachel's face is very expressive and dramatically
fine, though not absolutely beautiful. It is a long oval, with a
head of classical and very graceful contour, the forehead
rather narrow and not very high. The eyes small, dark, deep-
set, and terribly powerful. The brow straight, noble, and fine
in form, though not very flexible.
'I was immensely struck and carried away by her perfor-
mance of Hermione, though I am not sure that some of the
parts did not seem to me finer than the whole as a conception.
That in which she is unrivalled by any actor or actress I ever
saw, is the expression of a certain combined and concen-
trated hatred and scorn. Her reply to Andromaque's appeal.
to her, in that play, was one of the most perfect things I have
ever seen on the stage. The cold, cruel, acrid enjoyment of
her rival's humiliation; the quiet, bitter, unmerciful exercise
of the power of torture, was certainly, in its keen incisiveness,
quite incomparable. It is singular that so young a woman
394
WOMEN OF RENO IVN.
should so especially excel in delineations and expressions of
this order of emotion, while in the utterance of tenderness,
whether in love or sorrow, she appears, comparatively, less suc-
cessful. I am not, however, perhaps, competent to pronounce
upon this point, for Hermione, and Emilie in Corneille's Cinna,
are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M-
saw her the other day in Marie Stuart, and cried her eyes
almost out, so she must have some pathetic power.
was
so enchanted with her, both on and off the stage, that he took
me to call upon her on her arrival in London, and I was very
much pleased with the quiet grace and dignity, the excellent
bon ton of her manners and deportment. The other morning,
too, at Stafford House, I was extremely overcome at my
sister's first public exhibition in England, and was endeavour-
ing, while I screened myself behind a pillar, to hide my
emotion and talk with composure to Rachel. She saw, how-
ever, how it was with me, and with great kindness, allowed me
to go into a room that had been appropriated to her use
between the declamations, and was very amiable and courteous
to me.'
Rachel treated her Parisian public so unceremoniously, and
she was moreover so grasping in her monetary relations, that
it required all her prestige and talent to win back her
admirers after her temporary absences from the French
capital. The critics themselves sometimes grew weary of
her caprices, and Jules. Janin actually went the length of intro-
ducing a rival to her in one Mademoiselle Maxime. He
praised her acting of Phèdre lavishly, and instituted compari-
sons between her and Rachel, insulting to the latter. She said
nothing, but bided her time, which came on the 25th of
October, when the two rivals appeared in the same play,
Marie Stuart. There was a desperate struggle for the
mastery, and the partisans of the respective actresses were
filled with suppressed rage against each other. This extra-
ordinary histrionic duel has been thus described :
RACHEL.
395
Every time poor Maxime appeared, one portion of the
house maintained a disdainful silence, a tacit condemnation
which her own few but brave partisans retorted to the full
whenever Rachel came on. Both camps anxiously awaited
the decisive third act. It amply justified their solicitude.
The silence that reigned throughout the house was almost
oppressive. Elizabeth-Maxime-pale, disheartened, seeing
too well the tide was against her, feeling instinctively she was
doomed, knowing her incapacity to resist or escape the
impending avalanche, trembled with impotent rage. Every
word she uttered revealed the bitterness and grief of her
burthened heart. Mary Stuart-Rachel-on her side, pas-
sive and motionless, accepted all the withering contumely
heaped upon her; with bent head, folded arms, and steady
calm, glittering eye, she waited-waited patiently—but there
was something so appalling, so deadly in the look, that a
shudder went through the audience. Everyone felt that the
patience was that of the tiger secure of his prey, who has
noted the very place where his fangs will be thrust into the
quivering flesh of the victim. When, at last, it was her turn
to speak, the very ones who had expected the explosion were
thunderstruck. No pen can render the frenzied passion, the
terrific vehemence, the scorching indignation with which she
poured forth her pent-up fury. Her voice, lately so weak and
exhausted, strengthened by her imperious will, hurled forth
anathemas that fell like sledge-hammers on the crushed
Maxime, who, breathless, amazed, terrified beyond measure,
gazed at her with wild eyes. The scene was magnificent, and
beggars description. No one could have believed such mean-
ing could be given to the pale, meagre, wishy-washy trans-
lation of Lebrun; no one ever suspected the strength, the fire
contained in Rachel.'
.
The defeat of Maxime was utter and complete. Even the
critic who had exploited her acknowledged her failure. She
remained for some years on the stage, but sank into insignifi-
396
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
cance, and finally retired to keep a private hotel, where she
let unfurnished lodgings, with board if required!
In 1842 Rachel assumed two new characters, viz., Chimène
in Le Cid, and Ariane in the drama of that name. She did
not make a very favourable impression in these, and crossed
over to London on her second visit. Here, however, her
dramatic glory was a little diminished by the stars, Bouffé and
Déjazet. She next made her way to Antwerp, and from
thence to Brussels, where she enjoyed her greatest triumph
of the year. She played for twelve nights, and received no
less than 30,000 francs. In September she reappeared in
Paris, in Lemercier's Frédégonde, but the part was unsuited to
her, and the poetry execrable, so that a third failure was ex-
perienced in one year.
When Rachel attained her majority she took an apartment
on the Quai Voltaire, leaving her family in the possession of
their handsome apartments in the Rue du Luxembourg.
Besides presenting them with all the furniture, &c., she made.
her father and mother a very liberal allowance. Indeed, her
love for her family was one of the finest traits in her character.
Selfish and avaricious as she undoubtedly was, she was ever
most generous to the members of the Félix family. Nor was
it shown in money matters alone. She procured an engagement
for her elder sister Sarah at the Théâtre Français, supporting
her by all the weight of her authority. As Sarah became con-
vinced at last, however, that she could not act, she abandoned
the stage, and devoted herself to the manufacture of cosmetics
and toilet washes, one of which is still known by her name.
She survived her more famous sister by nearly twenty years.
Rebecca, who was nine years younger than Rachel, she also
assisted in getting on the stage, and her love for this child had
Poor Rebecca was
something really tender and human in it.
suffering from consumption, however, and was cut off at an
early age.
Rachel also showed genuine affection for her
brother Raphael, and introduced him likewise to the stage, and
RACHEL.
397
she did not even blame him when he caused the shipwreck of
her American expedition. With regard to Rachel's relations
with Samson-the teacher of Plessis, Favart, the Brohans,
Desclée, &c., she had quarrels with him, but she well knew
and gratefully acknowledged her indebtedness to his wise train-
ing and counsels. Where she received service or affection, she
freely rendered the same. But her friends needed to have
patience with her uncertain tempers, in respect to which she
was ever sinning and repenting.
Touching Rachel's love of gold, which was open and no-
torious, this strange anecdote, said to have been related by her-
self, is told:-
'Shortly after she had attained her majority, she had gone
to Marseilles, where, for one night's performance, she was to
receive 3,000 fr. On the day after the performance the money
was brought to her in a chest. At that time gold was not the
common medium of circulation it has since become, and pay-
ments, even of large sums, were often made in silver. Rachel
was recently emancipated from the parental trammels, and she
had never had in her own possession anything like this amount.
At sight of this box, full of five-franc pieces-this quantity of
money, all hers, her eyes dilated and fastened upon it with an
intensity that was almost painful to behold; to use her own
words, worthy of an actress accustomed to a tragic style. She
felt the ferocious joy of an animal that has the long wished for
prey within its clutches. There was no childish exultation, no
outward delight, none of the exultant pride of the girl who has
by her own exertions earned a large sum, no feminine feelings
of pleasant anticipation of the many pretty fancies this sum
could gratify; no, it was quiet, inward, savage enjoyment of the
money itself, independent of all associations generally connected
with it. She ordered the box to be placed before her by her
bedside, and, plunging her hands into it, kept stirring the silver
about.
CCC
Never," she said to the person to whom she related this,
398
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
(C
never had I so many five-franc pieces together, and all
belonging to me." She kept the box by her, and a sordid and
rapacious feeling possessed her throughout the night.'
Yet this is the same woman of whom the following anecdote
of a different character is related: While Mademoiselle
Rachel was at Lyons, she was told of a Jewish family that was
reduced to the lowest stage of want. Having ascertained all the
necessary details of the case, Mademoiselle Rachel repaired on
the following day to the sixth floor of a house in one of the
poorest quarters of the town. Here she found a workman, his
wife, and six children without bread, clothes, or shoes. The gift
of 300 fr. which the visitor had brought for their relief called forth
a torrent of blessings and fervent thanks. Not content with
this munificent donation, Mademoiselle Rachel stopped at a
shoemaker's on her way home, and ordered eight pairs of shoes
for the poor people she had just left.'
There were many other honourable incidents in Rachel's life
similar to the above.
Rachel by no means shines so well in yet another anecdote.
At the house of a friend, Madame S., she saw a guitar of most
respectable antiquity, the original colour of which had long ago
disappeared under the thick black crust with which time had
coated it. The actress was so drawn towards the guitar, that
the owner presented it to her. Some time afterwards the guitar,
enveloped in a beautiful silk net, was seen in Rachel's boudoir
by a certain Count, who enquired what it was. Rachel is said
to have unblushingly replied:-
That is the humble guitar, the faithful companion with
which, in the days of my childhood, I earned the scanty pittance.
bestowed on the poor little street-singer.'
The Count was at once wild to possess the inestimable
treasure.
—
'Oh,' said Rachel, 'I can never, never consent to part with it.'
C
I must have it at any cost; do not deny me this gift, to be
held as a sacred relic, and permit me to offer you, as a poor ex-
RACHEL.
399
change, the set of diamonds and rubies you appeared to
admire some days ago at the jeweller's.'
'Ah, well!' quoth the tragic muse, heaving a deep sigl,
'since you will have it, I cannot refuse you.'
The supposed historical instrument, obtained at a cost of
about 50,000 fr., was installed with pride in the aristocratic
mansion of the Count, who confided to his visitors the pathetic
story of its origin. Unluckily the original possessor called one
day, and recognising the instrument at a glance, unfolded its
true history to the Count. It is said that when a mutual
friend mentioned the report to Rachel with a view of having
it indignantly denied, the heroine only laughed, exclaiming,
'Poor how furious he was!' This anecdote is given in a
slightly different form by some writers, but the facts are the
same.
In 1843 Rachel essayed the part of Phèdre, in Racine's
tragedy. Traditions of the powerful and tender acting of Duch-
esnois in this role were still very vivid, and Rachel's venture
was a daring one. Phèdre was a character standing by herself
in tragedy, and the actress who could adequately represent her
would have nothing more left to achieve. Rachel's fame culmi-
nated with this representation, though she only attained per-
fection in it after the lapse of several years. Mrs. Kennard
has well said with regard to Rachel's greatest inspiration :-
'Phèdre, the culminating point of French tragedy, has ever
been looked on as a test play for all great actresses. The
whole range of human feelings, love, fear, grief, jealousy, re-
venge, repentance: all that can move and excite an audience,
are represented in three stages of development by one central
figure; and yet, though a prey to all these passions, the
daughter of Pasiphae, both in Euripides' and Racine's tragedy,
remains an elevated person, victim of the persecutions of
Aphrodite. Being thus absolved from moral responsibility,
she is likewise saved from moral obliquity. Racine seldom
allows himself thus to adopt a Greek myth, and it is hardly
T
400
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
necessary to show how enormously the complex idea of the
interference of the gods increases the difficulty of giving an
idea of the character to a moderate audience; for, although a
woman in her weakness and her sin, Phèdre must be almost
divine in her sorrow and her love. And it was from this point
of view that Rachel so immeasurably surpassed all other
actresses. Sarah Bernhardt, who, in this role, has most nearly
approached her, is weak, unequal, passionate. We see all the
viciousness of Phèdre, and none of her grandeur. She breaks
herself to pieces against the huge difficulties of the conception,
and does not succeed in moving us. In the second scene,
where Phèdre, thinking her husband is dead, confesses her
incestuous passion to the object of it, Sarah Bernhardt never
rises above the level of an aventurière or a Frou-Frou. Rachel
was the mouth-piece of the gods; no longer a free agent, she
poured forth every epithet of adoration that Aphrodité could
suggest, clambering up higher and higher in the intensity of
her emotion, whilst her audience hung breathless, riveted on
every word, and only dared to burst forth in thunders of
applause after she had vanished from their sight.'
Her Phèdre gave rise to the saying by an observer, 'she
does not act she suffers.' It was by common consent her
masterpiece-'an apocalypse of human agony not to be for-
gotten by anyone who ever witnessed it.'
Rachel's next part was Judith, in a tragedy of that name,
written expressly for her by Madame de Girardin. Although
when read in private by the authoress, this play received the im-
primatur of Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Balzac, on the stage
it was a complete failure. The drama was one long orgie of de-
bauchery, treachery, and blood, in which the real tragic elements
of passion were wanting. It was ill-suited to the audience of the
Théâtre Français, and Rachel could not fairly be saddled with the
responsibility for its failure. When the actress was charged in a
pamphlet called La Vérité Rachel, with being no actress, and
with having no skill, intelligence, or taste, she merely replied
RACHEL.
401
that she had made 5,000 francs the previous evening, and was
perfectly indifferent to everything else. But she could be
magnanimous sometimes towards her worst opponents.
In personal moral character it must be confessed that Rachel
was not exemplary. Her first love was given to a Jew, who
used her shamefully, and published her letters after the
rupture. Then she further defied the conventionalities by
forming a connection with Count Walewski-a natural son of
Napoleon by a Polish lady-to whom, in 1844, she bore a son,
who was openly acknowledged by his father. Society was not
unnaturally scandalised by these blots upon her career, and its
attitude probably deepened the pride and hardness of her
nature. One can but lament these deflections from the path
of rectitude on the part of a woman who undoubtedly possessed
some of the elements of true greatness. We may also add
that if she sinned she suffered. Many are the passages in her
letters showing how her heart yearned for pure human
affection—the love found in many homes—the love of parents,
of children, of friends.
Racine's Bérénice was revived at the Théâtre Français in
1844; but as this beautiful play had in it none of the grand
dramatic characteristics wherein Rachel displayed her mastery,
it was not successful. For the Court of Louis XIV., in whose
time it was originally produced, the drama was full of allusions
and scenes which elicited warm sympathy, but the later age
required something more than a refined picture of faithful
and idyllic love. Rachel was equally unfortunate in the part of
Isabelle in Don Sanche d'Aragon, and in the tragedy of
Catherine II., written for her by M. Romand. In absurdity
of plot, in want of taste, style, skill, imagination, poetry, rhythm,
this author had outdone all the stupid productions of former
years. Could his Catherine II. be played in the style of a
parody, as the Auberge des Adrets was once played, it would,
without the changing of a single word, prove the most amus-
ing farce that could be put upon the stage. It was not the
C
DD
402
women of renown.
fault of Rachel if she failed in a part where there was not a
situation, a thought, a line, worthy of a tolerable actress. But
she made a great mistake in accepting it, and proved a great
want of dramatic instinct, not to say taste, in so doing.' The
spring of 1845 witnessed her appearance in Virginie, a tragedy
written for her by M. Latour de St. Ybars. It is said that this
was the only play especially composed for her in which she was
thoroughly successful. The drama was an imitation of the
Lucrèce of M. Ponsard, and it was founded on an episode of
Roman history, immortalised by the genius of Livy. The ter-
rible agonies of Virginia, and her triumph over dishonour, were
passionately rendered by Rachel, and sent a thrill through the
rapt audience. The excitement culminated in the last act,
where the distracted Virginius gives his daughter freedom
through the fatal dagger. The play ran with great favour for a
considerable time. Towards the close of the year an attempt
was made to revive Voltaire's tragedy, Orestes. Rachel had
been tempted by the monotonous part of Electra, but the
representation fell dead. The actress rose to her own high
level, but the public would have none of the tragedy. Another
failure was registered in Soumet's Jeanne d'Arc, which was re-
vived especially for Rachel. The dramatist had a magnificent
subject, but treated it in a wretched and miserable fashion.
Rachel looked the part admirably, and in the death scene was
described as a model of statuesque beauty, but she could not
galvanise the piece into life.
Dispirited for a time, the actress remained quiescent, but she
reappeared in October, 1845, in Phèdre, and played with such
overwhelming power that the Bey of Tunis, who was present,
exclaimed, 'It is a soul of fire in an envelope of gauze !' The
year 1847 began with a revival of Molière's Don Juan, Rachel
and Mdlle. Brohan personifying serious and light comedy re-
spectively. Then Rachel appeared in another tragedy written for
her by Latour, entitled Le Vieux de la Montagne. It was a
soporific play, with Mount Lebanon for its centre, and was
RACHEL.
403
utterly destitute of life or reality. A good burlesque might
easily have been made of it, but as a tragic subject, 'The Old
Man of the Mountain' failed to catch on with the public, and
he was only trotted out of his mountain fastness twice.
Athalie was then revived, and though Rachel was not old
enough for the part, and had recourse to repulsive arts to make
her seem so, she played splendidly in the last act. The
tragedy was afterwards produced at the Tuileries, when the
king warmly expressed to Rachel his approbation. In June
the actress appeared at Amsterdam, and in July in London.
In the latter city she essayed a character in which Mars her-
self had not been wholly successful-the Célimène of
Molière's Misanthrope, but it met with no favour. She was as
successful as before in her tragedies. Returning to Paris,
Rachel appeared as the heroine in Madame de Girardin's
tragedy of Cléopâtre. The authoress made of the great queen
merely a degraded Messalina, but some parts of the play were
fine, and the tragedy was successful, though its run was inter-
rupted by Rachel's illness.
During the Revolution of 1848 Rachel declaimed the Mar-
seillaise from the stage with a fire and energy which threw the
Parisians into a fury. Janin besought her not to set passions
aflame which it might be beyond her power to control, but it
was of no avail. Her mind was bent upon it, and as her im-
pressive gestures 'gave a new significance, a new meaning to
every word and every line of the hymn, a perfect delirium of
excitement fell upon the crowd,' so that as the tricolor flag was
waved around her 'men felt capable of heroism and death.
That beautiful apparition, pale, menacing, was no longer a
woman; she was the Goddess of Liberty, calling on her coun-
trymen to arms.' George Sand remarked that all artists
competing for the statue of Liberty ought to go and study the
classic poses of Mdlle. Rachel, singing the Marseillaise. 'She
is an exquisite incarnation of pride, courage, and energy.' Na-
tional performances were ordered at the Théâtre Français by
DD 2
404
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
the Provisional Government, and for a time the 'blouse' was
triumphant. In March, Rachel appeared with favour in Pon-
sard's Lucrèce, the young Roman matron being excellently
adapted to her talent. The actress made a provincial tour in
June, 1848, and another in May, 1849. On the latter occasion
the tour extended from Orleans to Bayonne, and from Pau to
the Isle of Guernsey, and she gave altogether eighty-five per-
formances in ninety successive days. She agreed with the Go-
vernment to sing the Marseillaise wherever she went in the
provinces. While at Montpellier she had an interview with
the notorious captive, Madame Lafarge.
For some time the authorities of the Théâtre Français had
complained of Rachel's overbearing demeanour, and her ex-
tortionate and unscrupulous conduct. She was continually
hurrying away, they said, and making large sums in the
provinces. Ultimately the quarrel came to a head. Rachel
had lent all her influence to secure the election of M. Lockroy,
the Republican director of the theatre, in succession to M.
Buloz. But when the revolutionary fever began to die
down, the independent members of the Committee took
courage and dismissed Lockroy. This angered Rachel ex-
tremely, and matters were not improved when she essayed the
part of Agrippine in Britannicus, and completely failed in it.
In a fit of anger she sent in her resignation, but withdrew it
almost immediately, owing to the representations of Jules
Janin. She then hoped that M. Merle, the husband of one of
her intimate friends, would be appointed director of the
theatre, but Arsène Houssaye was selected by the Ministry. In
her usual spirit of daring, she at once wrote to the new
director as follows: 'Come at once, and dine with me; I have
a piece of bad news for you. I did my best-or rather, my
worst. You are appointed, in spite of me.' It is said that
this imperious creature ruled all the directors in succession-—
Buloz, Lockroy, Arsène Houssaye--and that she even sub-
jected to her influence the Prince President himself.
RACHEL.
405
In January, 1849, Rachel reappeared on the Parisian stage
in Andromaque. The performance—at which Louis Napoleon
was present—was completely successful. Cinna was to have
been produced, but it was prohibited because of certain
political allusions which were peculiarly apposite to the Prince
President. A great success in a new field was, however,
achieved by the actress in March, when she appeared in
Barthet's pretty little comedy in one act, entitled Le Moineau
de Lesbie. The scene was laid in Rome, in the time of Julius,
and the death of Lesbia's sparrow gracefully led up to her
reconciliation with her lover Catullus. Her next appearance
was in Adrienne Lecouvreur, a piece written expressly for her by
MM. Scribe and Legouvé. The play proved an immense
success. There was a strange analogy between Rachel's own
career and that of Adrienne, who was also an actress, and who
counted among her adorers Voltaire and Maurice de Saxe.
The later actress brought out strongly all the pathos and the
sadness which overshadowed the life of her predecessor. Diffi-
culties next arose with the Théâtre Français, for Rachel had
renewed her resignation, and determined to abide by it. Legal
proceedings were instituted by the Committee, but the judges
pronounced the resignation to be legal, and that there was
no case for damages. But although Rachel gained the day,
the facts which came out in the course of the trial prejudiced
her with the public. She was shown to be petulant, selfish in
pecuniary matters, and capricious in the matter of her engage-
ments.
Until the close of her career, this great artist now unfortun-
ately subordinated fame to fortune. In January, 1850, she
returned to the Théâtre Français, appearing as the heroine in
Dumas' drama, Mademoiselle de Belle Isle. Mars had created
quite a furore in this part years before, but it was unsuited to
Rachel, and her rendering of it was a comparative failure. The
artless child of modern civilisation was a wholly different being
from the tragic figures of antiquity, and she was not happy in
406
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
seizing upon the lighter aspects of the character. Next she
essayed the part of Tisbé in Victor Hugo's Angelo, her sister
Rebecca being the Catarina. Rachel retrieved her laurels in
Tisbé, which gave full scope to the passions of love, rage, and
scorn. It was her most powerful character in drama, as Phèdre
was her greatest in tragedy. Théophile Gautier thus describes
her in these two impersonations: 'One of Mademoiselle
Rachel's great qualities is that she gives so plastic a realisation
of the character she represents. In Phèdre she is a Greek
princess of the heroic ages, in Tisbé she personates an Italian
courtesan of the 16th century. There can be no mistake—
sculpture and painting could do no more. This graphic em-
bodiment of the idea exercises a despotic influence on the
audience the instant she appears. In tragedy she seems a
figure detached from a bas relief of Phidias ; in drama a Titian
or a Bronzine descended from its frame. The illusion is com-
plete. She is a great artiste as well as a great actress. Even
her beauty is endowed with the most astonishing flexibility; at
one time you have before you a sculptured hueless marble, at
another a warm Venetian painting. She takes the colouring of
the sphere in which she is to move-under the antique colon-
nade, a statue-under the renaissance ceiling, the richly-tinted
portrait. Between the scene and the actress the harmony is
always perfect.'
In June, Rachel created the part of the heroine in Ponsard's
one-act play Horace et Lydie. The theme was a love quarrel,
but the immorality of old Rome was not a savoury topic to set
prominently forth, and the piece fell lifeless. During her usual
leave of absence this year, Rachel played in London, Ham-
burgh, Berlin, Dresden, and Potsdam. The King of Prussia
never missed one of her performances at Berlin and Potsdam.
After her return to Paris, she found much of her old influence
slipping from her, and she did not improve her position later
by absenting herself from France, and visiting Russia and the
United States-in the former case when France was nearly at
L
RACHEL.
407
In describing
war with Russia, and in the latter when the Universal Exhibition
was drawing visitors from all nations to Paris.
Rachel's arbitrary conduct, Madame de B-
says: 'She
attempted with her comrades, with the public, with the press,
to exert a crushing despotism-she created around her the
most complete solitude. Towards the close of her career she
had alienated a number of the partisans she had had among
the members of the press, and consequently a portion of the
public. Sundry of her acts during the last few years had been
stamped with that excessive egotism that has its source in vain-
glorious blindness, producing selfish forgetfulness or disregard
of social ties and social duties.'
A disastrous failure was recorded in 1851 with Valeria, a
drama written for her by MM. Auguste Maquet and Jules
Lacroix, who endeavoured by it to secure for her a double
triumph-viz., as tragédienne and as cantatrice. The heroine
was the licentious and cruel Roman empress Messalina.
Although the dramatists endeavoured to whitewash her, the
play was objectionable in various ways, and it proved a dead
failure. This year Rachel was away from Paris for five months
and a half. She received for twenty-five performances in London
10,000 francs-and all her expenses, even to hotel bills,
were paid. She also had a very prosperous tour on the Conti-
nent. Charlotte Brontë saw her play in London, and thus
wrote of her: 'On Saturday I went to hear and see Rachel ;
a wonderful sight-terrible as if the earth had cracked deep at
your feet and revealed a glimpse of hell. I shall never forget
it. She made me shudder to the marrow of my bones; in her
some fiend has certainly taken up an incarnate home. She is not
a woman; she is a snake; she is the d--.' After another visit
Miss Brontë wrote: 'Rachel's acting transfixed me with
wonder, enchained me with interest, and filled me with horror.
The tremendous force with which she expresses the very
worst passions in their strongest essence forms an exhibition
as exciting as the bull-fights of Spain, and the gladiatorial com-
408
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
bats of old Rome, and it seemed to me not one whit more
moral than these poisoned stimulants to popular ferocity. It is
scarcely human nature that she shows you; it is something
wilder and worse; the feelings and fury of a fiend. The great
gift of genius she undoubtedly has, but, I fear, she rather
abuses it than turns it to good account.'
The year 1852 saw Rachel's appearance in Emile Augier's
drama Diane, whose chief points had been suggested by
Victor Hugo's Marion Delorme. Augier entirely lacked the
noble poetic fervour of Hugo, and the whole play, with the
exception of a few passages, did not permit the actress to rise
to any of her grand heights. It was succeeded by a revival of
the Louise de Lignerolles of MM. Prosper Dimaux and Ernest
Legouvé, but once more Rachel was made to tread in the paths
of Mdlle. Mars with indifferent results. Notwithstanding a
serious illness this year, Rachel travelled to Potsdam, where
she played before the King of Prussia and the Emperor and
Empress of Russia. She was received privately with unusual
marks of distinction, and the Czar Nicholas assured her that
she was greater even than her reputation, and he hoped she
would give him the pleasure of seeing her next in his own
dominions. Valuable gifts were likewise showered upon her.
In February 1853 she appeared again in Paris in Lady Tartuffe,
a play of modern social life, written for her by Madame de
Girardin. The drama lifted the veil on the scheming and
intriguing so rife in fashionable circles, and as the heroine,
Rachel was 'graceful, ladylike, and diabolical.' Although she
disliked her part, the play secured the favour of the public.
·
ế
M. Ernest Legouvé now wrote for her his tragedy of Medće,
but a serious quarrel arose between them over it. During the
negotiations, Rachel went away, 'to rest,' as she said, but she
appeared in various places, though to very poor audiences, as
she had visited these particular cities too often. After her
return, and just when Legouvé was hoping to complete the,
rehearsals for the production of his play, she accepted an
RACHEL.
409
engagement in Russia and went off there, leaving behind her
a note intimating that she would play Médée on her return, or
rescue her from any other hands which might have taken
possession of her in the interim. The actress had behaved
most disingenuously, for she was actually arranging for her visit
to St. Petersburg at the very time she told Legouvé she was
too ill to rehearse. She succeeded well in the Russian capital,
and was presented by the Empress with a pelisse of the most
costly furs in the world, and by the Emperor with a diamond
and ruby corsage ornament of immense value. Rachel after-
wards proceeded to Moscow and Warsaw, and at the latter
place she received a letter from Legouvé, who was wearied of
her tergiversations. She replied, practically refusing to appear
in the play.
The tragédienne's pecuniary harvest in Russia amounted to
no less than 300,000 francs. On her return to France she
hastened to Eaux Bonnes, in the Pyrenees, where her sister
Rebecca was dying of consumption. She continued to make
flying visits to her until the end, which came quite suddenly.
Rachel was chatting with some friends in another room, when
the maid Rose rushed in to say that Rebecca had been seized
with a paroxysm of coughing, and was in great danger. Rising
from her seat with a bound, Rachel appeared to seek for some
cause for this terrible blow that was falling upon her, and her
eye lighted upon a rosary blessed by the Pope, which she had
always worn as a bracelet since her visit to Rome. Realising
now that she had attached a talismanic virtue to the beads, she
tore them from her arm and dashed them to the ground,
frantically exclaiming, 'It is this fatal gift that has entailed this
curse upon me'! To her intense grief, Rebecca died, and on
the 23rd of June her body was conveyed to Paris for interment.
In the ensuing September the Legouvé-Rachel controversy
came to a crisis. The actress commissioned a friend to inform
the author that she could never appear in his play. The
reasons she finally assigned for this step were creditable to her,
410
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
but she ought to have advanced them in the outset, and not
have treated Legouvé so shamefully. 'I have read your two
last acts,' she wrote to him. 'I see my rôle is full of sharp,
sudden movements; I rush at my children, carry them about,
struggle with the crowd for their possession. This physical
agitation does not suit me. All that I can express by physi-
ognomy, attitude, by solemn, measured gestures, I can do ; but
where energetic pantomime begins my powers fail utterly.
Medea may murder her children, poison her father-in-law: I
feel unable to follow her example, even if I wished to. Holding
the respect for the public that I do, and bearing a name entirely
created by its favour and applause, I cannot allow myself to be
made the accomplice and instrument of theatrical favouritism.'
Legouvé appealed to the law, and ultimately recovered 12,000
francs damages, which was not much consolation for a man
who had waited for two years, hoping to see his Medea created
by Rachel. However, his reward came later, for Ristori took
up the part, and secured in it one of her greatest triumphs,
much to Rachel's chagrin.
The highest point of Rachel's pecuniary success was the
beginning of her decadence as an artist. This must always be
the case when the first-love is not that of the art itself. She
gave evidence of strange dramatic shortsightedness when she
accepted from M. Latour St. Ybars a one-act tragedy, Rose-
monde, in which horror and crime were concentrated to an
inordinate degree. The story of Rosemonde may be read in
Gibbon, but the historian's setting having been taken away,
there remained nothing but what was hideous and revolting.
Alboin, King of the Lombards, slew Cunimund, King of the
Gepidæ, and made Rosemonde, the captive daughter of his
late rival, his queen. On one occasion he induced her, unwit-
tingly, to joyously drink wine out of her father's skull. When she
became aware of this she vowed a terrible vengeance upon her
husband, and had him assassinated. Rachel played her part
with determination, but she failed to obtain the real sympathy
RACHEL.
411
of her audience. When she returned to her loge it was seen
that she was overwhelmed with disappointment and despair.
Jules Janin states that she cowered in a corner of the green-
room associated with her greatest triumphs, tears filling her
eyes. When a friend endeavoured to console her she sobbed
aloud, and passionately tearing open her dress, exclaimed,
'See! see how I am wasting away. It is a dying woman who
weeps.'
And this was really the beginning of the end.
Her nerves
became unstrung, and as she had always been superstitious,
she now began to see visions in the night. Amongst others
who appeared to her, she said, was Corneille, who had re-
proached her for her disloyalty to him in her later years. Then
she frequently recalled a supper given at Victor Hugo's months
before, at which thirteen were present, and she was filled with
terror as she thought of the evil fortune which had pursued
some of the guests. Victor Hugo and his wife were in exile,
Madame de Girardin was dead, Pradier gone, Alfred de
Musset gone, Count d'Orsay dead, Rebecca dead-‘I alone am
left, and that will not be for long.'
The last of Rachel's original creations in Paris was Catherine
II., of Russia, the heroine of La Czarine, a drama written for
her by M. Scribe. In anticipation of a brilliant success, a
dinner was arranged for the day following its production, which
took place in January, 1855. The drama was altogether inferior
to the subject and to Rachel's great powers, and it failed
accordingly. But the dinner, which was given by Dr. Véron,
was duly eaten by a depressed but distinguished company,
which included Rachel, St. Beuve, Mérimée, Aubert, Halévy,
and Scribe. The drama was only played for a few nights, and
then it sank into oblivion. Piqued by the great success of
Ristori, both in comedy and tragedy, Rachel went through the
list of her own chief characters in June, after which she left
Paris for London, where she appeared in Phèdre, Les Horaces,
Lady Tartuffe, and Adrienne Lecouvreur, and had a brilliant
412
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
reception in all. Rachel very grudgingly admitted the extra-
ordinary powers of Ristori, while the beautiful Italian warmly
applauded her rival in the part of Camille.
Rachel now set forth on her ill-starred expedition to America.
She landed at New York on the 22nd of August, and on the 3rd
of September appeared at the Metropolitan Theatre, Broadway.
The play chosen was Les Horaces, and the tragédienne began
her tour with a veritable artistic triumph. A writer in Harper's
Magazine thus described the scene: 'The artist and the
audience were mutually worthy. Her action was symmetrical
throughout. No one part was more perfectly done than
another; but the varied importance of the parts made the
differing excellence of the acting. The applause was as dis-
criminating. It shifted from sensation to murmur, and ran all
along the line of feeling until it exploded in enthusiasm. In the
extreme moment of hearing her lover's fate, Camille sinks faint-
ing in the chair, after a pantomime of fluctuating emotion,
which is the very height of her art. Just then some bewildered
poet flung a huge bouquet upon the stage, which fell, shattered
like a cabbage, at the very feet of the Roman who was de-
claiming. Perplexed for a moment--uncertain whether the
laws of our theatre might not require some notice to be taken
of the bouquet--unwilling, upon the first night, to do anything
contrary to courtesy, the Roman faltered and paused, made a
halting step towards the flowers, raised them doubtfully, and
turned towards Rachel, when a sudden "No!" rang through
the house like a gust, and the dismayed Thespian dropped the
bouquet like a hot cannon-ball, and proceeded with his part.
For an hour and a half the curtain was up, and the eyes of the
audience were riveted upon Rachel. For an hour and a half
there was the constant increase of passionate intensity, until
love and despair culminated in the famous denunciation; the
house hung breathless upon that wild whirl of tragic force-
and Camille lay dead and the curtain was down before that
rapt and amazed silence was conscious of itself. Then came
magda
RACHEL.
413
the judgment--the verdict which was worth having after such
a trial-the crown, and the garland, and the pæan. The
curtain rose, and there, wan and wavering, stood the ghost
of Camille, the woman Rachel. She had risen in her flowing
drapery just where she had fallen, and seemed to be the spirit
of herself. But pale and trembling, she flickered in the tempest
of applause. The audience stood and waved hats and hand-
kerchiefs, and flowers fell in pyramids; and that quick, earnest,
meaning “Bravo!" was undisturbed by any discordant sound.
It was a great triumph. It was too much for the excited and
exhausted Rachel. She knew that the news would instantly
fly across the sea that Paris would hear of her victory over a
new continent--that, perhaps, Ristori's foot would be found
too large for the slipper. She wavered for a moment, then
someone rushed forward and caught her as she fell, and the
curtain came down.
'There was no attempt at a recall. There was something too
real in the whole scene. The audience slowly arose and
silently separated. Ladies sat in groups upon the benches
with white faces and red eyes. They all thought her beautiful.
They all forgave everything and they all denied everything. It
was a rare triumph. We so love what we greatly admire that
we all longed to love Rachel.'
Raphael, the manager, was disappointed with the pecuniary
results of the first performance. The takings were 26,334
francs, which exceeded the amount made by any actor in
Europe, but which paled into insignificance beside the 100,000
francs obtained on the night of Jenny Lind's first American
performance. Various great parts followed that of Camille,
and after a vast amount of trouble Rachel was persuaded to
sing the Marseillaise, but she had a severe affection of the
larynx, and the song was necessarily rendered but tamely
compared with the old rendering in Paris. No attempt was
made to put the French tragedies adequately on the New
York stage, and sometimes a scene which should have been
414
women of renown.
imposing only evoked roars of laughter. After a visit to
Boston, Rachel returned to New York, from whence she pro-
ceeded to Philadelphia, where she was taken seriously ill. The
doctors ordered her to a warmer climate as soon
as she
could travel, and on the 27th of November she moved on to
Charleston. As the company was compelled to give three or
four performances without her, the theatre was empty. To
avert disaster, Rachel consented, at the urgent wish of her
brother, to appear in Adrienne Lecouvreur, although the doctors
had expressly warned her that absolute repose was necessáry.
'Play she would, and play she did-for the last time in America
the bills said, for the last time on earth! said implacable
destiny.' The performance took place on the 17th of Decem-
ber, and one of the actors read in the face of Rachel the un-
mistakable signs of the fell disease consumption, which must
for some time have had her within its grasp.
(
The company sailed for Havana on the 19th. On arriving
there Rachel hoped to act, but the doctors expressly forbade
it. Some days later the great tragédienne gave utterance to
this despairing cry: I am ill—very ill. My body and mind
have both sunk down to nothing. I shall not be able to act at
Havana either; but I have come, and the Director, exerting
his rights, has demanded damages to the extent of 7,000
piastres. I paid, and have also paid the actors up to-day. I
bring back my routed army to the banks of the Seine, and I,
perhaps, like another Napoleon, will go back and ask a stone
on which to lay my head and die at the Invalides.
will find my two guardian angels-my young sons. I hear
their voices calling me. I have been too long away from their
kisses, their caresses, their love. I do not regret the money I
have lost; I do not regret the fatigue I have undergone. I
have carried my name as far as I could, and I bring back my
heart to those who love me.'
But no; I
So the broken-hearted tragédienne, whose fame had filled two
continents, returned to France with only one hope in her
RACHEL.
415
breast-the desire to obtain rest and peace. Yet, disastrous
as was the American tour in some respects, it cannot be called
so in the pecuniary sense. The forty-two performances given
by Rachel in the United States realised a total sum of
684,033 francs, of which Rachel's share alone amounted to
298,000 francs; so that the American public scarcely deserved
the violent literary castigation administered to it by Jules
Janin.
i
The actress spent the spring of 1856 at a friend's residence
in Meulan, and here she was visited by Arsène Houssaye and
others. In his sketch of Rachel, Houssaye publishes some
conversations he held with her. The following extracts throw
a pathetic light upon the character of the actress :—
"Alas!" she said to me, "I have done with illusions. I
see myself already in the tomb. You spoke at Rebecca's grave,
you will speak also at mine.”
'Then an after-thought struck her.
"And yet, no; say
nothing, and prevent others from making speeches. Oblivion !
you do not know the charm of being forgotten after a life
before the public."
'She spoke simply. Off the stage she had a horror of de-
clamations, except when making fun.
""You know my life and heart. It is not necessary to tell
you I am not so bad as they would say. No one escapes his
destiny. I was born away in the mountains, I hardly know
where. I regret I did not live an obscure existence, like so
many honest women who think of nothing but their children.
Dragged by fate to Paris, I was obliged to live the life of Paris,
passing from misery to luxury, exposed to dangers and tempta-
tions. My calumniators did not succeed in making me im-
moral. God loved me since He gave me children. The
justice of God is greater towards poor, weak mortals, than the
justice of men. I do not fear Him, for I know there are
mothers of families who will not be better received than I
shall be at the Mercy Seat. If the writers of scandalous
416
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
memoirs should seek one day to parody my life, tell it in all its
simplicity. You know well I was not educated at the Sacré
Cœur; and those who are, are not many of them better than I
am, for I have only sinned against myself, while many of those
young ladies only passed through the sacrament of marriage to
betray it."
'We were walking in the park; the dinner-bell rang.
"I think I have suddenly become very serious," she said,
"I must not do so again, for I wish the evening to pass gaily.”
'Rachel was charming the whole time of dinner, but after-
wards nearly fainted away with fatigue. She then talked of
the possibility of her marriage with the man she loved.'
We read of visits which Rachel paid to Ems and Paris.
When the announcement was made that her town residence
was for sale, the French journals were seized with a sudden
frenzy of admiration, grief, enthusiasm, and despair. Extrava-
gant pictures were drawn of the vast wealth of the Rachel
mansion, and when it was found that it contained little more
treasure than an ordinary private dwelling, public interest evapo-
rated. The sale of the hotel was consequently countermanded
at the eleventh hour, though a portion of the furniture and the
important works of art were afterwards disposed of at nothing
like their real value. Towards the close of the summer of
1856, Rachel's disease had made such progress that the
doctors ordered her to winter in Egypt. The directors of the
theatre acted generously towards her, for they granted her
leave of absence until May 31st, 1857, with payment of her
salary. She reached Cairo early in October, but she still suf-
fered so much that in December she was ordered up the Nile,
in the hope that the air of Luxor would prove beneficial. Her
heart yearningly turned towards Paris, where, alas! the former
idol was already beginning to be forgotten, and from Thebes
she wrote a touching letter to the man she loved. The winter
passed, and the sufferer remained in Egypt through the follow-
ing spring. When summer came she returned to Paris,
RACHEL.
417
arriving there on July 1st, 1857. She wrote to the manager of
the Théâtre Français to the effect that her continued ill-health
left her no hope of being able to resume her engagements.
She was ordered to spend the next winter in the south of
France, and before her departure she wrote farewell letters to
Augustine Brohan and others. In one of these letters she said,
'I feel a great darkness and void in my head and in my intelli-
gence. All is suddenly extinguished, and Rachel has ceased
to exist! Aḥ, poor Rachel! that Rachel of whom I was so
proud-too proud, perhaps ; nothing remains of her to-day!'
Again she exclaimed - This terrible disease-this shirt of
Nessus that I cannot tear off! I trusted to my luck and my
strength, and, without any precautions, undertook that terrible
expedition to New York. Shall I return now-will God have
pity on me, for the sake of my children, my friends, or will He
take me to Himself?'
She retired to Cannet, a little village in the environs of
Cannes, and here she spent her last days, in a villa placed at
her disposal by M. Sardou, father of the famous dramatist.
Owing to the warm, dry air of Cannet, her life was prolonged
until January, 1858. Feeling her end approaching, however, one
day---by a marvellous effort of will-she wrote seventeen letters,
and prepared seventeen little boxes, filled with orange flowers,
and on the top of each she laid one of the letters. A friend
who was present at the last has so graphically and touchingly
described the scene, that it shall be related in his own words:
'I had felt the approach of the fatal event on Friday, January
Ist, when we exchanged the compliments of the New Year;
Rachel embraced us with so much feeling it was evident that
in her own mind she anticipated the eternal adieux. Doctor
Bergonier had, however, assured me we might yet expect life
would be prolonged a few days.
'On Saturday nothing particular occurred. Rachel remained,
as usual, plunged in a sort of stupor, the effect of excessive de-
bility, and from which she was now, at intervals, roused by fits
EE
418
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
of excessive pain, after which she would again fall asleep.
Toward midnight she awoke quite calm, as though out of a
long sleep, and chatted familiarly with those around her bed.
She desired to write to her father, but had not strength to finish.
The letter she was dictating contained her last requests, but
violent spasms of pain compelled her to cease for the time. She
remained in a state of complete prostration, and with infinite
trouble was made to swallow a little sustenance from time to
time.
'At eleven o'clock on Sunday morning the expectoration had
become so difficult that it was feared she would choke ; an unex-
pected effort having relieved her, calm succeeded to this crisis.
Rachel then expressed a wish to finish the letter to her father;
she dictated to the end, read it all over, and then exclaimed:
My poor Rebecca, my dear sister, I am going to see thee! I
am indeed happy!"
(C
'She then added a few words to the letter, signed it, and
appeared to fall asleep. This state lasted several hours.
'Sarah had, up to this moment, hesitated to call in religious.
assistance; the words uttered by Rachel now decided her, and
she despatched a telegraphic message to the Consistory of Nice,
which immediately sent ten persons, men and women. They
arrived towards eight o'clock, but they were not introduced for
some time in the chamber, lest the sight of them should cause
Rachel too great a shock. At ten o'clock there was another fit
like that of the morning, which alarmed all the house. This the
doctors said would be the last; and the members of the Con-
sistory were summoned. Two women and an old man ap-
proached the bed and began to sing in Hebrew, a psalm,
beginning:
""Ascend to God, daughter of Israel."
'Rachel turned her face calmly towards the singers.
Behold, Lord, the agony of thine handmaid; pity her
sufferings; shorten her pains, my God, and let those .she
endures redeem her sins!
CCC
RACHEL.
419
""In the name of Thy love, God of Israel, deliver her soul,
she aspires to return to Thee, break the bonds that bind her to
dust and suffer her to appear before Thy glory.”
'The countenance of Rachel seemed illumined by celestial
light; the singers continued:
"The Lord reigneth, the Lord has reigned, the Lord will
reign everywhere and for evermore! Blessed, everywhere and
for ever, be the name of His glorious reign!
""The Eternal One is God!" (Seven times.)
CCC
"Listen, Israel, the Eternal, our God, the Eternal, is one.
Go, then, whither the Lord calleth thee. Go, and may
His mercy assist thee. May the Eternal, our God, be with
thee; may His immortal angels guide thee to heaven, and may
the righteous rejoice when the Lord receives thee in His
bosom !
CCC
""God of our fathers, revive in Thy mercy this soul that goeth
to Thee; unite it to those of the holy patriarchs, amid the
eternal joys of the heavenly paradise! Amen."
'Rachel pressed Sarah's hand, and expired with a smile upon
her lips.
'And the singers said:
""Blessed be the Judge of Truth!"
'All present were moved by the tokens of heavenly grace
Rachel had manifested. It cannot be doubted that Rachel died
with the hope of another life.
'Until now I had doubted this faith of hers, which, perhaps,
was not definite and free from doubt until the last solemn
moment. However, I must confess that I had already heard
her utter words of religious hope on the occasion of a solemn
act of her life, which took place on the 15th of last December.'
The body of the great actress was conveyed to Paris, and
on the 11th of January it was committed to its resting-place in
the Israelite division of the cemetery of Père la Chaise, Jewish
rites being performed over the grave. A great number of
illustrious men were present at the ceremony, and eloquent
EE 2
420
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
>
eulogies were pronounced by Jules Janin, Théophile Gautier,
Paul de Saint Victor, and other friends and admirers.
Thus passes from our view Rachel, the artist and the
woman; Rachel the erring, the loving, the sinning, the magnifi-
cent; Rachel the child of genius and of fortune; that Rachel,
upon whom at her zenith shone the dazzling sun of prosperity,
but whose brilliant lustre was finally extinguished in sadness
and gloom.
'
鸭
​LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
→
423
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
THE life of this strange and
unique in the records of her sex.
ordinary as her adventures, and it is a moot point to this day
whether she was really insane on certain questions, or whether,
like Hamlet, she feigned insanity for purposes of her own. But
whatever may be the truth as regards her singular career, the
fascination and interest attaching to that career are undeniable.
As the granddaughter of the great Chatham, and the niece of
the illustrious William Pitt, her early years were passed amid
circumstances of pomp and power, and she knew much of the
inner life of kings and statesmen. According to tradition,
it was to her that Pitt said, after the crushing victory of
Napoleon at Austerlitz, 'Roll up the map of Europe!' Yet so
great were the extremes of vicissitude through which she
passed, that she died in a foreign clime the victim of
pecuniary difficulties and neglect, and the embittered enemy of
the land which gave her birth.
Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope was the eldest daughter of
Charles, third Earl Stanhope, by his first wife Hester, sister to
William Pitt, and daughter of the first Earl of Chatham. He
had issue by this first wife, three daughters-Hester, Griselda,
and Lucy. By his second wife, who was a Grenville, he had three
sons: the Earl who succeeded him; Charles, who was killed at
the battle of Corunna; and James, who died at Caen Wood,
the villa of his father-in-law the Earl of Mansfield. Lady
Hester was born at Chevening, Kent, on the 12th of March,
eccentric woman is probably
Her character was as extra-
}
424
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
1776. At a very early age she displayed an unusual force and
originality of character, and she grew up to be a woman of
great personal charm. She was the leading spirit, whether
in dancing, riding, or providing amusements for the house-
hold. She also guided her sisters in politics as well as in
private life. The early discipline as applied to herself, how-
ever, made her swear eternal hatred against all Swiss and
French governesses. The governess at Chevening pinched in
her back by boards, and endeavoured to pinch her foot and
flatten its high instep. The children saw little of their parents,
for Lady Stanhope was a woman of fashion, and Lord Stan-
hope was wrapped up in his philosophical pursuits. But
as Lady Hester grew up she attracted admiration by her
fine and majestic figure. The roses and lilies were blended in
her cheeks, she had a bewitching smile, and her complexion
was like alabaster. Her head was a perfect oval, the eye-
brows were arched and fine, the eyes were greyish-blue, and
although each feature taken alone was not strictly beautiful,
her whole appearance was such as to make most women
envious. She was nearly six feet in height, with a full and
well-proportioned figure, and while her mien was majestic, her
address was eminently graceful. She was pleasing and
eloquent in conversation, quick at wit and repartee, and
from first to last her knowledge of human nature was most pro-
found. She was full of courage, both moral and physical, was
undaunted, and proud as Lucifer. Reading was rather
distasteful to her, and she despised history, because she said she
had found the histories of her own times to be full of lies.
George III. was greatly taken by Lady Hester's independent
spirit; and once when he was going away from Lord Romney's
he wanted to put her bodkin between himself and the Queen.
When the Queen had got into the carriage, he said to her, 'My
dear, Lady Hester is going to ride bodkin with us: I am going
to take her away from Democracy Hall.' But as she had
not got her maid with her, it was decided that it would be
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
425
inconvenient to take her at such short notice. 'Democracy
Hall' was an allusion to Lord Stanhope's advanced Radical
opinions. Pitt was attached to his niece Hester from the first,
more so than to any other member of her family. When he was
reproached for allowing her such unreserved liberty of action
in state matters, and in affairs where his friends advised him to
question her on the motives for her conduct, he would answer,
'I let her do as she pleases; for if she were resolved to cheat
the devil she could do it.' But she was wise beyond her years,
and had always a reason for her actions, however harebrained
they might seem. The Premier once said to her, 'If you were
a man, Hester, I would send you on the Continent with 60,000
men, and give you carte blanche; and I am sure that not one of
my plans would fail, and not one soldier would go with his
shoes unblacked.' He had the highest opinion of her mind
and talents, and when someone said to him, 'I suppose Lady
Hester will never marry till she can get a man as clever as
herself,' he replied, 'Then she will never marry at all.'
Lady Hester went to reside altogether with her uncle in
1803, and from that time forth, as mistress of his establishment,
and his most trusted confidant in public matters until his
death, 'she had full scope for the exercise of her imperious
and queenly instincts.' When on his death-bed, Pitt left a
written request that she might have £1,500 a year, and
ultimately a pension of £1,200 a year was assigned her
by the King. Fox offered to provide for her in a more
generous manner still, but she proudly declined his offers,
being unwilling to accept benefit at the hands of the political
enemy of her late uncle. After Pitt's death in 1806 she
established herself in Montague Square with her two brothers;
but the great change from the excitement of her previous
career to the life of an ordinary woman of her own rank,
and with but limited means, proved irksome to her. Then
troubles befell her in 1808 by the death at Corunna of her
favourite brother, Major Stanhope, as well as of Sir John
426
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Moore, for whom she is understood to have cherished
an affection. Disgusted with London and its society, she
retired into Wales, and resided in a small cottage at
Builth, near Brecon, where she occupied herself in caring for
the poor, and in attending to her dairy and other rustic occu-
pations.
But even in this quiet spot she was subject to the interrup-
tion of friends from the great world, so in 1810 she left
England never to return. She was accompanied in the
character of physician by Dr. Meryon, who afterwards edited
.her Memoirs and her Travels, which extended to six volumes.
When the Memoirs were published they were so outspoken that
those who had been stung began to malign and vilify the
writer. Dr. Meryon therefore felt compelled to break this
lance in her defence in his preface to the Travels :
C
Mr. Pitt, owing to his long administration, was surrounded
by many coadjutors, who were raised by his patronage and
favour to high places in the Government. His generous nature
led him to tolerate in some of them a line of conduct based
on principles and motives less pure than his own. These men,
in becoming the channel of advancement to others of an
inferior class, created a host of followers who thought it, and,
where they survive, may think it still, a party duty to sup-
port the reputation of those persons to whom they owed their
advancement. Mr. Pitt's niece and companion, Lady Hester,
endowed with a finer discrimination of character than her
uncle, and enabled, from her position as a bystander, to take a
juster measure of the abilities and motives of those who seemed
to be acting with him, could scarcely bear with the stupidity of
some, the duplicity of others, and the baseness of almost all.
Gifted by nature with a most retentive memory, so as to be
able to compare men's actions and assertions from time to
time, just in her appreciation of their designs, fearless of their
anger and a match for their ridicule, disclaiming all compro-
mise with insincerity and vice, she aimed with an unerring
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
427
hand the shafts of her disdain at all those whose vices and
perfidy called forth her execration.
'Let those, therefore, who are open to conviction, correct
their judgment and be undeceived. Let them be persuaded
that, although the adherents of a Heliogabalus, of a versatile,
or an insincere minister, a pompous lord, or an intriguing
duchess may for a time be successful in their abuse, truth
at length will prevail, and the indignation of a noble-minded,
upright, and virtuous woman become matter of history.'
Lady Hester Stanhope and her party embarked at Ports-
mouth on the 10th of February, 1810, with the object of pro-
ceeding to the Mediterranean. On arriving at Gibraltar she
was lodged at the Governor's, in the convent, for some time.
Leaving there in the course of a month or so, she proceeded
to Malta, the travelling party being now increased by the
Marquis of Sligo and Mr. Michael Bruce. The latter had
assisted Sir Robert Wilson and Mr. Hutchinson in effecting
the escape of Lavallette from prison on the eve of his execution.
I have alluded to this escape in the article on Lady Morgan.
In July, Lady Hester Stanhope found herself at Zante, from
whence she passed over to Patras. Traversing Greece, she
next visited Constantinople, and from that city she sailed for
Egypt. A stay was made at the city of Brusa, which stands
at the foot of Mount Olympus, one of the highest mountains
in Asia Minor. Lady Hester was enchanted with the vale of
Brusa, which she thus described in a letter to a friend :
How I wish you were here to enjoy this delicious climate,
and the finest country I ever beheld! Italy is nothing to it in
point of magnificence. The town of Brusa is situated at the
foot of the Mount Olympus; it is one of the largest towns and
may be considered the capital of Asia Minor; the houses are
like all Turkish houses, bad in themselves but so interspersed
with trees and mosques that the whole has a fine effect; the
view is quite delightful over an immense plain, more rich and
beautiful than anything I ever saw, covered with trees, shrubs,
►
428
27
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
and flowers of all descriptions; the rides are charming, and the
horses better than any of those I have met with out of
England.
'How beautiful are these Asiatic women! they go to the
bath from fifty to five hundred together, and when I was bath-
ing the other day the wife of a deposed pasha begged I would
finish my bathing at a bath half a mile off, that she might have
the pleasure of my society, but this I declined; they bathe
with all their ornaments on-trinkets I mean-and when they
have finished they bind up their hair with flowers, and eat and
talk for hours, then cover up their faces, all but their eyes,
and sit under trees till the evening.'
The travellers were overtaken by a terrible storm when near
Rhodes. The ship sprang a leak and was lost, but Lady
Hester, her maid, Mrs. Fry, and the rest of the party got safe
to land after many privations. It was now that Lady Hester
Stanhope determined on abandoning the European costume,
her reasons for this in the first instance being thus stated by
the Doctor :
'As many things that were necessary for us in our destitute
situation could not be procured at Rhodes, arrangements were
made for my immediate departure to Smyrna, in order to pur-
chase a refit for the whole party. It will be thought by many
persons that Lady Hester Stanhope violated too far the regard
due to her sex in the resolution she now adopted of equipping
herself as a man and as a Turk. But let it be recollected that
she had lost everything in the shipwreck, and that even the
cities of the Levant, had she been in one, had neither milliners
nor mantuamakers who understood how to make European
female dresses, nor materials for them could she have made
them herself. The impossibility of getting what she wanted
was therefore so evident that she unavoidably made choice of
the Turkish costume, in which the long robes, the turban, the
yellow slippers and pelisses have really nothing incompatible
with female attire. Thus she was enabled to travel unveiled,
.
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
429
which, in women's clothes, would have been contrary to the
usages of the country; and, as Lady Hester decided on aban-
doning the English costume, the rest of the party did the
same.'
In February, 1812, the party safely reached Alexandria, which
Lady Hester thought quite hideous. After a fortnight's stay
she took her departure for Cairo, which was reached on March
12. Here her ladyship's first care was to equip herself with
proper clothes in which to appear before the Pasha. She chose
the costume of the people of Barbary, and purchased a
sumptuous dress, beautifully embroidered, of purple velvet and
gold. Ladies will be interested in learning that for her turban
and girdle she bought two handsome cashmere shawls, each at
£50. Her pantaloons, most richly embroidered in gold, cost
£40; her waistcoat and her pelisse, £50; her sabre, £20;
and her saddle, £35. Other articles necessary to the com-
pletion of the costume amounted to £100 more. This
important visit was very interesting to the Pasha, who had
never seen an Englishwoman of rank before. And in truth her
ladyship's arrival in Cairo had created a wonderful curiosity in
all ranks, both of Turks and Christians, and everybody was
ambitious to make her acquaintance. The Pasha sent five
horses, richly caparisoned after the Mameluke fashion, on
which Lady Hester and her retinue were conducted to the
Usbekéah palace, where much honour was shown to the party.
The Pasha received Lady Hester in a small kiosk which had
the appearance of a fairy palace. Everything was gorgeous in
the extreme; coffee and sherbet were served, and then the
pipe was offered to her ladyship, but this was declined, as she
had not yet learned to smoke. Before leaving, Lady Hester was
taken through the apartments of the harem.
From Egypt the travellers proceeded to the Holy Land. As
they neared Jerusalem, Lady Hester recalled vividly the fact
that years before a fortune-teller named Brothers had predicted
that she was to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to pass
+
430
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
འ
seven years in the Desert, to become the Queen of the
Jews, and to lead forth a chosen people. She now saw
the first part of the prophecy verified; and she often
openly, but laughingly, avowed that she had so much faith in
the prediction as to expect to see its final accomplishment.
She was deeply moved as first one spot and then another
appeared, memorable in the history of Palestine. A journey to
Nazareth was next undertaken, and here the party fell in with
Sheikh Ibrahim, who was none other than the celebrated
traveller Burckhardt. At Acre they saw Gezzàr Pasha, of
whose fearful vengeance upon the women of his seraglio for
their intrigues with the Mamelukes, sickening stories are told.
He seems to have been a monster of blood and lust. The
country of the Druses was soon entered, and on the 1st of
September the party arrived at the ancient city of Damascus.
Dr. Meryon says with regard to Lady Hester's entry: The
reader is aware that, throughout the East, women, above the
level of peasantry, dare not go unveiled. It is therefore always
with sentiments of contempt that European ladies, who may
F
· chance to visit or to reside at the seaports of the Ottoman
Empire, are beheld by the natives when they are seen unveiled
out of doors. But the protection afforded by consuls, on the
one hand, and the necessity of being on a good understanding
with the Frank merchants, from whom they gain so much, on
the other, together with other causes, induce them to tolerate
the custom. It is not so in the interior, where the intercourse is
less; and it was an opinion then current in the Levant that no
man even could venture to appear at Damascus, the inhabi-
tants of which place were considered as most bigoted, in
European clothes. Lady Hester, therefore, needed no little
courage to undergo the trial that awaited her. A woman, un
veiled, and in man's attire, she entered in broad daylight one
of the most fanatical towns in Turkey.
'From the moment of quitting Dayr el Kamar, the Turkish
Chokadar had once or twice hinted to Mr. Bertrand, the inter-
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
431
preter, that it would be necessary for her ladyship to veil her-
self on entering Damascus, otherwise the populace might
insult her. Mr. Bertrand, noved by his own terrors, did not
fail to back the Chokadar's opinion, and was utterly dismayed
when he understood, from her own mouth, that she should
brave public opinion, dressed as she was, and day by day. I
think it was at this time that she began to wear a fine Bagdad
abah, or mantle, which Mrs. Rich had sent her. About four
in the afternoon the cavalcade, which consisted of fifteen or
eighteen horsemen and as many loaded mules, reached the
suburbs, where I met it as it advanced. The people gazed at us,
and all eyes were turned towards her ladyship. Her feminine
looks passed with many, without doubt, for those of a beardless
youth. More saw at once that it must be a woman; but,
before they could recover from their astonishment, we had
passed on. Thus we arrived, followed by a few boys only, at
the Christian quarter of the city, and went to the house which
had been prepared for her reception.'
Lady Hester paid a visit of some ceremony to the Pasha of
Damascus, Sayd Suliman. It was considered a very formidable
undertaking for a woman, but she went through it with dignity,
and was not at all disconcerted. Her janissary remarked after-
wards, 'Your ladyship's reception was very grand,' and upon
her replying, Yes; but this is all vanity,' he added, 'Oh! my
lady, you carry the splendour of royalty on your forehead, with
the humility of a dervise at your heart!' Lady Hester found
that the extraordinary and mysterious people, the Druses, who
inhabited Mount Lebanon, ate the flesh of animals raw. The
Emir Beshýr, or Prince of the Druses, and the Shaykh Beshýr,
the Governor, received her with unequalled honours. For
once Lady Hester was deceived in her boasted reading of
character. The Prince, whom she at first thought to be a mild,
amiable man, proved to be one of the most sanguinary of
Eastern tyrants. She was the first traveller whom the Governor
ever allowed to walk over his palace, which had been the scene
432
WOMEN OF RENOWN
!
of several massacres. Two days spent under his roof she enjoyed
greatly; yet the Governor judged it necessary to make one of
his chief officers taste out of her cup before she drank, for fear
of poison. She was used to that, but was rather surprised on
this occasion, as the man who presented the cup on his knees
looked more solemn than usual.
'When it is considered,' says Dr. Meryon, 'how very
fanatical the inhabitants of Damascus were, and in what great
abhorrence they held infidels; that native Christians could
only inhabit a particular quarter of the town; and that no one
of these, at the peril of having his bones broken by the first
angry Turk he met, could ride on horseback within the walls,
or wear as part of his dress any coloured cloth or turban that
was showy, it will be matter of surprise how completely these
prejudices were laid aside in favour of Lady Hester and of
those persons who were with her. She rode out every day;
and, according to the custom of the country, coffee was poured
on the road before her horse by several of the inhabitants, in
order to do her honour. It was said that, in going through a
bazaar, all the people in it rose up as she passed--an honour
never paid but to a pasha or to the mufti ; but, as I was not
present, I do not assert the thing positively. On no occasion
was she insulted; and although a crowd constantly assembled
at her door at the time she was expected to appear, and awaited
her return home, she was always received by an applauding
buzz of the populace; and the women, more especially, would
call out, Long life to her! May she live to return to her
country!" with many other exclamations in use among them.'
tr
From Damascus, Lady Hester Stanhope journeyed to the
country of the Bedouins. She was received with awe and
wonder at Palınyra, whose inhabitants came to regard her as a
The scene
queen.
as she approached Palmyra is thus
described:
On entering the Valley of the Tombs, Lady Hester's
attention was absorbed in viewing the strange wonders around
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
433
her. But a still more extraordinary sight, prepared by the
Palmyrenes, here awaited her. In order to increase the effect
which ruins cause on those who enter them for the first time,
the guides led us up through the long colonnade which extends
four thousand feet in length from north-west to south-east in a
line with the gate of the temple. This colonnade is terminated
by a triumphal arch. The shaft of each pillar, to the right and
left, at about the height of six feet from the ground, has a
projecting pedestal, called in architecture a console, under
several of which is a Greek or Palmyrene inscription; and
upon each there once stood a statue, of which at present no
vestige remains excepting the marks of the cramp-iron for the
feet. What was our surprise to see, as we rode up the avenue,
and just as the triumphal arch came in sight, that several
beautiful girls (selected, as we afterwards learned, from the age
of twelve to sixteen) had been placed on these very pedestals,
in the most graceful postures, and with garlands in their hands
--their elegant shapes being but slightly concealed by a single
loose robe, girded at the waist with a zone, and a white crape
veil covering their heads. On each side of the arch other girls,
no less lovely, stood by threes, whilst a row of six was ranged
across the gate of the arch, with thyrsi in their hands. Whilst
Lady Hester advanced, these living statues remained immove-
able on their pedestals; but when she had passed, they leaped
upon the ground, and joined in a dance by her side. On reach-
ing the triumphal arch, the whole in groups, together with men
and girls intermixed, danced around her. Here some bearded
elders chanted verses in her praise, and all the spectators
joined in chorus. The sight was truly interesting, and I have
seldom seen one that moved my feelings more. Lady Hester
herself seemed to partake of the emotions to which her presence
in this remote spot had given rise, nor was the wonder of the
Palmyrenes less than our own. They beheld with amazement
a woman who had ventured thousands of miles from her own
country, and had now crossed a waste where hunger and thirst
FF
434
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
were only a part of the evils to be dreaded. The procession
advanced, after a pause, to the gate of the temple, being by
this time increased by the addition of every man, woman, and
child in the village. At length she reached the cottage which
had been prepared for her.'
Lady Hester found the Palmyreans a very intelligent race.
She assured Lord Sligo later that the idea of telling them cock-
and-bull stories and treating them like fools, with the view of
hoodwinking them, was perfectly incorrect; they were much
more difficult to manage than any Europeans she had ever
Respecting etiquette and politeness, they certainly far
exceeded even the Turks; and for eloquence and beauty of
ideas they were undoubtedly beyond any other people in the
world.
seen.
At Latakia Lady Hester was prostrated with the plague, and
she had only just gained sufficient strength to take her departure
when she was seized with an ague, her maid being at the same
time down with a nervous fever. But on the 6th of January,
1814, the indomitable lady traveller resolved on setting forward.
She was conveyed on an ass to the water side, and went on
board a lugger, which conveyed her to Tripoli. Then Sayda har-
bour was made, and here a stay of some time occurred. From
this period Lady Hester, instead of being a wanderer, now
became a sojourner in a strange land. Abandoning Europe
and its customs altogether, she conformed herself entirely to
the modes of life of the Orientals. 'Not that it is clear
whether she was fixed in such a determination at first, but,
unwilling to return to England, with which country she had
become, for several reasons, disenchanted, and finding no
other on the Continent sufficiently quiet to insure a permanent
asylum, she thought she would remain some time longer in
Syria, where, looking down on the world from the top of
Mount Lebanon, she might calmly contemplate its follies and
vicissitudes, neither mixed up with the one nor harassed by
the other.' Another reason for her stay in Syria was that she
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
435
believed she had obtained a clue to certain vast hidden treasures
which had hitherto eluded all the searches instituted by the
Porte; and she had applied to the Turkish Government for
permission to dig for them.
She consequently fixed upon the deserted monastery of Mar
Elias for her residence. It was a quadrangular stone building
of one story, covering a considerable extent of ground, but
having few good rooms in it. 'The situation is picturesque, but
lonely and barren, on the top of a mountain without verdure,
surrounded on every side with mountains equally sterile, ex-
cepting a few olive and mulberry trees on a shelving bank at
the back of the building, which were not to be come at save by
a circuitous path, or by leaping down a perpendicular rock of
twenty feet. Though now on Mount Lebanon, where the
imagination of the reader will supply him with umbrageous
cedars at every step, fiction alone could throw their shade
over Dayr Mar Elias. From its elevated situation the monastery
commands a most extensive view of the sea, from which it is
distant in a straight line about two miles. But the sea, on the
Syrian coast, is only a vast waste, where small craft are seen
coasting before the wind, and now and then a three-masted
vessel in the distance. The magnificent spectacle of a passing
fleet, so common in the British Channel, is here unknown.'
It was about the 20th of February, 1814, that Lady Hester
took possession of her mountain abode. Here she began to
lead her new and strange life, and in a very short time, by the
force and fearlessness of her character, she obtained a wonderful
ascendency over the rude races around her. She gradually
acquired the reputation of a prophetess, and came herself
partially, if not wholly, to believe in it. She not only adopted
the garb of a Mohammedan chieftain, but something of his
religion, so that ultimately her creed was compounded of about
equal proportions from the Koran and the Bible. Her home
became the refuge of all the persecuted and the distressed.
In 1832 she defied Mehemet Ali to take her fortress, and
FF 2
436
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
whether from gallantry to a woman, or some other motive, that
redoubtable warrior deemed it prudent to leave her undisturbed.
In 1815 Lady Hester conceived a plan for an association of
literary men and artists, whom she proposed inviting from
Europe for the purpose of prosecuting discoveries in every
branch of knowledge, and of journeying over different parts of
the Ottoman Empire. She aimed, in fact, at creating an Insti
tute like that which Bonaparte led with him to Egypt, and of
which she was to be the head. It was obvious, however, that no
private person could possibly command the wealth or the in-
fluence necessary to the successful action of such an associa-
tion, and the undertaking fell through. Yet, so enamoured
was she of the idea, that she drew up memorials to be presented
to different persons whom she wished to enlist and engage in
the work. A memorandum showed that she proposed to carry
the scheme through by subscriptions, levied according to the
wealth of the individual.
With regard to the hidden treasure already alluded to, a
manuscript had been put into Lady Hester's hands, said to
have been surreptitiously copied by a monk from the records
of a Frank monastery in Syria, and found among his papers
after his decease. It was written in Italian, and disclosed the
repositories of immense hoards of money, buried in the cities
of Ascalon, Awgy, and Sidon, in certain spots therein men-
tioned. There were many plausible reasons why this might be
so, including the frequent revolts in this region and the forced
levies made on wealthy inhabitants, which would naturally lead
them to bury their treasure out of sight. Lady Hester ob-
tained firmans from the Porte authorising her to make re-
searches, and she conceived various plans for raising the neces-
sary funds. Nothing practical came of them, however, and the
immense treasures, if really in existence, remained undis
covered. In the spring of 1815, Lady Hester again braved
the perils of an Eastern journey, and visited Acre, Bussa, and
Ascalon.
LADY 437
ADY
HESTER STANHOPE
On reaching Ascalon, Lady Hester set on foot systematic
excavations in that ancient city, with a view of discovering the
hidden treasure; and these excavations resulted in the unearth-
ing of a remarkable statue, which probably belonged to the
age of the successors of Alexander, or it might be that of
Herod himself. As she gave orders for the statue to be
destroyed, a charge of vandalism was brought against her,
which resulted in much obloquy being cast upon her name.
The singular circumstances attaching to the destruction of this
valuable relic of antiquity are thus related by Dr. Meryon :—
'I had made a pen sketch of the statue, and had represented
to Lady Hester that her labours, if productive of no golden
treasures, had brought to light one more valuable in the eyes of
the lovers of the fine arts, and that future travellers would come
to visit the ruins of Ascalon, rendered memorable by the
enterprise of a woman, who, though digging for gold, yet
rescued the remains of antiquity from oblivion. What was my
astonishment when she answered: “This may be all true; but
it is my intention to break up the statue and have it thrown into
the sea, precisely in order that such a report may not get
abroad, and I lose with the Porte all the merit of my disin-
terestedness."
'When I heard what her intentions were, I made use of
every argument in my power to dissuade her from it, telling
her that the apparent vandalism of such an act could never be
wiped away in the eyes of virtuosi, and would be the less ex-
cusable, as I was not aware that the Turks had either claimed
the statue or had forbidden its preservation. It was true, that,
whilst sketching it, the people had expressed their surmises at
what I could find to admire in a broken image; and I heard
some of them conjecture that it might be a deity of the Franks,
as it had been of the Romans and Greeks. But no idle
notions, I insisted, ought to have weight on her mind; and I
begged hard that, if she could not with decency carry it away,
she would at least leave it for others to look at.
She replied,
438
women of renown.
2
“Malicious men may say I came to search for antiquities for my
country, and not for treasures for the Porte; so, go this
instant, take with you half a dozen stout fellows, and break it into
a thousand pieces!" Her resolution was not a thing of the mo-
ment: she had reflected on it for two days; and knowing her
unalterable determination on such occasions, I went and did as
she desired. When Mohammed Aga saw what had been done,
he could not conceal his vexation: for it is probable that Lady
Hester had read what was passing in his mind, and had thus
prevented many an insinuation against her. Indeed, reports
were afterwards circulated that the chest of the statue was
found full of gold-half of which was given to the Pasha and
the other half kept by Lady Hester. In England, where her
motives were unknown, people naturally have decried her
conduct, although it is plain that her integrity ought to prove
her justification.'
All the researches at Ascalon having proved fruitless, Lady
Hester came to the conclusion that when Gezzàr Pasha embel-
lished the City of Acre by digging for marble and other
materials in the ruins of Ascalon, he was fortunate enough to
discover the treasure. It was generally conceded that Gezzàr
had enriched his coffers by wealth so obtained, and his pre-
tended mania for building was regarded as a cloak to conceal
his real motive for excavating. However, while the experiment.
failed in its primary object, it had the desirable effect of es-
tablishing Lady Hester's popularity throughout Syria, and of
confirming the belief that she was a person of some considera-
tion, even in the eyes of the Sublime Porte. Lady Hester
wrote to Lord Bathurst, the English Secretary of State, in-
forming him that, knowing how much the statue would be prized
by English travellers, she had ordered it to be broken into a
thousand pieces, so that malicious people might not say she
came to look for statues for her countrymen, and not for
treasures for the Porte. As Lady Hester considered that her
researches, if successful, would have brought credit on the
LADY HESTER STANIIOPE.
439
English name, and as she acted with the cognisance of the
British Minister at Constantinople, she applied to the latter to
be reimbursed her expenses. The application failed, however,
and from this time pecuniary matters began to weigh heavily
upon her.
In the year 1816 Lady Hester was joined by Miss Williams,
a young lady strongly attached to her, who ventured on the
voyage from Malta to Cyprus alone. Miss Williams owed her
education and the care of her younger years to the protec-
tion of Mr. Pitt. Lady Hester afterwards took her near her
person, and she left England with her ladyship for Malta in
1810. She now proceeded from Malta, by way of Rhodes,
Cyprus, and Beyrout, for Mount Lebanon, and reached Mar
Elias in safety. Lady Hester was visited at this time by Mr.
W. J. Bankes, afterwards member of Parliament for Cam-
bridge University, and subsequently by Mr. J. Silk Buckingham,
founder of The Athenæum. Mr. Buckingham wore the
Turkish dress, and looked very much like a Mahometan.
His stay was a very pleasant one for Lady Hester. After he
had left, in April, 1816, Lady Hester wrote to her relative, the
Marquis of Buckingham, a letter on the events which had
recently convulsed Europe. From this letter, which shows at
once her outspokenness and her power of language, I make the
following extract:
"You cannot doubt that a woman of my character, and
(I presume to say) of my understanding, must have held in
contempt and aversion all the statesmen of the present day,
whose unbounded ignorance and duplicity have brought ruin
on France, have spread their own shame through all Europe,
and have exposed themselves not only to the ridicule, but to
the curses of present and future generations. One great mind,
one single enlightened statesman, whose virtues had equalled
his talents, was all that was wanting to effect, at this unex-
ampled period, the welfare of all Europe, by taking advantage
of events the most extraordinary that have ever occurred in
•
440
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
13
t
any era.
The moment is gone by; an age of terror and perfidy
has succeeded. Horrible events will take place, and those
who find themselves farthest from the scenes which will be
acted may consider themselves the most fortunate.
(
Cease, therefore, to torment me: I will not live in Europe,
even were I, in flying from it, compelled to beg my bread.
Once only will I go to France, to see you and James, but only
that once. I will not be amartyr for nothing. The grand-
daughter of Lord Chatham, the niece of the illustrious Pitt,
feels herself blush, as she writes, that she was born in England,
-that England, who has made her accursed gold the counter-
poise to justice; that England, who puts weeping humanity
in irons, who has employed the valour of her troops, destined
for the defence of her national honour, as the instrument to en-
slave a free-born people; and who has exposed to ridicule and
humiliation a monarch who might have gained the goodwill
of his subjects, if those intriguing English had left him to
stand or fall upon his own merits.
What must be, if he reflects, the feelings of that monarch's
mind? But it is possible that his soul is too pure to enable
him to dive into the views of others, and to see that he has
merely been their tool. And may Heaven inspire him with
the sentiments of Henry IV. (a name too often profaned),
who would have trod the crown under his feet rather than have
received it upon the conditions with which your friend has
accepted it.'
M
Lady Hester's vigorous method of dealing with personal
matters was shown some time later. Dr. Wolff, a converted
Jew, finding himself at Sayda-which was near to Mar Elias -
forwarded to Miss Williams a letter from her sister, Mrs. David,
at the same time stating that he should be happy to send her
reply to her sister at Malta. Miss Williams had probably had
enough of life in the deserted convent, and desired to return.
Lady Hester no doubt suspected this, and was resolved to
cut off all communication with Dr. Wolff, who might have
5
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
441
facilitated Miss Williams's return. The Doctor, expecting a
letter from Miss Williams, received instead this violent epistle
from Lady Hester: 'I am astonished that an apostate should
dare thrust himself into notice in my family. Had you been a
learned Jew, you never would have abandoned a religion, rich
in itself although defective, to embrace the shadow of one.
Light travels faster than sound: therefore, the Supreme Being
could never have allowed his creatures to be left in utter dark-
ness, until paid and speculating wanderers deem it proper
to raise their venal voice to enlighten them.' The astounded
Wolff who was really an able man, and a justly-esteemed
philanthropist-replied that he could scarcely believe her
ladyship's letter to be genuine, but with regard to his views and
pursuits, they gave him perfect tranquillity and happiness, and
were quite immaterial to her ladyship. Dr. Wolff informed
Dr. Meryon that the bearer of his letter was bastinadoed by
Lady Hester, and kicked downstairs and the poor fellow re-
turned to Sayda lame, and told him that 'the daughter of the
King of England had beaten him.’
:
*
The perils of Syrian exploration were painfully exemplified
in the case of Colonel Boutin, whose fate was thus recorded
in the Courrier Français for April 29, 1830: 'Towards the
year 1811, Colonel Boutin received orders from the Emperor
to visit the East. He was intrusted with a mission to explore
Syria, to learn Arabic, and, at a fit opportunity, to penetrate into
Arabia and describe that country. On that occasion he made
the acquaintance of Pitt's niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, sub-
sequently crowned Queen of Palmyra by the Bedouins in
1821. He met from her with a most honourable reception,
and, proud of her powerful protection, he was on the point
of succeeding in his enterprise, when he was assassinated in
the neighbourhood of Damascus by the Arabs, who sought
to rob him of a bag of coins which he had in his possession.
France knows how the murder of this illustrious traveller
was avenged by her ladyship, who caused his assassins to
442
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
be decapitated, and obtained the restitution of his baggage,
which she effected purely by her own personal influence and
efforts. Dr. Meryon adds that 'to this extract may be added
another mark of the gratitude of the French nation, by whom
her noble conduct was better appreciated than by her own
countrymen. She received the thanks of the French Chamber
of Deputies, after a speech relative to this affair made by
the Comte Delaborde.'
Mr. A. W. Kinglake, in his delightful book of travel,
Eōthen, devotes an entertaining chapter to a visit which he
paid to Lady Hester Stanhope in her mountain home. He
had heard much of her kindness, while in England, to his
mother's family. Indeed, her name was made almost as
familiar to him in his childhood as the name of Robinson
Crusoe. Both were associated with the spirit of adventure;
but whilst the imagined life of the cast-away mariner never
failed to seem glaringly real, the true story of the English-
woman ruling over Arabs always sounded to me like fable.'
He adds that 'in one of the drawers which were the delight
of my childhood, along with attar of roses, and fragrant
wonders from Hindostan, there were letters carefully trea-
sured, and trifling presents which I was taught to think
valuable, because they had come from the Queen of the
Desert, who dwelt in tents, and reigned over wandering
Arabs.' Being therefore in Syria, the traveller resolved, if
possible, to see his mother's friend, especially as Lady
Hester's name had become invested with fresh wonders ;
'for it was said that the woman was now acknowledged as
an inspired being by the people of the mountains, and it
was even hinted with horror that she claimed to be more
than a prophet.' Having received a cordial invitation from
the recluse of Lebanon, Mr. Kinglake set forth from Beyrout,
and after some difficulty reached the slopes of Lebanon. On
the summit before him was a broad grey mass of irregular
building, which from its position, as well as from the gloomy
6
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
443
blankness of its walls, gave the idea of a neglected fortress.
It was, in fact, the deserted monastery of Mar Elias, and
like most of the religious houses in this part of the world,
had been made strong enough for opposing an inert resis-
tance to any mere casual band of assailants who might be
unprovided with regular means of attack; this was the
dwelling-place of the Chatham's fiery granddaughter.' Her
ladyship sent her visitor a command to repose for a while
after the fatigues of his journey, and to dine. The cuisine
was Oriental, and very good, and he rejoiced too in the wine.
of the Lebanon.
Afterwards, an interview was granted him, and he thus
describes his strange hostess: 'At last I was ushered into
a small apartment, which was protected from the draughts.
of air through the door-way by a folding screen; passing this,
I came alongside of a common European sofa, where sat
the Lady Prophetess. She rose from her seat very formally,
spoke to me a few words of welcome, pointed to a chair
which was placed exactly opposite to her sofa at a couple
of yards distance, and remained standing up to the full of
her majestic height, perfectly still and motionless, until I had
taken my appointed place. She then resumed her seat, not
packing herself up according to the mode of the Orientals,
but allowing her feet to rest on the floor, or the footstool;
at the moment of seating herself she covered her lap with
a mass of loose white drapery, which she held in her hand.
It occurred to me at the time, that she did this in order to
avoid the awkwardness of sitting in manifest trousers under
the eye of an European; but I can hardly fancy now, that
with her wilful nature, she would have brooked such a com-
promise as this. The woman before me had exactly the
person of a prophetess-not, indeed, of the divine Sibyl
imagined by Domenichino, so sweetly distracted betwixt
Love and Mystery, but of a good, business-like, practical
prophetess, long used to the exercise of her sacred calling.
444
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
I have been told by those who knew Lady Hester Stanhope
in her youth, that any notion of resemblance betwixt her
and the great Chatham must have been fanciful; but at the
time of my seeing her, the large commanding features of the
gaunt woman, then sixty years old or more, certainly re-
minded me of the statesman that lay dying in the House of
Lords, according to Copley's picture; her face was of the
most astonishing whiteness; she wore a very large turban,
which seemed to be of pale cashmere shawls, so disposed
as to conceal the hair; her dress, from the chin down to
the point at which it was concealed by the drapery which
she held over her lap, was a mass of white linen loosely
folded--an ecclesiastical sort of affair-more like a surplice
than any of those blessed creatures which our souls love
under the name of " dress," and "frock," and "boddice,"
and “collar," and "habit-shirt," and sweet "chemisette.”
}
Mr. Kinglake observes that Lady Hester was bound to look
somewhat differently from the rest of womankind, for she had
had a great past. There had been something of grandeur in
her career. After the death of Lady Chatham, which happened
in 1803, she lived under the roof of her uncle, the second Pitt ;
and when he resumed the Government in 1804, she became
the dispenser of much patronage, and sole Secretary of State
for the department of Treasury banquets. Not having seen
the lady until late in her life, when she was fired with spiritual
ambition, I can hardly fancy that she could have performed her
political duties in the saloons of the minister with much of
feminine sweetness and patience; I am told, however, that she
managed matters very well indeed; perhaps it was better for
the lofty-minded leader of the House to have his reception-
rooms guarded by this stately creature, than by a merely clever,
and managing woman; it was fitting that the wholesome awe
with which he filled the minds of the country gentlemen,
should be aggravated by the presence of his majestic niece.'
The conversation between Lady Hester and her visitor
LADY HESTER. STANHOPE.
445
turned on the miraculous, as it was bound to do. Mr. King-
lake gave her some proofs of his aptness for the marvellous,
whereupon the prophetess went so far as to say that she would
adopt him as her pupil in occult science. The narrator then
proceeds: 'For hours and hours, this wondrous white woman
poured forth her speech, for the most part concerning sacred
and profane mysteries; but every now and then she would stay
her lofty flight, and swoop down upon the world again. When-
ever this happened, I was interested in her conversation. She
adverted more than once to the period of her lost sway amongst
the Arabs, and mentioned some of the circumstances which
aided her in obtaining influence with the wandering tribes.
The Bedouin, so often engaged in irregular warfare, strains his
eyes to the horizon in search of a coming enemy just as
habitually as the sailor keeps his "bright look out" for a
strange sail. In the absence of telescopes, a far-reaching sight
is highly valued, and Lady Hester possessed this quality to an
extraordinary degree. She told me that, on one occasion,
when there was good reason to expect a hostile attack, great
excitement was felt in the camp by the report of a far-seeing
Arab, who declared that he could just distinguish some moving
objects upon the very furthest point within the reach of his
eyes. Lady Hester was consulted, and she instantly assured
her comrades in arms that there were indeed a number of horses
within sight, but that they were without riders -the assertion
proved to be correct, and from that time forth, her superiority
over all others in respect of a far sight remained undisputed.
❤
'Lady Hester related to me this other anecdote of her Arab
life; it was when the heroic qualities of the Englishwoman
were just beginning to be felt amongst the people of the desert,
that she was marching one day along with the forces of the
tribe to which she had allied herself. She perceived that pre-
parations for an engagement were going on, and upon her
making enquiries as to the cause, the Sheik at first affected
mystery and concealment, but at last confessed that war had
C
446
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
been declared against his tribe on account of its alliance with
the English Princess, and that they were now, unfortunately,
about to be attacked by a very superior force. He made it
appear that Lady Hester was the sole cause of hostility betwixt
his tribe and the impending enemy, and that his sacred duty of
protecting the Englishwoman whom he had admitted as his
guest, was the only obstacle which prevented an amicable
arrangement of the dispute. The Sheik hinted that his tribe
was likely to sustain an almost overwhelming blow, but
at the same time declared, that no fear of the conse-
quences, however terrible to him and his whole people,
should induce him to dream of abandoning his illustrious
guest. The heroine instantly took her part; it was not for her
to be a source of danger to her friends, but rather to her
enemies, so she resolved to turn away from the people, and
trust for help to none save only her haughty self. The Sheiks
affected to dissuade her from so rash a course, and fairly told
her that although they (having been freed from her presence)
would be able to make good terms for themselves, yet that
there were no means of allaying the hostility felt towards her,
and that the whole face of the desert would be swept by the
horsemen of her enemies so carefully, as to make her escape
into other districts almost impossible. The brave woman was
not to be moved by terrors of this kind, and bidding farewell
to the tribe which had honoured and protected her, she turned
her horse's head and rode straight away from them, without
friend or follower. Hours had elapsed, and for some time she
had been alone in the centre of the round horizon, when her
quick eye perceived some horsemen in the distance. The
party came nearer and nearer. Soon it was plain they were
making towards her, and presently some hundreds of Bedouins,
fully armed, galloped up to her, ferociously shouting, and
apparently intending to take her life at the instant with their
pointed spears. Her face at the time was covered with the
yashmack according to the Eastern usage, but at the moment
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
447
when the foremost of the horsemen had all but reached her
with their spears, she stood up in the stirrups-withdrew the
yashmack that veiled the terrors of her countenance-waved
her arms slowly and disdainfully, and cried out with a loud
voice, "Avaunt!" The horsemen recoiled from her glance,
but not in terror. The threatening yells of the assailants were
suddenly changed for loud shouts of joy and admiration, at the
bravery of the stately English woman, and festive gun-shots
were fired on all sides around her honoured head. The truth
was, that the party belonged to the tribe with which she had
allied herself, and that the threatened attack, as well as the
pretended apprehension of an engagement, had been contrived.
for the mere purpose of testing her courage. The day ended
in a great feast, prepared to do honour to the heroine, and from
that time her power over the minds of the people grew rapidly.
Lady Hester related this story with great spirit, and I recollect
that she put up her yashmack for a moment, in order to give
me a better idea of the effect which she produced by suddenly
revealing the awfulness of her countenance.'
Lady Hester informed Mr. Kinglake that for her sin she had
subjected herself during many years to severe penance, and
that her self-denial had not been without its reward. Milk was
her only food, and her abstinence from food intellectual was
carried as far as her physical fasting; she never looked upon a
book or a newspaper, but 'trusted alone to the stars for her
sublime knowledge.' She spoke with great contempt of the
frivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans,
who were not only untaught in astrology, but were unac-
quainted with the common and every-day phenomena pro-
duced by magic art. She claimed to have sorcerous spells at
her command, but declined to exercise such powers because
they would be derogatory to her high rank in the heavenly
kingdom. She believed the time was coming when the hidden
treasures of the earth would become available to those who
had true occult knowledge. Ibrahim Pasha, she said, was a
K
448
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
bold, bad man, who possessed the common and wicked magi-
cal arts upon which she looked down with contempt; but she
added that Ibrahim's life was charmed against balls and steel,
and that after a battle he would loosen the folds of his shawl and
shake out the bullets like dust. The St. Simonians had made
overtures to her, but she did not join them, though she believed
they were destined to find 'the Mystic Mother.' Mr. Kinglake
goes on to say:
'The Prophetess announced to me that we were upon the
eve of a stupendous convulsion, which would destroy the then
recognised value of all property upon earth; and, declaring that
those only who should be in the East at the time of the great
change, could hope for greatness in the new life that was now
close at hand, she advised me, whilst there was time, to dis-
pose of my property in fragile England, and gain a station in
Asia; she told me that, after leaving her, I should go into
Egypt, but that in a little while I should return into Syria. I
secretly smiled at this last prophecy as a "bad shot," for I had
fully determined, after visiting the Pyramids, to take ship from
Alexandria for Greece. But men struggle vainly in the meshes
of their destiny; the unbelieved Cassandra was right after all;
the Plague came, and the necessity for avoiding the quarantine
to which I should have been subjected if I had sailed from
Alexandria, forced me to alter my route; I went down into
Egypt and stayed there for a time, and then crossed the desert
once more, and came back to the mountains of the Lebanon
exactly as the Prophetess had foretold.
'Lady Hester talked to me long and earnestly on the subject
of religion, announcing that the Messiah was yet to come; she
strove to impress me with the vanity and the falseness of all
European creeds, as well as with a sense of her own spiritual
greatness; throughout her conversation upon these high topics,
she skilfully insinuated, without actually asserting, her heavenly
rank.
'When Lady Hester left for a time her high subjects of dis-
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
449
course, and descended to worldly chat, she could be like some
women to be met with in London drawing-rooms—cool, un-
sparing of enemies, full of audacious fun, and uttering the most
unpleasant truths. She heartily despised everything approach-
ing to exquisiteness, and affirmed that a brusque, determined
manner was more effective than any other with the Oriental.
She dealt fiercely with those she hated, and had a wonderful
facility in the details of vituperation.'
The interview with Mr. Kinglake lasted till after midnight,
and during its course the calumet of peace was frequently
smoked both by the lady and the gentleman.
Her ladyship's secretary, who had sacrilegiously begun to
doubt the divinity of his mistress-told her visitor, afterwards,
that she was greatly disliked by the surrounding people, whom
she oppressed by her exactions. Her fierce Albanians made it
'warm' for the inhabitants of the district, who were filled with a
wholesome respect for the prophetess. 'Now the being re-
spected amongst Orientals is not an empty or merely honorary
distinction, for, on the contrary, it carries with it a clear right
to take your neighbour's corn, his cattle, his eggs, and his
honey, and almost anything that is his, except his wives. This
law was acted upon by the Princess of Djoun, and her estab-
lishment was supplied by contributions apportioned amongst
the nearest of the villages.'
Mr. Kinglake had two more lengthy interviews with Lady
Hester the next day, and at the close of the second bade her
farewell. With her parting words she advised him to abandon
Europe-as she had strongly advised him on the first day-
and counselled him to seek his reward in the East, urging him
also to give the like advice to his father, and tell him that she
had said it. Mr. Kinglake believed that Lady Hester's un-
holy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom was the sug-
gestion of fierce and inordinate pride, perilously akin to mad-
ness; but even she had doubts occasionally as to her own
system. He did not, however, consider that her faith in
GG
450
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
astrology and magic science implied any aberration of intellect,
for she only believed these things in common with those
around her, and there was really little else but mystical lore to
occupy her time, or at least she would study little else.
When the news of the battle of Navarino, in 1827, reached
Sayda and Beyrout, the panic was so great that, in a single
hour, all the Franks at Sayda fled precipitately from their
homes, the greater part of them taking refuge with Lady
Hester Stanhope. In a spirit of the noblest generosity, and
with the greatest care and solicitude, she attended to their
wants, and kept them at a most serious expense to herself; she
further fed, clothed, and housed, for nearly two years, two hun-
dred wretched beings who had been rendered homeless by the
sacking of Acre; and what she did for large bodies of fugitives
she did for individuals, so that her dwelling became known as
a veritable castle of refuge.
Between Lady Hester's settlement at Mar Elias and her
death, her friend, Dr. Meryon, went backwards and forwards
to Europe on several occasions. One of his voyages from
Marseilles to Syria was rendered memorable by reason of a
small party of Englishmen, who, in company with several pious
ladies, had embarked for the purpose of proceeding to Pales-
tine and Persia with an object of making proselytes among
Jews and Mahomedans. These travellers included Mr. Parnell,
son of Sir Henry Parnell, afterwards Lord Congleton; and the
learned Mr. Francis W. Newman, brother of Cardinal Newman.
The finest proofs of Lady Hester Stanhope's courage were
manifested in her bold and open defiance of the power of the
Emir Beshýr, Prince of the Druses. Reference to the barbarities
of this monster has already been made, but it may now be added
that amongst other atrocities he cut out the tongues and put
out the eyes of five young princes, relatives of his own, whose
contingent prospects to the succession gave him uneasiness.
Yet, knowing him to be one of the most perfidious and blood-
thirsty tyrants that ever governed a Turkish province, Lady
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
45I
Hester openly defied him. Fearing her sympathy with, and
influence over, his rival Sheykh Beshýr, the Emir sent emissa-
ries to warn her of her peril if she did not leave Djoun.
'But Lady Hester Stanhope was not a a woman to be
frightened; and, when she found a fit opportunity, in the
presence of some other persons, of getting one of the Emir's
people before her, so as to be sure that what she said must
reich his ears and could not well be softened down, she
desired the emissary to go and tell his master that, "she knew
very well there was not a more profound and bloody tyrant on
the face of the earth; that she was aware no one was safe from
his poisons and daggers-but that she held him in the most
sovereign contempt and set him at defiance. Tell him," she
added, “that he is a dog and a monster, and that, if he means
to try his strength with me, I am ready." On another occasion,
one of the Emir Beshýr's people came on some message to her,
but, before he entered her room, laid by his pistols and his
sabre, which in Turkey these myrmidons always wear on their
persons. Lady Hester's maid whispered to her what the man
was doing, when her ladyship, calling him in, bade him gird on
his arms again. "Don't think I am afraid of you or your
master," she said; "you may tell him I don't care a fig for his
poisons-I know not what fear is. It is for him, and those who
serve him, to tremble. And tell the Emir Khalyh” (the Emir
Beshýr's son) "that if he enters my doors, I'll stab him-my
people shall not shoot him, but I will stab him-I, with my
own hand."
Lady Hester, after relating this to Dr. Meryon, thus pro-
ceeded: 'The beast, as I spoke to him, was so terrified, doctor,
that he trembled like an aspen leaf, and I could have knocked
him down with a feather. The man told the Emir Beshýr my
answer; for there was a tailor at work in the next room, who
saw and heard him, and spoke of it afterwards. The Emir
puffed such a puff of smoke out of his pipe when my message
was delivered-and then got up and walked out.
1
GG 2
452
WOMEN OF RENOWN,
'Why, what did Hamâady say to the Emir, when he was de-
liberating how he should get rid of me?-"You had better
have nothing to do with her. Fair or foul means, it is all alike to
her. She has been so flattered in her lifetime, that no praise
can turn her head. Money she thinks no more of than dirt;
and as for fear, she does not know what it is.
As for me, your
Highness, I wash my hands of her."
The Emir thought it wise to leave her ladyship alone,
although he had five hundred horsemen pillaging and murder-
ing in the neighbouring villages. Lady Hester had a strange
dislike to those of her own sex, but she was deeply moved
when her faithful companion Miss Williams died. This young
lady had followed her benefactress from a comfortable home,
to endure the numberless privations which constant refinement
want of society, and a residence in an uncivilised country
naturally brought with them. She had, further, not much
sympathy with the religious views of a fanatical lady who kept
in a magnificent stable two mares, which she fancied were
to bear her into Jerusalem with the Messiah at His next com-
ing, Lord Guildford, Mr. Fazakerly, and Mr. Gally Knight,
who were once at Brusa with Lady Hester, would often banter
her on her future greatness among the Jews. 'Well, madam,'
one or other of them would frequently say, 'you must go
to Jerusalem. Hester, Queen of the Jews! Hester, Queen of
the Jews!' The idea had not only gained strength with her
because of the prophecy of the English fortune-teller Brothers,
but because of an Eastern soothsayer, Metta, who professed to
show her the part she was to play in the East. He told her of
an old Arabic prophecy that a European female was to come
to reside on Mount Lebanon, and to acquire greater power
than the Sultan; that a boy without a father would join her,
whose destiny would be fulfilled under her wing; that the
coming of the Mahdi would follow, but after war, pestilence,
and other calamities; that the Mahdi would ride a horse born
saddled; and that a woman would come from a far country to
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
453
partake in the mission. At first, by the boy without a father,
Lady Hester thought the young Duke of Reichstadt was meant,
but she gave that up and waited for the real youth indicated.
Then when the Baroness de Fériat, an English lady residing in
the United States, wrote in 1835, out of admiration for Lady .
Hester's character, asking to come and live with her, she saw
the fulfilment of the prophecy concerning the 'woman from a
far country.'
(
Leaving now the Eastern life of Lady Hester, it will be in-
teresting to note a few of her English recollections, as pre-
served by Dr. Meryon. They were noted down by him after
their many conversations at Mar Elias. On one occasion the
talk turned upon her extraordinary likeness to her celebrated
grandfather, which Coutts the banker and others had noticed.
Then she added: My grandfather dived into futurity as I do.
Mr. Pitt, too, would often tell me how much I was like Lord
Chatham, my grandfather. Sometimes, when I was speaking
he would exclaim, "Good God! if I were to shut my eyes I
should think it was my father! And, how odd! I heard him
say almost those very words forty years ago." My grandfather,
doctor,' said Lady Hester, going on, 'had gray eyes, like mine,
and yet, by candlelight, from the expression that was in them,
one would have thought them black. When he was angry, or
speaking very much in earnest, nobody could look him in the
face. His memory, on things even of a common nature, and
his observations, were striking. On passing a place where he
had been ten years before, he would observe that there used to
be a tree, or a stone, or a something that was gone, and on in-
quiry it always proved to be so; yet he travelled always with
four horses at a great rate.'
Pitt ardently loved Lord Auckland's daughter, and she was
the only woman Lady Hester could have wished him to marry.
She was very beautiful, and Pitt'almost broke his heart when
he gave her up. But he considered that she was not a woman
to be left at will when business might require it, and he sacri-
454
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
ficed his feelings to his sense of public duty. Yet Mr. Pitt was
a man just made for domestic life, who would have enjoyed re-
tirement, digging his own garden, and doing it cleverly, too.
But it was God's will it should be otherwise.' Pitt's first and
only love afterwards became Lady Buckinghamshire.
Addington the statesman does not figure very highly in Lady
Hester's recollections. 'Mr. Addington wanted to be made----
would you believe it, doctor?-wanted to be made Lord
Raleigh, and I was determined he should not, if I could help
it. One morning Mr. Pitt came into the drawing-room to
speak to me, so I said to him, "What a pretty caricature they
have made about Addington "; and I described, as if I had
seen it, a caricature in which figured Queen Elizabeth, and
Mr. Addington and the King; and, with as much humour as I
could, made such a ridiculous picture that Mr. Pitt was quite
amused. Just as I had finished my description, somebody
came in, and interrupted the conversation, and, Mr. Pitt going
out to dinner, I saw no more of him. He, thinking what I
had told him was a fact, repeated the story to Mr. Addington
and others. Immediately, half-a-dozen people were despatched
to all the caricature shops to buy up the whole impression at
any price; but, as the whole was my invention, of course they
found none, for I had intended to say, "Fancy how ridiculous
a business it will appear if such a caricature is published,
which is very likely." So, when I saw Mr. Pitt next day, I told
him; but the fright they had been thrown in was so great, that
another title was chosen. Subsequently, Mr. Pitt never would
speak to Lord Sidmouth.'
For some reason or other the poet-statesman Lamartine had
vexed Lady Hester, yet it was through him that her Eastern
career first became known to Europeans. This is how she
deals with him: 'Look at Monsieur Lamartine, getting off his
horse half-a-dozen times to kiss his dog, and take him out of
his bandbox to feed him on the road from Beyrout here: the
very muleteers and servants thought him a fool. And then, that
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
455
{
}
way of thrusting his hands into his breeches' pockets, and stick-
ing out his legs as far as he could—what is that like? Monsieur
Lamartine is no poet, in my estimation, although he may be an
elegant versifier: he has no sublime ideas. Compare his ideas
with Shakspeare's-that was indeed a real poet. Oh, doctor,
what inspirations there are in that man! Even his imaginary
beings—his Ariels, his fairies, his Calibans—we see at once are
such as they would be if they had really existed. You don't be-
lieve in such things, but I do, and so did Shakspeare. He, I
am sure, had great knowledge of Eastern literature, somehow
or other.
'Monsieur Lamartine, with his straight body and straight
fingers, pointed his toes in my face, and then turned to
his dog and kissed him, and held long conversations with him.
They say he has £17,000 a year, and castles and villages. He
thought to make a great effect when he was here, but he was
grievously mistaken. I gave him a letter to Abu Ghosh, who
received him very well, but when he talked about himself, and
made out that he was a great man, Abu Ghosh said it was for
my sake, and not for his own, that he showed him as much
honour as he could.'
In speaking of M. Lascaris, of whom Monsieur Lamartine
had written a great deal, Lady Hester said M. Lascaris had the
heart of a Roman with the intrigue of a Greek. Lady Hester
regarded Queen Caroline as 'a nasty, vulgar, impudent woman,'
but she prevented her trial in the first instance because of the
scandal which would be created. Owing to her persuasion, the
Duke of Cumberland, Mr. Perceval, and the Lord Chancellor
quashed the proceedings. The papers were all printed,' she
said to Dr. Meryon, 'and it cost Mr. Perceval £10,000 out of
the secret service money to recover one copy which had been
taken off his table. Going out in a hurry, and forgetting to lock
it up, he had left the book open in his room. It was not a
thing to escape. Somebody stole it; and I know, to a
certainty, that it cost him £10,000 to get it back again."
456
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
Lady Hester was greatly embittered against George Canning.
She depreciated his appearance, his talents, and his eloquence
—all of which, she said, were entirely vitiated by his duplicity.
Canning, having heard that he was not a favourite with her,
once said to her, 'So, Lady Hester, you don't like me.' 'No,'
said she; 'they told me you were handsome, and I don't think
so.' Having given several instances of his alleged treachery to
Pitt, her ladyship exclaimed to her auditor-'Oh, Lord, when
I think of his duplicity! He was deceitful in everything.
only regret that he ever took me in as he did. But he was so art-
ful as to make me believe at last in his protestations of admira-
tion for Mr. Pitt; and, as Mr. Pitt was surrounded by such
fools as Castlereagh and Hawkesbury, I thought he might be
useful to him in lightening his labours, for he was clever and
wrote well, whilst Mr. Pitt could never trust Lord Castlereagh
to draw up an official paper, without having to cross out and
correct half of it. But the first time I saw him I thought him
insincere, and told Mr. Pitt so, and I did not scruple to add
how much I disliked him. "Oh !" Mr. Pitt replied, "he is very
amusing, and when you have seen more of him you will think
so, too.”—“Well, we shall see," said I. "You must like him,”
rejoined Mr. Pitt, "he is so brilliant." I answered, “Well, if I
must I must "—but I never did. It is true I took a great deal
of pains to get him into favour again when he was out of favour
with Mr. Pitt, but it was because I really believed him to be
Mr. Pitt's friend, and thought he would be another strong horse
in the stable.'
A very amusing anecdote is told of Lord Liverpool. 'Mr.
Pitt, having some intention of creating an order of merit,
desired the Cabinet Ministers each to give their opinions in turn
upon the coloured ribbon that should be used for the decora-
tion. Among the rest, Lord Liverpool said he had prepared
his, and that he would call in the evening to show it to him and
me. He accordingly came. You see," he observed with
much self-complacence, "I have endeavoured to combine such
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
457
>>
colours as will flatter the national vanity. Here is red for the
English flag, blue for liberty, and white to denote the purity of
motive." There were several persons present, and some of the
toadies were full of admiration. One cried, "Twas excellent,'
another that "The King would be greatly pleased with it,” a
third, "You had better take it down to Windsor," and so on.
"Yes," said I, "the King will be delighted with it. I myself
think the colours charming; for I know exactly how they will
look, as I have seen them very often." "Seen them!—Where?"
asked Lord Liverpool. "Why, in the French soldiers' cockades,"
answered I. Poor Lord Liverpool, who was a good sort of
man, but who had been putting himself forward in a thing he
was not fit for, and had stupidly overlooked the tri-coloured
flag, was thunderstruck. "What shall I do, Lady Hester ?" cried
he; "I have already got five hundred yards of ribbon made :
what can I do with it?" "Why," rejoined I, "it will serve,
my lord, to tie up your breeches: for, you know, you have
always such a load of papers in your breeches' pockets that
I quite fear to see them some day fall down." And so it was,
doctor; he used to ram his hands into his pockets, first on one
side and then on the other, in search of some paper or another,
just as if he was groping for an eel at the bottom of a pond.'
•
The following is a glimpse of Pitt's daily life: When I
think of the ingratitude of the English nation to Mr. Pitt, for
all his personal sacrifices and disinterestedness, for his life.
wasted in the service of his country!' Here Lady Hester's
emotions got the better of her, and she burst into tears: she
sobbed as she spoke. 'People little knew what he had to do.
Up at eight in the morning, with people enough to see for a
week, obliged to talk all the time he was at breakfast, and
receiving first one, then another, until four o'clock; then eating
a mutton chop, hurrying off to the House, and there badgered
and compelled to speak and waste his lungs until two or three
in the morning! Who could stand it? After this, heated as he
was, and having eaten nothing, in a manner of speaking, all
458
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
day, he would sup with Dundas, Huskisson, Rose, Mr. Long,
and such persons, and then go to bed to get three or four
hours' sleep, and to renew the same thing the next day, and
the next, and the next.'
The great Duke of Wellington is thus eulogised: When
Mr. Pitt was going to Bath, in his last illness, he told me he
had just seen Arthur Wellesley. He spoke of him with the
greatest commendation, and said the more he saw of him the
more he admired him. "Yes," he added, “the more I hear of
his exploits in India, the more I admire the modesty with.
which he receives the praises he merits for them. He is the
only man I ever saw that was not vain of what he had done,
and yet had so much reason to be so."
C
'This eulogium,' Lady Hester said, 'Mr. Pitt pronounced in
his fine mellow tone of voice, and this was the last speech I
heard him make in that voice, for on his return from Bath it
was cracked for ever.' Then she observed, 'My own opinion
of the Duke is, that he is a blunt soldier, who pleases women
because he is gallant and has some remains of beauty; but,'
she added, ‘he has none of the dignity of courts about him.'
George IV. gets it almost as severely in Lady Hester's pages
as he did afterwards in those of Thackeray. His unfeeling
conduct in deserting Sheridan she regarded as a typical act
showing his despicable character. She loved all the Princes.
but him. The Prince Regent heard of this, and said to Lord
Petersham, 'What can be the reason that Lady Hester, who
likes all my brothers, does not like me?' His lordship told
Lady Hester this, and she replied, 'If he asks me, I will have
an answer ready for him, and that is, "When he behaves like
them I shall like him, and not before.”
>
This passage by Lady Hester on Bonaparte and the leading
English statesmen is extremely interesting: 'Bonaparte had
naturally something vulgar in his composition. He took a
little from Ossian, a little from Cæsar, a little from this book,
a little from that, and made up a something that was a good
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
459
imitation of a great man; but he was not in himself naturally
great. As for killing the Duke d'Enghien, if he had killed all
the Bourbons, for the good of France, I should say nothing to
that; but he had not much feeling. Whenever he laments
anybody it is always for his own sake that he does it. I don't
understand, either, a great man making complaints about the
room he slept in not being good enough for him, or complain-
ing of his champagne. I dare say he had slept in many a
worse. Had I been in his place, you would have seen how
differently I should have acted; and such a man as Sir
Hudson Lowe should never have seen that he could have the
power of vexing me. He was not what I call a man of genius :
a man of considerable talent he certainly was. A man of
genius is like a fine diamond. What I understand by a fine
diamond is one resembling a large drop of water-smooth and
even on every side; so that whichever way you look at it
there is a place of light that seems as if it would spread as you
gaze on it. However, men of genius have seldom a look that
would tell you they are so; for, what a heavy-looking man Mr.
Fox was! did you ever see him? Mr. Pitt, again, had nothing
remarkable in his appearance; Mr. Pitt's face was not one thit
gave one the idea of a clever man. As he walked through the
park you would have taken him for a poet, or some such per-
son, thin, tall, and rather awkward; looking upwards as if his
ideas were en air, and not remarking what was passing around
him : there was no expression in him at such a moment. It
was my grandfather who had the fine look. The best picture
of him is that at Chevening he is represented in his robes.
The colour and fire in his eyes altogether is very fine.'
Lord Byron was thus described by Lady Hester: 'I think
he was a strange character, his generosity was for a motive, his
avarice for a motive: one time he was mopish, and nobody was
to speak to him; another, he was for being jocular with every-
body. Then he was a sort of Don Quixote, fighting with the
police for a woman of the town; and then he wanted to make
460
women of renown.
himself something great. But when he allowed himself to be
bullied by the Albanians, it was all over with him; you must
not show any fear with them. At Athens, I saw nothing in
him but a well-bred man, like many others; for, as for poetry,
it is easy enough to write verses; and as for the thoughts, who
knows where he got them? Many a one picks up some old
book that nobody knows anything about, and gets his ideas
out of it. He had a great deal of vice in his looks, his eyes
set close together, and a contracted brow, so '--(imitating it).
Oh, Lord! I am sure he was not a liberal man, whatever else
he might be. The only good thing about his looks was this
part' (drawing her hand under the cheek down the front of her
neck), and the curl on his forehead.'
When Duke Maximilian, of Bavaria, proposed to visit Lady
Hester in her mountain retreat, she wrote to him as follows:
'I cannot sufficiently appreciate the honour you intend me in
wishing to visit my hermitage; but permit me to impose these
conditions on you-that you say not a word more, neither you
nor the noblemen in your suite, of those trifling services which
you have so graciously and benevolently accepted. Allow me
also to acquaint your highness, that, although I was in my time
a woman of the world, for these last twenty years I have been
nothing but a philosopher, who turns out of her road for
nobody. When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes, he
neither changed his dress nor moved his tub for him; pardon
me, Prince, if I imitate his example.' When the Duke arrived,
however, to occupy quarters not so good as those of an English
mechanic, he found Lady Hester was so ill that she could not
be seen, and he accordingly left without protracting his visit.
Among those who lived on Lady Hester's bounty for a great
number of years was a General Loustaunau, who was known as
the Prophet, He had led a chequered career in France and
other countries, and at last settled down in Syria, where he
acquired the reputation of a seer. He was a close reader of
the Bible, and was much given to prediction. Sometimes
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
461
Lady Hester herself, who was interested in some of his proph-
ecies, found him rather trying, for his flattery was too open.
For example, he would go about preaching that all the queens
in Christendom were very ordinary women indeed, and that
Lady Hester was the only real Queen. For this man and his
family she did great things, and a son, Captain Loustaunau,
who died at Mar Elias, was buried in her garden. Another
great admirer of Lady Hester was the Prince Pückler-Muskau,
who deeply interested her by his physiognomical doctrines, and
his liking generally for occult science. But in spite of his
flattery, she was obliged to confess that he was not very
profound.
For the last twenty years of her life Lady Hester Stanhope
was an inveterate smoker. Dr. Meryon thus depicts her under
the influence of this habit in the year 1838: 'As she had
now kept her bed for many weeks, we will describe her there
as, lying with her pipe in her mouth, she talked on politics,
philosophy, religion, or on any other theme, with her accus-
tomed eloquence, closing her periods with a whiff that would
have made the Duchess of Rutland stare with astonishment,
could she have risen from her tomb and have seen her quondam
friend, the brilliant ornament of a London drawing-room,
clouded in fumes so that her features were sometimes invisible
-how this altered individual had not a covering to her bed that
was not burnt into twenty holes by the sparks and ashes that had
fallen from her pipe; and had not these coverings been all wool-
len, it is certain, that, on some unlucky night, she must have
been consumed, bed and all.
'Her bedroom, at the end of every twenty-four hours, was
strewn with tobacco and ashes, to be swept away and again
strewn as before, and it was always strongly impregnated with
the fumes.
•
'The finest tobacco the country could produce, and the
cleanest pipes (for she had a new one almost as often as a fop
puts on new gloves,) could hardly satisfy her fastidiousness;
462
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
and I have known her footman get as many scoldings as there
were days in the week on that score. From curiosity I once
counted a bundle of pipes thrown by after a day or two's use,
any one of which would have fetched five or ten shillings in
London, and there were one hundred and two.'
A group of Bedouins were once disputing as to the sanity of
Lady Hester, one party strenuously maintaining that it was im-
possible a lady so charitable, so munificent, could be otherwise.
than in full possession of her faculties; their opponents alleg-
ing that her assimilating herself to the Virgin Mary, her antici-
pated entry with our Saviour into Jerusalem, and other vagaries
attributed to her, were proofs to the contrary. An old man with
a white beard called for silence-a call from the aged amidst
the Arabs is seldom made in vain. 'She is mad,' said he, and
lowering his voice to a whisper, as if fearing lest such an out-
rage against established custom should spread beyond his circle,
he added, for she puts sugar in her coffee!' On this hypo-
thesis, lunacy must be very prevalent in England and Europe.
The pecuniary difficulties into which Lady Hester Stanhope
fell towards the close of her career were very grave. Her
pension, and a legacy of £1,500 a year left her by her brother,
Colonel James Stanhope, were all the means she had. These
would of course have been ample for a private lady, but not
for one whose purse and dwelling were open to everybody;
besides which, she was robbed on all hands. There was little
room for wonder, therefore, that she drifted deeper and deeper
into debt. She had an impression that she was somehow
entitled to an Irish estate, and wrote to Sir Francis Burdett
and others to take up her cause. It appears that a wealthy
Irish admirer of Pitt made a will leaving all his estates, &c., to
that eminent statesman, but unfortunately Pitt died three days
before the testator. This, of course, vitiated the whole affair,
yet Lady Hester seems to have thought that the estates should
have been handed over to Pitt's relatives, but the testator's
relatives, not unnaturally, took a different view.
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
463
To aggravate matters, in January, 1838, the English Govern-
ment took a step which was very painful to Lady Hester, and
one in regard to which she certainly seems deserving of some
sympathy. Colonel Campbell, Her Majesty's Consul-General
for Egypt and Syria, was instructed to inform her ladyship
that in consequence of an application made to the British
Government by Mr. Homsy, one of her creditors, Lord
Palmerston had ordered her pension to be stopped unless the
debt were paid. Knowing Lady Hester's fiery temper, one
can well understand her rage and indignation on receiving
such an intimation. Alluding to the Queen and her ministers
she exclaimed to Dr. Meryon: 'My grandfather and Mr.
Pitt did something, I think, to keep the Brunswick family on
the throne, and yet the granddaughter of the old king, without
hearing the circumstances of my getting into debt, or whether
the story is true (for it might be false), sends to deprive me of
my pension in a foreign country, where I may remain and
starve. If it had not been for my brother Charles, and
General Barnard, the only two who knew what they were
about, when the mutiny took place against the Duke of Kent
at Gibraltar, she would not be where she is now; for her
father would have been killed to a certainty.'
C
Unfortunately, Lady Hester allowed her indignation so far
to get the better of her that she addressed this letter to the
Queen, who, of course, had merely acted upon her Minister's
advice: Your Majesty will allow me to say that few things
are more disgraceful and inimical to royalty than giving com-
mands without examining all their different bearings, and
casting without reason an aspersion upon the integrity of any
branch of a family who had faithfully served their country and
the house of Hanover. As no inquiries have been made of
me what circumstances induced me to incur the debts alluded
to, I deem it unnecessary to enter into any details upon the
subject. I shall not allow the pension given by your royal
grandfather to be stopped by force, but I shall resign it for the
2
464
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
payment of my debts, and with it the name of English
subject and the slavery that is at present annexed to it; and as
your Majesty has given publicity to the business by your
orders to consular agents, I surely cannot be blamed for follow-
ing your royal example."
She likewise wrote as follows to Mr. Speaker Abercromby,
whom she had known in her youth: 'Your magnificent
Queen has made me appear like a bankrupt to the world, and
partly like a swindler; having given strict orders that one
usurer's account must be paid, or my pension be stopped,
without taking into consideration others who have equal claims
upon me. Her Majesty has not thrown the gauntlet before
a driveller or a coward. Those who are the advisers of these
steps cannot be wise men.
'Whatever men's political opinions may be, if they act
from conscientious motives, I have always respected them;
and you know that I have had friends in all parties. There-
fore, without any reference to the present or the past political
career of ministers, or Her Majesty's advisers, their conduct
would appear to me, respecting myself, identically as it was,
gentlemanlike or blackguard. But having had but too strong
a specimen of the latter by their attempting to bully a Pitt,
and to place me under consular control, it is sufficient for me
to resign the name of an English subject: for the justice
granted to the slave of despotism far exceeds that which has
been shown to me.'
Lady Hester further addressed appeals to the Duke of
Wellington and Lord Brougham, but they were powerless to
assist her. On the 25th of April, 1838, Lord Palmerston
wrote to Lady Hester, stating that he had laid her letter
before the Queen, to whom he had explained the circum-
stances of the case. Then he added that all the steps taken
had been suggested by nothing but a desire to save your
ladyship from the embarrassments which might arise if the
parties who have claims upon you were to call upon the
ર
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
465
Consul-General to act according to the strict line of his duty,
under the capitulations between Great Britain and the Porte.'
On receiving this communication, Lady Hester wrote a letter,
the like of which Palmerston probably never received during
his lengthy career. The writing had in it some of the vigour
and the biting sarcasm of Junius, and the letter is well worthy
of being reproduced entire :
'My Lord, if your diplomatic despatches are as obscure
as the one which now lies before me, it is no won-
der that England should cease to have that proud pre-
ponderance in her foreign relations which she once could
boast of.
'Your lordship tells me that you have thought it your duty.
to explain to the Queen the subject which caused me to
address her Majesty. I should have thought, my lord, that it
would have been your duty to have made those explanations
prior to taking the liberty of using her Majesty's name,
and alienating from her and her country a subject who, the
great and small must acknowledge (however painful it may be
to some) has raised the English name in the East higher than
anyone has yet done, besides having made many philosophical
researches of various descriptions for the advantage of human
nature at large, and this without having spent one farthing
of the public money. Whatever may be the surprise created
in the minds of statesmen of the old school respecting the
conduct of government towards me, I am not myself in the
least astonished; for, when the son of a king, with a view of
enlightening his own mind and the world in general, had
devoted part of his private fortune to the purchase of a most
invaluable library at Hamburgh, he was flatly refused an
exemption from the custom-house duties; but, if report speaks
truly, had an application been made to pass bandboxes,
millinery, inimitable wigs, and invaluable rouge, it would have
been instantly granted by her Majesty's ministers, if we may
judge by precedents. Therefore, my lord, I have nothing to
HH
466
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
complain of; yet I shall go on fighting my battles, campaign
after campaign.
'Your lordship gives me to understand that the insult I have
received was considerately bestowed upon me to avoid some
dreadful, unnameable misfortune which was pending over my
head. I am ready to meet with courage and resignation every
misfortune it may please God to visit me with, but certainly
not insult from man. If I can be accused of high crimes
and misdemeanours, and I am to stand in dread of the
punishment thereof, let me be tried, as I believe I have a
right to be, by my peers; if not, then by the voice of the
people. Disliking the English because they are no longer
English-no longer that hardy, honest, bold people that they
were in former times--yet, as some few of this race must re-
main, I should rely in confidence upon their integrity and
justice when my case had been fully examined.
'It is but fair to make your lordship aware, that if by the
next packet there is nothing definitely settled respecting my
affairs, and that I am not cleared in the eyes of the world of
aspersions, intentionally or unintentionally, thrown upon me,
I shall break up my household and build up the entrance gate
to my premises; there remaining, as if I was in a tomb, till my
character has been done justice to, and a public acknowledg-
ment put in the papers, signed and sealed by those who have
aspersed me. There is no trifling with those who have Pitt
blood in their veins upon the subject of integrity, nor expect-
ing that their spirit would ever yield to the impertinent inter-
ference of consular authority.
'Meanly endeavouring (as Colonel Campbell has attempted
to do) to make the origin of this business an application of the
Viceroy of Egypt to the English Government, I must, without
having made any enquiries upon the subject, exculpate his
Highness from so low a proceeding. His known liberality in
all such cases, from the highest to the lowest class of persons,
is such as to make one the more regret his extraordinary and
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
467
reprehensible conduct toward his great master; and that such
a man should become totally blinded by vanity and ambition,
which must in the end prove his perdition, is an opinion I
have loudly given utterance to from the beginning.
'Your lordship talks to me of the capitulations with the
Sublime Porte; what has that to do with a private indi-
vidual's having exceeded his finances in trying to do good? If
there is any punishment for that, you had better begin with.
your ambassadors, who have often been indebted themselves at
the different courts of Europe as well as at Constantinople. I
myself am so attached to the Sultan, that, were the reward of
such conduct that of losing my head, I should kiss the sabre
wielded by so mighty a hand, yet, at the same time, treat with
the most ineffable contempt your trumpery agents, as I shall
never admit of their having the smallest power over me; if I
did, I should belie my origin.'
Lady Hester could obtain no redress, but she indulged a
vague hope of being able to meet her debts. This hope proved
vain, however, and she sank deeper and deeper into difficul-
ties. She proceeded to carry out her threat of walling herself
up, and Dr. Meryon thus graphically describes the sad cir-
cumstances under which she passed the closing days of her
life: 'I was the last European physician or medical man that
attended her, and I was most anxious and willing (foreseeing
her approaching fate as I did) to continue to remain with her;
but it was her determined resolve that I should leave her, and
those who have known her cannot deny that opposition to her
will was altogether out of the question.
'There is no doubt that by prolonging my stay on Mount
Lebanon I might have been of considerable service to her lady-
ship. She was about to shut herself up alone, without money,
without books, without a soul she could confide in! without a
single European, male or female, about her; with winter com-
ing on, beneath roofs certainly no longer waterproof, and that
might fall in ; with war at her doors, and without any means of
HH 2
468
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
defence except in her own undaunted courage; with no one
but herself to carry on her correspondence; so that everything
conspired to make it an imperative duty to remain with
her. Yet she would not allow me to do so, and insisted on my
departure on an appointed day, declaring it to be her fixed deter-
mination to remain immured, as in a tomb, until reparation had
been made her for the supposed insult she had received at the
hands of the British Government.
'It would have been expected that the niece of Mr. Pitt and
the granddaughter of the great Lord Chatham, might have
laid claim to some indulgence from those whose influence
could help or harm her; and that her peculiar situation in
a foreign country, among a- people unacquainted with Euro-
pean customs and habits (being left, as she was, to her own
energies, to meet the difficulties which encompassed her) might
have exempted her from any annoyance, if it did not obtain for
her any aid. A woman, sixty years old, with impaired health,
inhabiting a spot removed many miles from any town, amidst a
population whom their own chiefs can hardly keep under con-
trol, was no fit object, one would think, for molestation under any
circumstances; but when the services of Lady Hester's family are
put into the scale it seems wonderful how the representations
of interested money-lenders could have had sufficient weight
with those who guided the State to induce them to disturb her
solitude and retirement. Will it be believed, that when in August,
1838, I took leave of her, the beam of the ceiling of the saloon,
in which she ordinarily sat, was propped up by two unsightly
spars of wood for fear the ceiling should fall on her head; and
that these deal pillars, very nearly in the rough state in which
they had been brought from the North in some Swedish vessel,
stood in the centre of the room? Her bedroom was still worse,
for there the prop was a rough, unplaned trunk of a poplar-tree,
cut at the foot of the hill on which her own house stood. Her
ladyship slept on a mattress, on planks upheld by tressels, and
She proclaimed
the carpeting of her bedroom was of felt.
LADY HESTER STANHOPE.
469
herself, with much cheerfulness, a philosopher, and, so far as
self-denial went, in regard to personal sumptuousness, her asser-
tion was completely borne out in garb and furniture. How far
she deserved that title upon the higher grounds of speculative
science and the extraordinary range of her understanding, let
those say who have shared with the writer in the profound im-
pression which her conversation always left on the minds of her
hearers.
'Peace be with her remains, and honour to her memory! A
surer friend, a more frank and generous enemy, never trod the
earth. "Show me where the poor and needy are," she would
say, "and let the rich shift for themselves!" As free from
hypocrisy as the purest diamond. from stain, she pursued her
steady way, unaffected by the ridiculous reports that were
spread about her by travellers, either malicious or misin-
formed, and not to be deterred from her noble, though some-
what Quixotic enterprises, by ridicule or abuse, by threats or
opposition.'
Lady Hester Stanhope slowly wasted away, and died on the
23rd of June, 1839, with no European near her. The news of
her death was conveyed to Beyrout, and the English consul,
Mr. Moore, and the Rev. Mr. Thompson, an American mis-
sionary, went to Djoun to bury her. The emaciated body of
Lady Hester was interred, according to her wish, in her own
garden.
(
Thus perished in silence, and with none but Easterns near
her, one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth
century. A friend said of her what was once said of her great
relative, Chatham, I hardly know which to be astonished at
most, your extraordinary genius or your extraordinary igno-
rance.' No clearer insight into her character has ever been
given in such few words. She had a courageous spirit and a
lofty integrity, but she was reckless in action, and especially in
her indiscriminate benevolence, which at length involved her in
inextricable difficulties. She had a clear insight into human
470
WOMEN OF RENOWN.
•
nature, but her feelings led her into excess, and she denounced
a race because of the folly or insincerity of individuals. It is
impossible not to admire her high, proud, and adventurous
spirit, her faithfulness towards friends, and her disinterested-
ness and generosity. Out of sympathy with the spirit of her
age, she formed visionary projects of aggrandisement, until
her eccentricities laid her open to the derision of the world.
Her intuitive perceptions were marvellous; and with a mind
more evenly balanced she might have achieved greatness.
Failing in this, she still remains one of the strangest figures in
modern history.
THE END.
INDEX.
ABOUT'S Madelon, Edmond, 261.
Adams, Professor John Couch, 209.
Addington, Mr., Amusing story of,
454.
Alice, The Princess, 312.
Andersen, Hans Christian, and
Jenny Lind, 143, 148, 149.
Anecdotes of Lord Byron, 56, 58,
353; Tennyson, 92; Sir David
Brewster, 178; Sir Walter Scott,
184; Sir Francis Chantry, 193;
Ugo Foscolo, 193; Fenimore
Cooper, 200; Dr. Majendie, 201;
George Sand, 252; Lord Derby,
363; Pasta, 365; Thomas Moore,
366; Sydney Smith, 371; Thomas
Campbell, 371; Rachel, 387, 395,
397, 398, 404, 409, 411, 415;
Pitt, 453; Addington, 454;
Lamartine, 454; Spencer Perce-
val, 455; George Canning, 456 ;
Lord Liverpool, 456; Duke of
Wellington, 458; George IV.,
458.
Anti-slavery movement, The, 287,
290.
Art as a part of life, 30.
Ascalon, Researches at, 427.
Austen, Jane, 40, 192..
BAILLIE, Joanna, 191.
Barnum engages Jenny Lind, 168.
Berg, Herr, and Jenny Lind, 130.
Bernadotte of Sweden, 7.
Bernhardt and Rachel compared,
400.
Berry Miss, Witty letter by, 203.
Blessington, Countess of, 43;
her character, 45; birth and
ancestry, 46; childhood, 47;
early marriage, 48; miserable
union, 49; separation from Cap-
tain Farmer, 51; marries Lord
Blessington, 52; her beauty, 52;
meets Count D'Orsay, 54; her
reunions, 54; European travels,
55; meets Byron at Genoa, 56;
her influence over him, 58; their
parting, 59; the Blessingtons in
Italy, 60; settlement in Paris,
64; return to London, 65; her
assemblies, 65; personal appear-
ance, 66; removes to Kensington
Gore, 69; her pecuniary diffi-
culties, 70; sketch of her rise
and fall, 71; leaves London for
Paris, 73; her last illness and
death, 74; her works : The
Magic Lantern, 75; Sketches and
Fragments, 75; Conversations
with Lord Byron, 76; The Re-
pealers, 76; Meredyth, 76; The
Follies of Fashion, 76; The Belle
of the Season, 76; The Two
Friends, 77; The Victims of
Society, 77; Confessions of an
Elderly Lady, &c., 77; charac-
ter of her writings, 78; her letters,
79; her literary character and
position, 8o.
Blessington, Lord, marries Mrs.
Farmer, 52; his extravagance. 53;
his life in Paris, 64; votes for
}
472
INDEX.
Catholic emancipation, 64; his
death, 65.
Bonaparte, Napoleon, Lady Hester
Stanhope on, 458.
Bournonville, the composer,
and
Jenny Lind, 143.
Boutin, Colonel, Sad case of, 441.
Bray, Charles, 89.
Bremer, Agatha, 11, 28.
Bremer, Carl Fredric, 3, 8.
Bremer, Charlotte, 8.
Bremer, Fredrika, I; and Ibsen
compared, 3; her birth, 3; an-
cestry, 4; early years, 5; per-
sonal appearance, 6; her patriot-
ism, 7, 12; discontented with
life, 8; visits the Continent, 9;
her home sorrows, 10; goes to
Stockholm, II; writes her first
work, 14; her views on woman,
25, 33; distinguished by the
Swedish Academy, 27; her
foreign travels, 27; loses her
sister Agatha, 28; opinion on
political and religious contro-
versies, 29; her views on the fine
arts, 30; humanitarian projects,
31; supports benevolent institu-
tions at Stockholm, 32;
her
admiration for Alexandre Vinet,
36; lives to see great reforms
effected, 37; her last illness and
death, 38; her critical faculty, 40;
compared with Jane Austen, 40;
her works: Sketches of Every-
day Life, 14; The Neighbours,
17; Morning Watches, 19; The
Homes, 20;
The President's
Daughters, 23; Nina, 25;
Homes of the New World, 27;
Life in the Old World, 27;
Strife and Peace, 28; Father and
Daughter, &c., 28; Two Leaves
from the Borders of the Rhine,
28; Sister Life, 29; Letters,
30; Hertha, 34; Posthumous
Sketches and Poems, 38.
Bremer, Hedda, 36.
Bremer, Jacob, 4.
Bremer, Mrs., 4, 36.
Brewster, Sir David, Anecdote of,
178.
Brontë, Charlotte, Mary Carpenter
on, 300.
Brontë, Charlotte, on Rachel, 407.
Brougham, Lord, criticised, 40.
Brougham, Lord, and Mary Somer-
ville, 196.
Browning, Mrs., 85; on George
Sand, 252.
Bulwers, Lady Blessington on the,
66.
Bunn, Alfred, and Jenny Lind, 151.
Byron, Lord, and Lady Blessing-
ton, 56, 58, 59.
Byron, Lady Noel, 194, 286, 296,
299, 300, 303.
Byron, Lord, described by Lady
Hester Stanhope, 459.
CANOVA and Thorwaldsen, 188.
Canning, George, described by
Lady Hester Stanhope, 456.
Carpenter, Mary, 271; her birth
and parentage, 273; early
life in Bristol, 274; her intellec-
tual studies, 275; becomes
governess, 277; opens a school at
Bristol, 278; consecrates herself
to philanthropic work, 279 ;
friendship with Rammohun Roy,
280; friendship with Dr. Joseph
Tuckerman, 281; begins to
visit the poor, 282; death of
her father, 284; visits the Conti-
nent, 285; her opinions on poetry,
etc., 285; an anti-slavery advo-
cate, 287; establishes a ragged
school, 288; her power for good,
289; letter on slavery, 290; on
the management of ragged schools,
292; on juvenile offenders, 294;
on reformatory schools, 295; her
public and legislative efforts, 297 ;
on juvenile delinquents, 298; her
labours at Red Lodge, Bristol,
300; on certified industrial
schools, 301; advocates further
reforms, 302; examines the
prison systems, 303; examines
the workhouse schools, 304;
publishes her work on convicts,
304; her interest in India, 306;
her first visit to India, 307; her
INDEX.
473
work among the natives, 309; her
interview with the Queen, 309;
further visits to India, 310; later
work in Bristol, 311; a guest of
Princess Louis of Hesse, 312;
visits the United States, 313; re-
sults of her American tour, 314;
her last visit to India, 316; final
labours in Bristol, 317; her death,
318; summary of her work, 318.
Carpenter, Dr. Lant, 274, 284.
Carpenter, Dr. W. B., 307, 318.
Cavour, Count, 211.
Chateaubriand and Rachel, 387
Chopin and George Sand, 241, 248.
Clarke, Lady (Olivia Owenson), 325,
368, 372.
Cobbe, Frances Power, 211, 301.
Colburn, the publisher, and Lady
Morgan, 348, 352, 362.
Commune, The Paris, 347.
Condé, the great, Mary Carpenter
on, 286.
Constant, Benjamin, and Lady
Morgan, 350.
Convicts, Our, 304.
Cornwall, Barry, on Lady Blessing-
ton, 80.
Croelius, Herr, tutor of Jenny Lind,
124, 125.
Crofton prison system, The, 303.
Cross, John Walter, marries George
Eliot, 94.
DEACONESS institution at Kaisers-
werth, 28.
Dermody, the Irish poel, 330.
Dickens, Charles, on Count d'Orsay,
75; compared with George Eliot,
96.
Disraeli, Mr. (Lord Beaconsfield),
on Jenny Lind, 195; described
by Lady Morgan, 365.
Disraelis, Lady Blessington on the,
66.
Dixon, Hepworth, on Lady Morgan,
330, 334, 336, 360.
D'Orsay, Count, introduced to the
Blessingtons, 54; accompanies
them to the Continent, 57;
Byron's impression of him, 58;
joins Lady Blessington in London,
65; hides from his creditors, 70;
his flight to Paris, 71; his death
and character, 74.
Druses, The, 431.
Dudevant,
Lieutenant, marries
George Sand, 226.
Dufferin, Lady, 207.
Dumas' Madile. de Belle Isle,
405.
EDGEWORTH, Maria, and Mary
Somerville, 194, 203.
Eliot, George, 83; her birth, 87;
character of her parents, 88;
her early life, 89; translates
the Leben Jesu, 89; translates
Spinoza's Ethics, 90; trans-
lates Feuerbach's Essence of
Christianity, 90; her relations
with George Henry Lewes,90; pro-
duces her Scenes of Clerical Life,
91; appearance of Adam Bede,
91; her life in London, 92; her
religion, 93; founds the Lewes
Studentship, 93; marries Mr J.
W. Cross, 94; her death, 94;
personal appearance, 95;
her
position as a writer, 96; charac-
ter of the Scenes of Clerical Life,
97; analysis of Adam Bede, 98;
The Mill on the Floss, 98; the
story of Silas Marner, 100; Rom-
ola, one of her three greatest
novels, Io; Felix Holt, 103;
Middlemarch, her crowning novel,
104; Daniel Deronda, 108; the
Impressions of Theophrastus Such,
100; character of her poetry, 110;
the Spanish Gypsy, 111; Jubal
and Armgart, III; her varied
culture, 112; features of her
genius, 112; her sadness, 112;
her power of observation, 113;
examples of her humour, 114;
her insight into character, 114;
ethical value of her works, 115;
her lasting influence, 116.
Evans, Robert and Mrs., 88.
FAIRFAX, The family of, 176; Ad-
miral Sir William, 176, 177, 184.
Farmer, Captain, marries Marguer-
474
INDEX.
ite Power, 48; his shocking
death, 50.
Félix, Abraham, Rachel's father,
379.
Félix, Rebecca, 396.
Félix, Raphael, 396, 413.
Félix, Sarah, 396.
Fine arts, Fredrika Bremer on the,
30.
Flaubert, Gustave, George Sand
on, 265.
Forrest, Edwin, on Rachel, 383.
Fry, Mrs., 192.
GARCIA trains Jenny Lind, 140.
Gardiner, Lady Harriet, marries
Count D'Orsay, 63.
Gardiner, Lady Mary, 63.
George III. and Lady Hester
Stanhope, 424.
George IV., Lady Hester Stanhope
on, 458.
Girardin, Madame de, 400, 403,
4II.
Goldschmidt, Otto, marries Jenny
Lind, 169.
Gore House, Historic sale at, 73.
Greig, Samuel, marries Mary
Somerville, 182.
Grey, Earl, and Lady Blessington,
55.
Grote, Mrs., and Jenny Lind, 167.
HAYDON, B. R., on Lady Blessing-
ton, 68.
Hennell, Charles, 89.
Herschel, Sir John, 197, 205.
Hill, Mr. M. Davenport, 294, 297,
303.
Histrionic duel, A, 394.
Holland, Canon, on Jenny Lind,
132, 136.
Holtzendorff, Baron Von, on Mary
Carpenter, 312.
Houssaye, Arsène, and Mdlle.
Rachel, 404, 415.
Howitt, Margaret, 38.
Howitt, Mary, and Fredrika
Bremer, 17.
Ilugo's Angelo, 436.
Humboldt, Baron, and Mary
Somerville, 209.
IBSEN, Henrik, and Fredrika
Bremer compared, 3.
India, Female reforms in, 309.
JANIN, JULES, on Rachel, 382, 383,
394.
Juvenile Delinquents, 298.
KaiserswertH, Deaconess insti-
tution at, 28.
Kemble, Frances Anne, and
Mdlle. Rachel, 393-
Kinglake, Mr. A. W., and Lady
Hester Stanhope, 442.
LAFAYETTE, General, 352.
Lamennais, Abbé de, 235.
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 249.
Lamartine and Lady Hester Stan-
hope, 454.
Landor, Walter Savage, on Lady
Blessington, 80.
Lewes, George Henry, and George
Eliot, 90; his death, 93.
Liggins, Joseph, claims the author-
ship of Adam Bede, 91.
Lind, Jenny, 119; her genius and
character, 121; distinguished
admirers, 122; her birth and
parentage, 122; musical in her
childhood, 123; discovery of her
genius, 123, 124; engagement
at the Royal Theatre, 125; her
training, 127; difficulties with
her mother, 128; her dramatic
gift, 129; training by Herr Berg,
129; appears in Der Freischütz,
130; appears in Robert le Di-
able, 131; she leaves home, 131;
appears in Don Juan and Lucia
di
Lammermoor, 132; her
character, 132; described by
N. P. Willis, 134; her personal
appearance, 137; indebtedness
to Lindblad, 138; appointed
Court singer, 139; proceeds to
Paris, 139; studies under Garcia,
140; plays Norma at Stock-
holm, 142; end of her domestic
trouble, 142; great success al
INDEX.
475
I
Copenhagen, 143; touching
anecdote of her, 144; her début
at Berlin, 145; remarkable
achievements, 146; first perform-
ance before Queen Victoria, 147;
appears in Don Giovanni at Ber-
lin, 148; her admiration for
Mendelssohn, 148; friendship
with Hans Christian Andersen,
149; appears in Les Huguenots
at Berlin, 150; visit to Vienna,
150; with Mendelssohn at the
Rhine festival, 151; receives
overtures from Mr. Alfred Bunn,
151; agrees to appear at Her
Majesty's, 152; visits Munich,
152; enthusiastic receptions, 153;
first appearance in London, 154;
great triumph in Robert le Diable,
155; appreciation of Her
Majesty, 156; description of the
scene, 156; furore for the
Swedish Nightingale, 159; La
Sonnambula and La Figlia del
Reggimento, 160; I Masnadieri
and the Nozze di Figaro, 161; she
is received by the Queen, 161;
provincial performances, 162;
new triumphs at Berlin and
Stockholm, 163; crushed by
Mendelssohn's death, 163; re-
turn visit to London, 164; sings
for the Brompton Hospital, 164;
founds Mendelssohn scholar-
ships, 165; devotes herself to
oratorio, 166; summary of her
dramatic performances, 167; her
distaste for the stage, 167; tour
in the United States, 168; love
affairs and marriage, 169; her
closing years, 170; her noble
character, 170.
Lind, Niclas Jonas, 122; Mrs.,
123, 124, 128, 131.
Lindblad and Jenny Lind, 131.
Liverpool, Lord, Story of, 456.
Loustaunau, General, and Lady
Hester Stanhope, 460.
Lumley engages Jenny Lind, 152,
154.
Lundberg, Mademoiselle, perceives
Jenny Lind's genius, 124.
MADDEN'S Life of Lady Blessing-
ton, 49.
Marseillaise, The, sung by Rachel,
403.
Martineau, Dr. James on Mary Car-
penter, 275, 318.
Martineau, Harriet, 85.
Maximilian, Duke, and Lady Hester
Stanhope, 460.
Mazzini on Romola, 101.
Mazzini and George Sand, 244.
Melbourne, Lord, and Lady Mor-
gan, 365, 372.
Mendelssohn and Jenny Lind, 138,
148, 150, 151, 160, 163.
Meryon, Dr., and Lady Hester
Stanhope, 426, 428, 432, 450,
461, 467.
Meyerbeer and Jenny Lind, 141,
145, 146, 153.
Mill, John Stuart, 285.
Morgan, Lady, 321; her character,
323; her birth and family, 325;
education, 326; her first book,
328; novel of St. Clair, 329;
her friendship for the poet Der-
mody, 330; experiences as a go-
verness, 330; writes the Novice
of St. Dominic, 333; the popular
Wild Irish Girl, 335; her tour
in the West of Ireland, 337; a
dramatic attempt, 338; enters
fashionable society, 339; her
sympathy with the unfortunate,
339; her love affair with Sir
Charles Ormsby, 341; Ida of
Athens, 341; The Missionary,
343; she marries Sir Charles
Morgan, 345; her wedded life,
347; writes O'Donnell, 348;
visit to France, 349; her work on
France, 350 ; Florence Mac-
Carthy, 351; she visits Italy,
352; her work on that country,
353; Life and Times of Salvator
Rosa, 355; on Irish absenteeism,
357; her life in London, 358;
her novel of The O'Briens and The
O'Flaherties, 359; second book
on France, 360; her rupture with
Colburn, 362; Dramatic Scenes
and Sketches, 363; interesting pas-
476
INDEX.
sages from her diary, 36, 366;
The Princess, 365; is awarded a
Civil List pension, 369; IVoman
and her Master, 369; death of
husband, 371; loss of her sister,
372; her last work, 373; death
and character, 374.
Morgan, Sir Thomas Charles, 345,
346, 349.
Musset, Alfred de, and George
Sand, 232.
Musset, Alfred de, and Mademoi-
selle Rachel, 389.
NAPOLEON, Louis, and Lady Bless-
ington, 73; and George Sand,
25I.
Napoleon,
Sand, 264.
Prince, and George
ODEON THÉÂTRE, Scene at the,
257.
Owenson, Robert, father of Lady
Morgan, 324, 325, 327, 347.
PALMERSTON, Lord, and Lady
Hester Stanhope, 464.
Palmyra, Strange scene at, 432.
Pasta, Anecdote of, 365.
Peel, Sir Robert, and Mary Somer-
ville, 199.
Perceval, Mr., and Queen Caroline,
455.
Phillips, Sir R., and Lady Morgan,
333, 337, 342.
Pitt, 453, 457, 458, 459.
Pitt, William, and Lady Hester
Stanhope, 423, 425.
Pius VII. receives Mary Somer-
ville, 188.
Power, Edmund, Lady Blessing-
ton's father, 46, 47, 57.
Power, Mary Ann, 58.
QUEEN VICTORIA and Jenny Lind,
147, 155, 156, 160, 161, 164,
167; and Mille. Rachel, 392.
Queen Victoria, Letter from Lady
Hester Stanhope to, 463.
RACHEL, 377; her humble origin,
379; early struggles, 380; first
dramatic recitals, 381; appears
at the Gymnase, 382; her suc-
cess in Les Horaces, 383; Mith-
ridate and Bajazet, 385; received
by Madame Récamier, 387; de-
fended by Alfred de Mussel.
389; appears in Polyeuctc, 389;
her personal appearance, 390;
first performances in London,
391; appears at Windsor, 392,
described by Frances Anne Kem-
ble, 393; her Marie Stuart, 394;
affection for her family, 396; her
love of gold, 397; singular anec-
dote concerning her, 398; Phèdre
her finest character, 399; appears
in Judith, 400; her personal
character, 401; various appear-
ances, 402; she declaims the
Marseillaise, 403; difficulties with
the Théâtre Français, 404; her
success in Adrienne Lecouvreur,
405; Victor Hugo's Angelo, 406;
Théophile Gautier on her acting,
406; is seen by Charlotte Brontë,
407; Rachel appears in various
pieces, 408; loses her sister Re-
becca, 409; her decadence as an
artist, 410; last creation in Paris,
411; her expedition to America, ·
412; is seized with serious illness,
414; returns to Europe, 415;
a pathetic interview with her,
415; winters in Egypt, 416; re-
turn to France, 417; her last
hours, 417; death and burial,
419.
Ragged School work at Bristol,
288.
Rammohun Roy, 279, 280.
Ravenna, Strange scene at, 63.
Realism in fiction, 266.
Récamier, Madame, receives Rachel,
387.
Reformatory Schools, 294.
Regicide poet, A, 69.
Renan's Vie de Jésus, 261.
Rochefort, George Sand on, 263.
Rossetti, Dante, on Romola, 101.
Rousseau and Montaigne, 263.
Russell, Lord John, described,
91.
INDEX.
477
Salvator Rosa, Lady Morgan on,
355.
Sand, George, 221; character of
her life and work, 223; her early
years, 224; school life, 225;
marriage, 226; first literary efforts,
227; produces Indiana and
Valentine, 228; her personal
appearance, 229; an indefatigable
worker, 230; writes Lélia and
Jacques, 231; friendship with
Alfred de Musset, 232; her
André, 233; separates from her
husband, 233; letter to her son
Maurice, 234; her friendship with
Daniel Stern and the Abbé de
Lamennais, 235; Lettres á
Marcie, 236; her philosophical
novels, 237; advice to sceptics
and others, 239; Simon, Léone
Léoni, and Mauprat, 240; A
Venetian Story', 241; relations
with Chopin, 241; Spiridion.
242; Cosima, a dramatic attempt,
243; socialist novels, 244; her
views on socialism explained, 244;
Consuelo and the Comtesse de
Rudolstadt, 246; her views on
communism, 247; Lucrezia
Floriani, 248; her appeal to
Lamartine, 249; the Revolution
and Louis Napoleon, 251; is
visited by Mrs. Browning, 252;
her novels of rural life, 254; her
dramas, 255; Le Marquis de
Villemer, 256; its extraordinary
reception, 257; literary fecundity
of, 258; her aims and spirit, 260;
her religious views, 261; phil-
osophy and politics, 263; on the
war of 1870, 264; on the function
of the novelist, 265; on the Zo-
laistic movement, 266; letter to
an invalid, 267; her illness and
death, 268; her position in litera-
ture, 268.
Sandeau, Jules, 227.
Scott, Sir Walter, compared with
George Eliot, 96; his friendship
with the Somervilles, 184, 185,
349.
Scribe's La Cz›rine, 411.
Siddons, Mrs., and John Kemble,
191.
Somerville, Dr. William, marries
Mary Somerville, 184; his death,
213.
Somerville, Mary, 173; her scien-
tific devotion, 175; her ancestry
and early years, 176; school life,
177; liberal principles, 179; first
studies in mathematics, 179; her
beauty and personal appearance,
180; marries her cousin, 182; is
left a widow, 182; her close
studies, 183; marries Dr. William
Somerville, 184; her life in Lon-
don, 186; makes a continental
tour, 187; meets La Place, Hum-
boldt, Cuvier, and Arago, 187;
her life at Rome, 188; returns to
London, 189; interested in Polar
exploration, 190; glimpses of her
distinguished contemporaries, 191;
at two Royal Coronations, 193;
her friendships, 194; first contri-
bution to science, 195; beginning
of her fame, 196; her Mechanism
of the Heavens, 197; awarded a
Čivil List pension, 199; meeting
with French celebrities, 200 ; her
work on the Physical Sciences,
202; her preliminary dissertation,
203; her literary friends, 205;
visit to Rome, 206; tour through
Italy, 208; her Physical Geo-
graphy, 209; further visit to Italy,
210; her interest in Italian unity,
212; death of her husband, 213;
her work on Molecular and Micro-
scopic Science, 213; her interest
in questions affecting women, 214;
thoughts in her 89th year, 216;
recognition of her geographical
services, 217; her remarkable old
age, 217; death and burial, 218.
Somerville, Mrs., 176, 180.
Somerville, Rev. Dr. Thomas, 176,
178.
Stanhope, Lady Hester, 421; her
birth, 423; early years, 424;
goes to reside with Pitt, 425;
leaves England, 426; incidents
in her travels, 427, 428; reaches
478
INDEX.
the Holy Land, 429; her entry
into Damascus, 430; amongst
the Druses, 431; her reception
at Palmyra, 432; she abandons
European life and customs, 434;
settles on Mount Lebanon, 435;
her researches at Ascalon, 437;
receives English visitors at Mar
Elias, 439; her letter on France
and England, 439; her strange
treatment of Dr. Wolff, 440; is
visited by Mr. Kinglake, 442;
exposition of her views, 443-448;
her bravery in danger, 445, 450 ;
her contempt for Europeans, 447;
her kindness to fugitives, 450;
her English recollections, 453;
her reception of Lamartine, 454 ;
smoking habits, 461; pecuniary
difficulties, 462; loss of her pen-
sion, 463; her letter to Lord
Palmerston, 465; closing days
of her life, 467; her death and
character, 469.
Stanley, Bishop, and Jenny Lind,
162.
Stanley, Dean, and Jenny Lind,
133.
Stanley, Mrs., and Jenny Lind, 133,
136, 169.
Stanmore Priory, Lady Morgan at,
343.
Stern, Daniel, 235, 238.
Stockholm House of Refuge, 32;
Ladies' Institution of, 33.
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 166.
Sweden, Reforms in, 37.
Swedish Academy, The, and *Fred-
rika Bremer, 27.
Swedish Nighingale, The, 121.
1
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115.
TAGLIONI, Sketch of, 364.
Talma, the tragedian, described,
187.
Tegnér, Bishop, and Fredrika Bre-
mer, 19.
Tennyson, Lord, and George Eliot,
92.
Tennyson, Mary Carpenter on, 286.
Thackeray compared with George
Eliot, 96.
Tuckerman, Dr. Joseph, 280, 281,
284.
UNITED STATES, Prisons of the,
313.
VINET, Alexandre, 36.
WALEWSKI, Count, and Mdlle.
Rachel, 401.
War of 1870, George Sand on the,
264.
Whewell, Dr., 182, 197.
Wichmann, the sculptor, and Jenny
Lind, 147.
Willis, N. P., on Lady Blessington,
66; on Jenny Lind, 134.
Woman, Intellectual activity of,
85; her literary talent, 86.
Women in Sweden, The position
of, 25, 34; legislation affecting,
215.
Wollaston, Dr., and Mary Somer-
ville, 189.
YOUNG, Dr., and Mary Somer-
ville, 190.
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sought in the want of a good illustrated English treatise upon them. In the
work which is now before us, Dr Braithwaite aims at placing the British
mosses on the same vantage-ground as the more favoured classes of the vege-
table kingdom; and judging from the sample lately issued, he will succeed in
his endeavours."-Popular Science Review.
"TOM BOWLING."
Book of Knots (The). Illustrated by 172 Examples, showing the
manner of making every Knot, Tie, and Splice. By "TOM
BOWLING. Third Edition. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d.
>>
Edited by JAMES BURROWS.
16mo, cloth, gilt edges, 2s. 6d.
A handsome book.
CARRINGTON, M.D., F.R.S.
Byron Birthday Book.
B.
British Hepaticæ. Containing Descriptions and Figures of the Native
Species of Jungermannia, Marchantia, and Anthoceros. With plates
coloured by hand. Imp. Svo, Parts I to 4, all published per set, 15s.
S. WELLS WILLIAMS, LL.D., Professor of the Chinese Language
and Literature at Yale College.
China-The Middle Kingdom. A Survey of the Geography, Govern-
ment, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire
and its Inhabitants. Revised Edition, with 74 Illustrations and a
New Map of the Empire. 2 vols., demy 8vo, 42s.
"The work now before us is second to none in thoroughness, comprehensiveness,
and all the tokens of accuracy of which an ‘outside barbarian' can take cognisance.'
-A. P. PEABODY.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
{
"
·∞.
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SURGEON-MAJOR L. A. WADDELL, M.B.
The Buddhism of Tibet. With its Mystic Cults, Symbolism, and
Mythology, and in its relation to Indian Buddhism, with over 200
Illustrations. Demy 8vo, 600 pp., 31s. 6d.
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS:-Introductory. Historical-Changes in Primi-
tive Buddhism leading to Lamaism-Rise, Development, and Spread of
Lamaism-The Sects of Lamaism. Doctrinal-Metaphysical Sources of the
Doctrine-The Doctrine and its Morality-Scriptures and Literature. Mon-
astic-The Order of Lamas-Daily Life and Routine-Hierarchy and Rein-
carnate Lamas. Buildings-Monasteries-Temples and Cathedral-Shrines
(and Relics and Pilgrims). Mythology and Gods-Pantheon and Images-
Sacred Symbols and Charms. Ritual and Sorcery-Worship and Ritual
Astrology and Divination-Sorcery and Necromancy. Festivals and Plays-
Festivals and Holidays-Mysic Plays and Masquerades and Sacred Plays.
Popular Lamaism-Domestic and Popular Lamaism. Appendices—Chrono-
logical Table-Bibliography-Index.
"By far the most important mass of original materials contributed to this
recondite study."-The Times.
"Dr Waddell deals with the whole subject in a most exhaustive manner,
and gives a clear insight into the structure, prominent features, and cults of
the system; and to disentangle the early history of Lamaism from the chaotic
growth of fable which has invested it, most of the chief internal movements
of Lamaism are now for the first time presented in an intelligible and syste-
matic form. The work is a valuable addition to the long series that have
preceded it, and is enriched by numerous illustrations, mostly from originals
brought from Lhasa, and from photographs by the author, while it is fully
indexed, and is provided with a chronological table and bibliography."-
Liverpool Courier.
"A book of exceptional interest."--Glasgow Herald.
In
•
•
'A learned and elaborate work, likely for some time to come to be a
source of reference to all who seek information about Lamaism.
the appendix will be found a chronological table of Tibetan events, and a
bibliography of the best literature bearing on Lamaism. There is also an
excellent index, and the numerous illustrations are certainly one of the dis-
tinctive features of the book."-Morning Post.
J
'' Cannot fail to arouse the liveliest interest. The author of this excel-
lently produced, handsomely illustrated volume of nearly six hundred pages
has evidently spared no pains in prosecuting his studies.
The book
is one of exceptional value, and will attract all those readers who take an
interest in the old religions of the far East."-Publishers' Circular.
•
•
"The author is one of few Europeans who have entered the torritory of the Grand
Lama, and spent several years in studying the actualities of Lamaism as explained by
Lamas. A Lamaist temple with its fittings was purchased, and the officiating priests
explained in full detail the symbolism and the rites as they proceeded. Other temples
and monasteries were visited and Lamas employed for copying manuscripts, and
searching for texts bearing upon the author's researches. Enjoying special facilities
for penetrating the reserve of Tibetan ritual, and obtaining direct from Lhasa and
Tashi-lhunpo most of the objects and explanatory material needed, much information
has been obtained on Lamaist theory and practice which is altogether now."
"The internal developments and movements of Lamaism aro now for the first time
presented in an intelligible and systematic form. Dotails of the principul rites, mystic
and other deep-rooted demon worship and dark sorcery, the religious Plays and
Festivals, are given fully."
With numerous illustrations from originals brought from Lhasa,
and from photographs by the author.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
1.
9
M. C. COOKE, M.A., LL.D.
**For fuller notices of Dr Cooke's works see under Scientific, pp. 29, 30.
The British Fungi: A Plain and Easy Account of. With Coloured
Plates of 40 Species. Fifth Edition, Revised, crown 8vo, 6s.
Rust, Smut, Mildew, and Mould. An Introduction to the Study of
Microscopic Fungi. Illustrated with 269 Coloured Figures by J. E.
Sowerby. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with Appendix of
New Species. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Handbook of British Hepaticæ. Containing Descriptions and Figures
of the Indigenous Species of Marchantia, Jungermannia, Riccia, and
Anthoceros, illustrated. Crown Svo, 6s.
Our Reptiles and Batrachians. A Plain and Easy Account of the
Lizards, Snakes, Newts, Toads, Frogs, and Tortoises indigenous to
Great Britain. New and Revised Edition. With Original Coloured
Pictures of every species, and numerous woodcuts, crown 8vo,
6s.
F. C. DANVERS.
Report to the Secretary of State for India in Council on the
Portuguese Records relating to the East Indies, contained in
the Archivo da Torre de Tombo, and the Public Libraries at Lisbon
and Evora. Royal 8vo, sewed, 6s. nct.
REV. A. J. D. D'ORSEY, B.D., K. C., P.O.C.
Portuguese Discoveries, Dependencies, and Missions in Asia and
Africa, with Maps. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
CONTENTS.
Book I.
Introductory.
The Portuguese in Europe and Asia.
Portugal and the Portuguese.
Portuguese Discoveries in the Fifteenth
Century.
Portuguese Conquests of India in the
Sixteenth Century.
The Portuguese Empire in the Sixteenth
Century.
Book II.
The Portuguese Missions in Southern
India.
Early History of the Church in India.
First Meeting of the Portuguese with the
Syrians.
Pioneers of the Portuguese Missions.
The Rise of the Jesuits.
The Jesuits in Portugal.
St Francis Xavier's Mission in India.
Subsequent Missions in the Sixteenth
Century.
Book III.
The Subjugation of the Syrian Church.
Roman Claim of Supremacy.
First Attempt, by the Franciscans.
Second Attempt, by the Jesuits.
The Struggle against Rome.
Book III.-continued
The Archbishop of Goa.
The Synod of Diamper.
The Triumph of Rome.
Book IV.
Subsequent Missions in Southern India,
with special reference to the Syrians.
Radiation of Mission of Goa.
The Madura Mission.
Portuguese Missions in the Carnatic.
Syrian Christians in the Seventeenth
Century.
Syrian Christians in the E
the Eighteenth
Century.
Book V.
The Portuguese Missions, with special
reference to Modern Missionary
efforts in South India,
The First Protestant Mission in South
India.
English Missions to the Syrians 1806-16,
English Missions and the Syrian
Christians.
The Disruption and its Results.
Present State of the Syrian Christians.
The Revival of the Romish Missions in
India.
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IO
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C. L. EASTLAKE.
Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Royal Gallery at Venice.
Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
VERY REV. FREDERICK W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.
(Archdeacon of Westminster).
Words of Truth and Wisdom, by Very Rev. Frederick W. Farrar,
D.D., F.R.S. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 5s.
CONTENTS.
Christian Statesmanship.
Legislative Duties.
The Use of Gifts and Oppor-
tunities.
The Brotherhood of Man.
Energy of Christian Service.
Christianity and the Human
Race.
The Conquest over Temp-
tation.
Too Late.
The Souls of the Departed.
What Heaven is.
No Discharge in the War
against Sin.
The Missionaries.
The Martyrs.
Seneca.
Seneca and St Paul.
The Dead which die in the Gallio and St Paul.
Lord.
Roman Society in the days
of St Paul.
Sanskrit.
The Resurrection of the
Dead.
The Blighted Life.
Wisdom and Knowledge.
The Voice of History.
The Monks.
The Early Franciscans.
The Hermits.
Christianity and Individual.
The Victories of Christianity.
The Christian Remedyagainst
the Frailties of Life.
Prayer, the Antidote
of
Sorrow.
"In theological views he might be described as standing between the Evangelical
party and the Broad Church; but his knowledge, coloured by a poetic temperament,
his superabundant fertility, and eloquent luxuriance of style, have gained for him a
unique position in the theological thought of the last twenty years."-Celebrities of the
Century.
¿
Greek and Hebrew.
Aryan Migrations.
Words.
GENERAL GORDON, C.B.
Events in the Taeping Rebellion, being Reprints of MSS. copied by
General Gordon, C.B., in his own handwriting; with Monograph,
Introduction, and Notes, by A. Egmont Hake, Author of "The Story
of Chinese Gordon." With Portrait and Map, demy Svo, 18s.
"The publication of this volume completos what may be called the personal
narrative of General Gordon's eventful life told in his own words."-Manchester
Guardian.
"There is no doubt that a wide circle of readers will like to read the story in the
very words of the gallant leader of the Ever Victorious Army.'”—Daily Graphic.
6
A handy book of reference.
Companion to the Writing Desk; or, How to Address, Begin, and
End Letters to Titled and Official Personages. Together with a
Table of Precedence, copious List of Abbreviations, Rules for Com-
position and Punctuation, Instructions on Preparing for the Press, &c.
32ino, Is.
A useful manual which should be in every office.
BARON CUVIER.
The Animal Kingdom, with considerable Additions by W. B. Carpenter,
M.D., F.R.S., and J. O. Westwood, F. L.S. New Edition, Illustrated
with 500 Engravings on Wood and 36 Coloured Plates, imp. Svo,
2IS.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
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II
M. GRIFFITH.
India's Princes, short Life Sketches of the Native Rulers of India,
with 47 full-page Illustrations. Demy 4to, gilt top, 21s.
The contents are arranged in the following order: -THE PUNJAUB-H.H. The
Maharaja of Cashmere, H.H. The Maharaja of Patiala, H.H. The Maharaja of Kapur-
thalla. RAJPUTANA-The Maharaja of Ouidpur, The Maharaja of Jeypore, The Maha-
raja of Jodhpur, The Maharaja of Uwar, The Maharaja of Bhurtpur. CENTRAL INDIA
-H.H. The Maharaja Holkar of Indore, H.H. The Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior, H.H.
The Begum of Bhopal. THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY-H. H. The Gaik war of Baroda, H.H.
The Rao of Cutch, H.H. The Raja of Kolhapur, H.H. The Nawab of Juarrghad, H.H.
The Thakore Sahib of Bhavnagar, H.H. The Thakore Sahib of Dhangadra, H.H. The
Thakore Sahib of Morvi, H.H. The Thakore Sahib of Gondal. SOUTHERN INDIA-H.H.
The Nizam of Hyderabad, H.H. The Maharaja of Mysore, H.H. The Maharaja of
Travancore, &c.
"A handsome volume, containing a series of photographic portraits and local views
with accompanying letterpress, giving biographical and political details, carefully com-
piled and attractively presented."-Times.
GEORGE GRESSWELL.
The Diseases and Disorders of the Ox. Second Edition, demy Svo,
7s. 6d.
"This is perhaps one of the best of the popular books on the subject which has
been published in recent years, and demonstrates in a most unmistakable manner
the great advance that has been made in Bovine and Ovine Pathology since the days
of Youatt.
To medical men who desire to know something of the disorders
of such an important animal-speaking hygienically-as the Ox, the work can be
recommended."-The Lancet.
C. HAMILTON.
·
Hedaya or Guide, a Commentary on the Mussulman Laws.
Second Edition, with Preface and Index by S. G. Grady, 8vo, 35s.
The great Law-Book of India, and one of the most important monuments of Mussul-
man legislation in existence.
"A work of very high authority in all Moslem countries. It discusses most of the
subjects mentioned in the Koran and Sonna."-MILLS Mohammedanism.
"A valuable work."—ALLIBONE.
JOSEPH HAYDN.
Book of Dignities, containing lists of the Official Personages of the
British Empire, Civil, Diplomatic, Heraldic, Judicial, Ecclesiastical,
Municipal, Naval, and Military, from the Earliest Periods to the
Present Time, together with the Sovereigns and Rulers of the World
from the Foundation of their respective States; the Orders of
Knighthood of the United Kingdom and India, and numerous other
lists. Founded on Beatson's "Political Index" (1806). Remodelled
and brought down to 1851 by the late Joseph Haydn. Con-
tinued to the Present Time, with numerous additional lists,
and an Index to the entire Work, by Horace Ockerby,
Solicitor of the Supreme Court. Demy Svo, 25s.
"The most complete official directory in existence, containing about 1,300 different
lists."-Times.
"The value of such a book can hardly be overrated.”—Saturday Review.
"A perfect monument of patient labour and research, and invaluable for many
purposes of reference.”—Truth.
This valuable work has cost its editor, Mr Horace Ockerby, a great deal of labour,
and does infinite credit to his research and industry."-World.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
I2
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Rev. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A., Author of "Music and Morals."
Sir Morell Mackenzie, Physician and Operator, a Memoir, compiled
and edited from Private Papers and Personal Reminiscences. New
Edition, with Portrait and copy of Autograph Letter from the Queen,
crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Family Tree.
Surroundings.
Boyhood.
A Vocation.
The Throat Hospital.
CONTENTS.
Private Practice.
Leisure Hours.
The Emperor.
The German Doctors.
The Book.
The Respite.
The Last Voyage.
Last Glimpses.
The End.
"Mr Haweis writes not only fearlessly, but with remarkable freshness and vigour.
He is occasionally eloquent, and even pathetic. In all that he says we perceive a
transparent honesty and singleness of purpose."-Saturday Review.
"A deeply interesting book, and one which challenges in a most striking and fear-
less manner the stern verdict which Sir Morell's own profession so generally passed
upon his conduct before and aftor the death of his illustrious patient the Emperor.
The volume is full of absolutely interesting details, many among them new.”—Daily
Telegraph.
HOWARD HENSMAN, Special Correspondent of the "Pioneer"
(Allahabad) and the "Daily News" (London).
•
•
The Afghan War, 1879-80. Being a complete Narrative of the Capture
of Cabul, the Siege of Sherpur, the Battle of Ahmed Khel, the March
to Candahar, and the defeat of Ayub Khan. With Maps, demy 8vo,
2IS.
"Sir Frederick Roberts says of the letters here published in a collected form that
'nothing could be more accurate or graphic.' As to accuracy no ono can be a moro
competent judge than Sir Frederick, and his testimony stamps the book before us as
constituting especially trustworthy material for history. Of much that he relates Mr
Honsman was an eye-witness; of the rest he was informed by eye-witnesses immedi-
ately after the occurrence of the events recorded. There could, therefore, be littlo doubt
as to the facts mentioned. Credibility might be concurrent with incorrect deductions,
but we are assured by Sir Frederick Roberts that Mr Hensman's accuracy is complete
in all respects. Mr Hensman enjoyed singular advantages during the first part of the
war, for he was the only special correspondent who accompanied the force which
marched out of Ali Kheyl in September 1879. One of the most interesting portions of
the book is that which describes the march of Sir Fredorick Roberts from Cabul to
Candahar. The description of the Maiwand disaster is given with combined clearness,
simplicity, and power, and will be read with the utmost interest. Indeed, the book is
in every respect interesting and well written, and reflects the greatest credit on the
author."--Athenaeum.
SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, Bart., K.H., &c., Member of
the Institute of France, &c.
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects. New Edition, crown 8vo,
6s.
"We are reminded of the rapid progress made by science within the last quarter of
a century by the publication of a new edition of Sir John Herschel's Popular Lectures
on Scientific Subjects. In 1861, spectrum analysis, as applied to the heavenly bodies,
was referred to as a possibility; now it is not only an accomplished fact, but the
analysis of the gases contained in the sun has led to the discovery of one of them,
helium, upon the earth. Some of the lectures, such as that on light, arc practically
popular treatises on the particular subject to which they refer, and can be read with
advantage even by advanced students."-The Westminster Review.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
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13
REV. T. P. HUGHES.
Dictionary of Islam. Being a Cyclopedia of the Doctrines, Rites,
Ceremonies, and Customs, together with the Technical and Theological
Terms of the Muhammadan Religion. With numerous Illustrations,
royal 8vo, £2. 25.
"Such a work as this has long been needed, and it would be hard to find any one
better qualified to prepare it than Mr Hughes. His 'Notes on Muhammadanism,' of
which two editions have appeared, have proved decidedly useful to students of Islam,
especially in India, and his long familiarity with the tenets and customs of Moslems
has placed him in the best possible position for deciding what is necessary and what
superfluous in a 'Dictionary of Islam.' His usual method is to begin an article with
the text in the Koran relating to the subject, then to add the traditions bearing upon it,
and to conclude with the comments of the Mohammedan scholiasts and the criticisms
of Western scholars. Such a method, while involving an infinity of labour, produces
the best results in point of accuracy and comprehensiveness. The difficult task of
compiling a dictionary of so vast a subject as Islam, with its many sects, its saints,
khalifs, ascetics, and dervishes, its festivals, ritual, and sacred places, the dress,
manners, and customs of its professors, its commentators, technical terms, science of
tradition and interpretation, its superstitions, magic, and astrology, its theoretical
doctrines and actual practices, has been accomplished with singular success; and the
dictionary will have its place among the standard works of reference in every library
that professes to take account of the religion which governs the lives of forty millions
of the Queen's subjects. The articles on 'Marriage,' 'Women,' Wives,' Slavery,'
'Tradition,' 'Sufl, Muhammad,' 'Da'wah' or Incantation, 'Burial,' and 'God,' are
especially admirable. Two articles deserve special notice. One is an elaborate account
of Arabic Writing' by Dr Steingass, which contains a vast quantity of useful matter,
and is well illustrated by woodcuts of the chief varieties of Arabic script. The other
article to which we refer with special emphasis is Mr F. Pincott on 'Sikhism.' There
is something on nearly every page of the dictionary that will interest and instruct the
students of Eastern religion, manners, and customs."-Athenæum.
•
"
1
L
Dictionary of Muhammadan Theology.
Notes on Muhammadanism, by Rev. T. P. Hughes. Third Edition,
revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo, 6s.
"Altogether an admirable little book. It combines two excellent qualities, abun-
dance of facts and lack of theories.
On every one of the numerous heads (over
fifty) into which the book is divided, Mr Hughes furnishes a large amount of very
valuable information, which it would be exceedingly difficult to collect from even a
large library of works on the subject. The book might well be called a 'Dictionary of
Muhammadan Theology,' for we know of no English work which combines a methodical
arrangement (and consequently facility of reference) with fulness of information in so
high a degree as the little volume before us."-The Academy.
"It contains multum in parvo, and is about the best outlines of the tenets of the
Muslim faith which we have seen. It has, moreover, the rare merit of being accurate;
and, although it contains a few passages which we would gladly see expunged, it can-
not fail to be useful to all Government employés who have to deal with Muhammadans;
whilst to missionaries it will be invaluable.”—The Times of India.
6
"It is manifest throughout the work that we have before us the opinions of one
thoroughly conversant with the subject, and who is uttering no random notions.
We strongly recommend Notes on Muhammadanism.' Our clergy especially, even
though they are not missionaries, and have no intention of labouring amongst Muham-
madans, or consorting with them, ought to have at least as much knowledge of the
system ás can be most readily acquired, with a very little careful study, from this use-
ful treatise.”—The Record,
•
SIR W. HUNTER.
Bengal MS. Records. A Selected List of Letters in the Board of
Revenue, Calcutta, 1782-1807, with an Historical Dissertation and
Analytical Index. 4 vols., demy Svo, 30s.
A Statistical Account of Bengal. 20 vols., demy Svo, £6.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
14
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
J. HUNTER, late Hon. Sec. of the British Bee-keepers' Association.
A Manual of Bee-keeping. Containing Practical Information for
Rational and Profitable Methods of Bee Management. Full Instruc-
tions on Stimulative Feeding, Ligurianising and Queen-raising, with
descriptions of the American Comb Foundation, Sectional Supers, and
the best Hives and Apiarian Appliances on all Systems. Fourth
Edition, with Illustrations, crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
"We are indebted to Mr J. Hunter, Honorary Secretary of the British Bee-keepers'
Association. His Manual of Bee-keeping, just published, is full to the very brim of
choice and practical hints fully up to the most advanced stages of Apiarian Science,
and its perusal has afforded us so much pleasure that we have drawn somewhat largely
from it for the benefit of our readers."-Bee-keepers' Magazine (New York).
"It is profusely illustrated with engravings, which are almost always inserted for
their utility.
There is an old saying that easy writing is hard reading,' but we
will not say thus much of Mr Hunter's book, which, taken as a whole, is perhaps the
most generally useful of any now published in this country."—The Field.
"
MAJOR LEIGH HUNT, Madras Army, and ALEX. S. KENNY,
M.R.C.S.E., A.K.C., Senior Demonstrator of Anatomy at King's
College, London.
On Duty under a Tropical Sun. Being some Practical Suggestions
for the Maintenance of Health and Bodily Comfort, and the Treatment
of Simple Diseases; with remarks on Clothing and Equipment.
Second Edition, crown 8vo, 4s.
"This little book is devoted to the description and treatment of many tropical
diseases and minor emergencies, supplemented by some useful hints on diet, clothing,
and equipment for travellers in tropical climates. The issue of a third edition proves
that the book has hitherto been successful. On the whole we can commend the hints
which have been given for the treatment of various diseases, but in some places much
has been left to the knowledge of the reader in the selection and application of a
remedy."-Scottish Geographical Magazine.
"Is written more especially for the rougher sex, and is only less important than
Tropical Trials ' because it has had many more predecessors. It is now in a third edition,
and contains practical suggestions for the maintenance of health and bodily comfort,
as well as the treatment of simple diseases, with useful remarks on clothing and equip-
ment for the guidance of travellers abroad."-Daily Telegraph.
Tropical Trials. A Handbook for Women in the Tropics. Crown 8vo,
7s. 6d.
"Ís a valuable handbook for women in the East, and, we are glad to see, now in its
second edition. It does not treat theoretically of the maladies incidental to Europeans
in hot climates, or go deeply into those matters which properly belong to the experi-
enced doctor, but it gives plain, wholesome advice on matters of health, which, wcre
it scrupulously followed, it is not too much to say would add fifty per cent. to the
enjoyment of our countrywomen abroad. She could scarcely have a better guide as
to what to do and what not to do than this excellent handbook, which deserves to be
included in every woman's foreign outfit."--Daily Telegraph.
JOHN H. INGRAM.
The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain.
Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Epitomised in One Volume by R. O'BYRNE, F. R. G.S., &c.
James' Naval History. A Narrative of the Naval Battles, Single Ship
Actions, Notable Sieges, and Dashing Cutting-out Expeditions, fought
in the days of Howe, Hood, Duncan, St Vincent, Bridport, Nelson,
Camperdown, Exmouth, Duckworth, and Sir Sydney Smith. Crown
8vo, 5s.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
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15
MRS GRACE JOHNSON, Silver Medallist Cookery, Exhibition.
Anglo-Indian and Oriental Cookery. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
"Overflows with all sorts of delicious and economical recipes."-Pall Mall Budget.
"Housewives and professors of the gentle art of cookery who deplore the dearth
of dainty dishes will find a veritable gold mine in Mrs Johnson's book."-Pall Mall
Gazette.
Appeals to us from a totally original standpoint. She has thoroughly and com-
pletely investigated native and Anglo-Indian cuisines, and brought away the very best
specimens of their art. Her pillau and kedgree are perfect, in our opinion; curries
are scientifically classed and explained, and some of the daintiest recipes we have ever
seen are given, but the puddings particularly struck our fancy. Puddings as a rule
are so nasty! The pudding that is nourishing is hideously insipid, and of the smart
pudding it may truly be said that its warp is dyspepsia, and its woof indigestion. Mrs
Johnson's puddings are both good to taste and pretty to look at, and the names of
some of her native dishes would brighten any menu.
H. G. KEENE, C.I.E., B.C.S., M.R.A.S., &c.
History of India. From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. For
the use of Students and Colleges. 2 vols, with Maps.
2 vols, with Maps.
16s.
Crown Svo,
"The main merit of Mr Keene's performance lies in the fact that he has assimilated
all the authorities, and has been careful to bring his book down to date. He has been
careful in research, and has availed himself of the most recent materials. He is well
known as the author of other works on Indian history, and his capacity for his self-
imposed task will not be questioned. We must content ourselves with this brief testi-
mony to the labour and skill bestowed by him upon a subject of vast interest and
importance. Excellent proportion is preserved in dealing with the various episodes,
and the style is clear and graphic. The volumes are supplied with many useful maps,
and the appendix include notes on Indian law and on recent books about India.
Globe.
""
"Mr Keene has the admirable element of fairness in dealing with the succession of
great questions that pass over his pages. and he wisely devotes a full half of his work
to the prosent century. The appearance of such a book, and of every such book, upon
India is to be hailed at present. A fair-minded presentment of Indian history like that
contained in Mr Keene's two volumes is at this moment peculiarly welcome."-Times.
An Oriental Biographical Dictionary.
Founded on Materials collected
by the late Thomas William Beale. New Edition, revised and
enlarged, royal 8vo, 28s.
"A complete biographical dictionary for a country like India, which in its long
history has produced a profusion of great men, would be a vast undortaking. The
suggestion here made only indicates the line on which the dictionary, at some future
time, could be almost indefinitely extended, and rendered still more valuable as a work
of reference. Great care has evidently been taken to secure the accuracy of all that
has been included in the work, and that is of far more importance than mere bulk.
The dictionary can be commended as trustworthy, and reflects much credit on Mr
Keene. Several interesting lists of rulers are given under the various founders of
dynasties."-India.
The Fall of the Moghul Empire. From the Death of Aurungzeb to
the Overthrow of the Mahratta Power. A New Edition, with Correc-
tions and Additions, with Map, crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
This work fills up a blank between the ending of Elphinstone's and the commence-
ment of Thornton's Histories.
Fifty-Seven. Some Account of the Administration of Indian Districts
during the Revolt of the Bengal Army. Demy 8vo, 6s.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
16
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
DR TALBOTT, and others.
Keble College Sermons.
Second Series, 1877-1888, crown 8vo, 6s.
"To those who desire earnest, practical, and orthodox doctrine in the form of short
addresses, these sermons will be most acceptable; and their lofty tone, their eloquent
wording, and the thorough manliness of their character, will commend them to a wide
circle of readers."-Morning Post.
"Dr Talbot has a second time thoughtfully placed on public record some of the
lessons which were taught during his Wardenship in Sermons preached in the Chapel
of Keble College, Oxford, 1877-1858. The serinors are fresh and vigorous in tone, and
evidently come from preachers who were thoroughly in touch with their youthful
audience, and who generally with much acuteness and skill grappled with the
spiritual and intellectual difficulties besetting nowadays the University career.".
Church Times.
a
G. H. KINAHAN.
A Handy Book of Rock Names. I'cap. 8vo, 4s.
"This will prove, we do not doubt, a very useful little book to all practical geo-
logists, and also to the reading student of rocks. When a difficulty is incurred as to
a species of deposit, it will soon vanish. Mr Kinahan's little book will soon make it
all clear. The work is divided into three parts. The first is a classified table of rocks,
the second part treats of the Ingenite rocks, and the third part deals with those rocks
which are styled Derivate. Dana's termination of yte has been most generally used
by the author, but he has also given the ite terminations for those that like them.
The book will be purchased, for it must be had, by every geologist; and as its size is
small, it will form a convenient pocket companion for the man who works over field
and quarry.”—Popular Science Review.
REV. F. G. LEE, D.D. (Vicar of All Saints', Lambeth).
The Church under Queen Elizabeth. An Historical Sketch. By Rev.
F. G. Lee, D.D. (Vicar of All Saints', Lambeth). Second Edition.
Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
"There is the same picturesqueness of detail, the same vigorous denunciation, the
same graphic power, which made the earlier book pleasant reading even to many who
disagree heartily with its tone and object. . . Dr Lee's strength lies in very graphic
description."-Notes and Queries.
"This is, in many ways, a remarkably fine book. That it is powerfully written no
one acquainted with Dr Lee's vigorous style would for a moment dispute."-Morning
Post.
"Presenting a painful picture of the degradation into which the Church had sunk
in Elizabeth's reign."-Daily Telegraph.
Sights and Shadows. Being Examples of the Supernatural. New
Edition. With a Preface addressed to the Critics. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"This work will be especially interesting to students of the supernatural, and their
name is legion at the present moment. It deals with more than one branch of what is
commonly known as spiritualism. The introduction gives a brief resumé of various
forms of magic and divination which have obtained credence in all ages, and later on
we find well-authenticated accounts of apparitions, supernatural warnings, hypnotic
experiments, and miracles of healing. Mr Lee evidently believes that 'there are more
things in heaven and carth' than are dreamt of in our philosophy,' and few sane people
will disagree with him, though they may not be inclined to accept all his opinions and
assertions as they stand."-Lady.
C
"Hore we have ghostly stories galore, which believers in supernatural visitations
will welcome as upholders of the faith that is in them. Dr Lec is a hard hitter and a
vigorous controversialist, with a righteous contempt for your Darwins and Stuart
Mills, and such like folk, and is not above suggesting that some of them have a decided
worship of the god Self. As for the pompous jargon and silly cynicism which so
many public scribes again and again make use of to throw discredit upon any phase of
the supernatural,' I have nothing to say. They can take care of themselves. This
much I know, that 'Sights and Shadows' gives one an eerio feeling as midnight
approaches and the fire flickers on the hearth."-Gentlewoman.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
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17
COL. G. B. MALLESON.
History of the French in India. From the Founding of Pondicherry
in 1674, to the Capture of that place in 1761. New and Revised.
Edition, with Maps. Demy Svo, 16s.
"Colonel Malleson has produced a volume alike attractive to the general reader and
valuable for its new matter to the special student. It is not too much to say that now,
for the first time, we are tornished with a faithful narrative of that portion of European
enterprise in India which turns upon the contest waged by the East India Company
against French influence, and especially against Duplcix."-Edinburgh Review.
"It is pleasant to contrast the work now before us with the writer's first bold plunge
into historical composition, which splashed every one within his reach. He swims now
with a steady stroke, and there is no fear of his sinking. With a keener insight into
human character, and a larger understanding of the sources of human action, he com-
bines all the power of animated recital which invested his earlier narratives with
popularity."-Fortnightly Review.
"The author has had the advantage of consulting the French archives, and his
volume forms a useful supplement to Orme."--Athenæum.
Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.
Edition. Crown Svo, 6s.
New
"How India escaped from the government of prefects and sub-prefects to fall under
that of commissioners and deputy-commissioners; why the Penal Code of Lord
Macaulay reigns supreme instead of a Code Napoleon; why we are not looking on
helplessly from Mahe. Karika), and Pondicherry, while the French are ruling all over
Madras, and spending millions of franes in attempting to cultivate the slopes of the
Neilgberries, may be learnt from this modest volume. Colonel Malleson is always
painstaking, and generally accurate; his style is transparent, and he never loses sight
of the purpose with which he commenced to write."-Saturday Review.
"A book dealing with such a period of our history in the East, besides being
interesting, contains many lessons. It is written in a style that will be popular with
general readers."-thenæum.
"It strikes one as the bost thing he has yet done. Searching, yot easy, his pen goes
with unflagging power through the military wonders of a hundred years, connecting
the accounts of battles by a sufficient historic thread."-Academy.
History of Afghanistan, from the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the
War of 1878, with map, demy Svo, 18s.
"The name of Colonel Malleson on the title-page of any historical work in relation
to India or the neighbouring States is a satisfactory guaranteo both for the accuracy
of the facts and the brilliancy of the narrative. The author may be complimented upon
having written a History of Afghanistan which is likely to become a work of standard
authority."-Scotsman.
The Battle-Fields of Germany, from the Outbreak of the Thirty Years'
War to the Battle of Blenheim, with maps and one plan, demy Svo,
16s.
"Colonel Malleson has shown a grasp of his subject, and a power of vivifying he
confused passages of battlo. in which it would be impossible to name any living writer
as his equal. In imbuing these almost forgotten battle-fields with fresh interest and
reality for the English reader, he is re-opening one of the most important chapters of
European History, which no previous English writer has made so interesting and
instructive as he has succeeded in doing in this volume."-Academy.
Ambushes and Surprises, being a Description of some of the most
famous instances of the Leading into Ambush and the Surprises of
Armies, from the time of Hannibal to the period of the Indian Mutiny,
with a portrait of General Lord Mark Ker, K. C.B., demy Svo, 18s.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
1
18
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
JAMES IRVIN LUPTON, F.R.C. V.S., author of "The External
Anatomy of the Horse," &c.
The Horse: as he Was, as he Is, and as he Ought to Be, with
Illustrations. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
"Written with a good object in view. namely, to create an interest in the important
subject of horse-breeding, more especially that class known as genoral utility horses.
The book contains several illustrations, is well printed and handsomely bound, and we
hope will meet with the attention it deserves."-Live Stock Journal.
T. MILLER MAGUIRE, M.A., LL.D.
American War--Campaigns in Virginia, 1861-2, with Maps. Royal
8vo, paper covers, 3s. 6d.
MRS MANNING.
Ancient and Medieval India. Being the History, Religion, Laws,
Caste, Manners and Customs, Language, Literature, Poetry, Philo-
sophy, Astronomy, Algebra, Medicine, Architecture, Manufactures,
Commerce, &c., of the Hindus, taken from their Writings. With
Illustrations. 2 vols., demy 8vo, 30s.
IRVING MONTAGU (late Special War Correspondent Illustrated
London News ").
Camp and Studio. Illustrated by the Author. New Edition. Crown
8vo, 6s.
'
"His animated pages and sketches have a more than ephemeral interest, and
present a moving picture of the romance and the misery of countries and populations
ravaged by great opposing armies, and many a picturesque episode of personal ex-
periences; he is pleasant and amusing enough."-Daily News.
"Mr Irving Montagu's narrative of his experiences as war artist of the Illustrated
London News during the Russo-Turkish war, though late in appearing, may be read
with interest. War correspondents and artists usually enjoy a fair share of adventure;
but Mr Montagu appears to have revelled in dangers which seem anything but desir-
able when studied in cold blood. Mr Montagu has much that is interesting to tell
about the horrors of the siege of Kars and the prowess of the fair young Amazon who
commanded a troop of Bashi-Bazuks, and even seduced a Russian general to her side.
How he got to the front in spite of Russian prohibition, disguised as a camp follower,
how his portmanteau was shelled a few inches behind his back, what he risked and
what he saw in the memorable lines before Plevna, will be read with great interest.
The book is well illustrated by many vigorous sketches, some of which are exceedingly
humorous."- Athenæum.
"A bright chatty record of wars, scenes, and adventures in various parts of the
world."-Echo.
Illustrated by the Author. New
"Mr Montagu is to be congratulated on an eminently readable book, which, both
in style and matter, is above the average of productions in this kind."-The Morning
Post.
Wanderings of a War Artist.
Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"This is an enchanting book. Equally as writer and as artist, Mr Irving Montagu
is a delightful companion. This beautiful and exceptionally interesting volume does
not by any means exhaust the literary and artistic achievements of the well-known
special' of the Illustrated London News."-The Daily Neus.
"His own adventures are largely seasoned with stories of other people and ancc-
dotes he picks up. He went through the second siege of Paris under the Commune,
and some of the best reading in the book is the picture he gives of the state of poor,
beautiful Paris, scen by the eye of an observing, impartial man, who has no object in
either exaggerating or under-colouring the work of the Commune."-The Spectator.
"The adventures of Mr Montagu are narrated with humour, and are seldom dull
reading."-Glasgow Herald.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
-
*
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
19
J. MORRIS, Author of "The War in Korea," &c., thirteen years
resident in Tokio under the Japanese Board of Works.
Advance Japan. A Nation Thoroughly in Earnest. With over 100
Illustrations by R. Isayama, and of photographs lent by the Japanese
Legation. 8vo, 12s. 6d.
"Mr Morris evidently knows the country well, and is a strong believer in its
future; his book will be found a useful summary of recent history, abounding in good
character sketches, accompanied with photographs, of the leading men."-Times.
"Is really a remarkably complete account of the land, the people, and the institu-
tions of Japan, with chapters that deal with matters of such living interest as its
growing industries and armaments, and the origin, incidents, and probable outcome
of the war with China. The volume is illustrated by a Japanese artist of repute; it
has a number of useful statistical appendices, and it is dedicated to His Majesty the
Mikado."-Scotsman.
"Mr Morris, who writes, of course, with thorough local knowledge, gives a very
complete and eminently readable account of the country, its government, people, and
resource. The work, which contains a large number of portraits and other illustra-
tions, is decidedly 'on the nail,' and may be recommended not only as a book to read,
but as of value for reference."-Westminster Gazette.
<<
Puts before us a clear view of the point which has been reached. His work is
historical, social, and descriptive; we see in it the Japanese of to-day as he really is.
Mr Morris has also something to say on the Japanese at home-how he cats, how he
dresses, and how he comports himself; while wider issues are discussed in the chapters
treating of the administration of the islands, their ports, communications, trades, and
armaments."-Globe.
•
•
•
•
"A well-proportioned sketch of the Japanese of to-day, so recent as to include the
results of the war. There is much else I should like to quote in this able and
interesting book. It has a good chapter on natural history, and an excellent chapter
on dict, dress, and manners; it gives just enough of Japanese history to help the
ordinary reader who wants to learn his Japan on easy terms; it has also most useful
and attractively conveyed information in its brief account of the principal cities of
Japan, communications and armament, language and literature, mines and minerals.'
-Queen.
}"
"He summarises clearly, concisely, the existing knowledge on the Japanese Parlia-
mentary system, territorial and administrative divisions, natural history, domestic
and national customs, dynastic changes, old feudal institutions, town populations,
industries, mineral and other natural resources, railways, armaments, the press, and
other subjects too many for enumeration. Even the chapter on language and litera-
ture makes an appalling subject interesting. ... Mr Morris has brought his very use-
ful account of Japan up-to-date. He gives a good summary of the recent war with
China, and then proceeds to make some well-considered suggestions on a matter of
supreme importance to Europe no less than to the two Empires of the Far East."
CHARLES MARVIN.
The Region of the Eternal Fire.
An Account of a Journey to the
Caspian Region in 1883. New Edition. With Maps and Illustra-
tions. Crown Svo, handsomely bound, 6s.
"The leading authority of the English Press on the Central Asian Question is
Charles Marvin, a man of iron industry, who has wielded his comprehensive knowledge
of the region in such a manner as to render eminent service to his country.”—Opinion
of Arminius Vambery.
"Charles Marvin's services in respect of the Russo-Afghan Question have been
invaluable. He has heard with his own ears the opinions expressed on the subject by
Russian generals and diplomatists, and, for the love of England, has spent his own
money to warn England's people.”—Opinion of Colonel Malleson, "The Russo-Afghan
Question," p. 55,
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad
20
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
W. O'CONNOR MORRIS.
Great Commanders of Modern Times, and the Campaign of 1815.
Turenne-Marlborough--Frederick the Great-Napoleon-Welling-
ton-Moltke. With Illustrations and Plans. Royal 8vo, 21S.
"Mr Morris certainly brings to his task vast reading and exhaustive research."-
Athenæum.
"We gladly welcome this handsome volume by Judge O'Connor Morris, which gives
evidence on every page of careful reading and correct judgment.
An admirable
book to place in the hands of any student who wishes to get some idea of the history
of the art of war."-Academy.
tr
•
To the students of war this book will prove of the utmost interest and the greatest
possible service."-National Observer.
"Writes vividly and well."—Times.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
Miscellanies from the Oxford Sermons of John Henry Newman,
D.D. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 5s.
"All the resources of a master of English style-except, perhaps one, description-
were at his command; pure diction, clear arrangement, irony, dignity, a copious
command of words, combined with a reserve in the use of them-all these qualities
went to make up the charm of Newman's style, the finest flower that the earlier system
of a purely classical education has produced."—Athenæum.
"The pieces presented to us here are carefully chosen, and answer the purpose of
the present volume. The selections which are contained in it happily avoid any of
these passages which have been the grounds of controversy. As a general rule we are
able to take in the teachings of this book without any arrière-pensée, without any
feeling that we have here the germ of those theories which estrange their author from
us."-Athenæum.
COL. F. A. WHINYATES, late R.H.A., formerly commanding
the Battery.
Military Regiments-From Corunna to Sevastopol, the History of
"Ć" Battery, "A" Brigade, late "C" Troop, Royal Horse
Artillery, with succession of Officers from its formation to the present
time. With 3 Maps, demy 8vo, 14s.
EDWARD NEWMAN, F.Z.S.
British Butterflies. With many Illustrations. Super royal 8vo, 7s. 6d.
DEPUTY SURGEON-GENERAL C. T. PASKE, late of the Bengal
Army, and Edited by F. G. AFLALO.
↓
Life and Travel in Lower Burmah, with Frontispicce. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"In dealing with life in Burmah we are given a pleasant insight into Eastern life;
and to those interested in India and our other Eastern possessions, the opinions Mr
Paske offers and the suggestions he makes will be delightful reading. Mr Paske has
adopted a very light style of writing in' Myanma,' which lends an additional charm
to the short historical-cum-geographical sketch, and both the writer and the editor
are to be commended for the production of a really attractive book."-Public Opinion
For the Reduced Prices apply to
1*1
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
2 I
Translation of the famous Passion Play.
Passion Play at Oberammergau, The, with the whole Drama translated
into English, and the Songs of the Chorus in German and English;
also a Map of the Town, Plan of the Theatre, &c. 4to, cloth, 3s. 6d. ;
paper, 2s. 6d.
"The author of 'Charles Lowder' has done a real service in publishing a transla-
tion of 'The Passion Play at Oberammergau,' with a description of the play and short
account of a visit there in 1880. To those who have already seen it, this little book
will recall vividly the experience of what must be to all a memorable day, while to
those who are going in 1890 it is simply invaluable."-Guardian.
MARY A. PRATTEN.
My Hundred Swiss Flowers, with a short account of Swiss Ferns.
With 60 Illustrations. Crown Svo, plain plates, 12s. 6d. ; with plates
coloured by hand, 25s.
"The temptation to produce such books as this seems irresistible. The
author feels a want; the want is undeniable. After more or less hesitation
he feels he can supply it. It is pleasantly written, and affords useful hints
as to localities."-Atheneum,
R. A. PROCTOR.
Watched by the Dead, a loving study of Dickens' half-told tale. Crown
Svo, cloth, Is. 6d. ; boards, Is.
"Mr Proctor here devotes much study and much ingenious conjecture to restoring
the plot of 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood.' It would not be fair were we to attempt
to give in a small compass the result of his labours. It must suffice to say that those
who have occupied themselves with this curious problem will be interested in the
solution here offered for their acceptance."-Spectator.
WILLIAM PROCTOR, Stud Groom.
The_Management and Treatment of the Horse in the Stable,
Field, and on the Road. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged,
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s.
*
There are few who are interested in horses will fail to profit by one portion or
another of this useful work."-Sportsman.
"We cannot do botter than wish that Mr Proctor's book may find its way into the
hands of all those concerned in the management of the most useful quadruped we
possess."-England.
"There is a fund of sound common-sense views in this work which will be interest-
ing to many owners."-Field.
66
Coming from a practical hand the work should recommend itself to the public."—
Sportsman.
WILLIAM RAEBURN ANDREWV.
Raeburn (Sir Henry, R.A.), Life by his Great-Grandson, William
Raeburn Andrew, with an Appendix comprising a list of his works
exhibited in the Royal Academy, Edinburgh. Svo, 10s. 6d.
C
"Mr Andrew's book, which on this occasion appeals to a wider public, makes no
pretence to do more than to bring together the biographical fragments concerning
Raeburn gathered out of various publications and to make them coherent with a little
cement of his own.' Possibly a füller and more original biography of the greatest of
our portrait-painters, who was at the same time one of the greatest ornaments of the
Edinburgh Society of the beginning of the century, may yet see the light; and in the
meantime we can be grateful to Mr Andrew for bringing together and arranging so
rich a store of topographical and personal details connected with his illustrious
ancestor. In an appendix is a useful annotated catalogue of the 1876 exhibition of
Raeburn's works."-Scotsman.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
22
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
R. RIMMER, F.L.S.
The Land and Freshwater Shells of the British Isles. Illustrated
with 10 Photographs and 3 Lithographs, containing figures of all the
principal Species. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s.
"This handsomely got up little volume supplies a long-felt want in a very ingenious
and trustworthy manner. The author is an enthusiastic conchologist, and writes
both attractively and well, and in a manner so simple and natural that we have no
fcar that any ordinarily educated man will easily understand every phrase. But
the feature of this book which strikes us most is that every species of British land and
freshwater shell has been photographed, and here we have all the photographs, natural
size in the albertype process, so that the merest tyro will find no difficulty in identi-
fying any shell he may find."—Science Gossip.
ALEXANDER ROGERS (Bombay Civil Service, Retired).
The Land Revenue of Bombay, a History of its Administration, Rise,
and Progress, with 18 Maps. 2 vols., demy 8vo, 30s.
CC
Mr Rogers has produced a continuous and an authoritative record of the land
changes and of the fortunes of the cultivating classes for a full half-century, together
with valuable data regarding the condition and burdens of those classes at various
periods before the present system of settlement was introduced. Mr Rogers now
presents a comprehensive view of the land administration of Bombay as a whole, the
history of its rise and progress, and a clear statement of the results which it has
attained. It is a narrative of which all patriotic Englishmen may feel proud. The old
burdens of native rule have been lightened, the old injustices mitigated, the old fiscal
crueltics and exactions abolished. Underlying the story of each district we see a per-
ennial struggle going on between the increase of the population and the available
means of subsistence derived from the soil. That increase of the population is the
direct result of the pence of the country under British rule. But it tends to press
more and more severely on the possible limits of local cultivation, and it can only be
provided for by the extension of the modern appliances of production and distribu-
tion. Mr Rogers very properly confines himself to his own subject. But there is
ample evidence that the extension of roads, railways, steam factories, and other
industrial enterprises, have played an important part in the solution of the problem,
and that during recent years such enterprises have been powerfully aided by an
abundant currency."-The Times.
ROBERT SEWELL.
Analytical History of India, from the earliest times to the Abolition of
the East India Company in 1858. Post Svo, 8s.
"Much careful labour has been expended on this volume "-Athenæum.
"The object of the author in compiling the following analytical sketch of Indian
history has been to supply a want felt by most students of the more voluminous
standard works of Mill, Elphinstone, Thornton, and Marshman, for a condensed outline
in one small volume, which should serve at onco to recall the memory and guide the
eye. At the same time he has attempted to render it interesting to the general reader
by preserving a medium between a bare analysis and a complete history; so that,
without consulting the eminent authorities mentioned above, the mind may readily
grasp the principal outlines of the early condition of India, and the risc and progress
of the East India Company. For the more full comprehension of these facts the author
has provided, in addition to a table of contents and a chronological index, an index to
the geographical position of the places to which reference is made in the text, bearing
the latitudes and longitude as given in Thornton's 'Gazetteer of India.' This will be
found not only to aid the student who is but partially acquainted with the map of
India, but also by means of occasional accents to guide him in the ordinary pro-
nunciation of the names."-Preface.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
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23
G. P. SANDERSON.
Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India; their Haunts and
Habits, from Personal Observation, with an account of the Modes of
Capturing and Taming Wild Elephants. With 21 full-page Illustra-
tions, reproduced for this Edition direct from the original drawings,
and 3 Maps. Fifth Edition. Fcap. 4to, 12s.
"We find it difficult to hasten through this interesting book; on almost every page
some incident or some happy descriptive passage tempts the reader to linger. The
author relates his exploits with ability and with singular modesty. His adventures
with min-eaters will afford lively entertainment to the reader, and indeed there is no
portion of the volume which he is likely to wish shorter. The illustrations add to the
attractions of the book.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
"This is the best and most practical book on the wild game of Southern and
Eastern India that we have read, and displays an extensive acquaintance with natural
history. To the traveller proposing to visit India. whether he be a sportsman, a
naturalist, or an antiquarian, the bock will be invaluable: full of incident and sparkling
with anecdote.”—Bailey's Magazine.
"This-the fifth edition of a work as charming to read as it is instructive-will be
welcomed equally by lovers of sport, and of natural history. Though he met with and
shot many other kinds of wild beasts, the bulk of the volume, well written, well illus-
trated, and generally well got up, deals chiefly with the elephant, the tiger, the bison,
the leopard, and the bear. Mr Sanderson, with exceptional powers of observation,
cultivated friendly intercourse with the natives; and he was consequently able to utilise
to the utmost the singularly favourable opportunities enjoyed by him as director of
elephant-capturing operations in Mysore and Chittagong. The result is a book which
to graphic details of sporting adventures far surpassing the common, adds a correct
natural history of the animals chiefly dealt with, and particularly the elephant. From
this real king of beasts, Mr Sanderson carefully removes every exaggeration made both
for or against him, which had been repeated without any good foundation by one
writer after another; he substitutes for fables a description of elephantine anatomy,
size, habits, and character which may be said to sum up all that we know for certain
about the animal, and nearly all that one can wish to know. We should have wished
to see this edition brought up to date. The book is more fascinating than a romance;
and we have read it now the third time with as great a zest as when we revelled over
the perusal of the first edition."—Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review.
PROFESSOR SHELDON.
The Future of British Agriculture, how Farmers may best be bene-
fited. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.
"Fortunately Prof. Sheldon has no mind to play the part of a prophet, but from
the plenitude of a long experience gives sage counsel how to farm abreast of the time
and be ready for whatever may ensue.
This little book is well worth reading,
and it is pleasant to find that the Professor by no means despairs of the future of
agriculture in England."-Academy.
"We welcome the book as a valuable contribution to our agricultural literature,
and as a useful guide to those branches in which the author is especially qualified to
instruct."-Nature.
"In this beautifully printed and well-bound little book Professor Sheldon, in
his usual happy style, surveys the agricultural field, and indicates what he thinks
is the prospect in front of the British farmer. Like a watchman he stands upon his
tower and when asked, What of the night? he disavows not that we are in the night,
but earnestly declares that the morning cometh apace. The professor is an optimist;
he does not believe that the country is done, and still less does he favour the idea that,
taking a wide survey, the former days were better than these. On the contrary, he
urges that the way out of the wilderness is not by any by-path, but by going right
ahead; and, ere long, the man who holds the banner high will emerge triumphant."
-Scottish Farmer.
4
J. SMITH, A.L.S.
Ferns British and Foreign. Fourth Edition, revised and greatly
enlarged, with New Figures, &c. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
24
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
1
G. BARNETT SMITH, Author of "History of the English
Parliament."
Leaders of Modern Industry. Biographical Sketches.
Contents:-The Stephensons, Charles Knight, Sir George Burns,
Sir Josiah Mason, The Wedgwoods, Thomas Brassey, The Fairbairns,
Sir William Siemens, The Rennies. Crown Evo, 7s. 6d.
"Leaders of Modern Industry' is a volume of interesting biographical sketches of
the pioneers of various phases of industry, comprising the Stephensons, Charles
Knight, Sir George Burns, Sir Josiah Mason, the Wedgwoods, Thomas Brassey, the
Fairbairns, Sir William Siemens, and the Rennies."-World.
Women of Renown.
Nineteenth Century Studies.
Contents :-Frederika Bremer, Countess of Blessington, George Eliot,
Jenny Lind, Mary Somerville, George Sand, Mary Carpenter, Lady
Morgan, Rachel, Lady Hester Stanhope. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Mr Barnett Smith continues his biographical activity. It is not many weeks since
a volume appeared from his pen on "Christian Workers of the Nineteenth Century ";
now we have "Women of Renown: Nineteenth Century Studies." The later is the
larger and more elaborate work of the two, but in design and execution it is not
greatly dissimilar from the earlier volume. Desirous of showing what the women of
eminence whom he has chosen for delineation really were-how they lived, moved,
and acted the author has presented them wherever he could "as painted by them
selves or their contemporaries." Autobiographies and biographics are thus, as far as
available, laid under contribution. In the hands of so capable a compiler as Mr
Barnett Smith such materials have been skilfully utilised, and the result is a scries of
brightly written sketches.
The Life and Enterprises of Ferdinand de Lesseps-The only full
and Complete English Account of. New Edition. Revised, and
brought up to the time of his death, with Portrait. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
"A great part of M. de Lesseps' career already belongs to history, and is invested
with a lustre which nothing can obscure. Mr G. Barnett Smith makes this clear in his
useful and painstaking compilation. It is skilfully executed, and illustrates aptly
and not altogether inopportunely, both the poetry and the prose of M. de Lesseps'
extraordinary career."-The Times.
•
•
•
"A very comprehensive life of Ferdinand de Lesseps has been produced by G.
Barnett Smith, who has already proved his ability as a faithful and painstaking bio-
grapher. The career of M. de Lesseps was one of great achievements and great
vicissitudes. This biographer lauds bis achievements. The facts of the prosecution
in connection with the Panama Canal project are elaborately set forth in this volume,
to which all readers interested in the question should refer for information on a matter
which to people not resident in France must have appeared unusually complicated."
Westminster Review.
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. (Dean of Westminster).
Scripture Portraits and other Miscellanies collected from his Published
Writings. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D. Crown 8vo, gilt top,
5s.
"In virtue of his literary genius, his solid acquirements, his manly sense, and his
sympathetic and generous piety, he ranks among the most eminent and estimable of
Christian teachers."-Chambers's Encyclopædia.
C
These essays range over a period of twenty years (1850-1870), and they furnish a
series of singularly interesting illustrations of the great controversies which have
agitated that time. . . . Every one, indeed, of his essays has achieved in its day a
success which makes a recommendation unnecessary."—ALLIBONE.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
25
E. E. SOMERVILLE and MARTIN ROSS, THE AUTHORS
OF "AN IRISH COUSIN.”
Through Connemara in a Governess Cart.
Illustrated by W. W.
Russell, from Sketches by Edith CE. Somerville. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
"The quaint seriousness, the free and hearty fun, the sly humour of this narrative,
are charmingly bright and attractive."- World.
"A bright and breezy narrative of two ladies in Connemara who preferred inde-
pendence and a mule to society and a rail car. Their simple story is divertingly
told."-Times.
"The delightful wilderness of mountain. peat bog, and heather, and all that they
said and did, are graphically described in this chatty and extremely readable volume."
-Daily Telegraph.
"Sketches of Irish Life, the eccentricities of wandering Saxons, and descriptions of
local scenery, are worked up in a manner which makes the book a pleasant companion.
Mr Russell has in his illustration ably supported the writers."-Morning Post.
By the same Authors.
In the Vine Country -Bordeaux and its Neighbourhood, Illustrated.
Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
"The genuine fund of wit and humour which sparkles throughout will be enjoyed
by all."-Glasgow Herald.
CC
The authors have the knack of putting their readers in the situation in which
they themselves were, and so the book, light and smart as it is, is heartily enjoyable.”
-Scotsman.
"A bright, artless narrative of travel."— Times.
"There is not a dull line in the volume from the first page to the last.”—Lady's
Pictorial.
J. E. TAYLOR, F.L.S., F.G.S., &c.
For fuller notices of Dr Taylor's Works, see Scientific, PP. 33, 34.
Flowers: Their Origin, Shapes, Perfumes, and Colours. Illustrated with
32 Coloured Figures by Sowerby, and 161 Woodcuts.
Edition. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d.
Second
The Aquarium: Its Inhabitants, Structure, and Management. Second
Edition, with 238 Woodcuts. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
Half-Hours at the Seaside. Illustrated with 250 Woodcuts. Fourth
Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.
Half-Hours in the Green Lanes.
Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.
Illustrated with 300 Woodcuts.
E. THORNTON.
A Gazetteer of the Territories under the Government of the Viceroy
of India. Last Edition. Revised and Edited by Sir Roper
Lethbridge, C.I.E., and A. N. Wollaston, C.I.E. Demy Svo,
1,070 pp., 28s.
PERCY M. THORNTON.
Harrow School and its Surroundings.
Demy 8vo, 15S.
With Maps and Plates.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad
26
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
W. M. TORRENS.
History of Cabinets. From the Union with Scotland to the Acquisition
2 vols. Demy 8vo, 36s.
of Canada and Bengal.
"It is almost impossible-and, alas! now useless as regards the writer-to praise
this book too highly. It is a clever, sincere, and painstaking contribution to the
making of modern history, and all students of constitutional and parliamentary history
will find much to interest and instruct them in these able volumes. In all the minor
matters of references, indexing, and printing every care has been taken. Indeed, all
is praiseworthy, and the pity is that the writer should have passed away without
receiving the thanks of students."-Si James's Budget.
: :
C
"A History of Cabinets' from the beginning of the Eighteenth Century down to
the death of George II., which the late Mr M'Cullagh Torrens regarded as the work
of his life,' was published yesterday. It consists of two volumes of considerable bulk,
showing at once that something more than the origin and progress of the Cabinet
system had occupied the attention of the author. In fact, a history of Cabinets is a
history of Governments, and a history of Governments is, in a great incasure, a history
of England."-The Standard.
4. J. WALL.
Indian Snake Poisons. Their Nature and Effects.
Crown Svo, 6s.
CONTENTS.
The Physiological Effects of the Poison of the Cobra (Naja Tripudians).-The Physio-
logical Effects of the Poison of Russell's Viper (Daboia Russellii).- The Physiological
Effects produced by the Poison of the Bungarus l'asciatus and the Bungarus Coerulcus.
The Relativo Power and Properties of the Poisons of Indian and other Venomous
Snakes. The Naturo of Snake Poisons. - Some practical considerations connected with
the subject of Snake-Poisoning, capecially rogarding prevention and treatment.—The
object that has been kept in view, has been to define as closely as possible, the con-
ditions on which the mortality from Snake-bite depends, both as regards the physio-
logical nature of the poisoning process, and the relations between the reptiles and their
victims, so as to indicate the way in which we should best proceed with the hope of
diminishing the fearful mortality that exists.
JOHN WATSON, F.L.S.
Ornithology in Relation to Agriculture and Horticulture, by various
writers, edited by John Watson, F. L.S., &c. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
>>
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.-Miss Eleanor A. Ormerod, late Consulting
Entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England; O. V. Alpin,
F.L.S., Member of the British Ornithologists' Union; Charles Whitehead,
F.L.S., F.G.S., &c., author of "Fifty Years of Fruit Farming "; John
Watson, F.L.S., author of "A Handbook for Farmers and Small Holders
the Rev. F. O. Morris, M.A., author of "A History of British Birds"; G.
W. Murdoch, late editor of The Farmer; Riley Fortune, F.Z.S.; T. H.
Nelson, Member of the British Ornithologists' Union; T. Southwell, F.Z.S.;
Rev. Theo. Wood, B. A., F.I.S.; J. H. Gurney, jun., M.P.; Harrison Weir,
F.R.H S.; W. H. Tuck.
"Will form a textbook of a reliable kind in guiding agriculturists at large
in their dealings with their feathered friends and foes alike."-Glasgow
Herald.
"This is a valuable book, and should go far to fulfil its excellent purpose.
It is a book that every agriculturist should possess."-Lând and
Water.
60
"It is well to know what birds do mischief and what birds are helpful.
This book is the very manual to clear up all such doubts."-Yorkshire Post.
In these days of agricultural depression it behoves the farmer to study,
among other subjects, ornithology. That he and the gamekeeper often bring
down plagues upon the land when they fancy they are ridding it of a pest is
exceedingly well illustrated in this scries of papers. -Scotsman.
>>
For the Reduced Prices apply to
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
27
SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, D.D. (Bishop of Winchester).
Heroes of Hebrew History. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 5s.
"The tales which he relates are all good, and have a moral aim aud purpose.'
Athenæum.
"It is written with a natural and captivating fervour."-London Quarterly Review.
"An interesting historical account."-London Lit. Gaz.
"Using his influence as a man of the world for the purpose of modifying those about
him for good, and making them serve as his instruments for the furtherance of the
objects which he had at heart. He was the most delightful of companions, and the
wittiest talker of his time. Of his extraordinary versatility and extraordinary powers
of work, it is impossible to speak at length here, but both qualities are abundantly
illustrated in his life by Canon Ashwell."-Celebrities of the Century.
S. WELLS WILLIAMS, LL.D., Professor of the Chinese Language
and Literature at Yale College.
China--The Middle Kingdom. A Survey of the Geography, Govern-
ment, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire
and its Inhabitants. Revised Edition, with 74 Illustrations and a New
Map of the Empire. 2 vols. Demy 8vo, 42s.
Dr S. Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom has long occupied the position of a classic.
It is not only the fullest and most authoritative account of the Chinese and their
country that exists, but it is also the most readable and entertaining. This issue is
practically a new work-the text of the old edition has been largely re-written and the
work has been expanded so as to includo a vast amount of new material collected by
Dr Williams during the late years of his residence in China—as well as the most recent
information respecting all the departments of the Empire. Many new illustrations
have been added and the best of the old engravings have been retained. An important
feature of this edition is a large map of the Chinese Empire from the best modern
authorities, more completo and accurate than any map of the country hitherto
published.
HARRY WILLIAMS, R.N. (Chief Inspector of Machinery).
Dedicated, by permission, to Admiral H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh.
The Steam Navy of England. Past, Present, and Future.
Contents :-Part I.-Our Seamen; Part II.-Ships and Machinery ;
Part III.-Naval Engineering; Part IV.-Miscellaneous, Summary,
with an Appendix on the Personnel of the Steam Branch of the Navy.
Third and enlarged Edition. Medium Svo, 12s. 6d.
· →
"It is a series of essays, clearly written and often highly suggestive, on the still
unsolved, or only partially and tentatively solved, problems connected with the man-
ning and organisation, aud propulsion of our modern war-ships, being laudably
free from technicalities, and written in a not unattractive style, they will recommend
themselves to that small, but happily increasing, section of the general public which
concerns itself seriously and intelligently with naval affairs.”—Times.
"Mr Harry Williams, a naval enginder of long experience and high rank, discusses
the future requirements of the fleet. He is naturally most at home when dealing with
points which specially affect his own branch of the service, but the whole book is well
worth study."-Manchester Guardian.
"Must be pronounced a technical book in the main, although its author expressly
states that he wrote it not so much for professional as non-professional men.' Its
manifest object is to promote the efficiency of our steam navy in times to come, keeping
which aim steadfastly in view Mr Williams has brought great knowledge and ability to
boar upon the endeavour to forecast what provision it would be well to make in order
to meet the full naval requiremonts of the British nation. His highly iustructive work
is divided into four parts, under the respective titles of 'Our Seamen,' 'Ships and
Machinery,' Naval Engineering,' and 'Miscollaneous,' which again are carefully
summarised in somo fifty pages of eminently readable matter. The three chapters of
miscellanea deal principally with the coal-endurance, engine-room complements, elec-
tric lighting, and steam-steoring machinery of Her Majesty's ships."-Daily Telegraph
C
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
28
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
Professor H. H. WILSON, author of the "Standard History of India."
Glossary of Judicial Terms, including words from the Arabic,
Persian, Hindustani, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Uriya, Marathi,
Guzarathi, Telugu, Karnata, Tamil, Malayalam, and other languages.
4to, cloth, 30s.
Wynter's Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers.
CONTENTS.
The Buried Roman City in Britain.
"Silvertown."
Advertising.
Vivisection.
The New Hotel System.
The Restoration of our Soil.
Half-Hours at the Kensington Museum,
Mudie's Circulating Library.
Fraudulent Trade Marks.
Superstition: Where docs it End?
The New Counterblast to Tobacco.
Air Traction,
Illuminations,
Boat-Building by Machinery.
The Effects of Railway Travelling upon
Health.
The Working-Men's Flower Show..
Messages under the Sea.
Town Telegraphs.
The Bread We Eat.
Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Early Warnings.
Dining Rooms for the Working Classes.
Railway and City Population.
A Day with the Coroner.
The English in Paris.
The Times Newspapor in 1798.
The Under-Sea Railroad.
Oh, the Roast Beef of Old England
Physical Education.
Advice by a Retired Physician.
The Clerk of the Weather.
Portsmouth Dockyard.
Village Hospitals.
Railways, the Great Civilisers.
On taking a House.
Photographic Portraiture.
Doctor's Stuff.
Smallpox in London.
Hospital Dress.
Excursion Trains.
"Altogether 'Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers' is about the pleasantest book of
short collected papers of chit chat blending information with amusement, and not over-
tasking the attention or the intelligence, that we have seen for a good while.”—London
Reader.
LIEUT. G. J. YOUNGHUSBAND, Queen's Own Corps of Guides.
Eighteen Hundred Miles in a Burmese Tat, through Burmah, Siam,
and the Eastern Shan States. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 5s.
"There is a good deal of jocular description in this book, which, as tho reader will
casily see, has been introduced with an eye rather to amusement than to accuracy; but
after all the volume will have repaid the reader for the few hours which may be spent
in its perusal if it conveys to him, as it is calculated to do, a fair impression of tho
difficulties which beset the wayfarer in a strange land who, when in search of the
pleasures of travel, begins his journey where he should leave off, and ends it where he
should have started."-Athenæum.
"Mr Younghusband's account of his adventures is written simply and without
exaggeration, but on the whole we think we would rather read about the Shan country
than travol in it."-Literary World.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
29
Scientific Works: including Botany, Matural
history, &c.
E. BONAVIA, M.D., Brigade-Surgeon, Indian Medical Service.
The Cultivated Oranges and Lemons of India and Ceylon. Demy
Svo, with oblong Atlas Volume of Plates, 2 vols. 30s.
R. BRAITHWAITE, M.D., F.L.S., &c.
The Sphagnacea, or Peat Mosses of Europe and North America.
Illustrated with 29 Plates, coloured by hand. Imp. 8vo, 25s.
"All muscologists will be delighted to hail the appearance of this important work.
W
Never before has our native moss-flora been so carefully figured and described,
and that by an acknowledged authority on the subject."-Science Gossip.
"Mosses, perhaps, receive about as little attention from botauists as any class of
plants, and considering how admirably mosses lend themselves to the collector's
purposes, this is very remarkable. Something may be due to the minuteness of the
size of many of the species, and something perhaps to the difficulties inherent in the
systematic treatment of these plants; but we fancy the chief cause of comparative
neglect with which they are treated is to be sought in the want of a good illustrated
English treatise upon them. In the work which is now before us, Dr Braithwaite aims
at placing the British mosses on the same vantage-ground as the more favoured classes
of the vegetable kingdom; and judging from the sample lately issued, he will succeed
in his endeavours."-Popular Science Review.
.
B. CARRINGTON, M.D., F.R.S.
British Hepaticæ. Containing Descriptions and Figures of the Native
Species of Jungermannia, Marchantia, and Anthoceros. Imp. 8vo,
sewed, Parts I to 4, plain plates, 2s. 6d. each; coloured plates,
3s. 6d. each.
M. C. COOKE, M.A., LL.D.
The British Fungi: A Plain and Easy Account of.
With Coloured
Plates of 40 Species. Fifth Edition, Revised. Crown Svo, 6s.
"Mr Cooke writes for those whose education and means are limited, and with pre-
eminent success. It is really a pleasure to read the manuals which he has published,
for they are up to the mark, and so complete as to leave hardly anything to be desired.
The new work on the fungi appears to be equally valuable with those which he has
already printed. It contains descriptions of the esculent fungi, the manner in which
they are prepared for the table, how to discriminate the nutritious from the poisonous
species, details of the principles of their scientific classification, and a tabular arrange-
ment of orders and genera.
"}
Handbook of British Hepaticæ. Containing Descriptions and Figures
of the Indigenous Species of Marchantia, Jungermannia, Riccia, and
Anthoceros, Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"It is very creditable to Mr Cooke that the drawings in his book are all sketches
from nature made by his own pencil. This shows work, and is more respectable than
the too common practico of copying engravings from the authorities in the particular
branch of science. This little book is valuable, because in some rospects it is certainly
a good guide-book to a number of edible fungi unknown to the public."-Popular
Science Review.
A
"Probably no group in the British flora has received so little attention as the
Hopatico. Dr M. C. Cooke has now filled up the gap by producing a Handbook of
the British Hepatico,' containing full descriptions of all the specics, about two hundred
in number, known to inhabit the British Islands."-Nature,
M. C. Cooke's Books continued.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
30
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
M. C. COOKE, M.A., LL.D.—continued.
Our Reptiles and Batrachians. A Plain and Easy Account of the
Lizards, Snakes, Newts, Toads, Frogs, and Tortoises indigenous to
Great Britain. New and Revised Edition. With original Coloured
Pictures of every Species, and numerous Woodcuts. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Reptiles and Snake-stones.
The Common Lizard.
The Sand Lizard.
CONTENTS.
The Blind Worm.
The Cominon Snake.
The Smooth Snake.
The Viper, or Adder.
Great Water Newt.
Gray's Banded Newt.
Amphibia or Batrachians.
The Hawk's-Bill Turtle.
Appendix.
The Green Lizard.
The Natterjack.
Palmate Newt.
The Leathery Turtle.
"Mr Cooke has especially distinguished himself as a student of the fungi and the
fresh-water alga, his works on these orders being the standard treatises in English.
He has also paid some attention to zoology and chemistry, his education in these as in
other sciences being obtained by persistent self-instruction."-Celebrities of the Century.
Rust, Smut, Mildew, and Mould. An Introduction to the Study of
Microscopic Fungi. Illustrated with 269 Coloured Figures by J.
E. Sowerby. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with Appendix
of New Species. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Those of our readers who are the happy possessors of microscopes would welcome
this book with delight, as opening the way to a definite study of a most interesting
branch of plant life. The minute fungi, here so faithfully depicted by Mr Sowerby,
and so carefully described by Dr Cooke, have not only beauty of form and colour, but
wonderful life-histories. Every hedgo or lane or piece of waste ground, even in the
suburbs of large towns, will provide specimens, which may be easily preserved on tho
plants which they attack or mounted as microscope slides.
Important to Bolanists and Students of Natural History.
European Fungi (Hymenomycetum) - Synoptical Key to.
Cooke
(M. C.) and Quelet (L., M.D., &c.)—Clavis Synoptica Hymenomy-
cetum Europæorum. Fcap. 8vo, 7s. 6d. ; or, interleaved with ruled
paper, 8s. 6d.
"Without pretending to high scientific quality, the work throughout is well fitted to
instruct and to attract a class of readers who might shrink from grappling with a
scientific text-book."-Saturday Review.
BARON CUVIER.
The Common Frog.
The Edible Frog.
The Common Toad.
Common Smooth Newt or
Eft.
The Animal Kingdom. With considerable Additions by W. B.
Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S., and J. O. Westwood, F. L.S. New
Edition, Illustrated with 500 Engravings on Wood and 36 Coloured
Plates. Imp. 8vo, 21s.
J. HUNTER, late Hon. Sec. of the British Bee-keepers' Association.
A Manual of Bee-keeping. Containing Practical Information for
Rational and Profitable Methods of Bee Management. Full Instruc-
tions on Stimulative Feeding, Ligurianising and Queen-raising, with
descriptions of the American Comb Foundation, Sectional Supers,
and the best Hives and Apiarian Appliances on all systems. Fourth
Edition. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
"We cordially recommend Mr Hunter's neat and compact Manual of Bee-keeping.
Mr Hunter writes clearly and well."-Science Gossip.
"We are indebted to Mr J. Hunter, Honorary Secretary of the British Bec-keepers'
Association. His Manual of Bee-kocping, just published, is full to the very brim of
choice and practical hints fully up to tho most advanced stages of Apiarian Science,
and its perusal has afforded us so much pleasure that we have drawn somewhat largely
from it for the benefit of our readers."-Bee-keepers' Magazine (New York).
For the Reduced Prices apply to
•
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
31
G. H. KINAHAN.
A Handy Book of Rock Names.
Rock Names. Fcap. 8vo, 4s.
"This will prove, we do not doubt, a very useful little book to all practical geologists,
and also to the reading student of rocks When a difficulty is incurred as to a
species of deposit, it will soon vanish. Mr Kinahan's little book will soon make it all
clear. The work is divi led into three parts. The first is a classified table of rocks, the
second part trears of the Ingenite rocks, and the third part deals with those rocks which
are styled Derivate. Dana's termination of yle has been most generally used by the
author, but he has also given the ite torminations for those that like them. The book
will be purchased, for it must be had, by every geologist; and as its size is small, it will
form a convenient pocket companion for the man who works over field and quarry."-
Popular Science Review.
Professor E. LANKESTER.
New
The Uses of Animals in Relation to the Industry of Man.
Edition. Illustrated. Crown Svo, 45.
Silk, Wool, Leather, Bone, Soap, Waste, Sponges, and Corals, Shell-fish, Insects,
Furs, Feathers, Horns and Hair, and Animal Perfumes, are the subjects of the twelve
lectures on "The Uses of Animals."
"
"In his chapter on Waste,' the lecturer gives startling insight into the manifold
uses of rubbish.
Dr Lankester finds a use for everything; and he delights in
analysing each fresh sample of rejected material, and stating how each of its com-
ponent parts can be turned to the best account. -Atheneum.
Practical Physiology: A School Manual of Health.
Woodcuts. Sixth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d.
With numerous
CONTENTS.
Constitution of the Human Body.
Nature of the Food supplied to the Human
Body.
Digestion, and the Organs by which it is
performed.
Nature of Blood and its Circulation by the
Heart.
"}
Breathing, or the Function of Respira-
tion.
The Structure and Functions of the
Skin.
The Movements of the Human Body.
The Brain and Nerves.
The Organs of the Senses.
(K
Writing for schoolboys, Dr Lankester has been careful to consult their tastes.
There are passages in this little work which will make it popular, and the instructor
will probably be hailed by a name which is new to people of his class, that of a
' regular brick.'"-Atheneum.
MRS LANKESTER.
Talks about Health: A Book for Boys and Girls. Being an Explana-
tion of all the Processes by which Life is Sustained. Illustrated.
Small Svo, IS.
The Late EDIVARD NEWMAN, F.Z.S.
British Butterflies. With many Illustrations. Super royal Svo, 7s. 6d.
"The British butterflies have found a good friend in Mr Newman, who has given
us a history of their lives-from larra to imago, their habits and their whereabouts-
which is one of the most perfect things of the kind. And we are glad to read the
author's statement that his work has attained, while in progress, a sale that is almost
unattainable in English scientific works. Firstly, the work consists of a series of
notices to the young who may be disposed to go butterfly-hunting. And in them we
find the author's great experience, and we commend this part of his work to our
readers. The next part deals with the subjects of anatomy, physiology, and embryo-
logy of the insects; and finally we come to the separate account of each species. This
latter is admirably given. First comes a capital engraving, life size, of the species,
and then follows in order the life, history, time of appearance and locality, occupying
from a page to a page and a half or two pages of a large quarto (or nearly so) volume.
All this is done well, as we might expect from the author; it is clear, intelligible, and
devoid of much of the rubbish which abounds in books of this kind generally. We
must conclude by expressing the hope that all who are interested in insects will make
themselves aquainted with the volume."-Popular Science Review.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
32
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
!
MARY A. PRATTEN.
My Hundred Swiss Flowers.
With a Short Account of Swiss Ferns.
With 60 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, plain plates, 12s. 6d. ; coloured
plates, 25s.
The author
"The temptation to produce such books as this seems irresistible.
feels a want; the want is undeniable. After more or less hesitation he feels he can
supply it. It is pleasantly written, and affords useful hints as to localities."—
Athenæum.
S. L. PUMPHREY.
<
A Little Brown Pebble, with 10 full-page cuts. Fcap. 4to, 3s. 6d.
"In the story of A Little Brown Pebble,' its writer endeavours to introduce
geo-
logical science into the nursery, showing what strange creatures lived in the ancient
seas, what monsters inhabited the primeval forests, and how our country alternated
between torrid heats and an arctic cold. The accuracy of the information is guaran
teed by competent authorities, and the illustrations are spirited. There is no reason
why the attempt should not succced."-Academy, 21st December 1889.
R. RIMMER, F.L.S.
The Land and Freshwater Shells of the British Isles.
Illus-
trated with to Photographs and 3 Lithographs, containing figures of
all the principal Species.
Species. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s.
"This handsomely got up little volume supplies a long-felt want in a very ingenious
and trustworthy manner. The author is an enthusiastic conchologist, and writes
both attractively and well, and in a manner so simple and natural that we have no
fear that any ordinarily educated man will easily understand every phrase. But the
feature of this book which strikes us most is that every species of British land and
freshwater shell has been photographed, and hero we have all the photographs, natural
size in the albertype process, so that the merest tyro will find no difficulty in identi-
fying any shell he may find."-Science Review.
J. SMITH, A.L.S.
Ferns British and Foreign.
Fourth Edition, revised and greatly en-
larged, with many illustrations. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
"Each genus is described, and the technical characters upon which it is founded
are shown in the accompanying illustrations, and the indispensable technical terms
are explained by examples The meaning and derivations of the botanical names of
ferns are also given in sufficient detail and with sufficient accuracy to meet the wants
of amateurs, if not of scholars. But perhaps the most valuable part of the work is that
devoted to instruction in the cultivation of ferns, which occupies some soventy pages
of the book. A bibliography of the subject and an excellent index make up the
remainder of this useful volume, which we recommend to all persons desirous of know-
ing something more about ferns than being able to recognise them by sight."-Field.
"Mr Smith's work entitles him to admiration for his industry and for the manifest
care with which he has studied his subject; and his present enlarged work will certainly
become and be a standard library book of reference for all pteridologists and orna-
mental gardeners (whether professional or amateur) who devote attention to filiculturo.
And there really is no family of plants which is more elegant than are ferns. Indi-
genous British ferns alone afford a most interesting scope of research and collection."
Whitehall Review.
"This is a new and enlarged edition of one of the best extant works on British
and foreign ferns which has been called for by the introduction, during the interval
of ten years which has clapsed since the issue of the first edition, of a number of exotic
species which have been collected and arranged under their respective genera and
tribes as an appendix. There are thus introduced 231 entirely new species. The sixty
pages devoted to a treatise on the cultivation of ferns are invaluable to the fern-grower,
professional or amateur, describing the conditions under which ferns grow in their
native country-knowledge which is essential to their really successful cultivation
in this."-Rural World.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
33
J. E. TAYLOR, F.L.S., F. G.S.
Flowers: Their Origin, Shapes, Perfumes, and Colours, Illus-
trated with 32 Coloured Figures by Sowerby, and 161 Woodcuts.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. 6d.
CONTENTS
The Old and New Philosophy of Flowers-The Geological Antiquity of Flowers
and Insects-The Geographical Distribution of Flowers-The Structure of Flowering
Plants-Relations between Flowers and their Physical Surroundings-Relations
between Flowers and the Wind-The Colours of Flowers-The External Shapes of
Flowers-The Internal Shapes of Flowers-The Perfumes of Flowers-Social Flowers
-Birds and Flowers-The Natural Defences of Flowering Plants.
"This is an altogether charming book, full of wisdom, cheerful, simple, attractive,
and informed throughout with a high purpose. Its object is to place within reach of
the general public in an agreeable form the results of the most recent and compre-
hensive botanical research. The author is so bold as to ask why flowers were made,
and is not without means to answer the question reverently and truthfully. He
connects them by the aids that science supplies with the history of creation, and the
records of the rocks, and with the history of man, and the progress of the agricultural
and horticultural arts. He tells us how they are influenced by soil and climate, how
changed and multiplied by insects and other agencies, how their seeds are blown
about the world, and how by innumerable divine appointments it at last comes about
that the life of a man is environed and beautified with flowers. The work is rich in
the results of travel, and it happily connects the vegetable products of the globe with
the conditions that favour them and the wants they satisfy. It is therefore a book
for all ages, and for botanists and gardeners, as well as for such as rather too gladly
confess they know nothing about plants. We should like to see it on every
family table in the whole length and breadth of the United Kingdom.”—Gardeners'
Magazine.
The Aquarium: Its Inhabitants, Structure, and Management.
Second Edition, with 238 Woodcuts. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
"Few men have done more to popularise the natural history science than the late
Dr Taylor. The work before us, while intended as a handbook to public aquaria, is
responsible for many attempts, successful and otherwise, at the construction of the
domestic article. The book is replete with valuable information concerning persons
and things, while the directions for making and managing aquaria are very clear and
concise. The illustrations are numerous, suitable, and very good."—Schoolmaster.
>
"The ichthyologist, be it known, is not such a fearful or horrific 'sort of wild-
fowl' as his name would seem to argue him. The prevalence of the breed, the extent
of its knowledge, the zeal of its enthusiasm, and the number of the aquaria it has
built for itself in town or country, are all part and parcel of that 'march of science
which took its impetus from Darwin and the 'Origin of Species.' Those who do not
already know that useful book, The Aquarium,' by Mr J. E. Taylor, Ph.D., F.L.S.,
&c., should procure this new edition (the sixth). It forms a convenient handbook or
popular manual to our public aquaria. The aquarium, its inhabitants, its structure
and its management, are the author's especial care. And with the help of well-kλ. a
works and a wide experience he has managed to put together a most praiseworthy
book."-Science Siftings.
C
Half-Hours in the Green Lanes. Illustrated with 300 Woodcuts.
Fifth
Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.
"A book which cannot fail to please the young, and from which many an older
reader may glean here and there facts of interest in the field of nature. Mr Taylor
has endeavoured to collect these facts which are to be recorded daily by an observant
country gentleman with a taste for natural history; and he has attempted to put them
together in a clear and simple style, so that the young may not only acquire a love for
the investigation of nature, but may also put up (by reading this little book) an im-
portant store of knowledge. We think the author has succeeded in his object. He
has made a very interesting little volume, not written above the heads of its readers
as many of those books are, and he has taken care to have most of his natural history
observations very accurately illustrated."-Popular Science Review.
J. E. Taylor's Books continued.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
34
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
J. E. TAYLOR, F.L.S., F. G.S.-continued.
Half-Hours at the Seaside. Illustrated with 250 Woodcuts. Fourth
Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.
"The love of natural history has now become so prevalent, at least among purely
English readers, that we hardly meet a family at the seaside one of whose members
has not some little knowledge of the wonders of the deep. Now, of course, this love
of marine zoology is being vastly increased by the existence of the valuable aquaria
at the Crystal Palace and at Brighton. Still, however, notwithstanding the amount
of admirable works on the subject, more especially the excellent treatises of Gosse
and others, there was wanted a cheap form of book with good illustrations which
should give a clear account of the ordinary creatures one meets with on the sands
and in the rock pools. The want no longer exists, for the excellent little manual that
now lies before us embraces all that could be desired by those who are entirely ignorant
of the subject of seaside zoology, while its mode of arrangement and woodcuts, which
are carefully drawn, combine to render it both attractive and useful."- Popular
Science Review.
Riding, Veterinary, and Agriculture.
EDWARD L. ANDERSON.
How to Ride and School a Horse. With a System of Horse Gym-
nastics. Fourth Edition. Revised and Corrected. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.
"He is well worthy of a hearing."-Bell's Life.
"Mr Anderson is, without doubt, a thorough horseman."-The Field.
"It should be a good investment to all lovers of horses."-The Farmer.
66 'There is no reason why the careful reader should not be able, by the help of this
little book, to train as well as ride his horses."-Land and Water.
JAMES IRVINE LUPTON, F.R.C. V.S.
The Horse, as he Was, as he Is, and as he Ought to Be.
Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Illustrated.
"Written with a good object in view, namely, to create an interest in the im-
portant subject of horse-breeding, more especially that class known as general utility
horses. The book contains several illustrations, is well printed and handsomely
bound, and we hope will meet with the attention it deserves."-Live Stock Journal.
WILLIAM PROCTOR, Stud Groom.
The Management and Treatment of the Horse in the Stable, Field,
and on the Road. New and Revised Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
cr
"There are few who are interested in horses will fail to profit by one
portion or another of this useful work. Coming from a practical hand the
work should recommend itself to the public."-Sportsman.
66 There is a fund of sound common-sense views in this work which will be
interesting to many owners."-Field.
GEORGE GRESSWELL.
The Diseases and Disorders of the Ox. Second Edition. Demy 8vo,
7s. 6d.
"This is perhaps one of the best of the popular books on the subject which has been
published in recent years, and demonstrates in a most unmistakable manner the great
advance that has been made in Bovine and Ovine Pathology since the days of Youatt.
To medical men who desire to know something of the disorders of such an
important animal-speaking hygienically-as the Ox, the work can be recommended."
The Lancet.
"It is clear, concise, and practical, and would make a very convenient handbook of
reference."-Saturday Review.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
35
The Future of British Agriculture.
Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.
Benefited.
(6
PROFESSOR SHELDON.
Fortunately Prof. Sheldon has no mind to play the part of a prophet,
but from the plenitude of a long experience gives sage counsel how to farm
abreast of the time and be ready for whatever may ensue. This little
book is well worth reading, and it is pleasant to find that the professor by
no means despairs of the future of agriculture in England."-Academy.
•
How Farmers may best be
،،
We welcome the book as a valuable contribution to our agricultural
literature, and as a useful guide to those branches in which the author
is especially qualified to instruct."-Nature.
"In this beautifully printed and well-bound little book of 158 pp.,
Professor Sheldon, in his usual happy style, surveys the agricultural field,
and indicates what he thinks is the prospect in front of the British farmer.
Like a watchman he stands upon his tower-and when asked, What of the
night? he disavows not that we are in the night, but earnestly declares that
the morning cometh apace. The professor is an optimist; he does not believe
that the country is done, and still less does he favour the idea that, taking a
wide survey, the former days were better than these. On the contrary, he
urges that the way out of the wilderness is not by any by-path, but by going
right ahead; and, ere long, the man who holds the banner high will emerge
triumphant."-Scottish Farmer.
JOHN WATSON, F.L.S.
Ornithology in Relation to Agriculture and Horticulture, by various
writers, edited by John Watson, F. L.S., &c. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.
•
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.-Miss Eleanor A. Ormerod, late Consulting
Entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England; O. V. Aplin,
F.L.S., Member of the British Ornithologists' Union; Charles Whitehead,
F.L.S., F.G.S., &c., author of "Fifty Years of Fruit Farming "; John
Watson, F.L.S., author of "A Handbook for Farmers and Small Holders";
the Rev. F. O. Morris, M.A., author of “A History of British Birds"; G. W.
Murdoch, late editor of The Farmer; Riley Fortune, F.Z.S.; T. H. Nelson,
Member of the British Ornithologists' Union; T. Southwell, F.Z.S.; Rev.
Theo. Wood, B.A., F.I.S.; J. H. Gurney, jun., M.P.; Harrison Weir,
F.R.H.S.; W. H. Tuck.
"Will form a textbook of a reliable kind in guiding agriculturists at large
in their dealings with their feathered friends and foes alike."-Glasgow
Herald.
"This is a valuable book, and should go far to fulfil its excellent purpose.
It is a book that every agriculturist should possess."-Land and
Water.
"It is well to know what birds do mischief and what birds are helpful.
Yorkshire Post.
This book is the very manual to clear up all such doubts."
"In these days of agricultural depression it behoves the former to study,
among other subjects, ornithology. That he and the gamekeeper often bring
down plagues upon the land when they fancy they are ridding it of a pest is
"-Scotsman.
exceedingly well illustrated in this series of papers.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
36
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
India, China, Japan, and the East.
SURGEON-MAJOR L. A. WADDELL, M.B., F.L.S., F.R.G.S.,
Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, Anthropological Institute, &c.
The Buddhism of Tibet, with its Mystic Cults, Symbolism, and Mytho-
logy, and in its Relation to Indian Buddhism, with over 200 Illustra-
tions. Demy 8vo, 31s. 6d.
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS:-Introductory. Historical: Changes in Primitive Bud-
dhism leading to Lamaism-Rise, Development, and Spread of Lamaism-The Sects of
Lamaism. Doctrinal: Metaphysical Sources of the Doctrine-The Doctrine and its
Morality-Scriptures and Literature. Monastic: The Order of Lamas-Daily Life and
Routine-Hierarchy and Reincarnate Lamas. Buildings: Monasteries-Temples and
Cathedrals-Shrines (and Relics and Pilgrims). Mythology and Gods: Pantheon and
Images-Sacred Symbols and Charms. Ritual and Sorcery: Worship and Ritual-
Astrology and Divination-Sorcery and Necromancy. Festivals and Plays: Festivals
and Holidays-Mystic Plays and Masquerades and Sacred Plays. Popular Lamaism:
Domestic and Popular Lamaism. Appendices: Chronological Table-Bibliography—
Index.
"By far the most important mass of original materials contributed to this recondite
study."-The Times.
tr
Dr Waddell deals with the whole subject in a most exhaustive manner, and gives
a clear insight into the structure, prominent features, and cults of the system; and to
disentangle the early history of Lamaism from the chaotic growth of fable which has
invested it, most of the chief internal movements of Lamaism are now for the first
time presented in an intelligible and systematic form. The work is a valuable
addition to the long series that have preceded it, and is enriched by numerous illus-
trations, mostly from originals brought from Lhasa, and from photographs by the
author, while it is fully indexed, and is provided with a chronological table and biblio-
graphy."-Liverpool Courier.
"A book of exceptional interest."-Glasgow Herald.
"A learned and elaborate work, likely for some time to come to be a source of
reference for all who seek information about Lamaism.
In the appendix will be
found a chronological table of Tibetan events, and a bibliography of the best literature
bearing on Lamaism. There is also an excellent index, and the numerous illustrations
are certainly one of the distinctive features of the book."-Morning Post.
"Cannot fail to arouse the liveliest interest. The author of this excellently pro-
duced, handsomely illustrated volume of nearly six hundred pages has evidently
spared no pains in prosecuting his studies. The book is one of exceptional value,
and will attract all those readers who take an interest in the old religions of the far
East."-Publishers' Circular.
•
·
·
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A., Author of " The Light of Asia," &c.
The Book of Good Counsels. Fables from the Sanscrit of the
Hitopadésa. With Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Autograph and
Portrait. Crown 8vo, antique, gilt top, 5s.
A few copies of the large paper Edition (limited to 100 copies),
bound in white vellum, 25s. each net.
"The Book of Good Counsels,' by Sir Edwin Arnold, comes almost as a new book,
so long has it been out of print. Now, in addition to being very tastefully and
prettily reissued, it contains numerous illustrations by Mr Gordon Browne. As some
few may remember, it is a book of Indian stories and poetical maxims from the
Sanskrit of the Hitopadésa. The book is almost a volume of fairy tales, and may pass
for that with the younger generation, but it is a little too heavily overlaid with philo-
sophy to be dismissed wholly as such. In fact, like all that Sir Edwin Arnold has
brought before us, it is full of curious fancies, and that it is a charming little book to
look at is its least merit."-Daily Graphic.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
1
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
37
CAPTAIN JAMES ABBOTT.
Narrative of a Journey from Herat to Khiva, Moscow, and St
Petersburgh during the late Russian invasion at Khiva.
With Map
and Portrait. 2 vols., demy vo, 24s.
The real interest of the work consists in its store of spirited anecdote, its enter-
taining sketches of individual and national character, its graphic pictures of Eastern
life and manners, its simply told tales of peril, privation, and suffering encountered and
endured with a soldier's courage. Over the whole narrative, the naiveté and frank-
ness of the writer cast a charm that far more than covers its occasional eccentricities
of style and language. It has seldom fallen to our lot to read a more interesting
narrative of personal adventure. Rarely, indeed, do we find an author whose
constant presence, through almost the whole of two large volumes, is not only
tolerable, but welcome. Few readers will rise from a perusal of the narrative
without a strong feeling of personal sympathy and interest in the gallant Major; even
though here and there unable to repress a smile at some burst of ecstasy, some abrupt
apostrophe, such as would never have been perpetrated by a practical writer, and a
man of the world.
SIR E. C. BAYLEY.
The Local Muhammadan Dynasties, Gujarat.
Forming a Sequel
to Sir H. M. Elliott's "History of the Muhammadan Empire
of India." Demy 8vo, 21S.
"The value of the work consists in the light which it serves to throw upon dis-
puted dates and obscure transactions. As a work of reference it is doubtless useful.
Regarding the way in which its learned translator and editor has acquitted himself
of his task it is scarcely necessary to write; a profound scholar and painstaking in-
vestigator, his labours are unusually trustworthy, and the world of letters will doubt-
less award him that meed of praise, which is rarely withheld from arduous and con-
scientious toil, by assigning him, in death, a niche in the temple of fame, side by side
with his venerated master, Sir Henry Elliott."-Academy.
"This book may be considered the first of a serics designed rather as a supplement
than complement to the 'History of India as Told by its own Historians.' Following
the Preface, a necessarily brief biographical notice-written in the kindly and appre-
ciative spirit which ever characterises the style of the learned editor of Marco Polo,
whose initials are scarcely needed to confirm his identity-explains how on Professor
Dowson's death, Sir Edward Clive Bayley was induced to undertake an editorship for
which he was eminently qualified by personal character and acquaintance with the
originator of the project which constituted his raison d'être. But the new editor did
not live to see the actual publication of his first volume. Scarcely had he completed
it for the press, when his career was brought to a close. A singular fatality seems to
have attended the several able men who have taken the leading part in preserving this
particular monument of genuine history. Henry Elliott, John Dowson, Edward Clive
Bayley, and more recently still (during the current year), Edward Thomas, the high-
class numismatist, all have passed away, with hands upon the plough in the very field
of Oriental research. Without asking to whose care the preparation of any future
volumes may be entrusted, let us be thankful for the work, so far completed and-at
this time especially-for the instalment which has just appeared."-Athenæum.
SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD, M.D.
Report on the Old Records of the India Office, with Maps and
Illustrations. Royal Svo, 12s. 6d.
"Those who are familiar with Sir George Birdwood's literary method will appreciate
the interest and the wealth of historical illustration with which he invests these topics."
-Times, Feb. 26, 1891.
"Sir George Birdwood has performed a Herculean task in exploring, sorting, and
describing the masses of old India Office records, which Mr Danvers has now got into
a state of admirable arrangement, so that, with the help of Sir George's Index, they
may be readily and profitably consulted by students."-Scotsman.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
38
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
E. BONAVIA, M.D., Brigade-Surgeon, Indian Medical Service.
The Cultivated Oranges and Lemons of India and Ceylon. Demy
8vo, with Atlas of Plates, 30s.
"The amount of labour and research that Dr Bonavia must have expended on these
volumes would be very difficult to estimate, and it is to be hoped that he will be repaid,
to some extent at least, by the recognition of his work by those who are interested in
promoting the internal industries of India."—Home News.
"There can be no question that the author of this work has devoted much time and
trouble to the study of the Citrus family in India. That the preparation of the book
has been a labour of love is evident throughout its pages."-The Englishman.
F. C. DANVERS, Registrar and Superintendent of Records,
India Office, London.
Report to the Secretary of State for India in Council on the Portu-
guese Records relating to the East Indies, contained in the
Archivo da Torre de Tombo, and the Public Libraries at Lisbon and
Evora. Royal 8vo, sewed, 6s. net.
"The whole book is full of important and interesting matorials for the student
alike of English and of Indian history."—Times.
"It is more than time that some attention was paid to the history of the Portuguese
in India by Englishmen, and Mr Danvers is doing good service to India by his investi-
gation into the Portuguese records."-India.
"We are very grateful for it, especially with the gratitude which consists in a long-
ing for more favours to come. The Secretary of State spends much money on worse
things than continuing the efforts of which the book under review is only the first
result."-Asiatic Quarterly Review.
The visits of inspection into the records preserved in Portugal bearing on the
history of European enterprise in Eastern seas, which were authorised by the Secretary
of State for India in 1891 and 1892, have resulted in the production of a most interest-
ing report, which shows that a vast store of historical papers has been carefully pre-
served in that country, which deserves more thorough investigation. Mr Danvers,
whose devotion to the duties of the Record Department is well known, hastened to
carry out his instructions, and his report fully attests the earnestness with which he
pursued his task. The documents range in date from 1500 to the present date, and
contain clusters of documents numbering 12,465 and 5,274, and 1,783 in extent, besides
many other deeply interesting batches of smaller bulk. It seems that no copies exist
of most of these documents among our own records, a fact which invests them with
peculiar interest.
GEORGE DOBSON.
Russia's Railway Advance into Central Asia.
from St Petersburg to Samarkand, Illustrated.
Notes of a Journey
Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
"The letters themselves have been expanded and rewritten, and the work contains
seven additional chapters, which bring the account of the Transcaspian Provinces
down to the present time. Those of our readers who remember the original letters
will need no further commendation of our correspondent's accuracy of information
and graphic powers of description."-Times.
"Offers a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this region. The author
journeyed from St Petersburg to Samarkand by the Russian trains and steamers.
He wonders, as so many have wondered before, why the break in the line of railway
communication which is made by the Caspian Sea is allowed to continue. His book is
eminently impartial, and he deals with the question of trade between India and Central
Asia in a chapter full of tho highest interest, both for the statesman and the British
merchant."-Daily Telegraph.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
of Messrs W. H. Allen & Co.'s Publications.
39
REV. A. J. D. D'ORSEY, B.D., K.C., P.O.C.
Portuguese Discoveries, Dependencies, and Missions in Asia and
Africa, with Maps. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
CONTENTS.
Book I.
Introductory.
The Portuguese in Europe and Asia.
Portugal and the Portuguese.
Portuguese Discoveries in the Fifteenth
Century.
Portuguese Conquests of India in the
Sixteenth Century.
The Portuguese Empire in the Sixteenth
Century.
Book II.
The Portuguese Missions in Southern
India.
Early History of the Church in India.
First Meeting of the Portuguese with the
Syrians.
Pioneers of the Portuguese Missions.
The Rise of the Jesuits,
The Jesuits in Portugal.
St Francis Xavier's Mission in India.
Subsequent Missions in the Sixteenth
Century.
Book III.
The Subjugation of the Syrian Church.
Roman Claim of Supremacy.
First Attempt, by the Franciscans.
Second Attempt, by the Jesuits.
The Struggle against Rome.
Book III. continued.
The Archbishop of Goa.
The Synod of Diamper.
The Triumph of Rome.
Book IV.
Subsequent Missions in Southern India,
with special reference to the Syrians.
Radiation of Mission of Goa.
The Madura Mission.
Portuguese Missions in the Carnatic.
Syrian Christians in the Seventeenth
Century.
Syrian Christians in the Eighteenth
Century.
Book V.
The Portuguese Missions, with special
reference to Modern Missionary
efforts in South India,
The First Protestant Mission in South
India.
English Missions to the Syrians 1806-16,
English Missions and the Syrian
Christians.
The Disruption and its Results.
Present State of the Syrian Christians.
The Revival of the Romish Missions in
India.
GENERAL
GORDON, C.B.
Events in the Taeping Rebellion. Being Reprints of MSS. copied
by General Gordon, C. B., in his own handwriting; with Monograph,
Introduction, and Notes. By A. Egmont Hake, author of "The
Story of Chinese Gordon." With Portrait and Map. Demy Svo, ISS.
"A valuable and graphic contribution to our knowledge of affairs in China at the
most critical period of its history."-Leeds Mercury.
C
"Mr Hake has prefixed a vivid sketch of Gordon's career as a leader of men,'
which shows insight and grasp of character. The style is perhaps somewhat too
emphatic and ejaculatory-one seems to hear echoes of Hugo, and a strain of Mr
Walter Besant-but the spirit is excellent."-Atheneum.
"Without wearying his readers by describing at length events which are as
familiar in our months as household words, he contents himself with giving a light
sketch of them, and fills in the picture with a personal narrative which to most people
will be entirely new.”—Saturday Review.
F. V. GREENE, Military Attaché to the U.S. Legation
at St Petersburg.
Sketches of Army Life in Russia. Crown Svo, 9s.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
40
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
M. GRIFFITH.
India's Princes.
Short Life Sketches of the Native Rulers of India,
with 47 Portraits and Illustrations. Demy 4to, gilt top, 21s.
LIST OF PORTRAITS.
THE PUNJAUB,
H.H. the Maharaja of Cashmere.
H.H. the Maharaja of Patiala.
H.H. the Maharaja of Kapurthalla.
RAJPUTANA.
The Maharaja of Oudipur.
The Maharaja of Jeypore.
The Maharaja of Jodhpur.
The Maharaja of Ulware.
The Maharaja of Bhurtpur.
CENTRAL INDIA.
H.H. the Maharaja Holkar of Indore.
H.H. the Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior.
H.H. the Begum of Bhopal.
"A handsome volume containing a series of photographic portraits and local
views with accompanying letterpress, giving biographical and political details,
carefully compiled and attractively presented." "-Times.
C. HAMILTON.
Hedaya or Guide.
A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws. Second
Edition. With Preface and Index by S. G. Grady. Svo, 35s.
Of Zakat.
Of Nikkah or Marriage.
"A work of very high authority in all Moslem countries. It discusses most of the
subjects mentioned in the Koran and Sonna."-MILL'S Muhammadanism.
The great Law-Book of India, and one of the most important monuments of Mussul-
man legislation in existence.
"A valuable work."-ALLIBONE.
Of Rizza or Fosterage.
Of Talak or Divorce.
Of Ittak or the Manumission of Slaves.
Of Eiman or Vows.
Of Hoodood or Punishment.
Of Saraka or Larceny.
Of Al Seyir or the Institutes.
Of the Law respecting Lakects or Found-
lings.
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Of Shirkat or Partnership.
Of Wakf or Appropriations.
Of Sale.
Of Serf Sale.
Of Kafalit or Bail.
Of Hawalit or the Transfer of the Kazee.
Of the Duties of the Kazee.
Of Shahadit or Evidence.
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
Of Retractation of Evidence.
Of Agency.
Of Dawee or Claim.
THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY.
H.H. the Gaikwar of Baroda.
H.H. the Rao of Cutch.
H.H. the Raja Kolhapur.
H.H. the Nawab of Junagarh.
H.H. the Thakore Sahib of Bhavnagar.
H.H. the Thakore Sahib of Dhangadra.
H.H. the Thakore Sahib of Morvi,
H.H. the Thakore Sahib of Gondal.
Of Ikrar or Acknowledge.
Of Soolh or Composition.
SOUTHERN INDIA.
H.H. the Nizam of Hyderabad.
H.H. the Maharaja of Mysore.
H.H. the Maharaja of Travancore.
Of Mozaribat or Co-partnership in the
Profits of Stock and Labour.
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Of Hijr or Inhibition.
Of Mazoons or Licensed Slaves.
Of Ghazb or Usurpation.
Of Shaffa.
Of Kissmat or Partition.
Of Mozarea or Compacts of Cultivation.
Of Mosakat or Compacts of Gardening.
Of Zabbah or the Slaying of Animals for
Food.
Of Uzheea or Sacrifice.
Of Kiraheeat or Abominations.
Of the Cultivation of Waste Lands.
Of Prohibited Liquors.
Of Hunting.
Of Rahn or Pawns.
Of Janayat or Offences against the Person.
Of Decayat or Fines.
Of Mawakil or the Levying of Fines.
Of Wasaya or Wills.
Of Hermaphrodites.
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4I
HOWARD HENSMAN, Special Correspondent of the "Pioneer"
(Allahabad) and the "Daily News" (London).
The Afghan War, 1879-80. Being a complete Narrative of the Capture
of Cabul, the Siege of Sherpur, the Battle of Ahmed Khel, the March
to Candahar, and the defeat of Ayub Khan. With Maps. Demy 8vo,
2IS.
"Sir Frederick Roberts says of the letters here published in a collected form that
'nothing could be more accurate or graphic.' As to accuracy no one can be a more
competent judge than Sir Frederick, and his testimony stamps the book before us as
constituting especially trustworthy material for history. Of much that he relates Mr
Hensman was an eye-witness; of the rest he was informed by eye-witnesses immedi-
ately after the occurrence of the events recorded. We are assured by Sir Frederick
Roberts that Mr Hensman's accuracy is complete in all respects. Mr Hensman enjoyed
singular advantages during the first part of the war, for he was the only special corre-
spondent who accompanied the force which marched out of Ali Kheyl in September
1879. One of the most interesting portions of the book is that which describes the
march of Sir Frederick Roberts from Cabul to Candahar. Indeed, the book is in
every respect interesting and well written, and reflects the greatest credit on the
author."—Athenæum.
Sir H. HUNTER.
A Statistical Account of Bengal.
1. Twenty-four Parganas and Sundar-
bans.
2. Nadiya and Jessor.
3. Midnapur, Hugli, and Hourah,
4. Bardwan, Birbhum, and Bankhura.
5. Dacea, Bakarganj, Faridpur, and
Maimansinh.
6. Chittagong Hill Tracts, Chittagong,
Noakhali, Tipperah, and Hill
Tipperah State.
20 vols. Demy 8vo, £6.
7. Meldah, Rangpur, Dinajpur.
S. Rajshahr and Bogra.
9. Murshidabad and Pabna.
10. Darjiling, Jalpaigurf, and Kutch
Behar State.
11. Patna and Saran.
12. Gaya and Shababad.
13. Tirhut and Champaran,
14. Bhagalpur and Santal Parganas.
15. Monghyr and Purniah.
Bengal MS. Records, a selected list of Letters in the Board of Revenue,
Calcutta, 1782-1807, with an Historical Dissertation and Analytical
Index. 4 vols. Demy 8vo, 30s.
"This is one of the small class of original works that compel a reconsideration of
views which have been long accepted and which have passed into the current history
of the period to which they refer. Sir William Wilson Hunter's exhaustive examination
of the actual state of the various landed classes of Bengal during the last century
renders impossible the further acceptance of these hitherto almost indisputable dicta
of Indian history. The chief materials for that examination have been the contem-
porary MS. records preserved in the Board of Revenue, Calcutta, of which Sir William
Hunter gives a list of 14,136 letters dealing with the period from 1782 to 1807. Nothing
could be more impartial than the spirit in which he deals with the great questions
involved. He makes the actual facts, as recorded by these letters, written at the
time, speak for themselves. But those who desire to learn how that system grew out
of the pre-existing land rights and land usages of the province will find a clear and
authoritative explanation. If these four volumes stood alone they would place their
author in the first rank of scientific historians; that is, of the extremely limited
class of historians who write from original MSS. and records. But they do not stand
alone. They are the natural continuation of the author's researches, nearly a genera-
tion ago, among the District Archives of Bengal, which produced his Annals of
Rural Bengal' in 1868 and his 'Orissa' in 1872. They are also the first-fruits of that
comprehensive history of India on which he has been engaged for the last twenty years,
for which he has collected in each province of India an accumulation of tested local
materials such as has never before been brought together in the hands, and by the
labours, of any worker in the same stupendous field, and which, when completed, will
be the fitting crown of his lifelong services to India. These volumes are indeed an
important instalment towards the projected magnum opus; and in this connection
it is of good augury to observe that they maintain their author's reputation for that
fulness and minuteness of knowledge, that grasp of principles and philosophic insight,
and that fertility and charm of literary expression which give Sir William Hunter his
unique place among the writers of his day on India.”—The Times.
C
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42
Great Reductions in this Catalogue
REV. T. P. HUGHES.
A Dictionary of Islam, being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites,
Ceremonies, and Customs, together with the Technical and Theological
Terms of the Muhammadan Religion. With numerous Illustrations.
Royal 8vo, £2 25.
"Such a work as this has long been needed, and it would be hard to find
any one better qualified to prepare it than Mr Hughes. His 'Notes on
Muhammadanism,' of which two editions have appeared, have proved de-
cidedly useful to students of Islam, especially in India, and his long familiarity
with the tenets and customs of Moslems has placed him in the best possible
position for deciding what is necessary and what superfluous in a Dictionary
of Islam.' His usual method is to begin an article with the text in the
Koran relating to the subject, then to add the traditions bearing upon it, and
to conclude with the comments of the Mohammedan scholiasts and the
criticisms of Western scholars. Such a method, while involving an infinity of
labour, produces the best results in point of accuracy and comprehensiveness.
The difficult task of compiling a dictionary of so vast a subject as Islam, with
its many sects, its saints, khalifs, ascetics, and dervishes, its festivals, ritual,
and sacred places, the dress, manners, and customs of its professors, its com-
mentators, technical terms, science of tradition and interpretation, its super-
stitions, magic, and astrology, its theoretical doctrines and actual practices,
has been accomplished with singular success; and the dictionary will have its
place among the standard works of reference in every library that professes
to take account of the religion which governs the lives of forty millions of
the Queen's subjects. The articles on 'Marriage, Women, Wives,'
Slavery, Tradition,' 'Sufi,' 'Muhammad,' 'Da'wah' or Incantation,
'Burial,' and 'God,' are especially admirable. Two articles deserve special
notice. One is an elaborate account of Arabic 'Writing' by Dr Steingass,
which contains a vast quantity of useful matter, and is weli illustrated by
woodcuts of the chief varieties of Arabic script. The other article to which
we refer with special emphasis is Mr F. Pincott on 'Sikhism.' There is some-
thing on nearl every page of the dictionary that will interest and instruct
the students of Eastern religion, manners, and customs."—Athenceum.
, <
L
Dictionary of Muhammadan Theology.
Notes on Muhammadanism. By Rev. T. P. Hughes. Third Edition,
revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo, 6s.
Altogether an admirable little book. It combines two excellent quali-
ties, abundance of facts and lack of theories.
On every one of the
numerous heads (over fifty) into which the book is divided, Mr Hughes
furnishes a large amount of very valuable information, which it would be
exceedingly difficult to collect from even a large library of works on the
subject. The book might well be called a Dictionary of Muhammadan
Theology,' for we know of no English work which combines a methodical
arrangement (and consequently facility of reference) with fulness of informa-
tion in so high a degree as the little volume before us."-The Academy.
"It contains multum in parvo, and is about the best outline of the
tenets of the Muslim faith which we have seen. It has, moreover, the rare
merit of being accurate; and, although it contains a few passages which we
would gladly see expunged, it cannot fail to be useful to all Government
employés who have to deal with Muhammadans; whilst to missionaries it
will be invaluable."-The Times of India.
"The main object of the work is to reveal the real and practical character
of the Islam faith, and in this the author has evidently been successful."-
The Standard.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
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43
MRS GRACE JOHNSON, Silver Medallist, Cookery Exhibition.
Anglo-Indian and Oriental Cookery. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
H. G. KEENE, C.I.E., B.C.S., M.R.A.S., &c.
History of India. From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. For
the use of Students and Colleges. 2 vols. Crown 8vo, with Maps,
16s.
"The main merit of Mr Keene's performance lies in the fact that he has assimilated
all the authorities, and has been careful to bring his book down to date. He has been
careful in research, and has availed himself of the most recent materials. He is well
known as the author of other works on Indian history, and his capacity for his self-
imposed task will not be questioned. We must content ourselves with this brief testi-
mony to the labour and skill bestowed by him upon a subject of vast interest and
importance. Excellent proportion is preserved in dealing with the various episodes,
and the style is clear and graphic. The volumes are supplied with many useful maps,
and the appendix include notes on Indian law and on recent books about India.
Globe.
31
"Mr Keene has the admirable element of fairness in dealing with the succession of
great questions that pass over his pages, and he wisely devotes a full half of his work
to the present century. The appearance of such a book, and of every such book, upon
India is to be hailed at present. A fair-minded presentment of Indian history like that
contained in Mr Keene's two volumes is at this moment peculiarly welcome."-Times.
1
"In this admirably clear and comprehensive account of the rise and consolidation
of our great Indian Empire, Mr Keene has endeavoured to give, without prolixity, a
statement of the relevant facts at present available, both in regard to the origin of the
more important Indian races and in regard to their progress before they came under
the unifying processes of modern administration. To this undertaking is, of course,
added the completion of the story of the 'unprecedented series of events' which have
led to the amalgamation of the various Indian tribes or nationalities under one rule.
In theory, at least, there is finality in history. Mr Keene traces the ancient Indian
races from their earliest known ancestors and the effect of the Aryan settlement. He
marks the rise of Buddhism and the great Muslim Conquest, the end of the Pathans,
and the advent of the Empire of the Mughals. In rapid succession he reviews the
Hindu revival, the initial establishment of English influence, and the destruction of
French power. The author records the policy of Cornwallis, the wars of Wellesley,
and the Administration of Minto-the most important features in Indian history before
the establishment of British supremacy. It is a brilliant record of British prowess and
ability of governing inferior races that Mr Keene has to place before his readers. We
bave won and held India by the sword, and the policy of the men we send out year by
year to assist in its administration is largely based on that principle. The history of
the land, of our occupation, and our sojourning, so ably set forth in these pages, is
inseparable from that one essential fact."-Morning Post.
An Oriental Biographical Dictionary.
by the late Thomas William Beale.
larged. Royal 8vo, 28s.
Founded on materials collected
New Edition, revised and en-
"A complete biographical dictionary for a country like India, which in its long
history has produced a profusion of great men, would be a vast undertaking. The
suggestion here made only indicates the line on which the dictionary, at some future
time, could be almost indefinitely extended, and rendered still more valuable as a work
of reference. Great care has evidently been taken to secure the accuracy of all that
has been included in the work, and that is of far more importance than mere bulk.
The dictionary can be commended as trustworthy, and reflects much credit on Mr
Keene. Several interesting lists of rulers are given under the various founders of
dynasties."-India.
The Fall of the Moghul Empire. From the Death of Aurungzeb to
the Overthrow of the Mahratta Power. A New Edition, with Correc-
tions and Additions.
With Map. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d.
This work fills up a blank between the ending of Elphinstone's and the commence-
ment of Thornton's Histories.
Fifty-Seven. Some Account of the Administration of Indian Districts
during the Revolt of the Bengal Army. Demy Svo, 6s.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad.
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G. B. MALLESON.
History of the French in India. From the Founding of Pondicherry
in 1674, to the Capture of that place in 1761. New and Revised
Edition, with Maps. Demy 8vo, 16s.
"Colonel Malleson has produced a volume alike attractive to the general reader and
valuable for its new matter to the special student. It is not too much to say that now,
for the first time, we are furnished with a faithful narrative of that portion of European
enterprise in India which turns upon the contest waged by the East India Company
against French influence, and especially against Dupleix."-Edinburgh Review.
"It is pleasant to contrast the work now before us with the writer's first bold plunge
into historical composition, which splashed every one within his reach. He swims now
with a steady stroke, and there is no fear of his sinking. With a keener insight into
human character, and a larger understanding of the sources of human action, he com-
bines all the power of animated recital which invested his earlier narratives with
popularity."-Fortnightly Review.
"The author has had the advantage of consulting French Archives, and his volume.
forms a useful supplement to Orme."-Athenæum.
Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.
Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
New
How India escaped from the government of prefects and sub-prefects to
fall under that of Commissioners and Deputy-Commissioners; why the Penal
Code of Lord Macaulay reigns supreme instead of a Code Napoleon; why we
are not looking on helplessly from Mahe, Karikal, and Pondicherry, while the
French are ruling all over Madras, and spending millions of francs in attempt-
ing to cultivate the slopes of the Neilgherries, may be learnt from this modest
volume. Colonel Malleson is always painstaking, and generally accurate; his
style is transparent, and he never loses sight of the purpose with which he
commenced to write."-Saturday Review.
"A book dealing with such a period of our history in the East, besides
being interesting, contains many lessons. It is written in a style that will be
popular with general readers."—Athenæum.
History of Afghanistan, from the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the
War of 1878. With map. Demy 8vo, 18s.
"The name of Colonel Malleson on the title-page of any historical work in
relation to India or the neighbouring States, is a satisfactory guarantee both
for the accuracy of the facts and the brilliancy of the narrative. The author
may be complimented upon having written a History of Afghanistan which
is likely to become a work of standard authority."-Scotsman.
The Battlefields of Germany, from the Outbreak of the Thirty Years'
War to the Battle of Blenheim. With Maps and I Plan. Demy 8vo,
16s.
"Colonel Malleson has shown a grasp of his subject, and a power of
vivifying the confused passages of battle, in which it would be impossible to
name any living writer as his equal. In imbuing these almost forgotten
battlefields with fresh interest and reality for the English reader, he is re-
opening one of the most important chapters of European history, which no
previous English writer has made so interesting and instructive as he has
succeeded in doing in this volume."-Academy.
Ambushes and Surprises, being a Description of some of the most famous
instances of the Leading into Ambush and the Surprises of Armies,
from the time of Hannibal to the period of the Indian Mutiny. With a
portrait of General Lord Mark Ker, K. C.B. Demy 8vo, 18s.
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45
MRS MANNING.
Ancient and Mediæval India. Being the History, Religion, Laws,
Caste, Manners and Customs, Language, Literature, Poetry, Philo-
sophy, Astronomy, Algebra, Medicine, Architecture, Manufactures,
Commerce, &c., of the Hindus, taken from their Writings. With
Illustrations. 2 vols. Demy 8vo, 30s.
J. MORRIS, Author of "The War in Korea," &c., thirteen years
resident in Tokio under the Japanese Board of Works.
Advance Japan. A Nation Thoroughly in Earnest. With over 100
Illustrations by R. Isayama, and of Photographs lent by the Japanese
Legation. 8vo, 12s. 6d.
"Is really a remarkably complete account of the land, the people, and the institu-
tions of Japan, with chapters that deal with matters of such living interest as its
growing industries and armaments, and the origin, incidents, and probable outcome
of the war with China. The volume is illustrated by a Japanese artist of repute; it
has a number of useful statistical appendices, and it is dedicated to His Majesty the
Mikado."-Scotsman.
DEPUTY SURGEON-GENERAL C. T. PASKE, late of the Bengal
Army, and Edited by F. G. AFLALO.
Life and Travel in Lower Burmah, with frontispiece. Crown Svo, 6s.
"In dealing with life in Burmah we are given a pleasant insight into
Eastern life; and to those interested in India and our other Eastern
possessions, the opinions Mr Paske offers and the suggestions he makes will
be delightful reading. Mr Paske bas adopted a very light style of writing in
'Myamma,' which lends an additional charm to the short historical-cum-
geographical sketch, and both the writer and the editor are to be commended
for the production of a really attractive book."-Public Opinion.
ALEXANDER ROGERS, Bombay Civil Service Retired.
The Land Revenue of Bombay. A History of its Administration,
Rise, and Progress. 2 vols, with 18 Maps. Demy Svo, 30s.
"These two volumes are full of valuable information not only on the Land Revenue,
but on the general condition and state of cultivation in all parts of the Bombay Pre-
sidency. Each collectorate is described separately, and an excellent map of each is
given, showing the divisional headquarters, market-towns, trade centres, places of
pilgrimage, travellers, bungalows, municipalities, hospitals, schools, post offices,
telegraphs, railways, &c."-Mirror of British Museum.
"Mr Rogers has produced a continuous and an authoritative record of the land
changes and of the fortunes of the cultivating classes for a full half-century, together
with valuable data regarding the condition and burdens of those classes at various
periods before the present system of settlement was introduced. Mr Rogers now
presents a comprehensive view of the land administration of Bombay as a whole, the
history of its rise and progress, and a clear statement of the results which it has
attained. It is a narrative of which all patriotic Englishmen may feel proud. The old
burdens of native rule have been lightened, the old injustices mitigated, the old fiscal
cruelties and exactions abolished. Underlying the story of each district we see a per-
ennial struggle going on between the increase of the population and the available
means of subsistence derived from the soil. That increase of the population is the
direct result of the peace of the country under British rule. But it tends to press
more and more severely on the possible limits of local cultivation, and it can only be
provided for by the extension of the modern appliances of production and distribu-
tion. Mr Rogers very properly confines himself to his own subject. But there is
ample evidence that the extension of roads, railways, steam factories, and other
industrial enterprises, have played an important part in the solution of the problem,
and that during recent years such enterprises have been powerfully aided by an
abundant currency."-The Times.
•
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G. P. SANDERSON, Officer in Charge of the Government
Elephant Keddahs.
Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India; their Haunts
and Habits, from Personal Observation. With an account of the
Modes of Capturing and Taming Wild Elephants. With 21 full-page
Illustrations, Reproduced for this Edition direct from the original
drawings, and 3 Maps. Fifth Edition. Fcap. 4to, 12s.
"We find it difficult to hasten through this interesting book; on almost every page
some incident or some happy descriptive passage tempts the reader to linger. The
author relates his exploits with ability and with singular modesty. His adventures
with man-eaters will afford lively entertainment to the reader, and indeed there is no
portion of the volume which he is likely to wish shorter. The illustrations add to the
attractions of the book."-Pall Mall Gazette.
"This is the best and most practical book on the wild game of Southern and
Eastern India that we have read, and displays an extensive acquaintance with natural
history. To the traveller proposing to visit India, whether he be a sportsman, a
naturalist, or an antiquarian, the book will be invaluable: full of incident and sparkling
with anecdote."-Bailey's Magazine.
ROBERT SEWELL, Madras Civil Service.
Analytical History of India. From the Earliest Times to the Aboli-
tion of the East India Company in 1858. Post 8vo, 8s.
"Much labour has been expended on this work.”—Athenæum.
EDWARD THORNTON.
A Gazetteer of the Territories under the Government of the Vice-
roy of India.
New Edition, Edited and Revised by Sir Roper
Lethbridge, C. I. E., late Press Commissioner in India, and Arthur N.
Wollaston, H.M. Indian (Home) Civil Service, Translator of the
..
Anwar-i-Suhaili." In one volume, 8vo, 1,000 pages, 28s.
Hunter's Imperial Gazetteer" has been prepared, which is not only much
more ample than its predecessor, but is further to be greatly enlarged in the New
Edition now in course of production. In these circumstances it has been thought
incumbent, when issuing a New Edition of Thornton's "Gazetteer" corrected up to
date, to modify in some measure the plan of the work by omitting much of the
detail and giving only such leading facts and figures as will suffice for ordinary pur-
poses of reference, a plan which has the additional advantage of reducing the work to
one moderate-sized võlume.
་
It is obvious that the value of the New Edition must depend in a large measure
upon the care and judgment which have been exercised in the preparation of the
letterpress. The task was, in the first instance, undertaken by Mr Roper Lethbridge,
whose literary attainments and acquaintance with India seemed to qualify him to a
inarked degree for an undertaking demanding considerable knowledge and experience.
But in order further to render the work as complete and perfect as possible, the
publishers deemed it prudent to subject the pages to the scrutiny of a second Editor,
in the person of Mr Arthur Wollaston, whose lengthened service in the Indian Branch
of the Civil Service of this country, coupled with his wide acquaintance with Oriental
History, gives to his criticism an unusual degree of weight and importance. The
joint names which appear on the title-page will, it is hoped, serve as a guarantee to
the public that the "Gazetteer" is in the main accurate and trustworthy, free alike
from sins of omission and commission. It will be found to contain the names of many
hundreds of places not included in any former edition, while the areas and popula-
tions have been revised by the data given in the Census Report of 1881.
**The chief objects in view in compiling this Gazetteer are:-
1st. To fix the relative position of the various cities, towns, and villages with as
much precision as possible, and to exhibit with the greatest practicable brevity all
that is known respecting them; and
2ndly. To note the various countries, provinces, or territorial divisions, and to
describe the physical characteristics of each, together with their statistical, social,
and political circumstances.
For the Reduced Prices apply to
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47
DR C. EDWARD SACHAU.
Athâr-Ul-Bâkiya of Albîrûnî: The Chronology of Ancient Nations,
an English Version of the Arabic Text Translated and Edited with
Notes and Index. Imp. 8vo (480 pp.), 42s.
A book of extraordinary erudition compiled in A. D. 1000.
A. J. WALL.
Indian Snake Poisons: Their Nature and Effects.
M
Crown 8vo, 6s.
CONTENTS.
The Physiological Effects of the Poison of the Cobra (Naja Tripudians).-The Physio-
logical Effects of the Poison of Russell's Viper (Daboià Russellii). The Physiological
Effects produced by the Poison of the Bungarus Fasciatus and the Bungarus Coeruleus.
-The Relativo Power and Properties of the Poisons of Indian and other Venomous
Snakes. The Nature of Snake Poisons.-Some practical considerations connected with
the subject of Snako-Poisoning, especially regarding Prevention and Treatment.-The
object that has been kept in view, has been to define as closely as possible the condi-
tions on which the mortality from Snake-bite depends, both as regards the physio-
logical nature of the poisoning process, and the relations between the reptiles and their
victims, so as to indicate the way in which we should best proceed with the hope of
diminishing the fearful mortality that exists.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
S. WELLS WILLIAMS, LL.D., Professor of the Chinese
Language and Literature at Yale College.
China-The Middle Kingdom. A Survey of the Geography, Govern-
ment, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese
Empire and its Inhabitants. Revised Edition, with 74 Illustrations
and a New Map of the Empire.
2 vols. Demy Svo, 42s.
"Williams' 'Middle Kingdom' remains unrivalled as the most full and accurate
account of China-its inhabitants, its arts, its science, its religion, its philosophy-
that has ever been given to the public. Its minuteness and thoroughness are beyond
all praise."-North American Review.
"The standard work on the subject."-Globe.
PROFESSOR H. H. WILSON.
Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, including words from
the Arabic, Teluga, Karnata, Tamil, Persian, Hindustani. Sanskrit,
Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Guzarathi, Malayalam, and other languages.
410, 30s.
"It was the distinguishing characteristic of our late director that he con-
sidered nothing unworthy of his labours that was calculated to be useful, and
was never influenced in his undertakings by the mere desire of acquiring
distinction or increasing his fame. Many of his works exhibit powers of
illustration and close reasoning, which will place their author in a high
position among the literary men of the age. But it is as a man of deep
research and as a Sanskrit scholar and Orientalist, as the successor of Sir Wm.
Jones and H. T. Colebrooke, the worthy wearer of their mantles and inheritor
of the pre-eminence they enjoyed in this particular department of literature,
that his name will especially live among the eminent men of learning of his
age and country. "-H. T. PRINSEP.
(C
'A work every page of which teems with information that no other
scholar ever has or could have placed before the public.
The work
must ever hold a foremost place not only in the history of India but in that of
the human race."-Edinburgh Review.
LIEUT. G. J. YOUNGHUSBAND, Queen's Own Corps of Guides.
Eighteen Hundred Miles in a Burmese Tat, through Burmah, Siam,
Illustrated. Crown Svo, 5s.
and the Eastern Shan States.
Any Bookseller at Home and Abroad,

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Women of renown
"