Chapter XL: Letter XIII: To the Lady Subscriber in the Country (2)

We sat a half hour, studying these little wonders. The little girl, Bartola, held our hand, and looked us full in the eye with affectionate confidingness, while the boy backed in between the open knees of our partner, Gen. Morris, and signified his wish, with the careless authority of a little Emperor, to be taken into the lap. With no words of their own, they understood what the attendant said to them, and seemed to be relieved of their loneliness by our company. A band of music approaching while we were there, the little Aztecs showed the greatest excitement. We held the boy up to the window while the military company went by, and his little kitten frame trembled and jumped nervously to the measure of the march—music happily being of no language, and stirring brains of all stages of progress, from Kossuth’s, at the noon of a race’s developement, to the Iximayan’s, in its fading twilight.

Our readers will not expect, in our columns, the details of Kossuth’s Progress, nor a literal report of his speeches. They overwhelm even the double sheets of the daily papers. But we shall chronicle a distinct outline of his movements, and see that the readers of the _Home Journal_ lose none of the _ideas_, either of his producing or suggesting. He has begun with magnificent frankness and boldness, and is unquestionably a magnanimous and admirable man, equal to, and embarked upon, a great errand. We wish him success—not with the legislators, but with the _dollars_ of our country. _Money enough will set Hungary free._ We trust the enlistment of these gold and silver recruits will be organized and in progress while his eloquence is thundering an accompaniment. Many ways will be devised for raising contributions. Let us close our present remarks by _proposing one_—as a natural sequent to the peculiarity of which we have spoken in his reception. The Magyar’s _lady constituency_ in America—each one giving but the price of a pair of gloves—a dollar from each of the fair admirers of Kossuth and his cause—might, almost of itself, secure the independence of Hungary. The dollars are willing and waiting—who can doubt? Will not some ruling spirit devise a way to reach and enrol them?

NEAR VIEW OF KOSSUTH.

The eye has opinions of its own. Pour into the mind, by all its other avenues, the most minute and authentic knowledge of a man, and, when you _see him_, your opinion is more or less changed or modified. This is our apology for adding another to the numberless descriptions of Kossuth. Having been favored with an opportunity to stand near him during the delivery of one of his most stirring speeches, we found that our previous impression of him was altered, or, rather, perhaps, somewhat added to. Trifling as the difference of our view from that of others may be, Kossuth is a star about whom the astronomy can scarce be too minute; and our distant readers, who are in the habit of hearing of new planets from us, may be willing to see how also the Magyar looks, through the small telescope of our quill.

With our distant readers mainly in view, we shall be excused for describing Kossuth’s surroundings, as well as himself, with a particularity unnecessary for the city reader.

It has been difficult, without some official errand, to approach near enough to the Magyar to distinguish the finer lines of his face, and we were beginning to despair of this privilege when the Delegation arrived from Baltimore, and, from friends among them, we received an invitation to go in at the presentation of the _silver book_. This, we may anticipatorily explain, was the “freedom of the city” in a written address, of folio size, and bound between two leaves of massive silver; the whole enclosed in a case of red velvet. It was suitably and creditably magnificent; and its history would not all be told without mentioning that it received a kiss from Madame Kossuth—Mr. Brantz Mayer having mindfully and courteously presented it to that lady—the Governor’s Secretary insisting on taking charge of it—and she refusing to release it before pressing it to her lips. Baltimore’s blood will warm with the compliment.

On reaching the Irving House at the hour when the silver book was to be presented, we found the hotel in a state of siege, inside and out. Broadway was packed with people, and the staircases of the hotel were hardly passable. One Hungarian officer, in brilliant uniform, stood sentry at the drawing-room door, and here and there a Magyar hat, with its go-against-the-wind-looking black feather, wound through the crowd; but by the numerous “highly respectables” in body coats and important expressions of countenance, there were evidently uncounted Committees waiting to get audience _within_, while flags and bands of music indicated the more popular deputations whose hopes were on the balcony _without_.

There seemed little chance of any special reception by the Magyar, when Howard sent word that he could give the Baltimore Delegation his own private parlor, where Kossuth would presently come to them. We took advantage of the “presently” to get a look into the street, from one of the front windows. It was a sea of upturned faces, with hats all falling one way, like shadows—Kossuth the light. He stood on the balcony. The many colored flags of the “European Democracy” throbbed over the crowd—Italians, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles—the refugees of all nations standing gazing on the prophet of Liberty. It was a scene, and had a meaning, for history. Yet it was but the _one hour’s event, in a day all occupied with such_. A band of one hundred of the clergy had linked an imperishable testimonial to _the hour before_. The reply to the Baltimore Delegation contained truths that will radiate through all time _from the hour after_. Truly, a man’s life may be so high and so deep, that, to measure it by its length, is meaningless.

The Baltimoreans made their way to the room appointed, which was immediately crowded by privileged spectators, and reporters for the press, with a small party of ladies in the corner. We were kindly urged to take our place directly behind Judge Le Grand, who was the central figure of the Delegation group, and, as Kossuth stood but four or five feet distant, during his reply to the addresses, and with his eye upon the Judge almost unvaryingly, we were so fortunate as to see him with every advantage of the closest observation.

Madam Kossuth was presently introduced with Madam Pulzky, her companion, and seated a little in advance of the lady spectators. She is an invalid, pale and slightly bent—her figure fragile, and her expression of face a mingled imprint of bodily suffering and conscious belonging to greatness. Her countenance, we observed, though earnestly attentive, was profoundly tranquil, alike through the more even flow of her husband’s eloquence and its overwhelming and impassioned outbreaks.

The crowd near the door parted at last, and Kossuth entered. The gentleman on whose arm he leaned led him to the centre of the room, and presented him to the Delegation.

The reader must remember the tumultuous scene, of which Kossuth had been the centre a moment before, when we say that he entered and was presented to the Committee, with a face as calm as if he had just risen from his morning prayer. He bowed, with grave and deliberate deference, at each introduction. It had been communicated to the gentlemen in the room, that, from the injury of movement to his chest after the hemorrhage of the morning, he must be excused from shaking hands, and he bowed only—assuming the attitude of a listener, with an immediate earnestness which showed that he felt little strength for more than the main purpose of the interview. He stood in the centre of the room, motionless, and the reading of the Addresses proceeded.

The surprise of a man who had placed himself at a window to watch for the coming of a stranger, but discovers, after a while, that the stranger has been for some time enjoying the welcome of the household within, may vaguely express the feeling to which we awoke, after looking for five minutes at Kossuth. He had been, from the first instant, in full possession of our heart, and yet the eyes that we had set to scrutinize him had not noted a single feature. It was the strongest instance we had ever experienced, of what we knew to be true, by lesser examples, that the soul, _with neighborhood only_, makes recognitions of what could neither be painted nor sculptured, neither uttered nor written. His mere _presence_ opened to him the door, told who he was, and set the heart, like Mary, to the washing of his feet. We loved and revered the man—why, or with what beginning or progress, we could not have explained. But—let us describe what we afterwards called upon the eye to take note of.

Kossuth is of medium height, with hollow chest and the forward-brought shoulders of a sedentary life. His head is set firmly, not proudly or aristocratically erect, upon his neck. He stood so long and so tranquilly immovable in single postures, that it raised a question in our mind whether he could be of the nervous construction which men of great intellect oftenest are; and, on looking at the hand, that tablet of nervous action, we saw that he was not. The broad smooth back of it was unwritten with needless suffering, and the thumb joint projected, like that of a man used to manual labor. It was a hand, had we seen its like elsewhere, from whose owner we should have expected nothing more poetical or heroic than a well-considered vote. We found a subsequent confirmation of this, we may mention, in the singular immovableness of the sockets, and lids of his eyes, during the eloquent outpourings of his heart which followed. When his lips were compressed, and a quivering movement in his chin showed that emotion was restrained with difficulty, his eye was immovably serene, and its largely spread lids were as tranquil as the sky around a moon unclouded. We were strongly impressed with these outer signs of the two natures of Kossuth. He has a heart like other men—his exquisitely moulded chin and lips of exceeding physical beauty and expression sufficiently show. But, from all that can reach these, his intellect is islanded away. The upper part of his face is calmly separate, not only from the movement, but from the look, of emotion. It is a mind unreachable by nerves—a brain that thinks on, as the sun pursues its way across the heavens, unhindered by the clouds that may gather beneath. A face, in the lower part of which, sensuous beauty is so remarkably complete—and, around the temples, and beneath the brow of which, is so stamped the divine impress of an intellect high above weakness and human by limit only—we had never before seen.

It was quite evident that Kossuth had entered the room, simply to fulfil a duty—feeling unequal to it, from his illness of the morning and the fatigues he had already undergone—and with no idea of making more than the briefest acknowledgment of courtesy for what he should hear from the Committee. Even his dress showed that he was not prepared for “an occasion.” He wore a brown cut-away coat, (which must have been selected for him by a waiter, sent to a ready made clothes shop with a verbal description of the gentleman to be fitted,) a black waistcoat buttoned to the throat, no shirt visible, and trousers of uninfluenceable salt-and-pepper. That the mien and bearing of an Oriental gentleman, as well as the dignity of a prophet, were as fully and impressively recognizable through these Edward-P.-Fox-ables, as through the braided cloak and under the black plume of the Magyar, is a standard, though a homely one, by which some may be helped to an estimate of the man.

We have seen repeated mention of the “perpetual smile” of Kossuth. This conveys a wrong impression. He may smile often and easily when receiving introductions or bowing to the cheers of a crowd; but it is a demonstration which, habitually, he keeps very much in reserve, and which, of all the visible weapons of his eloquence, is the most rarely and aptly introduced, the most captivating and effective. We are inclined to think his heavy mustache accidentally favors this, by aiding the unexpectedness of the smile, and by leaving its fading glow to the imagination—but, at moments when the lips of another orator would be cloud-wrapt in the darkest expression of solemnity, a gleam, like the breaking away for a transfiguration, comes suddenly over the lips of Kossuth—as beautiful and inspired a smile certainly as was ever seen on the face of a human being—and the effect is in the peculiar triumph that he achieves. Love irresistibly follows conviction.

As we said before, Kossuth had evidently no idea of making the speech which was drawn from him by the Baltimore Delegation—drawn from him, we think, by the superior cast of the gentlemen who formed it, and by the fitness, both of the manner and accompaniments of the honors they paid him. He spoke altogether extemporaneously, and with difficulty and hesitation, at first; but, with one or two brilliant and successful illustrations, his words grew more fluent, and, in the following passage, he became fully and gloriously aroused. It was the first mention he had yet made to the world of his intention to return to Hungary _a soldier_!

“As for the future, I shall devote my life to the resurrection
of my native land. I will endeavor to wrest Hungary from the
power of tyrants and despots, to procure for her her sovereign
rights, and the fundamental rights which belong to every nation.
Should Providence assign me a place in the accomplishment of
these great designs, I will take care that they shall receive no
injury from me. I will here remark that I have always been
extremely anxious not to assume or take upon my humble shoulders
any duty which I had not a positive conviction would not answer
me, or which I could not perform. Though I was never in actual
military service, I was ready to help my country in every way I
could. I was not able to be in every place at the same time, and
I had not the boldness to take the practical direction of the
military operations because I feared I was not sufficiently
familiar with military tactics to do so. I thought that if it so
happened that any thing should go amiss, and my people be
defeated, that I should not only be condemned by my countrymen,
but that my conscience would torture me with the feeling, that
if I had not undertook to do a thing which I did not understand,
the fall of my country would not have taken place. This was my
conviction. _I was not master of the practice and strategy of
war, and I gave the cause of my country thus far into other
hands._ I have seen that cause destroyed, and become a failure,
and I weep for my country, not for my own misfortunes. _Since I
have been in exile I have endeavored to improve my intellect
from the movements of the past, and to prepare myself for the
future_, and I rely on my people, whose confidence in me is not
shaken by my misfortunes, nor broken by my calumniators, who
have misrepresented me. _I have had all in my own hands once,
and if I get in the same position again, I will act._ I will not
become a Napoleon nor an Alexander, and labor for the sake of my
own ambition, but I will labor for freedom.”

These are not his words, though they embody the sentiments expressed. His own language was as much finer, and as different from this, as a poem is from its story told in prose. The reporters are not to blame, taking their notes standing amid a crowd as they do—but, (let us say here,) the public should give Kossuth credit for incomparably more eloquent speeches than they read. An admirable passage, left out in what we have quoted, for instance, followed the allusion he made to his disappointment in Gœrgey, the traitor, the shock it gave to his belief in the power of one man to read the soul of another, and the lonely _trust in himself only_, to which it had driven him. To the words and the manner with which he repeated the declaration that he _believed in himself_, we do not think we shall ever hear the parallel for impressive eloquence. Those who heard it would believe in Kossuth—against the testimony of angels.

Kossuth is too heroic a man to be over-cautious; and, from the kind of freshly impulsive and chivalric energy with which he spoke of holding the army in his own hand on his return, we were impressed with the idea that this evidently unpremeditated giving of shape to his thought for the future had another element in its momentum. _It was the reading aloud of a newly turned over leaf of his nature._ In prison, he says, he prepared himself for the next struggle of Hungary by making “the science and strategy of war” a study. Profound and careful, of course, must be the _theory_ of war—but its _practice_ is with trumpet and banner; and ever so abstruse though the _tactics_ are, they are tried even for the holiest cause, with those accompaniments, of personal daring and danger, which have, to all lofty minds, a charm irresistible. Of the statesman and hero united in Kossuth, the _statesman_ has been more wanted, hitherto—but there is a call, now, for the _hero_—and, if he betrays joy and eagerness long suppressed, (as we mean to say he did,) in answering that he is ready, what American will “wish he had been more careful?”

In farther illustration of what we are saying, the reader will permit us to change the scene of our sketch, and speak of Kossuth as we saw him more recently—addressing the five thousand of our soldiery in the amphitheatre of Castle Garden. It was not, _there_, the pale, carelessly dressed, and slightly bent invalid of the few days before. Oh no! Neither in mien nor in dress would he have been recognized by the picture we have drawn of him, above. The scene was enough to inspire him it is true. Five thousand brilliantly equipped men—with but one thought under every plume and belt, and that thought the cause whose highest altar was in his own bosom—were marshalled beneath his glance, waiting breathlessly to hear him. His look, that night, will never be forgot, by those who saw it. He wore a black velvet frock with standing collar, and buttons of jet—the single ornament being the slender belt of gold about his waist, holding a sword gracefully to his side. The marked simplicity of this elegant dress made his figure distinguished among the brilliant uniforms of the officers upon the stage; but his countenance, as he became animated, and walked to and fro before that magnificently arrayed audience, was the idealization of a look to inspire armies. When Captain French (to whom we make our admiring compliments) rose in the far gallery, and insisted on being heard, while he offered a thousand dollars from the Fusileers to the cause, would any one have doubted that the life’s blood of those fine fellows _would have come as easy_, with opportunity?

We stop with this mere description. The Kossuth questions are discussed sufficiently elsewhere. Our object has been to aid the distant reader in imagining the personal appearance of the man whose thoughts of lightning reach them, gleaming gloriously even through the clouds of impoverished language on which they travel. We close with a prayer—_God keep Kossuth to take the field for Hungary!_

DEATH OF LADY BLESSINGTON.

The Parisian correspondent of the _London Morning Post_ thus makes the first mention of this unexpected event:—

“We have all been much shocked this afternoon by the sudden
death of Lady Blessington. Her ladyship dined yesterday with the
Duchess de Grammont, and returned home late in her usual health
and spirits. In the course of this morning she felt unwell, and
her homœopathic medical adviser, Dr. Simon, was sent for. After
a short consultation, the doctor announced that his patient was
dying of apoplexy, and his sad prediction was unhappily verified
but too rapidly, as her ladyship expired in his arms about an
hour and a half ago.”

We doubt whether a death could have taken place, in private life, in Europe, that would have made a more vivid sensation than this, or have been more sincerely regretted. Indeed, a possessor of more power, in its most attractive shape, could hardly have been named, in life public or private—for the extent of Lady Blessington’s friendships with distinguished men of every nation, quality, character, rank and creed, was without a parallel. Her friends were carefully chosen—but, once admitted to her intimacy, they never were neglected and never lessened in their attachment to her. She has a circle of mourners, at this moment, in which there is more genius, more distinction, and more sincere sorrowing, than has embalmed a name within the lapse of a century. Noblemen, statesmen, soldiers, church-dignitaries, poets and authors, artists, actors, musicians, bankers,—a galaxy of the best of their different stations and pursuits—have received, with tears at the door of the heart, the first intelligence of her death.

The deceased will have a biographer—no doubt an able and renowned one. Bulwer, who enjoyed her friendship as intimately, perhaps, for the last ten years of her life, as any other man, might describe her best, and is not likely to leave, undone, a task so obviously his own. Without hoping to anticipate, at all, the portraiture, by an abler hand, of this remarkable woman, we may venture to send to our readers this first announcement of her death, accompanied with such a sketch of her qualities of mind and heart as our own memory, of the acquaintance we had the privilege of enjoying, enables us easily to draw.

Lady Blessington, as her writings show, was not a woman of genius in the creative sense of the term. She has originated nothing that would, of itself, have made a mark upon the age she lived in. Her peculiarity lay in the curiously felicitous combination of the best qualities of the two sexes, in her single character as it came from nature. She had the cool common sense and intrepid unsubserviency which together give a man the best social superiority, and she had the tact, the delicacy and the impassioned devotedness which are essentials in the finest compounds of woman. She did not know what fear was,—either of persons or of opinions,—and it was as like herself when she shook her gloved fist in defiance at the mob in Whitehall, on their threatening to break her carriage windows if she drove through, as it was to return to London after her long residence on the continent, and establish herself as the centre of a society from which her own sex were excluded. Under more guarded and fortunate circumstances of early life, and had she attained “the age of discretion” before taking any decided step, she would probably have been one of those guiding stars of _individualism_, in common life, alike peculiar, admirable and irreproachable.

Lady Blessington’s generous estimate of _what services were due in friendship_—her habitual conduct in such relations amounting to a romantic chivalry of devotedness—bound to her with a naturalness of affection not very common in that class of life, those who formed the circle of her intimacy. She did not wait to be solicited. Her tact and knowledge of the world enabled her to understand, with a truth that sometimes seemed like divination, the position of a friend at the moment—his hopes and difficulties, his wants and capabilities. She had a much larger influence than was generally supposed, with persons in power, who were not of her known acquaintance, many an important spring of political and social movement was unsuspectedly within her control. She could aid ambition, promote literary distinction, remove difficulties in society which she did not herself frequent, serve artists, harmonize and prevent misunderstandings, and give valuable counsel on almost any subject that could come up in the career of a man, with a skill and a control of resources of which few had any idea. Many a one of her brilliant and unsurpassed dinners had a kindly object which its titled guests little dreamed of, but which was not forgotten for a moment, amid the wit and eloquence that seemed so purposeless and impulsive. On some errand of good will to others, her superb equipage, the most faultless thing of its kind in the world, was almost invariably bound, when gazed after in the streets of London. Princes and noblemen, (who, as well as poets and artists, have aims which need the devotion of friendship,) were the objects of her watchful aid and ministration; and we doubt, indeed, whether any woman lived, who was so valuable a friend to so many, setting aside the high careers that were influenced among them, and the high station and rank that were befriended with no more assiduity than lesser ambitions and distinctions.

The conversation, at the table in Gore House, was allowed to be the most brilliant in Europe, but Lady Blessington herself seldom took the lead in it. Her manners were such as to put every one at his ease, and her absolute tact at suggestion and change of topics, made any one shine who had it in him, when she chose to call it forth. She had the display of her guests as completely under her hand as the pianist his keys; and, forgetful of herself—giving the most earnest and appreciative attention to others—she seemed to desire no share in the happiness of the hour except that of making each, in his way, show to advantage. If there was any impulse of her mind to which she gave way with a feeling of carelessness, it was to the love of humor in her Irish nature, and her mirthfulness at such moments, was most joyously unrestrained and natural.

In 1835, when we first saw Lady Blessington, she confessed to forty, and was then exceedingly handsome. Her beauty, it is true, was more in pose and demeanor than in the features of her face, but she produced the full impression of great beauty. Her mouth was the very type of freshness and frankness. The irregularity of her nose gave a vivacity to her expression, and her thin and pliant nostrils added a look of spirit which was unmistakable, but there was a steady penetration in the character of her eye which threw a singular earnestness and sincerity over all. Like Victoria, Tom Moore, the Duke of Wellington and Grisi, she sat tall—her body being longer in proportion than her limbs—and, probably from some little sensitiveness on this point, she was seldom seen walking. Her grace of posture in her carriage struck the commonest observer, and, seated at her table, or in the gold and satin arm-chair in her drawing room, she was majestically elegant and dignified. Of the singular beauty of her hands and arms, celebrated as they were in poetry and sculpture, she seemed at least unconscious, and used them carelessly, gracefully and expressively, in the gestures of conversation. At the time we speak of, she was in perfect maturity portion and figure, but beginning, even then, to conceal, by a peculiar cap, the increasing fullness under her chin. Her natural tendency to plethora was not counteracted by exercise, and when we saw her last, two years ago, she was exceedingly altered from her former self, and had evidently given up to an indolence of personal habits which has since ended in apoplexy and death.

There is an ignorance with regard to the early history of this distinguished woman, and a degree of misrepresentation in the popular report of her life in later years, which a simple statement of the outline of her career will properly correct. Her death takes away from her friends the freedom of speaking carelessly of her faults, but it binds them, also, to guard her memory as far as Truth can do it, from injustice and perversion.

Lady Blessington’s maiden name was Margaret Power. She was born in Ireland, the daughter of the printer and editor of the _Clonmel Herald_, and up to the age of twelve or fourteen, (as we once heard her say) had hardly worn a shoe or been in a house where there was a carpet. At this age of her girlhood, however, she and her sister (who was afterwards Lady Canterbury) were fancied by a family of wealthy old maids, to whom they were distantly related, and taken to a home where they proved apt scholars in the knowledge of luxury and manners. On their return to Clonmel, two young girls of singular beauty, they became at once the attraction of a dashing English regiment newly stationed there, and Margaret was soon married to an officer by the name of Farmer. From this hasty connection, into which she was crowded by busy and ambitious friends, sprang all the subsequent canker of her life. Her husband proved to be liable to temporary insanity, and, at best, was cruel and capricious. Others were kinder and more attentive. She was but sixteen. Flying from her husband who was pursuing her with a pistol in his hand to take her life, she left her home, and, in the retreat where she took refuge, was found by a wealthy and accomplished officer, who had long been her admirer, and whose “protection” she now fatally accepted.

With this gentleman, Captain Jenkinson, she lived four years in complete seclusion. His return to dissipated habits, at the end of that time, destroyed his fortune and brought about a separation; and, her husband, meantime, having died, she received an offer of marriage from Lord Blessington, who was then a widower with one daughter. She refused the offer, at first, from delicate motives, easily understood: but it was at last pressed on her acceptance, and she married and went abroad.

Received into the best society of the continent at once, and with her remarkable beauty and her husband’s enormous wealth, entering upon a most brilliant career, she became easily an accomplished woman of the world, and readily supplied for herself, any deficiencies in her early education. It was during this first residence in Paris that Lord Blessington became exceedingly attached to Count Alfred D’Orsay, the handsomest and most talented young nobleman of France. Determined not to be separated from one he declared he could not live without, he affianced his daughter to him, persuaded his father to let him give up his commission in the army, and fairly adopted him into his family to share his fortune with him as a son. They soon left Paris for Italy, and at Genoa fell in with Lord Byron, who was a friend of Lord Blessington’s, and with whom they made a party, for residence in that beautiful climate, the delightful socialities of which are well described in her Ladyship’s “Conversations.”

A year or two afterwards, Lord Blessington’s daughter came to him from school, and was married to Count D’Orsay at Naples. The union proved inharmonious, and they separated, after living but a year together. Lord Blessington died soon after, and, on Lady Blessington’s return to England, the Count rejoined her, and they formed but one household till her death.

It was this residence of Lord Blessington’s widow and her son-in-law under the same roof—he, meantime, separated from his wife, Lady Harriet D’Orsay—which, by the English code of appearances in morals, compromised the position of Lady Blessington. She chose to disregard public opinion, where it interfered with what she deliberately made up her mind was best, and, disdaining to explain or submit, guarded against slight or injury, by excluding from her house all who would condemn her, viz:—her own sex. Yet all who knew her and her son-in-law, were satisfied that it was a useful and, indeed, absolutely necessary arrangement for _him_—her strict business habits, practical good sense, and the protection of her roof, being an indispensable safeguard to his personal liberty and fortunes—and that this need of serving him and the strongest and most disinterested friendship were _her_ only motives, every one was completely sure who knew them at all. By those intimate at her house, including the best and greatest men of England, Lady Blessington was held in unqualified respect, and no shadow even of suspicion, thrown over her life of widowhood. She had many entreaties from her own sex to depart from her resolve and interchange visits, and we chanced to be at her house, one morning, when a note was handed to her from one of the most distinguished noble ladies of England, making such a proposal. We saw the reply. It expressed, with her felicitous tact, a full appreciation of the confidence and kindness of the note she had received, but declined its request, from an unwillingness to place herself in any position where she might, by the remotest possibility, suffer from doubt or injustice. She persevered in this to the end of her life, a few relatives and one or two intimates of her continental acquaintance being the only ladies seen at her house. When seized with her last illness, she had been dining with Count D’Orsay’s sister, the beautiful Duchess de Grammont.

Faulty as a portion of Lady Blessington’s life may have been, we doubt whether a woman has lived, in her time, who did so many actions of truest kindness, and whose life altogether was so benevolently and largely instrumental for the happiness of others. With the circumstances that bore upon her destiny, with her beauty, her fascination and her boundless influence over all men who approached her, she might easily, almost excusably, have left a less worthy memory to fame. Few in their graves, now, deserve a more honoring remembrance.

MOORE AND BARRY CORNWALL.

Well—how does Moore write a song?

In the twilight of a September evening he strolls through the park to dine with the marquis. As he draws on his white gloves, he sees the evening star looking at him steadily through the long vista of the avenue, and he construes its punctual dispensation of light into a reproach for having, himself a star, passed a day of poetic idleness. “Damme,” soliloquizes the little fat planet, “this will never do! Here have I hammered the whole morning at a worthless idea, that, with the mere prospect of a dinner, shows as trumpery as a ‘penny fairing.’ Labor wasted! And at my time of life, too! Faith!—it’s dining at home these two days with nobody to drink with me! It’s eyewater I want! Don’t trouble yourself to sit up for me, brother Hesper! I shall see clearer when I come back!

‘Bad are the rhymes
That scorn old wine.’

as my friend Barry sings. Poetry? hum! Claret? Prithee, call it claret!”

And Moore is mistaken! He draws his inspiration, it is true, with the stem of a glass between his thumb and finger, but the wine is the least stimulus to his brain. _He talks and is listened to admiringly_, and that is his Castaly. He sits next to Lady Fanny at dinner, who thinks him an “adorable little love,” and he employs the first two courses in making her in love with herself, i. e., blowing everything she says up to the red heat of poetry. Moore can do this, for the most stupid things on earth are, after all, the beginnings of ideas, and every fool is susceptible of the flattery of seeing the words go straight from his lips to the “highest heaven of invention.” And Lady Fanny is not a fool, but a quick and appreciative woman, and to almost everything she says, the poet’s _trump_ is a germ of poetry. “Ah!” says Lady Fanny with a sigh, “this will be a memorable dinner—not to you, but to me; for you see pretty women every day, but I seldom see Tom Moore!” The poet looks into Lady Fanny’s eyes and makes no immediate answer. Presently she asks, with a delicious look of simplicity, “Are you as agreeable to everybody, Mr. Moore?”—“There is but one Lady Fanny,” replies the poet; “or, _to use your own_ beautiful simile, ‘The moon sees many brooks, but the brook sees but one moon!’” (Mem. jot that down.) And so is treasured up _one_ idea for the morrow, and when the marchioness rises, and the ladies follow her to the drawing-room, Moore finds himself sandwiched between a couple of whig lords, and opposite a past or future premier—an audience of cultivation, talent, scholarship, and appreciation; and as the fresh pitcher of claret is passed round, all regards radiate to the Anacreon of the world, and with that sanction of expectation, let alone Tom Moore. Even our “Secretary of the Navy and National Songster” would “turn out his lining”—such as it is. And Moore is delightful, and with his “As you say, my lord!” he gives birth to a constellation of bright things, no one of which is dismissed with the claret. Every one at the table, except Moore, is subject to the hour—to its enthusiasm, its enjoyment—but the hour is to Moore a precious slave. So is the wine. It works for him! It brings him money from Longman! It plays his trumpet in the reviews! It is his filter among the ladies! Well may he sing its praises! Of all the poets, Moore is probably the only one who is thus _master of his wine_. The glorious _abandon_ with which we fancy him, a brimming glass in his hand, singing “Fly not yet!” exists only in the fancy. He keeps a cool head and coins his conviviality; and to revert to my former figure, they who wish to know what Moore’s electricity amounts to _without_ the convivial friction, may read his history of Ireland. Not a sparkle in it, from the landing of the Phœnicians to the battle of Vinegar Hill! He wrote _that_ as other people write—with nothing left from the day before but the habit of labor—and the travel of a collapsed balloon on a man’s back, is not more unlike the same thing, inflated and soaring, than Tom Moore, historian, and Tom Moore, bard!

Somewhere in the small hours the poet walks home, and sitting down soberly in his little library, he puts on paper the half-score scintillations that collision, in one shape or another, has struck into the tinder of his fancy. If read from this paper, the world would probably think little of their prospect of ever becoming poetry. But the mysterious part is done—the life is breathed into the chrysalis—and the clothing of these naked fancies with winged words, Mr. Moore knows very well can be done in very uninspired moods by patient industry. Most people have very little idea what that industry is—how deeply language is ransacked, how often turned over, how untiringly rejected and recalled with some new combination, how resolutely sacrificed when only tolerable enough to pass, how left untouched day after day in the hope of a fresh impulse after repose. The vexation of a Chinese puzzle is slight, probably, to that which Moore has expended on some of his most natural and flowing single verses. The exquisite nicety of his ear, though it eventually gives his poetry its honied fluidity, gives him no quicker choice of words, nor does more, in any way, than pass inexorable judgment on what his industry brings forward. Those who think a song dashed off like an invitation to dinner, would be edified by the progressive phases of a “Moore’s Melody.” Taken with all its rewritings, emendations, &c., I doubt whether, in his most industrious seclusion, Moore averages a couplet a day. Yet this persevering, resolute, unconquerable patience of labor is the secret of his fame. Take the best thing he ever wrote, and translate its sentiments and similitudes into plain prose, and do the thing by a song of any second-rate imitator of Moore, one abstract would read as well as the other. Yet Moore’s song is immortal, and the other ephemeral as a paragraph in a newspaper, and the difference consists in a patient elaboration of language and harmony, and in that only. And even thus short, _seems_ the space between the _ephemeron_ and the immortal. But it is wider than they think, oh, glorious Tom Moore!

And how does Barry Cornwall write?

I answer, from the efflux of his soul! Poetry is not labor to him. He _works_ at _law_—he plays, relaxes, luxuriates in _poetry_. Mr. Proctor has at no moment of his life, probably, after finishing a poetic effusion, designed ever to write another line. No more than the sedate man, who, walking on the edge of a playground, sees a ball coming directly towards him, and seized suddenly with a boyish impulse, jumps aside and sends it whizzing back, as he had not done for twenty years, with his cane—no more than that unconscious school-boy of fourscore (thank God there _are_ many such live coals under the ashes) thinks he shall play again at ball. Proctor is a prosperous barrister, drawing a large income from his profession. He married the daughter of Basil Montague (well known as the accomplished scholar, and the friend of Coleridge, Lamb, and that bright constellation of spirits,) and with a family of children of whom, the world knows, he is passionately fond, he leads a more domestic life, or, rather, a life more within himself and his own, than any author, present or past, with whose habits I am conversant. He has drawn his own portrait; however, in outline, and as far as it goes, nothing could be truer. In an epistle to his friend Charles Lamb, he says:—

“Seated beside this Sherris wine,
And near to books and shapes divine,
Which poets and the painters past
Have wrought in line that aye shall last,—
E’en I, with Shakspere’s self beside me,
And one whose tender talk can guide me
Through fears and pains and troublous themes,
Whose smile doth fall upon my dreams
Like sunshine on a stormy sea,******”

Proctor slights the world’s love for his wife and books, and, as might be expected, the world only plies him the more with its caresses. He is now and then seen in the choicest circles of London, where, though love and attention mark most flatteringly the rare pleasure of his presence, he plays a retired and silent part, and steals early away. His library is his Paradise. His enjoyment of literature should be mentioned as often in his biography as the “feeding among the lilies” in the Songs of Solomon. He forgets himself, he forgets the world in his favorite authors, and that, I fancy, was the golden link in his friendship with Lamb. Surrounded by exquisite specimens of art, (he has a fine taste, and is much beloved by artists,) a choice book in his hand, his wife beside him, and the world shut out, Barry is in the meridian of his true orbit. Oh, then, a more loving and refined spirit is not breathing beneath the stars! He reads and muses; and as something in the pages stirs some distant association, suggests some brighter image than its own, he half leans over to the table, and scrawls it in unstudied but inspired verse. He thinks no more of it. You might have it to light your cigar. But there sits by his side one who knows its value, and it is treasured. Here, for instance, in the volume I have spoken of before, are some forty pages of “fragments”—thrown in to eke out the volume of his songs. I am sure, that when he was making up his book, perhaps expressing a fear that there would not be pages enough for the publisher’s design, these fragments were produced from their secret hiding-place to his great surprise. The quotations I have made were all from this portion of his volume, and, as I said before, they are worthy of Shakspere. There is no mark of labor in them. I do not believe there was an erasure in the entire manuscript. They bear all the marks of a sudden, unstudied impulse, immediately and unhesitatingly expressed. Here are several fragments. How evident it is that they were suggested directly by his reading:—

“She was a princess—but she fell; and now
Her shame goes blushing through a line of kings.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Sometimes a deep thought crossed
My fancy, like the sullen bat that flies
Athwart the melancholy moon at eve.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Let not thy tale tell but of stormy sorrows!
She—who was late a maid, but now doth lie
In Hymen’s bosom, like a rose grown pale,
A sad, sweet wedded wife—why is _she_ left
Out of the story? Are good deeds—great griefs,
That live but ne’er complain—naught? What are tears?—
Remorse?—deceit? at best weak water drops
Which wash out the bloom of sorrow.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Is she dead?
Why so shall I be—ere these autumn blasts
Have blown on the beard of winter. Is she dead?
Aye, she is dead—quite dead! The wild sea kissed her
With its cold, white lips, and then—put her to sleep:
She has a sand pillow, and a water sheet,
And never turns her head, or knows ’tis morning!

* * * * * * * * * * *

Mark, when he died, his tombs, his epitaphs!
Men did not pluck the ostrich for his sake,
Nor dyed’t in sable. No black steeds were there,
Caparisoned in wo; no hired crowds;
No hearse, wherein the crumbling clay (imprisoned
Like ammunition in a tumbril) rolled
Rattling along the street, and silenced grief;
No arch whereon the bloody laurel hung;
No stone; no gilded verse;—poor common shows!
But tears and tearful words, and sighs as deep
As sorrow is—these were _his_ epitaphs!
Thus—(fitly graced)—he lieth now, inurned
In hearts that loved him, on whose tender sides
Are graved his many virtues. When they perish,
He’s lost!—and so’t should be. The poet’s name.
And hero’s—on the brazen book of Time,
Are writ in sunbeams, by Fame’s loving hand;
But none record the household virtues there.
These better sleep (when all dear friends are fled)
In endless and serene oblivion.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

JANE PORTER,

AUTHORESS OF “SCOTTISH CHIEFS,” “THADDEUS OF WARSAW,” ETC., ETC.

This distinguished woman died recently at Bristol, England, at the age of seventy-four. We shall, doubtless, soon have an authentic biography of her, from some one to whom her papers and other materials will have been entrusted by the brother who survives her; but, meantime, let us yield to the tide of remembrance which her death has awakened, and arrest, ere they float by and are lost, the scattered leaf-memories that may recall the summers when we knew her. For the sixteen years that we enjoyed the privilege of her friendship, her correspondence with us was interrupted only by illness, and we hope yet to find the leisure to put some of those high-thoughted and invaluable letters into print—true reflex as they are of the lofty and true mind which made her fame. Our present memoranda will be brief, with a view to that better justice to the theme.

We first saw Miss Porter at the house of Lady S——, the sister of Lady Franklin, a few weeks after our first arrival in London, in 1834. It was at a large party, thronged with the scientific and literary persons who form the society of a man like Sir John Franklin. The great navigator, whose fate now excites so deep an interest, was present, and he was almost the only celebrity in the room whom we did not then see for the first time—Sir John having been in command of the English fleet in the Mediterranean, and Lady Franklin at Athens when we chanced to be there. The noble head and majestic frame of the fine old sailor showed in strong relief, even among the great men who surrounded him, and we well remember the confirmed impression, of his native dignity and superiority of presence, which we received at that time.

A very tall lady, apparently about fifty years of age, had arrested our attention early in the evening, and, whenever unoccupied, we found ourself turning to observe her, with a magnetism which we could not resist. She was dressed completely in black, with black lace upon the neck, and black feathers drooping over the knot of her slightly grey hair. Her person was very erect, and, though her conversation was evidently playful with all who spoke with her, there was an exceeding loftiness, and an air of unconscious and easy nobility, in her mien and countenance, which was truly remarkable. She was like the ideal which one forms of a Lady Abbess of noble blood, or of Queen Katharine. The deference with which she was addressed was mingled invariably with an affectionate cordiality, however, which puzzled our conjectures a little, for it is not common to see the two feelings inspired with equal certainty by the same presence. It chanced to be late in the evening before we had an opportunity of enquiring the name of this lady, and, when we heard who she was, we recognized at once that very unusual phenomenon—a complete fitness of the outer temple to the fame whose deathless lamp is enshrined within it. It was Jane Porter, and she looked as one would have expected her to look, who had conjured up her image by aid of magic, after being carried away by her enchantments of story.

We were presented to Miss Porter by Sir John Franklin, just before the breaking up of the party that evening, and, soon after, we were so fortunate as to be a guest, with her, at one of those English country-houses which are the perfection of luxury and refinement, and where there was the opportunity to see her with her proper surroundings. Of the impression received at that time, we have already made a slight record, which some of our readers may remember:—

“One of the most elegant and agreeable persons I ever saw was
Miss Porter, and I think her conversation more delightful to
remember than any person’s I ever knew. A distinguished artist
told me that he remembered her when she was his beau ideal of
female beauty; but in those days she was more “fancy-rapt,” and
gave in less to the current and spirit of society. Age has made
her, if it may be so expressed, less selfish in her use of
thought, and she pours it forth like Pactolus—that gold which
is sand from others. She is still what I should call a handsome
woman, or, if that be not allowed, she is the wreck of more than
a common allotment of beauty, and looks it. Her person is
remarkably erect, her eyes and eyelids (in this latter
resembling Scott) very heavily moulded, and her smile is
beautiful. It strikes me that it always is so—where it ever
was. The smile seems to be the work of the soul.