Chapter XLI: Letter XIII: To the Lady Subscriber in the Country (3)

“I have passed months under the same roof with Miss Porter, and
nothing gave me more pleasure than to find the company in that
hospitable house dwindled to a “fit audience though few,” and
gathered around the figure in deep mourning which occupied the
warmest corner of the sofa. In any vein, and _apropos_ to the
gravest and the gayest subject, her well-stored mind and memory
flowed forth in the same rich current of mingled story and
reflection, and I never saw an impatient listener beside her. I
recollect one evening a lady’s singing “Auld Robin Gray,” and
some one remarking (rather unsentimentally,) at the close,
“By-the-by what is Lady —— (the authoress of the ballad) doing
with so many carpenters? Berkeley square is quite deafened with
their hammering!” “_Apropos_ of carpenters and Lady ——,” said
Miss Porter, “this charming ballad-writer owes something to the
craft. She was better-born than provided with the gifts of
fortune, and in her younger days was once on a visit to a noble
house, when, to her dismay, a large and fashionable company
arrived who brought with them a mania for private theatricals.
Her wardrobe was very slender, barely sufficient for the
ordinary events of a week-day, and her purse contained one
solitary shilling. To leave the house was out of the question,
to feign illness as much so, and to decline taking a part was
impossible, for her talent and sprightliness were the hope of
the theatre. A part was cast for her, and, in despair, she
excused herself from the gay party bound to the country town to
make purchases of silk and satin, and shut herself up, a prey to
mortified low spirits. The character required a smart village
dress, and it certainly did not seem that it could come out of a
shilling. She sat at her window, biting her lips, and turning
over in her mind whether she could borrow of some one, when her
attention was attracted to a carpenter, who was employed in the
construction of a stage in the large hall, and who, in the court
below, was turning off from his plane broad and long shavings of
a peculiarly striped wood. It struck her that it was like
riband. The next moment she was below, and begged of the man to
give her half-a-dozen lengths as smooth as he could shave them.
He performed his task well, and depositing them in her
apartment, she set off alone on horseback to the village, and
with her single shilling succeeded in purchasing a chip hat of
the coarsest fabric. She carried it home, exultingly, trimmed it
with her pine shavings, and on the evening of the performance
appeared with a white dress, and hat and belt ribands which were
the envy of the audience. The success of her invention gave her
spirits and assurance, and she played to admiration. The sequel
will justify my first remark. She made a conquest on that night
of one of her titled auditors, whom she afterward married. You
will allow that Lady —— may afford to be tolerant of
carpenters.”

It was two years after this first meeting of Miss Porter at —— Park, that we accepted an invitation to meet her at the house of a Baronet in Warwickshire, and of that visit the following mention is made in Sketches of Travel already published:—

“I remembered a promise I had nearly forgotten, that I would
reserve my visit to Stratford till I could be accompanied by
Miss J. Porter, whom I was to have the honor of meeting at my
place of destination; and promising an early acceptance of the
landlady’s invitation, I hurried on to my appointment over the
fertile hills of Warwickshire.

“I was established in one of those old Elizabethan
country-houses which with their vast parks, their self-sufficing
resources of subsistence and company, and the absolute deference
shown on all sides to the lord of the manor, give one the
impression rather of a little kingdom with a castle in its
heart, than of an abode for a gentleman subject. The house
itself (called, like most houses of this size and consequence in
Warwickshire, a ‘Court,’) was a Gothic half-castellated square,
with four round towers, and innumerable embrasures and windows;
two wings in front, probably more modern than the body of the
house, and again two long wings extending to the rear, at right
angles, and enclosing a flowery and formal parterre. There had
been a trench about it, now filled up, and at a short distance
from the house stood a polyangular and massive structure, well
calculated for defence, and intended as a stronghold for the
retreat of the family and tenants in more troubled times. One of
these rear wings enclosed a catholic chapel, for the worship of
the baronet and those of his tenants who professed the same
faith; while on the northern side, between the house and the
garden, stood a large, protestant stone church, with a turret
and spire, both chapel and church, with their clergyman and
priest, dependant on the estate, and equally favored by the
liberal and high-minded baronet. The tenantry formed two
considerable congregations, and lived and worshipped side by
side, with the most perfect harmony—an instance of _real_
Christianity, in my opinion, which the angels of heaven might
come down to see. A lovely rural grave-yard for the lord and
tenants, and a secluded lake below the garden, in which hundreds
of wild ducks swam and screamed unmolested, completed the
outward features of C—— Court.

“There are noble houses in England with a door communicating
from the dining room to the stables, that the master and his
friends may see their favorites, after dinner, without exposure
to the weather. In the place of this rather _bizarre_ luxury,
the oak-panelled and spacious dining-hall of C—— is on a level
with the organ loft of the chapel, and when the cloth is
removed, the large door between is thrown open, and the noble
instrument pours the rich and thrilling music of vespers through
the rooms. When the service is concluded, and the lights on the
altar extinguished, the blind organist (an accomplished
musician, and a tenant on the estate,) continues his voluntaries
in the dark until the hall-door informs him of the retreat of
the company to the drawing-room. There is not only refinement
and luxury in this beautiful, arrangement, but food for the soul
and heart.

“I chose my room from among the endless vacant but equally
luxurious chambers of the rambling old house; my preference
solely directed by the portrait of a nun, one of the family in
ages gone by—a picture full of melancholy beauty, which hung
opposite the window. The face was distinguished by all that in
England marks the gentlewoman of ancient and pure descent; and
while it was a woman with the more tender qualities of her sex
breathing through her features, it was still a lofty and sainted
sister, true to her cross, and sincere in her vows and
seclusion. It was the work of a master, probably Vandyke, and a
picture in which the most solitary man would find company and
communion. On the other walls, and in most of the other rooms
and corridors, were distributed portraits of the gentlemen and
soldiers of the family, most of them bearing some resemblance to
the nun, but differing, as brothers in those wild times may be
supposed to have differed, from the gentle creatures of the same
blood, nursed in the privacy of peace.”

Warwick Castle, Stratford-on-Avon, and Kenilworth, were all within the reach of what might be called neighborhood, and our hospitable host (in his eightieth year, and unable to accompany us,) had made the arrangements for our visit to these places. We were to be gone three days, but were to remain his guests in all respects. The carriage was packed with the books which might be needed for reference, the butler of the old Baronet was to go with us and provide post-horses and everything we could want at inns upon the road, and, under this kind and luxurious provision, we took seat beside Miss Porter, and visited Kenilworth, Warwick, and Stratford, with no thought or care which need divide our pleasure in her society. From the description of this journey (given without mention of the above circumstances,) let us copy one more passage:—

“I had wandered away from my companion, Miss Jane Porter, to
climb up a secret staircase in the wall, rather too difficult of
ascent for a female foot, and from my elevated position I caught
an accidental view of that distinguished lady through the arch
of a Gothic window, with a background of broken architecture and
foliage—presenting, by chance, perhaps, the most fitting and
admirable picture of the authoress of the “Scottish Chiefs,”
that a painter in his brightest hour could have fancied. Miss
Porter, with her tall and striking figure, her noble face (said
by Mr. Martin Shee to have approached nearer in its youth to his
_beau idéal_ of the female features than any other, and still
possessing the remains of uncommon beauty,) is at all times a
person whom it would be difficult to see without a feeling of
involuntary admiration. But standing, as I saw her at that
moment, motionless and erect, in the morning-dress, with dark
feathers, which she has worn since the death of her beloved and
gifted sister, her wrists folded across, her large and still
beautiful eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her
nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and
benevolent tranquility, while, around and above her, lay the
material and breathed the spirit over which she had held the
first great mastery—it was a _tableau vivant_ which I was sorry
to be alone to see.

“Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked the spirits
of the ruins she stood among—a mind in which (by Sir Walter’s
own confession) she had first bared the vein of romance which
breathed so freely for the world’s delight? where the visions
which sweep with such supernatural distinctness and rapidity
through the imagination of genius—vision of which the millionth
portion is probably scarcely communicated to the world in a
literary lifetime—were Elizabeth’s courtiers, Elizabeth’s
passions, secret hours, interviews with Leicester—were the
imprisoned king’s nights of loneliness and dread, his hopes, his
indignant, but unheeded thoughts—were all the possible
circumstances, real or imaginary, of which that proud castle
might have been the scene, thronging in those few moments of
revery through her fancy? or was her heart busy with its kindly
affections, and had the beauty and interest of the scene but
awakened a thought of one who was most wont to number with her
the sands of those brighter hours.

“Who shall say? The very question would perhaps startle the
thoughts beyond recall—so illusive are even the most angelic of
the mind’s unseen visitants?”

In another place we made the following memoranda of what we knew of her biography, etc.:—

“Miss Porter was the daughter of a gallant English officer, who
died, leaving a widow and four children, then very young, but
three of them destined to remarkable fame, Sir Robert Ker
Porter, Jane Porter, and Anna Maria Porter. Sir Robert, as is
well known, was the celebrated historical painter, traveller in
Persia, soldier, diplomatist, and author, lately deceased. He
went to Russia with one of his great pictures when very young,
married a wealthy Russian princess, and passed his subsequent
years between the camp and diplomacy, honored and admired in
every station and relation of his life. The two girls were
playmates and neighbors of Walter Scott. Jane published her
“Scottish Chiefs,” at the age of eighteen, and became
immediately the great literary wonder of her time. Her widowed
mother, however, withdrew her immediately from society to the
seclusion of a country town, and she was little seen in the gay
world of London before several of her works had become classics.
Anna Maria, the second sister, commenced her admirable series of
novels soon after the first celebrity of Jane’s works, and they
wrote and passed the brightest years of their life together in a
cottage retreat. The two sisters were singularly beautiful. Sir
Thomas Lawrence was an unsuccessful suitor to Anna Maria, and
Jane was engaged to a young soldier who was killed in the
Peninsula. She is a woman to have but one love in a lifetime.
Her betrothed was killed when she was twenty years of age, and
she has ever since worn mourning, and remained true to his
memory. Jane is now the only survivor of the three; her
admirable mother and her sister having died some twelve or
fourteen years ago, and Sir Robert having died lately, while
revisiting England after many years’ diplomatic residence in
Venezuela.

“Miss Porter is now near seventy. She has suffered within the
last two or three years from ill health, but she is still erect,
graceful, and majestic in person and still possessed of
admirable beauty of countenance. Her large dark eyes have a
striking lambency of lustre, her smile inspires love in all who
see her, and her habit of mind, up to the time we last saw her,
(three or four years ago,) was that of _reflecting the mood of
others in conversation_, thinking never of herself, and
endeavoring only to _make others shine_, and all this with a
tact, a playfulness and simplicity, an occasional unconscious
brilliancy and penetration, which have made her, up to seventy
years of age, a most interesting, engaging, and lovely woman.
Considering the extent of her charm, over old and young, titled
and humble, masters and servants, we sincerely think we never
have seen a woman so beloved and so fascinating. She is the idol
of many different circles of very high rank, and passes her time
in yielding, month after month, to pressing invitations from the
friends who love her. The dowager queen Adelaide is one of her
warmest friends, the highest families of nobility contend for
her as a resident guest, distinguished and noble foreigners pay
court to her invariably on arriving in England, she has been
ennobled by a decree of the king of Prussia, and with all this
weight of honor on her head, you might pass weeks with her
(ignorant of her history) without suspecting her to be more than
the loveliest of women past their prime, and born but to grace a
contented mediocrity of station.”

We know nothing more to the honor of the English nobility of this day, than that Jane Porter—such as she was—should have chosen and cherished the greater number of her friendships from among them. Utterly incapable of a servility or an obsequiousness as her gifted and lofty nature was always admitted to be, she still moved in the highest sphere of rank, with sympathies all expanded, and the imprint of congeniality, with all around her, stamped upon countenance and mien. Yet she had mingled, more or less, with all classes, and knew the world well. Had she found it necessary to sacrifice the slightest shadow of purity or independence to retain her position, or had she believed, or conjectured, that purer or simpler natures were to be found in the ranks below, she was not one to hesitate or compromise for an instant. But, with the intuitive perceptions of genius, and a disposition as open as the day, she chose this for her sphere, and lived in it as one who had no thought or need of managements, either to belong to, or to grace it. The class of society, in a country, with which simple and proud genius finds itself most at home, is its superior and true nobility; and, that England’s circles of high rank are so preferred, and so honored and brightened, by spirits like Jane Porter, is, we think, the evidence that proves most for England’s present civilization and glory.

OLE BULL’S NIAGARA.

(AN HOUR BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE.)

Saddle, as, of course, we are, under any very striking event, we find ourselves bestridden, now and then, with a much wider occupancy than the plumb-line of a newspaper column. Ole Bull possesses us over our tea-table; he will possess us over our supper-table—his performance of Niagara equi-distant between the two. We must think of him and his violin for this coming hour. Let us take pen and ink into our confidence.

The “origin of the harp” has been satisfactorily recorded. We shall not pretend to put forward a credible story of the _origin of the violin_; but we wish to name a circumstance in natural history. The house-cricket that chirps upon our hearth, is well known as belonging to the genus Pneumora. Its insect size consists almost entirely of a pellucid abdomen, crossed with a number of transverse ridges. This, when inflated, resembles a bladder, and upon its tightened ridges the insect plays like a fiddler, by drawing its thin legs over them. The cricket is, in fact, a _living violin_; and as a fiddler is “scarce himself” without his violin, we may call the cricket a stray portion of a fiddler.

Ole Bull “is himself” with his violin before him—but without it, the commonest eye must remark that he is of the invariable build of the restless searchers after something lost—the build of enthusiasts—that is to say, chest enormous, and _stomach, if anything, rather wanting_! The great musician of Scripture, it will be remembered, expressed his mere mental affliction by calling out “My bowels! my bowels!” and, after various experiments on twisted silk, smeared with the white of eggs, and on single threads of the silk-worm, passed through heated oil, the animal fibre of _cat-gut_ has proved to be the only string that answers to the want of the musician. Without trying to reduce these natural phenomena to a theory (except by suggesting that Ole Bull may very properly take the cricket as an emblem of his instinctive pursuit), we must yield to an ominous foreboding for this evening. The objection to cat-gut as a musical string is its _sensibility to moisture_: and in a damp atmosphere it is next to impossible to keep it in tune. The string comes honestly enough by its sensitiveness (as any one will allow who has seen a cat cross a street after a shower)—but, if _the_ cat of Ole Bull’s violin had the least particle of imagination _in_ her, can what is left of her be expected to discourse lovingly of her natural antipathy—a _water_-fall?

But—before we draw on our gloves to go over to Palmo’s—a serious word as what is to be attempted to-night.

Ole Bull is a great creature. He is fitted, if ever mortal man was, to represent the attendant spirit in Milton, who

“Well knew to still the wild woods when they roared
And hush the moaning winds;”

but it seems to us that, without a printed programme, showing what he intends to express _besides_ the mere sound of waters he is trusting far too rashly to the comprehension of his audience and their power of musical interpretation. He is to tell a story by music! Will it be understood?

We remember being very much astonished, a year or two ago, at finding ourself able to read the thoughts of a lady of this city, as she expressed them in an admirable improvisation upon the piano. The delight we experienced in this surprise induced us to look into the extent to which musical _meaning_ had been perfected in Europe. We found it recorded that a Mons. Sudre, a violinist of Paris, had once brought the expression of his instrument to so nice a point that he “could convey information to a stranger in another room,” and it is added that, upon the evidence thus given of the capability of music, it was proposed to the French government to educate military bands _in the expression of orders and heroic encouragements in battle_! Hayden is criticised by a writer on music as having failed in attempting (in his great composition “The Seasons”) to express “the dawn of day,” “the husbandman’s satisfaction,” “the rustling of leaves,” “the running of a brook,” “the coming on of winter,” “thick fogs,” etc., etc. The same writer laughs at a commentator on Mozart, who, by a “second violin quartette in D minor,” imagines himself informed how a loving female felt on being abandoned, and thought the music fully expressed that it was Dido! Beethoven undertook to convey distinct pictures in his famous Pastoral Symphony, but it was thought at the time that no one would have distinguished between his musical sensations on visiting the country and his musical sensations while sitting beside a river—unless previously told what was coming!

Still, Ole Bull is of a primary order of genius, and he is not to wait upon precedent. He has come to our country, an inspired wanderer from a far away shore, and our greatest scenic feature has called on him for an expression of its wonders in music. He may be inspired, however, and we, who listen, still be disappointed. He may not have felt Niagara as we did. He may have been subdued where a meaner spirit would be aroused—as

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

(Seven o’clock, and time to go.)
* * * * * * *
(after the performance.)

We believe that we have heard a transfusion into music—not of “Niagara,” which the audience seemed bona-fide to expect, but—of the _pulses of the human heart AT Niagara_. We had a prophetic boding of the result of calling the piece vaguely “Niagara”—the listener furnished with no “argument,” as a guide through the wilderness of “treatment” to which the subject was open. This mistake allowed, however, it must be said that Ole Bull has, genius-like, refused to misinterpret the voice within him—refused to play the charlatan, and “bring the house down”—as he _might well have done by any kind of “uttermost” from the drums and trumpets of the orchestra._

The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a “small, still voice” that replies within us to the thunder of waters. The musical mission of the Norwegian was to represent the insensate element _as it was to him_—to a human soul, stirred in its seldom-reached depths by the call of power. It was the _answer_ to Niagara that he endeavored to render in music—not the _call_! We defer attempting to _read_ further, or rightly, this musical composition till we have heard it again. It was received by a crowded audience, in breathless silence, but with no applause.

DR. LARDNER’S LECTURE.

We did not chance to hear Dr. Lardner’s excellent and amusing lecture on the “London _literati_,” etc., but the report of it in the “Republic” has scraped the moss from one corner of our memory, and we may, perhaps, aid in the true portraiture of one or two distinguished men by showing a shade or two in which our observation of them differed from that of the Doctor. We may remark here, that Dr. Lardner has been conversant with all the wits and scholars of England for the last two or three lustrums, and we would suggest to him that, with the freedom given him by withdrawal from their sphere, he might give us a book of anecdotical biography that would have a prosperous sale and be both instructive and amusing. We shall not poach upon the doctor’s manor, by the way, if we give our impression of _one_ of these literati—himself—as he appeared to us, once in very distinguished company, in England. We were in a ball in the height of the season, at Brighton. Somewhere about the later hours, we chanced to be in attendance upon a noble lady, in company with two celebrated men, Mr. Ricardo and Horace Smith (the author of Brambletye House, and Rejected Addresses), Lady Stepney, authoress of the “New Road to Ruin,” approached our charming centre of attraction with a proposition to present to her the celebrated Dr. Lardner. “Yes, my dear! I should like to know him of all things!” was the reply, and the doctor was conjured forthwith into a magic circle. He bowed “with spectacles on nose,” but no other extraneous mark of philosopher or scholar. We shall not offend the doctor by stating that, on this evening, he was a very different looking person from his present practical exterior. With showy waistcoat, black tights, fancy stockings and small patent-leather shoes, he appeared to us an elegant of very bright water, smacking not at all, in manner no more than in dress, of the smutch and toil of the laboratory. We looked at and listened to him, we remember, with great interest and curiosity. He left us to dance a quadrille, and finding ourself accidentally in the same set, we looked at his ornamental and lover-like acquittal of himself with a kind of wonder at what Minerva would say! This was just before the doctor left England. We may add our expression of pleasure that the Protean facility of our accomplished and learned friend has served him in this country—making of him the best lecturer on all subjects, and the carver out of prosperity under a wholly new meridian.

But, to revert to the report of the Lecture:—

“The doctor gave some very amusing descriptions of the personal peculiarities of Bulwer and D’Israeli, the author of ‘Coningsby,’ observing that those who have read the works of the former, would naturally conclude him to be very fascinating in private society. Such, however, was not the case. He had not a particle of conversational facility, and could not utter twelve sentences free from hesitation and embarrassment. In fact, Bulwer was only Bulwer when his pen was in his hand and his meerschaum in his mouth. He is intimate with Count D’Orsay, one of the handsomest men of the day, and in his excessive admiration of that gentleman has adopted his style of dress, which is adapted admirably to the figure of the second Beau Brummell, but sits strangely on the feeble, rickety and skeleton form, of the man of genius.”

Now it struck us, on the contrary, that there was no more playful, animated, _facile_ creature in London society than Bulwer. He seemed to have a horror of stilted topics, it is true, and never mingled in general conversation unless merrily. But at Lady Blessington’s, where there was but one woman present (herself), and where, consequently, there could be no _têtes-à-têtes_, Bulwer’s entrance was the certain precursor of fun. He _was a brilliant rattle_, and as to any “hesitation and embarrassment,” we never saw a symptom of it. At evening parties in other houses, Bulwer’s powers of conversation could scarce be fairly judged, for his system of attention is very concentrative, and he was generally deep in conversation with some one beautiful woman whom he could engross. We differ from the doctor, too, as to his style of dandyism. Spready upper works, trousers closely fitting to the leg, a broad-brimmed hat, and cornucopial whiskers, distinguished D’Orsay, while Bulwer wore always the loose French pantaloon, a measurable hat-brim, and whiskers carefully limited to the cheek. We pronounced the doctor’s astrology (as to _the_ stars) based upon an error in “observation.”

The reporter adds:—

“D’Israeli he described as an affected coxcomb, with a restless desire to appear witty; yet he never remembered him to have said a good thing in his life except one, and that was generally repeated with the preface, ‘D’Israeli has said a good thing at last.’”

That D’Israeli is not a “bon-mot” man, is doubtless true. It never struck us that he manifested a “desire to appear witty.” He is very silent in the general _melee_ of conversation, but we have never yet seen him leave a room before he had made an impression by some burst in the way of _monologue_—either an eloquent description or a dashing new absurdity, an anecdote or a criticism. He sits indolently with his head on his breast, taking sight through his eyebrows till he finds his cue to break in, and as far as our observation goes, nobody was ever willing to interrupt him. The doctor calls him an “affected coxcomb,” but it is only of his dress that this is any way true. No school-boy is more frank in his manners. When we were first in London, he was the immortal tenant of one room and a recess, and with manners indolently pensive. Three years after, returning to England, we found him master of a lordly establishment on Hyde Park, and, except that he looked of a less lively melancholy, his manners were as untroubled with affectation as before.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Numerous misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where more than one spelling was used, the most frequent spelling was adopted throughout the book. French diacritics were corrected.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.

A cover was created for this eBook by the Transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

[The end of _Famous Persons and Places_, by N.(Nathaniel) Parker Willis.]