Chapter C: KEGAN PAUL: ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.’ (4)

She was not more than six years old when her father exchanged the kirk of Bothwell for that of Hamilton, likewise in the fruit lands. But Hamilton was a town of six thousand inhabitants, clustering round the ducal palace and park of the Hamiltons. Here Joanna found herself one of a community which numbered scores of young people of her own age and degree. So well did she like it, that she was the leader in every romping game and frolic--an adept at out-of-door sports, whether swinging, skipping or climbing. She was celebrated for the fearlessness with which she ran along the parapets of bridges and on the tops of walls, and scampered heedlessly on any pony she could find. She had the misfortune to cause the fracture of her brother’s arm by inducing him to ride double with her. The horse, not approving of a pair of riders, threw the one who had the worse seat. “Look at Miss Jack!” a farmer once commented, ... “she sits her horse as if it was a bit of herself.”

In advanced life she loved to dwell on her early unchecked rambles over heaths compared to which Hampstead was a common; on her endless “paidling” in innumerable burns, tributaries of the Clyde. She was wont to regret wistfully that she could no longer “pad” barefooted on the grass or “plowter” in the water. And she would eagerly recommend to dainty and horrified English matrons the entire wholesomeness and happiness of letting their petted children run bare-footed in summer.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Education.]

Whatever more valuable acquisitions Joanna made in these young days she was singularly deficient in learning, as the term is generally understood. “At nine I could not read plainly,” Joanna Baillie told Lucy Aikin. “At nine, Joanna?” her sister Agnes called her back. “You could not read well at eleven.”... The worthy minister took the stout little ignoramus in hand along with his breakfast. She spoilt the flavor of his trout and cake and black pudding by crying throughout each lesson. It was thought that a change was called for in order to conquer Joanna’s repugnance to sedentary studies, and her passion for open-air pursuits and boyish pranks. At ten years of age she was accordingly sent, along with her elder sister, to Miss Macdonald’s boarding-school, in the heart of the city of Glasgow.... Joanna learned to read perfectly at the Glasgow boarding-school, as doubtless she also learned more or less serviceable writing and arithmetic, and correct or incorrect notions in geography and history. If she did not learn much else beyond singing a little to the guitar, and making a few promising attempts at drawing and dancing, still the school did its part. The study for which she showed a particular inclination was mathematics--a fact which is characteristic of the clear-headed girl. Of her own free will and entirely unassisted, she mastered a considerable portion of Euclid.

[Sidenote: Private theatricals.]

Pricked on by the demands of a large girl-audience at school, Joanna’s hereditary gift of story-telling, by which she could excite laughter or tears, grew and grew until at length she found herself the chief figure in something like private theatricals. In connection with these chamber-dramas, Joanna was play-writer, playwright, player, stage-dresser, and scene-shifter in one. In this foreshadowing of her future career, she is said to have strongly displayed an eye for effect, which failed her in her great efforts of later life.... Let us conjure up, if we can, the old Glasgow boarding-school, with its small rooms and dim tallow candles. There stand the host of eager girls in their short-waisted, short-sleeved gowns and mittens, absorbed in the common levy of buckles, brooches, necklaces, plaids, scarfs, breast-knots, and Highland bonnets. The acknowledged mistress of the ceremonies and games, and the “first lady” of the troop, is the undersized girl with marked features and gray eyes.... Down on the scene Miss Macdonald and her governess look for a moment, from the elevation of their huge toupees and barricades of ruffles. They dismiss authoritatively the excited rabble, and retire to their cosy supper where they admit in confidence to each other the mother-wit of Miss Jack Baillie, who has yet got a bad memory for facts of consequence outside of her “fule” stories, and her “droll swatches” of this man and that woman.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Joanna at 21.]

[Sidenote: Appearance.]

[Sidenote: Character.]

Joanna appeared to her companions a capable young woman with much decision of character, like her mother. She was shy amongst strangers, but sufficiently frank to her friends; and in the midst of her seriousness she was the merriest soul when the fit took her. She had quietly written some clever Scotch songs, most of them adaptations from old ditties. These were already sung with glee around many a rustic hearth and at many a homely supper table.... Joanna was not handsome. She was below the middle height, and had the large, statuesque features which suit better with a stately figure. Years lent these features dignity rather than robbed them of grace. There is no word of her youthful bloom. She wore her hair for many years simply divided and braided across her forehead; but the hair must have grown low on it from the first, and, whether in a crop, or in braids, must have nearly concealed the expansive brow, which thus lent no relief to the dark gauntness of the face. The brows were firmly arched. Her mouth was wide, and expressed benevolence. Her chin was clearly moulded, and slightly projecting. She was the most sensible of wilful geniuses; the most retiring of “wise” women; the most maidenly of experienced elderly ladies; the most tenderly attached of daughters and sisters; one of the meekest and most modest of Christians. Joanna Baillie’s was a noble soul. She had a great man’s grand guilelessness, rather than a woman’s minute and subtle powers of sympathy; a man’s shy but unstinted kindness and forbearance, rather than a woman’s eager but measured cordiality and softness; a man’s modesty in full combination with a woman’s delicacy; and, as if to prove her sex beyond mistake, she had after all more than the usual share of a woman’s pugnacity and headstrongness, when the fit was upon her.

SARAH TYTLER and J. L. WATSON: ‘Songstresses of Scotland.’ London: Strahan & Co., 1871.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: An innocent face.]

Mrs. Barbauld mentions Miss Baillie in her letter to Mrs. Kenrick, and tells her how much amazed she was at finding the author [of ‘Plays on the Passions’] was not one of the already celebrated writers to whom it had been attributed, but “a young lady of Hampstead whom she visited, and who came to Mr. Barbauld’s meeting all the while with as innocent a face as if she had never written a line.”

GRACE A. ELLIS (OLIVER): ‘Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld.’ Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1874.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A Sunday morning in 1801.]

I was taken by Dr. and Mrs. Baillie to Hampstead to see the gifted Joanna. I found her on a Sunday morning reading the Bible to her mother, a very aged lady, who was quite blind. Joanna’s manners and accent were very Scottish, very kind, simple, and unaffected, but less frank than those of her elder sister. She seemed almost studious to avoid literary conversation, but spoke with much interest of old Scotch friends, and of her early days in Scotland.

MRS. FLETCHER: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Roberts Bros., 1876.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The ‘Family Legend’ in Edinburgh.]

The first new play produced by Henry Siddons [at the Edinburgh Theatre] was the ‘Family Legend’ of Joanna Baillie. This was, I believe, the first of her dramas that ever underwent the test of representation in her native kingdom; and Scott appears to have exerted himself most indefatigably in its behalf. He was consulted about all the _minutiæ_ of costume, attended every rehearsal, and supplied the prologue. The play was better received than any other which the gifted authoress has since subjected to the same experiment; and how ardently Scott enjoyed its success will appear from a few specimens of the many letters which he addressed to his friend on the occasion.

The first of these letters is dated Edinburgh, October 27, 1809:

“On receiving your long kind letter yesterday, I sought out Siddons, who was equally surprised and delighted at your liberal arrangement about the ‘Lady of the Rock.’ I will put all the names to rights, and retain enough of locality and personality to please the antiquary, without the least risk of bringing the clan Gillian about our ears. I went through the theatre, which is the most complete little thing of the kind I ever saw, elegantly fitted up, and large enough for every purpose.... With regard to the equipment of the ‘Family Legend,’ I have been much diverted at a discovery which I have made. I had occasion to visit our Lord Provost (by profession a stocking-weaver), and was surprised to find the worthy magistrate filled with a new-born zeal for the drama. He spoke of Mr. Siddons’ merits with enthusiasm, and of Miss Baillie’s powers almost with tears of rapture. Being a curious investigator of cause and effect, I never rested until I found out that this theatric rage which had seized his lordship of a sudden, was owing to a large order for hose, pantaloons, and plaids for equipping the rival clans of Campbell and Maclean, and which Siddons was sensible enough to send to the warehouse of our excellent provost.”

Three months later he thus communicates the result of the experiment:

[Sidenote: Scott’s account of its success.]

“You have only to imagine all that you could wish to give success to a play, and your conceptions will still fall short of the complete and decided triumph of the ‘Family Legend.’ The house was crowded to a most extraordinary degree; many people had come from your native capital of the west; everything that pretended to distinction, whether from rank or literature, was in the boxes, and in the pit such an aggregate mass of humanity as I have seldom, if ever, witnessed in the same space.... I sat the whole time shaking for fear a scene-shifter, or a carpenter, or some of the subaltern actors, should make some blunder and interrupt the feeling of deep and general interest. The scene on the rock struck the utmost possible effect into the audience, and you heard nothing but sobs on all sides. The banquet-scene was equally impressive, and so was the combat. Of the greater scenes, that between Lorn and Helen in the castle of Maclean, that between Helen and her lover, and the examination of Maclean himself in Argyle’s castle, were applauded to the very echo. Siddons announced the play ‘for the rest of the week,’ which was received not only with a thunder of applause, but with cheering and throwing up of hats and handkerchiefs. Mrs. Siddons supported her part incomparably.... The scenery was very good, and the rock, without the appearance of pantomime, was so contrived as to place Mrs. Siddons in a very precarious situation to all appearance. The dresses were more tawdry than I should have judged proper, but expensive and showy. I got my brother John’s Highland recruiting party to reinforce the garrison of Inverary, and as they mustered beneath the porch of the castle, and seemed to fill the courtyard behind, the combat scene had really the appearance of reality.... My kind respects attend Miss Agnes Baillie, and believe me ever your obliged and faithful servant,

WALTER SCOTT.”

J. G. LOCKHART: ‘The Life of Sir Walter Scott.’ Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1871.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Opinion of ‘Orra.’]

It is too little to say that I am enchanted with the third volume [of ‘Plays on the Passions’], especially with the two first plays, which in every point not only sustain, but even exalt your reputation as a dramatist. [Miss Baillie had written him that this was to be her last publication, and that she was “getting her knitting-needles in order”----meaning to begin her new course of industry by making him a purse.] The whole character of ‘Orra’ is exquisitely supported as well as imagined, and the language distinguished by a rich variety of fancy, which I know no instance of excepting in Shakespeare. After I had read ‘Orra’ twice to myself, Terry [the comedian, Scott’s warm friend and admirer] read it over to us a third time, aloud, and I have seldom seen a little circle so much affected as during the whole fifth act. I think it would act charmingly.... Yet I have a great quarrel with this beautiful drama, for you must know that you have utterly destroyed a song of mine, precisely in the turn of your outlaw’s ditty, and sung by persons in somewhat the same situation.... I took out my unfortunate manuscript to look at it, but alas! it was the encounter of the iron and the earthen pitchers in the fable. I was clearly sunk, and the potsherds not worth gathering up. But only conceive that the chorus should have run thus _verbatim_----

“’Tis mirk midnight with peaceful men,
With us ’tis dawn of day”----

and again----

“Then boot and saddle, comrades boon,
Nor wait the dawn of day.”

[Note by Lockhart: These lines were accordingly struck out of the outlaw’s song in ‘Rokeby.’ The verses of ‘Orra,’ to which Scott alludes, are no doubt the following:

“The wild fire dances on the fen,
The red star sheds its ray,
Up rouse ye then, my merry men,
It is our opening day.”]

To return, I really think ‘Fear’ the most dramatic passion you have hitherto touched, because capable of being drawn to the most extreme paroxysm on the stage. In ‘Orra’ you have all gradations, from a timidity excited by a strong and irritable imagination, to the extremity which altogether unhinges the understanding.

SIR WALTER SCOTT: _Letter to Joanna Baillie_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by J. G. Lockhart.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Joanna’s personal appearance.]

She is small in figure, and her gait is mean and shuffling, but her manners are those of a well-bred woman. She has none of the unpleasant airs too common to literary ladies. Her conversation is sensible. She possesses apparently considerable information, is prompt without being forward, and has a fixed judgment of her own, without any disposition to force it on others. Wordsworth said of her with warmth: “If I had to present any one to a foreigner as a model of an English gentlewoman, it would be Joanna Baillie.”

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: _Diary_, 1812, in ‘Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence.’ Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1871.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Several years later.]

I remember her as singularly impressive in look and manner, with the “queenly” air we associate with ideas of high birth and lofty rank. Her face was long, narrow, dark, and solemn, and her speech deliberate and considerate, the very antipodes of “chatter.” Tall in person,[9] and habited according to the mode of an olden time, her picture, as it is now present to me, is that of a very venerable dame, dressed in coif and kirtle, stepping out, as it were, from a frame in which she had been placed by the painter Vandyke.

S. C. HALL: ‘A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age.’ London: Virtue & Co., 1871.

* * * * *

She was past fifty when I first saw her, and appeared like an old lady to me, then in my teens. She dressed like an aged person, and with scrupulous neatness. She lived with a sister who looked older still, because she had not the vivacity of Joanna, and was only distinguished for the amiability with which she bore being outshone by her more gifted relative.

[Sidenote: “Mrs.” Baillie.]

Miss Baillie, according to the English custom, took the title of Mrs. Joanna Baillie, on passing her fiftieth birthday. She gave the prettiest and the pleasantest dinners, and presided at them with peculiar grace and tact, always attentive to the wants of her guests, and yet keeping up a lively conversation the while. She took such pleasure in writing poetry, and especially in her ‘Plays on the Passions,’ that she said, “If no one ever read them, I should find my happiness in writing them.”

Though she was young when she left her native land, she never lost her Scotch accent. I thought it made her conversation only the more piquant. She was full of anecdotes and curious facts about remarkable people. I only recollect her telling one of Lord Byron being obliged, by politeness, to escort her and her sister to the opera, and her perceiving that he was provoked beyond measure at being there with them, and that he made faces as he sat behind them.

ELIZA FARRAR: ‘Recollections of Seventy Years.’ Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Old age.]

Of Joanna Baillie I saw much both as a friend and patient. Her gentle simplicity, with a Scotch tinge coloring it to the end of life, won the admiration even of those who knew nothing of her power of dramatic poetry. It was pleasant to visit her in the quiet house at Hampstead, in which she lived with her sister Agnes. She reached, I think, her ninety-second year.[10] Agnes lived to a hundred.

SIR HENRY HOLLAND: ‘Recollections of Past Life.’ New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1872.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: “Dry and Scotchy.”]

Our great poetess, or rather the sensible, amiable old lady that _was_ a great poetess thirty years ago, is still in full preservation as to health. Never did the flame of genius more thoroughly expire than in her case.... She is, as Mr. Wordsworth observes, when quoting her non-feeling for Lycidas, “dry and Scotchy”; learning she never possessed, and some of her poetry, which I think was far above that of any other woman, is the worse for a few specks of bad English; then her criticisms are so surprisingly narrow and jejune, and show so slight an acquaintance with fine literature in general.

[Sidenote: A gracious winter.]

Yet if the authoress of ‘Plays on the Passions’ does not now write or talk like a poetess, she _looks_ like one, and _is_ a piece of poetry in herself. Never was old age more lovely and interesting; the face, the dress, the quiet, subdued motions, the silver hair, the calm _in-looking_ eye, the pale, yet not unhealthy skin, all are in harmony; this is winter with its own peculiar loveliness of snows and paler sunshine.

SARA COLERIDGE: _Letter to Miss E. Trevenen_, 1833, in the former’s ‘Memoir and Letters,’ edited by her daughter. New York: Harper & Bros., 1874.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Meeting with Harriet Martineau.]

She had enjoyed a fame almost without parallel, and had outlived it. She had been told every day for years, through every possible channel, that she was second only to Shakespeare--if second; and then she had seen her works drop out of notice so that, of the generation who grew up before her eyes, not one in a thousand had read a line of her plays--yet was her serenity never disturbed, nor her merry humor in the least dimmed. I have never lost the impression of the trying circumstances of my first interview with her, nor of the grace, simplicity and sweetness with which she bore them. She was old; and she declined dinner-parties; but she wished to meet me, ... and therefore she came to Miss Berry’s to tea, one day when I was dining there. Miss Berry, her contemporary, put her feelings, it seemed to me, to a most unwarrantable trial, by describing to me, as we three sat together, the celebrity of the ‘Plays on the Passions’ in their day. She told me how she found on her table, on her return from a ball, a volume of plays; and how she kneeled on a chair to look at it, and how she read on till the servant opened the shutters, and let in the daylight of a winter morning. She told me how all the world raved about the plays; and she held on so long that I was in pain for the noble creature to whom it must have been irksome on the one hand to hear her own praises and fame so dwelt upon, and, on the other, to feel that we all knew how long that had been quite over. But, when I looked up at her sweet face, with its composed smile amidst the becoming mob-cap, I saw that she was above pain of either kind.

HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The home at Hampstead.]

We drove out, by appointment, to Mrs. Joanna Baillie’s, at Hampstead, took our lunch with her, and passed the time at her house till four o’clock. We found her living in a small and most comfortable, nice, unpretending house, where she has dwelt for above thirty years. She is now above seventy, and, dressed with an exact and beautiful propriety, received us most gently and kindly. Her accent is still Scotch; her manner strongly marked with that peculiar modesty which you sometimes see united to the venerableness of age, and which is then so very winning; and her conversation, always quiet and never reminding you of her own claims as an author, is so full of good sense, with occasionally striking and decisive remarks, and occasionally a little touch of humor, that I do not know when I have been more pleased and gratified than I was by this visit.

She lives exactly as an English gentlewoman of her age and character should live, and everything about her was in good taste and appropriate to her position, even down to the delicious little table she had spread for us in her quiet parlor.

GEORGE TICKNOR: _Diary_, 1835, in ‘Life, Letters, and Journals.’ Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1876.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Serene old age.]

A sweeter picture of old age was never seen. Her figure was small, light, and active; her countenance, in its expression of sincerity, harmonized wonderfully with her gay conversation and her cheerful voice. Her eyes were beautiful, dark, bright, and penetrating, with the full, innocent gaze of childhood. Her face was altogether comely, and her dress did justice to it. She wore her own silvery hair and a mob-cap, with its delicate lace border fitting close round her face. She was well-dressed in handsome dark silks, and her lace caps and collars looked always new. No Quaker ever was neater, while she kept up with the times in her dress as in her habit of mind, as far as became her years. In her whole appearance there was always something for even the passing stranger to admire, and never anything for the most familiar friend to wish otherwise.

HARRIET MARTINEAU: Quoted in ‘Songstresses of Scotland.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Taste in dress.]

She wore a delicate lavender satin bonnet; and Mrs. J---- says she is fond of dress, and knows what every one has on. Her taste is certainly exquisite in dress. I more than ever admired the harmony of expression and tint, the silver hair and silvery gray eye, the pale skin, and the look which speaks of a mind that has had much communing with high imagination, though such intercourse is only perceptible now by the absence of everything which that lofty spirit would not set his seal upon.... Age has slackened the active part of genius, and yet is in some sort a substitute for it. There is a declining of mental exercitation. She has had enough of that; and now for a calm decline, and thoughts of Heaven.

SARA COLERIDGE: _Letter to her husband_, 1834, in, ‘Memoir and Letters,’ edited by her daughter.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Enthusiasm for Scott.]

She talked of Scott with a tender enthusiasm that was contagious, and of Lockhart with a kindness that is uncommon when coupled with his name, and which seemed only characteristic of her benevolence. It is very rare that old age, or, indeed, any age, is found so winning and agreeable. I do not wonder that Scott in his letters treats her with more deference, and writes to her with more care and beauty, than to any other of his correspondents.

GEORGE TICKNOR: _Diary_, 1838, in ‘Life, Letters and Journals.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Disposition of her earnings.]

Unlike Zaccheus the publican in every other respect, she followed his rule with respect to the earnings of her pen--half of her goods she gave to feed the poor. This arrangement was made and adhered to, when the Baillies’ income, never a very large one, was at its minimum; and it was not departed from when increased funds brought in their train increased expenditures and a host of additional wants.

SARAH TYTLER AND J. L. WATSON: ‘Songstresses of Scotland.’

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Mr. Hall’s testimony on this point differs from that of all others who have described Miss Baillie.

[10] An error. Miss Baillie died at eighty-nine.

MARGUERITE, LADY BLESSINGTON.

1789-1849.

MARGUERITE, LADY BLESSINGTON.

Marguerite, Lady Blessington, flitted across the field of English literature like a blue butterfly, and left no trace behind. She claims a place among our literary women, not by virtue of her many works, which are now forgotten, but rather as an influence among literary men; as the woman in whose sunny companionship Byron basked, and who had Landor and Procter to write her epitaphs.

She was born at Knockbrit, Tipperary, on the 1st of September, 1789. (The year, however, has been variously stated as 1787 and 1790.) She was the daughter of Edmund Power, a country gentleman and magistrate, a man of violent temper and without principle. In 1796 or ’97 the Powers removed to Clonmel. In 1804, when she was under fifteen years of age, Marguerite was forced by her father into a marriage with the vicious and half-insane Captain Maurice Farmer. Within a year they agreed to separate. Mrs. Farmer is spoken of as residing in Cahir, Tipperary, in 1807, and in Dublin in 1809. And now occurs that hiatus in the account of her life which has never been satisfactorily filled, and the existence of which the English women of her day refused to overlook. In 1816 she was established in Manchester Square, London; and in 1818, Captain Farmer having died the previous year, she married the Earl of Blessington. Her fashionable life, foreign travels, and literary career now began. In 1823, while at Genoa with her husband, she made the acquaintance of Lord Byron. In 1829 Lord Blessington died in the Hotel Ney, Paris, which had been sumptuously fitted up as his residence. Lady Blessington returned to London in 1830. She lived in Seamore Place, May Fair, until 1836, when she removed to Gore House, Kensington Gore. The extravagant splendor of her style of living, and the charm of her evenings, have often been described. The £2,000 a year which Lord Blessington had left her, even with the addition of the income received from her writings, was not sufficient to meet the expenses which long habit had rendered almost necessary to her; and in the spring of 1849 “the long-menaced break-up of the establishment at Gore House took place.” Lady Blessington left London, accompanied by her nieces, for Paris, where, on the 4th of June, 1849, she died very suddenly of “an apoplectic malady, complicated with disease of the heart.” Count D’Orsay, her husband’s son-in-law and her intimate friend, survived her but a few years, and was buried beside her at Chambourcy, where he had caused a huge monument to be erected to her memory.

The following are the works of Lady Blessington:

_The Magic Lantern; or, Sketches of Scenes in the Metropolis_, 1822.

_Sketches and Fragments_, 1822.

_Conversations with Lord Byron_, 1832. These articles first appeared in Colburn’s _New Monthly Magazine_.

_Grace Cassidy; or, the Repealers_, 1833.

_Meredyth_, 1833.

_The Follies of Fashion_, 1835.

_The Two Friends_, 1835.

_The Victims of Society_, 1837.

_The Confessions of an Elderly Lady_, 1838.

_The Governess_, 1839.

_Desultory Thoughts and Reflections_, 1839.

_The Idler in Italy_, 1839.

_The Idler in France_, 1841.

_The Lottery of Life_, 1842.

_Strathern; or, Life at Home and Abroad_, 1845.

_The Memoirs of a Femme de Chambre_, 1846.

_Lionel Deerhurst_, 1846.

_Marmaduke Herbert_, 1847.

_Country Quarters._ This was first published in a London Sunday paper, 1848. After Lady Blessington’s death it was edited by her niece, Miss Power, and published separately.

She also wrote _A Tour Through the Netherlands to Paris_, _Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman_, _The Belle of a Season_, and edited for several years Heath’s ‘Book of Beauty,’ ‘The Keepsake,’ and another annual entitled, ‘Gems of Beauty.’ Miss Power says in her memoir, “I believe that for some years she made, on an average, somewhere about a thousand a year; some years a good deal above that sum.” Jerdan states that he has known her to enjoy from her pen an amount between £2,000 and £3,000 per annum; and adds that her title and her social tact had considerable influence in commanding high prices.

Lady Blessington’s strange life may be said to have been written in three chapters: the first as dark and terrible as any in ‘Wuthering Heights’; the second as gorgeous as any in the novels of D’Israeli; and the last like a handful of leaves torn from ‘Vanity Fair.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Sickly childhood.]

Beauty, the heritage of the family, was, in her early youth, denied to Marguerite: her eldest brother and sister were singularly handsome and healthy children, while she, pale, weakly, and ailing, was for years regarded as little likely ever to grow 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.

The atmosphere in which she lived was but little congenial to such a nature. Her father, a man of violent temper, and little given to study the characters of his children, intimidated and shook the delicate nerves of the sickly child, though there were moments--rare ones, it is true--when the sparkles of her early genius for an instant dazzled and gratified him. Her mother, though she failed not to bestow the tenderest maternal care on the health of the little sufferer, was not capable of appreciating her fine and subtile qualities, and her brothers and sisters, fond as they were of her, were not, in their high health and boisterous gayety, companions suited to such a child.

At a very early age, the powers of her imagination had already begun to develop themselves. She would entertain her brothers and sisters for hours with tales invented as she proceeded; and at last, so remarkable did this talent become, that her parents, astonished at the interest and coherence of her narrations, constantly called upon her to _improviser_ for the entertainment of their friends and neighbors, a task always easy to her fertile brain; and, in a short time, the little neglected child became the wonder of the neighborhood.

MISS POWER: ‘A Memoir of Lady Blessington,’ quoted by R. R. Madden in ‘The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1855.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Unfortunate early marriage.]

Her father was in a ruined position at the time Lady Blessington was brought home from school, a mere child, and treated as such. Among his military friends, she then saw a Captain Farmer for the first time; he appeared on very intimate terms with her father, but when she first met him, her father did not introduce her to him; in fact, she was looked upon then as a mere school-girl, whom it was not necessary to introduce to any stranger. In a day or two her father told her she was not to return to school; 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 determination 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 before 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 that time he frequently treated her with personal violence; ... he used to lock her up whenever he went abroad, and often has left her without food till she felt almost famished. He was ordered to join his regiment, which was encamped at the Curragh of Kildare. Lady Blessington 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 former, and the result of this insane act (for such it was allowed to be) was, that he was obliged to quit the service, being permitted to sell his commission. The friends of Captain Farmer now prevailed on him to go to India; she, however, refused to go with him, and remained at her father’s.

Such is the account given to me by Lady Blessington, and for the accuracy of the above report of it I can vouch.

R. R. MADDEN: ‘Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Portrait by Sir. T. Lawrence.]

I first saw Lady Blessington under circumstances sufficiently characteristic of her extraordinary personal beauty at the period in question, to excuse my referring to them somewhat in detail. It was on the opening day of that Royal Academy Exhibition which contained Lawrence’s celebrated portrait of Lady Blessington--one of the very finest he ever painted, and universally known by the numerous engravings that have since been made from it. In glancing hastily round the room on first entering, I had duly admired this exquisite portrait, as approaching very near to the perfection of the art, though (as I conceived) by no means reaching it, for there were points in the picture which struck me as inconsistent with others that were also present. Yet I could not, except as a vague theory, lay the apparent discrepancies at the door of the artist....

Presently, on returning to this portrait, I saw standing before it, as if on purpose to confirm my theory, the lovely original. She was leaning on the arm of her husband, Lord Blessington. And then I saw how impossible it is for an artist to flatter a really beautiful woman.... I have seen no other instance so striking, of the inferiority of art to nature when the latter reaches the ideal standard, as in this celebrated portrait of Lady Blessington.... As the original stood before it ... she fairly “killed” the copy, and this no less in the individual details than in the general effect. Moreover, what I had believed to be errors and shortcomings in the picture were wholly absent in the original. There is about the former a consciousness, a “pretension,” a leaning forward, and a looking forth, as if to claim or court notice and admiration, of which there was no touch in the latter.

I have never since beheld so pure and perfect a vision of female loveliness, in what I conceive to be its most perfect phase, that, namely, in which intellect does not predominate over form, feature, complexion, and the other physical attributes of female beauty, but only serves to heighten, purify and irradiate them; and it is this class of beauty which cannot be equalled on canvas.

At this time Lady Blessington was about six-and-twenty[11] years of age; but there was about her face together with that beaming intelligence which rarely shows itself upon the countenance till that period of life, a bloom and freshness which as rarely survives early youth, and a total absence of those undefinable marks which thought and feeling still more rarely fail to leave behind them. Unlike all other beautiful faces that I have seen, hers was, at the time of which I speak, neither a history nor a prophecy; not a book to read and study, a problem to solve, or a mystery to speculate upon, but a star to kneel before and worship ... an end and a consummation in itself.

P. G. PATMORE: ‘My Friends and Acquaintance.’ London: Saunders & Otley, 1854.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Her beauty at twenty-eight.]

From the period of her marriage with the Earl of Blessington, her intercourse with eminent men and distinguished persons of various pursuits may be said to date.... She was then twenty-eight years of age, in the perfection of natural beauty, that bright and radiant beauty which derives its power not so much from harmony of features and symmetry of form, as from the animating influences of intelligence beaming forth from a mind full of joyous and of kindly feelings and of brilliant fancies--that kind of vivid loveliness which is never found where some degree of genius is not. Her form was exquisitely moulded, with an inclination to fullness; but no finer proportions could be imagined; her movements were graceful and natural at all times.

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 conversation or object of attention might excite. The instant a joyous thought took possession of her fancy, you saw it transmitted 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.

[Sidenote: Geniality and good humor.]

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-humor and of good-nature in the smiles and laughter, and the sallies of wit of this lovely woman in her early and happy days (those of her Italian life, especially from 1823 to 1826), such as have been seldom surpassed.... Her voice was ever sweetly modulated and low. Its tones were always in harmonious concord with the traits of her expressive features. There was a cordiality, a clear, silver-toned hilarity, a correspondence in them, apparently with all her sensations, that made her hearers feel “she spoke to them with every part of her being.”... All the beauty of Lady Blessington, without the exquisite sweetness of her voice, and the witchery of its tones in pleasing or expressing pleasure, would have been only a secondary consideration.

R. R. MADDEN: ‘Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Friendship with Lord Byron.]

It is clear that the peculiar charm of Lady Blessington’s manner exercised its usual spell--that the cold, scorning, and world-wearied spirit of Byron was, for the time being, “subdued to the quality” of the genial and happy one with which it held converse--and that both the poet and the man became once more what nature intended them to be.

Lady Blessington seems to have been the only woman holding his own rank and station with whom Byron was ever at his ease, and with whom, therefore, he was himself. With all others he seemed to feel a constraint which irritated and vexed him into the assumption of vices which did not belong to him.

P. G. PATMORE: ‘My Friends and Acquaintance.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A Byronic jeu d’esprit.]

His lordship suffered Lady Blessington to lecture him in prose, and, what was worse, in verse. He endeavored to persuade Lord Blessington to prolong his stay in Genoa, and to take a residence adjoining his own named “_Il Paradiso_.” And on a rumor of his intention to take the place for himself, and some good-natured friend observing, “_Il diavolo è ancora entrato in Paradiso_,” his lordship wrote the following lines:

“Beneath Blessington’s eyes
The reclaimed Paradise
Should be free as the former from evil;
But if the new Eve
For an apple should grieve,
What mortal would not play the devil?”

R. R. MADDEN: ‘Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Lady Blessington’s apartments in Paris.]

“The whole fitting up,” says Lady Blessington, “is in exquisite taste; and, as usual, when my most gallant of all gallant husbands that it ever fell to the happy lot of woman to possess interferes, no expense has been spared. The bed, which is silvered instead of gilt, rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in _alto-relievo_, and looks as fleecy as those of the living birds. The recess in which it is placed is lined with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace; and from the columns that support the frieze of the recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are hung, which, when drawn, conceal the recess altogether.... A silver sofa has been made, to fit the side of the room opposite the fire-place, near to which stands a most inviting _bergere_. An _escritoire_ occupies one panel, a book-stand the other, and a rich coffer for jewels forms a pendant to a similar one for lace or India shawls. A carpet of uncut pile, of a pale blue, a silver lamp and a Psyche glass, the ornaments silvered to correspond with the decorations of the chamber, complete the furniture. The hangings in the dressing-room are of blue silk, covered with lace, and trimmed with rich frills of the same material, as are also the dressing-stands and _chaire longue_, and the carpet and lamp are similar to those of the bedroom. A toilet-table stands before the window, and small _jardinieres_ are placed in front of each panel of looking-glass, but so low as not to impede a full view of the person dressing in this beautiful little sanctuary. The _salle de bain_ is draped with white muslin, trimmed with lace; and the sofa and the _bergere_ are covered with the same. The bath is of marble, inserted in the floor, with which its surface is level. On the ceiling over it is a painting of Flora, scattering flowers with one hand, while from the other is suspended an alabaster lamp in the form of a lotus.”

R. R. MADDEN: ‘Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Her Ladyship’s luxurious taste.]

Her taste in everything was towards the gay, the superb, the luxurious; but, on the whole, excellently good. Here eye was as quick as lightning; her resources were many and original. It will not be forgotten how ... she astounded the opera-goers by appearing in her box with a plain transparent cap, which the world in its ignorance called a Quaker’s cap; and the best of all likenesses of her, in date later than the lovely Lawrence portrait, is that drawing by Chalon, in which this tire is represented, with some additional loops of ribbon. So, too, her houses in Seamore Place and at Kensington Gore were full of fancies which have since passed into fashions, and which seemed all to belong to and to agree with herself. Had she been the selfish sybaritic woman whom many who hated her, without knowing her, delighted to represent her, she might have indulged these joys and costly humors with impunity; but she was affectionately, inconsiderately liberal.

HENRY F. CHORLEY: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters,’ compiled by H. G. Hewlett. London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1873.

* * * * *

The following sketch was taken from the “Ring” in Hyde Park:

[Sidenote: Her chariot.]

“Observe that green chariot just making the turn of the unbroken line of equipages. Though it is now advancing towards us with at least a dozen carriages between, it is to be distinguished from the throng by the elevation of its driver and footman above the ordinary level of the line. As it comes nearer, we can observe the particular points that give it that perfectly _distingué_ appearance which it bears above all others in the throng. They consist of the white wheels lightly picked out with green and crimson; the high-stepping action, blood-like shape and brilliant _manège_ of its dark bay horses; the perfect style of its driver; the height (six feet two) of its slim, spider-limbed, powdered footman, perked up at least three feet above the roof of the carriage, and occupying his eminence with that peculiar air of accidental superiority which we take to be the ideal of footman perfection, and finally, the exceedingly light, airy, and (if we may so speak) intellectual character of the whole set-out. The arms and supporters blazoned on the centre panels, and the small coronet beneath the window, indicate the nobility of station; and if ever the nobility of nature was blazoned on the ‘complement extern’ of humanity, it is on the lovely face within.”

P. G. PATMORE: ‘My Friends and Acquaintance.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Her receptions.]

Enter when you would the beautifully-arranged drawing-room of Lady Blessington, with its gorgeous furnishing, resplendent lights, ample mirrors, and all the accessories of value and taste, some one you were sure to meet who was a Memory thenceforward. The list of her guests, taking any one of her “evenings,” would comprise nearly all the leading men of the time--Earl Grey, Lord Durham, Lord Brougham, the “Iron Duke,” occasionally the elder and the younger Disraeli, Walter Savage Landor, Edwin Landseer, James Smith, John Galt, “Barry Cornwall,” Thomas Moore, Campbell, Lord Lytton and Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, Dr. William Beattie, Colley Grattan--a number of names crowd upon my memory as I write--statesmen, lawyers, artists, men of letters, and foreigners of all countries. The Emperor Napoleon was a frequent guest, and here I have met him more than once when there seemed little prospect indeed that the silent, apparently ungenial, and seemingly unintellectual man, who usually occupied a neglected corner, would fill the _premier rôle_ on the great stage of the world.... It is true few women were encountered there. I can recall none but her sister, Lady Canterbury; another sister, much younger, married to a French count; and her two nieces. I once saw “the Guiccioli” there.

S. C. HALL: ‘A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age.’ London: Virtue & Co., 1871.

[Sidenote: “Gore house, an impromptu.”]

Mild Wilberforce, by all beloved,
Once owned this hallowed spot,
Whose zealous eloquence improved
The fettered Negro’s lot;
Yet here still Slavery attacks,
When Blessington invites;
The chains from which _he_ freed the Blacks
_She_ rivets on the Whites.

JAMES SMITH: Quoted by R. R. Madden, in ‘Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Influence among men of letters.]

Of Lady Blessington’s tact, kindness and remarkable beauty Procter always spoke with ardor, and abated nothing from the popular idea of that fascinating person. He thought she had done more in her time to institute good feeling and social intercourse among men of letters than any other lady in England, and he gave her eminent credit for bringing forward the rising talent of the metropolis without waiting to be prompted by a public verdict.

JAMES T. FIELDS: ‘Barry Cornwall and Some of His Friends.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1876.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: N. P. Willis describes her.]

A friend in Italy had kindly given me a letter to Lady Blessington, and with a strong curiosity to see this celebrated lady, I called on the second day after my arrival in London. It was “deep i’ the afternoon,” but I had not yet learned the full meaning of “town hours.” “Her ladyship had not come down to breakfast.” I gave the letter and my address to the powdered footman, and had scarce reached home when a note arrived inviting me to call the same evening at ten.

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. 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 diamond rings. As the servant mentioned my name, she rose and gave me her hand very cordially, and a gentleman entering immediately after, she presented me to her son-in-law, 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.

[Sidenote: Appearances at forty.]

The portrait of Lady Blessington in the ‘Book of Beauty’ is not unlike her, but it is still an unfavorable 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 representation 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 now (she confessed it very frankly) forty. She looks something on the sunny side of thirty. Her person is full, but preserves all the fineness of an admirable shape; her foot is not crowded in a satin slipper for which a Cinderella might 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 was cut low, and folded across her bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round and sculpture-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 _feronière_ 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 fullness and freedom of play peculiar to the Irish physiognomy, and expressive of the most unsuspicious good-humor. 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 most prominent traits of one of the most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen.

NATHANIEL P. WILLIS: ‘Pencillings by the Way.’ New York: Charles Scribner, 1853.

* * * * *

Lady Blessington was fair, florid-complexioned, with sparkling eyes and white, high forehead, above which her bright brown hair was smoothly braided beneath a light and simple blonde cap, in which were a few touches of sky-blue satin ribbon that singularly well became her, setting off her buxom face and its vivid coloring.

MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’ New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Growing stout.]

She was inclined to _embonpoint_;[12] her hair abundant and of a lightish brown; but she always wore caps fastened under the chin; her complexion fair and healthily tinged, deriving no aid from art; she was too stout to be graceful, but she had a natural grace that regulated all her movements.

S. C. HALL: ‘Book of Memories.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Essentially Irish.]

At that period [1832] she was past her prime no doubt, but she was still remarkably handsome; not so, perhaps, if tried by the established canons of beauty; but there was a fascination about her look and manner that greatly augmented her personal charms. Her face and features were essentially Irish, and that is the highest compliment I can pay them.

S. C. HALL: ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Landor’s admiration.]