[BORN 1758. DIED 1816.]PROFESSOR CRAIK.
MISS, or as she latterly chose to style herself, Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton, is one of the female writers of what may now be called the last age, whose eruption into literature was about as spontaneous and irregular as well as could be; for there was nothing either in the education she received, or in the circumstances of her position, to give her any peculiar impulse towards such a career; yet she may be said to have registered her name there among the classics of our language. If everything else she produced be forgotten, as may almost be said to be already the case, her "Cottagers of Glenburnie" at least will live, and continue to be read, so long as the Scottish dialect remains intelligible. It is the only work written in that dialect, between the era of the poetry of Burns and that of the prose of Scott, which is now remembered. Of Scottish prose writing, there is no earlier subsisting example, until we go back to the sixteenth century. Here it claims the honour of having been the only modern predecessor of the Waverley Novels, if not that of having been, in some degree, their model. In so far as its interest and humour lie in the use of the popular dialect, it is probably to be accounted the offspring of Miss Edgeworth's "Castle Rackrent," which is the earliest work still surviving, in which thecomedy and expressiveness to be found in the peculiarities of the Irish provincial speech were highly taken advantage of.
[Born in Ireland about the middle of the last century, yet of Scotch descent, Miss Hamilton while yet young came to Scotland, where, residing with relations, she went through many changes of life. She wrote a great many books, both on religious and political subjects, some of which challenged without retaining attention; but it was otherwise with the "Cottagers of Glenburnie."] This work was begun, we are told, merely as the amusement of an idle hour; she was encouraged to proceed with it, and to extend the plan, by the mirth which the first sheets of it excited, when she read them to a few friends collected at her own fireside. It was not, her biographer further informs us, without considerable distrust on the part of the publisher that it was committed to the press. Is it indeed the unhappy instinct of publishers to be thus always blindest to the value, before they come out, of the books that succeed the best? or is it thought expedient, for the sake of making the better story, that every instance of remarkably successful publication should be set off by being made to fall out contrary to expectation?
However that may be, the success of the present work was immediate and decided. It was universally read in Scotland, and very generally even in England, where its humour could less be appreciated. The great demand soon induced the publishers to print a cheap edition; and, in the native country of the writer, it was to be seen in the hands of all classes. Miss Benger relates, that in Stirlingshire a person named Isabel Irvine, who had been Miss Hamilton's attendant when she was at school there some thirty or forty years before, and to whom, we suppose, a copy had beensent by the authoress, made money by lending it out among her neighbours. It is believed, too, not to have been without effect in making the peasantry ashamed of the indolence and slovenliness which it exposed and ridiculed. "Perhaps few books," observes a friend and countryman of Miss Hamilton's, in a sketch of her character and her literary and other services to her country, which Miss Benger has printed, "have been more extensively useful. The peculiar humour of this work, by irritating our national pride, has produced a wonderful spirit of improvement. The cheap edition is to be found in every village library; and Mrs M'Clarty's example has provoked many a Scotch housewife into cleanliness and good order."
Miss Benger thus describes Miss Hamilton's ordinary mode of life after she took up her residence in Edinburgh: "The morning, whenever her infirmities admitted, was devoted to study. At two o'clock she descended to the drawing-room, where she commonly found some intimate friend ready to receive her. If no engagement intervened, the interval from seven till ten was occupied with some interesting book, which, according to her good Aunt Marshall's rule, was read aloud for the benefit of the whole party. On Monday, she deviated from the general system, by admitting visitors all the morning; and such was the esteem for her character, and such the relish for her society, that this private levee was attended by the most brilliant persons in Edinburgh, and commonly protracted till a late hour. But it was inthe heartsome ingle-nookby herain fireside, when the world was shut out, and its cares, and conflicts, and pretensions consigned to temporary oblivion, that Mrs Hamilton was most truly known and most perfectly enjoyed. Of anecdoteshe was inexhaustible, and in narrative she dramatised with such effect that she almost personated those whom she described."
"All who had the happiness to know this amiable woman," said Miss Edgeworth, in a tribute to her memory, which she contributed to an Irish paper soon after Mrs Hamilton's death, "will with one accord bear testimony to the truth of that feeling of affection which her benevolence, kindness, and cheerfulness of temper inspired. She thought so little of herself, so much of others, that it was impossible she could—superior as she was—excite envy. She put everybody at ease in her company, and in good humour and good spirits with themselves. So far from being a restraint on the young and lively, she encouraged by her sympathy their openness and gaiety. She never flattered, but she always formed the most favourable opinion, that truth and good sense would permit, of every individual who came near her. Instead, therefore, of fearing and shunning her reputation, all loved and courted her society." She died on the 23d July 1816, in the sixtieth year of her age.
[1760.]SISMONDI.
THE Academy of Sciences in Portugal having proposed a prize for the best Portuguese tragedy, on the 13th of May 1788 conferred the laurel-crown on "Osmia," a tragedy which proved to be the production of a lady, the Countess de Vemieiro. On opening the sealed envelope accompanying the piece, which usually conveys the name of the author, there was found only a direction, in case "Osmia" should prove successful, to devote the proceeds to the cultivation of olives, a species of fruit from which Portugal might derive great advantages. It was with some difficulty that the name of the modest writer of this work, published in 1795, in quarto, was made known to the world. Bouterwek has erroneously attributed it to another lady, very justly celebrated in Portugal, Catharina de Sousa, the same who singly ventured to oppose the violence of the Marquis de Pombal, whose son she refused in marriage. From the family of this illustrious lady I learned that the tragedy of "Osmia" was not really the production of her pen.
In this line of composition, so rarely attempted by female genius, the Countess de Vemieiro displays a singular purity of taste, an exquisite delicacy of feeling, and an interest derived rather from passion thanfrom circumstances,—qualities, indeed, which more particularly distinguish her sex. In the catastrophe, as well as in the rest of the piece, the Countess de Vemieiro appears to have studied the laws of the French theatre; and, in the vivacity of her dialogue, Voltaire, rather than Corneille or Racine, would seem to have been kept in view. The whole is composed in iambic verse, free from rhyme; and we are, perhaps, justified in asserting that this tragedy is the only one which the Portuguese theatre can properly be said to possess.
[BORN 1762. DIED 1851.]PROFESSOR SPALDING.
THE daughter of a parish minister in Bothwell in Lanarkshire. Her mother was sister of John and William Hunter, the famous anatomists. Her life was spent in domestic privacy, and marked by no events more important than the appearance of her successive works. Her brother, who became Sir Matthew Baillie, having settled as physician in London, Miss Baillie removed thither at an early age. She resided in the metropolis or its neighbourhood almost constantly, and died at Hampstead in February 1851.
Her first volume of dramas was published in 1798. Their design, as to which it is not too much to say that the works were good in spite of it, not by means of it, was indicated in the title, "A Series of Plays, in which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind, each Passion being the Subject of a Tragedy and a Comedy." A second volume of the "Plays of the Passions" appeared in 1802, and a third in 1812. The tragedies are fine poems, noble in sentiment, and classical and vigorous in language; but they were not fit for the stage, and "De Montfort" itself was with difficulty supported for a while by the acting of John Kemble and Mrs Siddons. The tragedy of "The Family Legend," notcontained in the series, was acted in Edinburgh in 1809, after a visit the poetess had paid to Sir Walter Scott. In 1836 she published another series of "Plays of the Passions," of which "Henriquez" and "The Separation," the former a very striking piece, were attempted on the stage. Some of Miss Baillie's small pieces were exceedingly good.
[BORN 1763. DIED 1814.]ALISON.
FEW persons in that elevated rank have undergone such varieties of fortune as Josephine [first wife of Napoleon], and fewer still have borne so well the ordeal both of prosperity and adversity. Born in the middle class of society, she was the wife of a respectable but obscure officer. The Revolution afterwards threw her into a dungeon, where she was saved from a scaffold only by the fall of Robespierre. The hand of Napoleon made her successively the partner of every rank, from the general's staff to the emperor's throne; and the same connection consigned her, at the very highest point of her elevation, to degradation and seclusion—the loss of her consequence, separation from her husband, the sacrifice of her affections. Stripped of her influence, cast down from her rank, wounded in her feelings, the divorced empress found the calamity, felt in any rank, of being childless, the envenomed dart which pierced her to the heart.
It was no common character which could pass through such marvellous changes of fortune unmarked by any decided stain, unsullied by any tears of suffering. If, during the confusion of all moral ideas, consequent on the first triumphs of the Revolution, her reputation did not escape thebreath of scandal; and if the favourite of Barras occasioned, even when the wife of Napoleon, some frightful fits of jealousy in her husband; she maintained an exemplary decorum when seated on the consular and imperial throne, and communicated a degree of elegance to the court of the Tuileries which could hardly have been expected after the confusion of ranks and ruin of the old nobility which had preceded her elevation.
Passionately fond of dress, and often blameably extravagant in that particular, she occasioned no small embarrassment to the treasury by her expenditure; but this weakness was forgiven in the recollection of its necessity to compensate the inequality of their years, in the amiable use which she made of her possessions, the grace of her manner, and the alacrity with which she was ever ready to exert her influence with her husband to plead the cause of suffering, or avert the punishment of innocence. Though little inclined to yield in general to female persuasion, Napoleon both loved and felt the sway of this amiable character, and often in his sternest fits he was weaned from violent measures by her influence. Her influence over him was evinced in the most conclusive manner by the ascendant which she maintained after their separation from each other. The divorce, and marriage of Marie Louise, produced no estrangement between them; in her retirement at Malmaison she was frequently visited and consulted by the emperor; they corresponded to the last moment of her life; and the fidelity by which she adhered to him in his misfortunes won the esteem of his conquerors, as it must command the respect of all succeeding ages of the world.
[BORN 1764. DIED 1823.]EDINBURGH REVIEW.
BORN in 1764, died in 1823, this lady was as truly an inventor, a great and original writer in the department she had struck out for herself—whether that department was of the highest kind or not—as the Richardsons, Fieldings, or Smolletts whom she succeeded, and for a time threw into the shade; or the Ariosto of the North, before whom her own star has paled its ineffectual fires. The passion of fear, "the latent sense of supernatural awe and curiosity concerning whatever is hidden and mysterious"—these were themes and sources of interest which, prior to the appearance of her tales, could scarcely be said to have been touched upon. The "Castle of Otranto" was too obviously a mere caprice of imagination; its gigantic helmets, its pictures descending from their frames, its spectral figures dilating themselves in the moonlight to the height of the castle battlements,—if they did not border on the ludicrous, no more impressed the mind with any feeling of awe than the enchantments and talismans, the genii and peris, of the "Arabian Nights."
A nearer approach to the proper tone of feeling was made in the "Old English Baron;" but while it must be admitted that Mrs Radcliffe's principle of composition was to a certain degree anticipated in thatclever production, nothing can illustrate more strongly the superiority of her powers, the more poetical character of her mind, than a comparison of the way in which in her different works the principle is wrought out; the comparative boldness and rudeness of Clara Reeves' mode of exciting superstitious emotions as contrasted with the profound art, the multiplied resources, the dexterous display and concealment, the careful study of that class of emotions on which she was to operate, which Mrs Radcliffe displays in her supernatural machinery. Certainly never before or since did any one more accurately perceive the point to which imagination might be wrought up by a series of hints, glimpses, or half-heard sounds, consistently at the same time with pleasurable emotion, and with the continuance of that very state of curiosity and awe which had been thus excited. The clang of a distant door, a footfall on the stair, a half-effaced stain of blood, a stream of music floating over a wood or round some decaying château—nay, a very "rat behind the arras,"—become, in her hands, invested with a mysterious dignity; so finely has the mind been attuned to sympathise with the terrors of the sufferer by a train of minute details and artful contrasts, in which all sights and sounds combine to awaken and render the feeling more intense. Yet her art is more visible in what she conceals than in what she displays. "One shade the more, one ray the less," would have left the picture in darkness; but to have let in any farther the garish light of day upon her mysteries, would have shown at once the hollowness and meanness of the puppet which alarmed us, and have broken the spell beyond the power of reclasping it. Hence, up to the moment when she chooses to do so herself by those fatal explanations, for which no reader will ever forgive her, she never loses her hold on the mind. Thevery economy with which she avails herself of the talisman of terror preserves its power to the last undiminished, if not increased. She merely hints at some fearful thought, and leaves the excited fancy surrounded by night and silence to give it colour and form.
Of all the passions, that of fear is the only one which Mrs Radcliffe can be properly said to have painted. More wearisome beings than her heroines, and anything "more tolerable and not to be endured" than her love tales, Calprenede or Scuderi never invented. As little have the sterner passions of jealousy or hatred, or the dark shades of envious and malignant feeling, formed the subjects of her analysis. Within the circle of these passions, indeed, she did not feel that she could walk with security; but her quick perception showed where there was still an opening in a region of obscurity and twilight as yet all but untrodden. To that, as to the sphere pointed out to her by nature, she at once addressed herself; from that, as from a central point, she surveyed the provinces of passion and imagination, and was content if, without venturing into their labyrinths, she could render their leading and more palpable features available to set off and to brighten, by their variety, the solemnity and gloom of the department which she had chosen.
[BORN 1767. DIED 1849.]JEFFREY.
MISS Edgeworth is the great modern mistress in the useful school of true philosophy, and has eclipsed, we think, the fame of all her predecessors. By her many excellent tracts on education, she has conferred a benefit on the whole mass of the population, and discharged, with exemplary patience as well as extraordinary judgment, a task which superficial spirits may perhaps mistake for an humble and easy one. By her popular tales, she has rendered an invaluable service to the middling and lower classes of the people; and, by her novels, has made a great and meritorious effort to promote the happiness and respectability of the higher classes.
There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one isennui, that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the absence of all motives to exertion, and by which the justice of Providence has so fully compensated the partiality of fortune, that it may be fairly doubted whether upon the whole the race of beggars is not happier than the race of lords, and whether those vulgar wants that are sometimes so importunate are not in this world the chief ministers of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects all indolent persons that canlive on in the rank in which they were born, without the necessity of working; but in a free country it rarely occurs in any great degree of virulence, except among those who are already at the summit of human felicity. Below this there is room for ambition, and envy, and emulation, and all the feverish movements of aspiring vanity and unresisting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the full-blown flower of human felicity—the pestilence which smites at the bright hour of noon.
The other curse of the happy has a range more wide and indiscriminate. It, too, tortures only the comparatively rich and fortunate, but is most active among the least distinguished, and abates in malignity as we ascend to the lofty regions of pureennui. This is the desire of being fashionable, the restless and insatiable passion to pass for creatures a little more distinguished than we really are, with the mortification of frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being perpetually exposed to it. Among those who are secure of "meat, clothes, and fire," and are thus above the chief evils of existence, we do believe that this is a more prolific source of unhappiness than guilt, disease, or wounded affection; and that more positive misery is created, and more true enjoyment excluded, by the eternal fretting and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by all the ravages of passion, the desolations of war, or the accidents of mortality. This may appear a strong statement, but we make it deliberately, and are deeply convinced of its truth. The wretchedness which it produces may not be so intense, but it is of much longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle. It is quite dreadful indeed to think what a sweep this pest has taken among thecomforts of our prosperous population. To be thought fashionable—that is, to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than they really are,—is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily industry.
These are the giant curses of fashionable life; and Miss Edgeworth has accordingly dedicated her two best tales to the delineation of their symptoms. The history of Lord Glenthorn is a fine picture ofennui; that of Almeria, an instructive representation of the miseries of aspirations after fashion. The moral use of these narratives, therefore, must consist in warning us against the first approaches of evils which can never afterwards be resisted. To some readers her tales may seem to want the fairy colouring of high fancy and romantic tenderness; and it is very true that they are not poetical love tales, any more than they are anecdotes of scandal. We have great respect for the admirers of Rousseau and Petrarca, and we have no doubt that Miss Edgeworth has great respect for them; butthe world, both high and low, which she is labouring to mend, have no sympathy with this respect. They laugh at these things, and do not understand them; and, therefore, the solid sense which she possesses presses perhaps rather too closely upon them, and, though it permits of relief from wit and direct pathos, really could not be combined with the more luxuriant ornaments of an ardent and tender imagination.
[BORN 1768. DIED 1793.]CARLYLE.
AMID which dim ferment of Caen and the world, history specially notices one thing. In the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where busy deputies are coming and going, a young lady, with an aged valet, taking grave, graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure, in her twenty-fifth year, of beautiful still countenance; her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a note to Deputy Duperret, him who once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently, she will to Paris on some errand. "She was a republican before the Revolution, and never wanted energy." A completeness, a decision is in this fair figure: "by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country." What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded stillness suddenly like a star; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment to be extinguished; to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries! Quitting Cimmerian coalitions without, and the dim-simmering twenty-five millions within, history will look fixedly at this one fair apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the little life burns forth soradiant, then vanishes, swallowed of the night.
With Barbaroux's note of introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday, the 9th of July, seated in the Caen diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her good journey; her father will find a line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her and forget her. The drowsy diligence lumbers along, amid drowsy talk of politics and praise of the Mountain, in which she mingles not; all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly. Here is Paris, with her thousand black domes—the goal and purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence, in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room, hastens to bed, sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.
On the morrow morning she delivers her note to Duperret. It relates to certain family papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hands, which a nun at Caen, an old convent-friend of Charlotte's, has need of, which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this, then, was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this in the course of Friday, yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.
About eight o'clock on the Saturday morning she purchases a large sheath-knife in the Palais-Royal; then straightway, in the Place de Victoires, takes a hackney-coach. "To the Rue de l'Ecole de Médicine, No. 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! The Citoyen Marat isill, and cannot be seen, which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hapless, beautiful Charlotte—hapless, squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost west, from Neuchâtel in the utmost east, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely, business together. Charlotte returning to her inn, despatches a short note to Marat, signifying that she is from Caen; that she desires earnestly to see him, and "will put it in his power to do France a great service." No answer. Charlotte writes another note, still more pressing; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself.
It is yellow July evening, we say, the 13th of the month. Marat sits, about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath, sore, afflicted, ill of Revolution fever—of what other malady this history had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man; with precisely elevenpence-half-penny in paper; with slipper-bath, strong three-footed stool for writing on the while, and a squalid—washerwoman, one may call her; that is his civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither and not elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of brotherhood and perfect felicity; yet surely on the way towards that. Hark! a rap again! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it is the citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat, recognising from within, cries—Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted.
"Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen, the seat of rebellion, and wished to speak with you." "Be seated,mon enfant. Now what are the traitors doing at Caen—what deputies are at Caen?" Charlotte names some deputies. "Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the eager people's friend, clutching his tablets to write:Barbaroux, Pétion,writes he, with bare, shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath;PétionandLouvet, and—Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "A moi, chère amie—Help, dear!" no more could the death-choked say or shriek. The helpful washerwoman running in—there is no friend of the people or friend of the washerwoman left; but his life with a groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below.
On Wednesday evening, about half-past seven o'clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a city all on tiptoe, the fatal cart issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying towards death—alone amid the world. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck; a blush of maidenly shame overspreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly, for I saw it with my eyes."
[BORN 1766. DIED 1817.]JEFFREY.
THE most powerful writer that her country has produced since the time of Voltaire and Rousseau, and the greatest writer, of a woman, that any time or any country has produced. Her taste perhaps is not quite pure, and her style is too irregular and ambitious. These faults may even go deeper. Her passion for effect, and the tone of exaggeration which it naturally produces, have probably interfered occasionally with the soundness of her judgment, and given a suspicious colouring to some of her representations of fact. At all events, they have rendered her impatient of the humbler task of completing her explanatory details, or stating in their order all the premises of her reasonings. She gives her history in abstracts, and her theories in aphorisms; and the greater part of her works, in place of presenting that systematic unity, from which the highest degrees of strength and beauty and clearness must ever be derived, may be fairly described as a collection of striking fragments, in which a great deal of repetition does by no means diminish the effect of a good deal of inconsistency. In those same works, however, whether we consider them as fragments or as systems, we do not hesitate to say that there are more of original and profound observations, more new images, greater sagacity, combined with higherimagination, and more of the true philosophy of the passions, the politics, and the literature of her contemporaries, than in any other author we can now remember.
She has great eloquence on all subjects, and a singular pathos in representing those bitterest agonies of the spirit in which wretchedness is aggravated by remorse, or by regrets that partake of its character. Though it is difficult to resist her when she is in earnest, we cannot say that we agree in all her opinions, or approve of all her sentiments. She overrates the importance of literature, either in determining the character, or affecting the happiness of mankind; and she theorises too confidently on its past and its future history. On subjects like this, we have not yet facts enough for so much philosophy, and must be contented, we fear for a long time to come, to call many things accidental which it would be more satisfactory to refer to determinate causes. In her estimate of the happiness and her notions of the wisdom of private life, we think her both unfortunate and erroneous. She makes passions and high sensibilities a great deal too indispensable, and varnishes over all pictures too uniformly with the glue of an extravagant or affected enthusiasm. She represents men, in short, as a great deal more unhappy, more depraved, and more energetic than they are, and seems to respect them the more for it. In her politics, she is far more unexceptionable. She is everywhere the warm friend and animated advocate of liberty, and of liberal, practical, and philanthropic principles. On these subjects we cannot blame her enthusiasm, which has nothing in it vindictive or provoking, and are far more inclined to envy than to reprove that sanguine and buoyant temper of mind which, after all she has seen and suffered, still leads her to overrate, in ourapprehension, both the merits of past attempts at political amelioration, and the chances of their success hereafter. It is in that futurity, we fear, and in the hopes that make it present, that the lovers of mankind must yet for a while console themselves for the disappointments which still seem to beset them. If Madame de Staël, however, predicts with too much confidence, it must be admitted that her labours have a powerful tendency to realise her predictions. Her writings are all full of the most animating views of the improvement of our social condition and the means by which it may be effected, the most striking refutations of prevailing errors on these great subjects, and the most persuasive expostulations with those who may think their interest or their honour concerned in maintaining them. Even they who are the least inclined to agree with her must admit that there is much to be learned from her writings; and we can give them no higher praise than to say that their tendency is not only to promote the interests of philanthropy and independence, but to soften rather than exasperate the prejudices to which they are opposed.
With our manners in society she is not quite well pleased, though she is kind enough to ascribe our deficiencies to the most honourable causes. In commiserating the comparative dulness of our social talk, however, has not this philosophic observer a little overlooked the effects of national tastes and habits? and is it not conceivable at least that we who are used to it may really have as much satisfaction in our own hum-drum way of seeing each other, as our more sprightly neighbours in their exquisite assemblies?
[BORN 1772. DIED 1857.]JEFFREY.
THIS hard-fated woman was very young and newly married when she was thrown, by the adverse circumstances of the time, into the very heart of those deplorable contests [the war in La Vendée, during the first and maddest years of the French Republic]; and without pretending to any other information than she could draw from her own experience, and scarcely presuming to pass any judgment upon the merits or demerits of the cause, she has made up her memoirs of a clear and dramatic description of acts in which she was a sharer, or scenes of which she was an eye-witness, and of the characters and histories of the many distinguished individuals who partook with her of their glories and sufferings. The irregular and undisciplined wars which it was her business to describe were naturally far more prolific of extraordinary incidents, unexpected turns of fortune, and striking displays of individual talent, and vice and virtue, than the more solemn movements of national hostility, where everything is in a great measure provided and foreseen, and where the inflexible subordination of rank, and the severe exactions of a limited duty, not only take away the inducement, but the opportunity, for those exaltations of personal feeling and adventure which produce the most lively interest, and lead to the mostanimating results.
This lady had some right, in truth, to be delicate and royalist beyond the ordinary standard. Her father, the Marquis de Donnison, had an employment about the person of the king, in virtue of which he had apartments in the Palace of Versailles, in which splendid abode Madame de la Rochejaquelein was born, and continued constantly to reside in the very focus of royal influence and glory till the whole of its unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to leave it by the fury of that mob which escorted them to Paris in 1789. She had, like most French ladies of distinction, been destined from her infancy to be the wife of M. de Lescure, a near relation of her mother, and the representative of the ancient and noble family of Salgues in Poitou.
The picture of the war [in which Madame de la Rochejaquelein figured so prominently, and in which she lost her young husband] is shaded with deep horrors. The convention issued the barbarous decree that the country [La Vendée], which still continued its resistance, should be desolated, that the whole inhabitants should be exterminated without distinction of age or sex, the habitations consumed with fire, and the trees cut down by the axe. A multitude of sanguinary conflicts ensued, and the insurgents succeeded in resisting this desolating invasion. Among the slain in one of those engagements the republicans found the body of a young woman, which, Madame de la Rochejaquelein informs us, gave occasion to a number of idle reports, many giving it out that it was she herself, or a sister of M. de la Rochejaquelein, who had no sister, or a new Joan of Arc, who had kept up the spirit of the peasantry by her enthusiastic predictions. The truth was, that it wasthe body of an innocent peasant who had always lived a remarkably quiet and pious life till recently before this action, when she had been seized with an irresistible desire to take a part in the conflict. [She deserved to be "a woman of history," but her name has not been preserved.] She had discovered herself some time before to Madame de la Rochejaquelein, and begged of her a shift of a peculiar fabric. The night before the battle, she also revealed herself to M. de la Rochejaquelein, asking him to give her a pair of shoes, and promising to behave in such a manner in the morrow's fight that he would never think of parting with her. Accordingly, she kept near his person through the whole of the battle, and conducted herself with the most heroic bravery. Two or three times, in the very heat of the fight, she said to him: "No, mon general, you shall not get before me; I shall always be closer up to the enemy even than you." Early in the day she was hurt pretty severely in the hand, but held it up, laughing, to her general, and said, "It is nothing at all." In the end of the battle, she was surrounded in a charge, and fell fighting like a desperado. There were about ten other women who took up arms, Madame de la Rochejaquelein says, in this cause: two sisters under fifteen, and a tall beauty who wore the dress of an officer.
At the end, after the loss of her husband, Madame de la Rochejaquelein was told that it was impossible to resist the attack that was to be made next day, and was advised to seek her safety in flight and disguise, without the loss of an instant. She set out accordingly with her mother, on a gloomy day in December, under the conduct of a drunken peasant; and, after being out most of the night, at length obtained shelter in a dirty farm-house, from which, in the course of the day, she had themisery of seeing her unfortunate countrymen scattered over the whole open country, chased and butchered without mercy by the republicans, who now took a final vengeance for all the losses they had sustained. She had long been clothed in shreds and patches, and needed no disguise to conceal her quality. She was sometimes hidden in the mill when the troopers came to search for fugitives in her lonely retreat, and often sent in the midst of winter to herd the sheep or cattle of her faithful and compassionate host, along with his raw-boned daughter.
While skulking about in this state of peril and desolation, they had glimpses and occasional rencounters with some of their former companions, whom similar misfortunes had driven upon similar schemes of concealment. In this wretched condition, the time of Madame de la Rochejaquelein's confinement drew on; and after a thousand frights and disasters, she was delivered of two daughters, one of whom died within a fortnight. The result at length was, that Madame de la Rochejaquelein, after several struggles with pride and principle, was prevailed to repair to Nantes, to avail herself of an amnesty.
[BORN 1777. DIED 1849.]DAVENPORT ADAMS.
THE daughter of Monsieur Bernard, a notary of Lyons, born in 1777, and married at fifteen to Monsieur Récamier, a wealthy banker of forty-three. She was a beauty, and she knew it; the idol of that gay, irresistible French society which knows so well how to repay the devotion of its votaries; the theme of song, the goddess ofla beau monde; very capable of love, but denied its natural exercise as wife and mother. If her path then ran among the flowers, not the less did she skirt the brink of the precipice; and her friends' advice and counsel were often needed and always welcome. She did not disdain the flatteries of her admirers; often she encouraged them to an extent that in England would have been considered criminal; but from the testimony of impartial witnesses, it seems clear that she never overstepped the bounds of virtue. She was the only woman, said Charles James Fox, "who united the attractions of pleasure to those of modesty;" but a woman who is always travelling on the verge of danger needs such a friend as Matthieu de Montmorency to counsel her in time.
Fox was in Paris in 1802 when Madame Récamier was at the zenith of her reputation. He almost divided with her the allegiance of the gay world.The Parisian beaux imitated his costume, and the Parisian shop-windows were crowded with his portraits. Between the statesman and the beauty so close an intimacy was established that scandal made busy with it. She called upon him one day to accompany her in a drive along the Boulevards. "Before you came," said she, "I was the fashion; it is a point of honour, therefore, that I should not seem jealous of you." When sitting with her in her box at the opera, a copy of an ode was placed in the hands of each, in which Fox was panegyrised as Jupiter, and Madame Récamier as Venus.
The failure of Monsieur Récamier in 1806 affected her health, and she went to spend the summer months of 1807 with Madame de Staël at Coppet. Among the illustrious residents at Geneva at the time was Prince Augustus of Prussia, a nephew of Frederick the Great, and a handsome young man of twenty-four. He fell violently in love with the Parisian beauty, who was by no means indifferent to the passion he openly displayed. He offered her his hand if she could obtain a divorce from her husband, whom half Paris [according to an old scandal] declared to be her father. Madame was not unwilling to be a princess, and she wrote to her husband proposing a divorce. Monsieur Récamier, in reply, expressed his willingness, but at the same time appealed to her better feelings. Years afterwards the love-suit dropped, and the prince, instead of a wife, received her portrait. Other lovers followed, and her career came near its close. In 1849 the cholera broke out in Paris. Madame Récamier was not afraid of dying, but she shrunk from death in so terrible a form. To avoid its ravages she removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale, but she could not escape from fate. On the 10th of May shewas seized with the premonitory symptoms; on the 11th she was a corpse. She had completed nearly two-and-seventy years when she was removed from life by a death which of all others she most dreaded.
In her time she played a conspicuous part; was constantly upon the gay and glittering stage; the audience applauded her loudly, and illustrious hands flung at her garlands and bouquets. Now that the applause has died out, now that the lamps burn dimly, now that the silent stage is given up to shadows, we wonder what there was in her acting to secure her so wide a fame. We look in vain for a flash of genius, for a burst of noble emotion. Vain, greedy of admiration, an errant coquette, a somewhat frivolous intruder on the threshold of criminal passion,—what was she more? A beauty? Yes, but could beauty alone have secured her so wide a repute among her contemporaries? She did not even converse brilliantly, like a Du Deffand or a De Staël. She did not write charming epistles, like a De Sévigné, and yet she was assiduously courted by famous wits and accomplished men of letters. Partly we may suppose her celebrity to have arisen from her profession of liberal principles under the sternrégimeof a Bonaparte; partly it was owing to the tact with which she drew out the best qualities, and flattered theamour propreof her visitors.