A Book of Sibyls Part 9

Amelia Opie was born in 1769 in the old city of Norwich, within reach of the invigorating breezes of the great North Sea. Her youth must have been somewhat solitary; she was the only child of a kind and cultivated physician, Doctor James Alderson, whose younger brother, a barrister, also living in Norwich, became the father of Baron Alderson. Her mother died in her early youth. From her father, however, little Amelia seems to have had the love and indulgence of over half a century, a tender and admiring love which she returned with all her heart's devotion. She was the pride and darling of his home, and throughout her long life her father's approbation was the one chief motive of her existence. Spoiling is a vexed question, but as a rule people get so much stern justice from all the rest of the world that it seems well that their parents should love and comfort them in youth for the many disgraces and difficulties yet to come.

Her mother is described as a delicate, high-minded woman, 'somewhat of a disciplinarian,' says Mrs. Opie's excellent biographer, Miss Brightwell, but she died too soon to carry her theories into practice. Miss Brightwell suggests that 'Mrs. Opie might have been more demure and decorous had her mother lived, but perhaps less charming.' There are some verses addressed to her mother in Mrs. Opie's papers in which it must be confessed that the remembrance of her admonition plays a most important part--

Hark! clearer still thy voice I hear.

Again reproof in accents mild, Seems whispering in my conscious ear,

and so on.

Some of Mrs. Alderson's attempts at discipline seemed unusual and experimental; the little girl was timid, afraid of black people, of black beetles, and of human skeletons. She was given the skeleton to play with, and the beetles to hold in her hand. One feels more sympathy with the way in which she was gently reconciled to the poor negro with the frightening black face--by being told the story of his wrongs. But with the poor mother's untimely death all this maternal supervision came to an end. 'Amelia, your mother is gone; may you never have reason to blush when you remember her!' her father said as he clasped his little orphan to his heart; and all her life long Amelia remembered those words.

There is a pretty reminiscence of her childhood from a beginning of the memoir which was never written:--'One of my earliest recollections is of gazing on the bright blue sky as I lay in my little bed before my hour of rising came, listening with delighted attention to the ringing of a peal of bells. I had heard that heaven was beyond those blue skies, and I had been taught that _there_ was the home of the good, and I fancied that those sweet bells were ringing in heaven.' The bells were ringing for the Norwich a.s.sizes, which played an important part in our little heroine's life, and which must have been a.s.sociated with many of her early memories.

The little girl seems to have been allowed more liberty than is usually given to children. 'As soon as I was old enough to enjoy a procession,'

she says, 'I was taken to see the Judges come in. Youthful pages in pretty dresses ran by the side of the High Sheriff's carriage, in which the Judges sat, while the coaches drove slowly and with a solemnity becoming the high and awful office of those whom they contained.... With reverence ever did I behold the Judges' wigs, the scarlet robes they wore, and even the white wand of the Sheriff.'

There is a description which in after years might have made a pretty picture for her husband's pencil of the little maiden wandering into the court one day, and called by a kind old Judge to sit beside him upon the bench. She goes on to recount how next day she was there again; and when some attendant of the court wanted her to leave the place, saying not unnaturally, 'Go, Miss, this is no place for you; be advised,' the Judge again interfered, and ordered the enterprising little girl to be brought to her old place upon the cushion by his side. The story gives one a curious impression of a child's life and education. She seems to have come and gone alone, capable, intelligent, unabashed, interested in all the events and humours of the place.

Children have among other things a very vivid sense of citizenship and public spirit, somewhat put out in later life by the rush of personal feeling, but in childhood the personal events are so few and so irresponsible that public affairs become an actual part of life and of experience. While their elders are still discussing the news and weighing its importance, it is already a part of the children's life.

Little Amelia Alderson must have been a happy child, free, affectionate, independent; grateful, as a child should be, towards those who befriended her. One of her teachers was a French dancing-master called Christian, for whom she had a warm regard. She relates that long afterwards she came with her husband and a friend to visit the Dutch church at Norwich.

'The two gentlemen were engaged in looking round and making their observations, and I, finding myself somewhat cold, began to hop and dance upon the spot where I stood, when my eyes chanced to fall upon the pavement below, and I started at beholding the well-known name of Christian graved upon the slab; I stopped in dismay, shocked to find that I had actually been dancing upon the grave of my old master--he who first taught me to dance.'

III.

After her mother's death, Amelia Alderson, who was barely fifteen at the time, began to take her place in society. She kept her father's house, received his friends, made his home bright with her presence. The lawyers came round in due season: Sir James Mackintosh came, the town was full of life, of talk, of music, and poetry, and prejudice.

Harriet Martineau, in her memoir of Mrs. Opie, gives a delightful and humorous account of the Norwich of that day--rivalling Lichfield and its literary coterie, only with less sentimentality and some additional peculiarities of its own. One can almost see the Tory gentlemen, as Miss Martineau describes them, setting a watch upon the Cathedral, lest the Dissenters should burn it as a beacon for Boney; whereas good Bishop Bathurst, with more faith in human nature, goes on resolutely touching his hat to the leading Nonconformists. 'The French taught in schools,'

says Miss Martineau, 'was found to be unintelligible when the peace at length arrived, taught as it was by an aged powdered Monsieur and an elderly flowered Madame, who had taught their pupils' Norfolk p.r.o.nunciation. But it was beginning to be known,' she continues, 'that there was such a language as German, and in due time there was a young man who had actually been in Germany, and was translating "Nathan the Wise." When William Taylor became eminent as almost the only German scholar in England, old Norwich was very proud and grew, to say the truth, excessively conceited. She was (and she might be) proud of her Sayers, she boasted of her intellectual supper-parties, and finally called herself the "Athens of England."'

In this wholesome, cheerful Athens, blown by the invigorating Northern breezes, little Amelia bloomed and developed into a lovely and happy girl. She was fortunate, indeed, in her friends. One near at hand must have been an invaluable adviser for a motherless, impressionable girl.

Mrs. John Taylor was so loved that she is still remembered. Mrs. Barbauld prized and valued her affection beyond all others. 'I know the value of your letters,' says Sir James Mackintosh, writing from Bombay; 'they rouse my mind on subjects which interest us in common--children, literature, and life. I ought to be made permanently better by contemplating a mind like yours.' And he still has Mrs. Taylor in his mind when he concludes with a little disquisition on the contrast between the barren sensibility, the indolent folly of some, the useful kindness of others, 'the industrious benevolence which requires a vigorous understanding and a decisive character.'

Some of Mrs. Opie's family have shown me a photograph of her in her Quaker dress, in old age, dim, and changed, and sunken, from which it is very difficult to realise all the brightness, and life, and animation which must have belonged to the earlier part of her life. The delightful portrait of her engraved in the 'Mirror' shows the animated beaming countenance, the soft expressive eyes, the abundant auburn waves of hair, of which we read. The picture is more like some charming allegorical being than a real live young lady--some Belinda of the 'Rape of the Lock' (and one would as soon have expected Belinda to turn Quakeress).

Music, poetry, dancing, elves, graces and flirtations, cupids, seem to attend her steps. She delights in admiration, friendship, companionship, and gaiety, and yet with it all we realise a warm-hearted sincerity, and appreciation of good and high-minded things, a truth of feeling pa.s.sing out of the realms of fancy altogether into one of the best realities of life. She had a thousand links with life: she was musical, artistic; she was literary; she had a certain amount of social influence; she had a voice, a harp, a charming person, mind and manner. Admiring monarchs in later days applauded her performance; devoted subjects were her friends and correspondents, and her sphere in due time extended beyond the approving Norwich-Athenian coterie of old friends who had known her from her childhood, to London itself, where she seems to have been made welcome by many, and to have captivated more than her share of victims.

In some letters of hers written to Mrs. Taylor and quoted by her biographer we get glimpses of some of these early experiences. The bright and happy excitable girl comes up from Norwich to London to be made more happy still, and more satisfied with the delight of life as it unfolds. Besides her fancy for lawyers, literary people had a great attraction for Amelia, and G.o.dwin seems to have played an important part in her earlier experience. A saying of Mrs. Inchbald's is quoted by her on her return home as to the report of the world being that Mr.

Holcroft was in love with Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Inchbald with Mr. G.o.dwin, Mr. G.o.dwin with Miss Alderson, and Miss Alderson with Mr. Holcroft!

The following account of Somers Town, and a philosopher's costume in those days, is written to her father in 1794:--

After a most delightful ride through some of the richest country I ever beheld, we arrived about one o'clock at the philosopher's house; we found him with his hair _bien poudre_, and in a pair of new sharp-toed red morocco slippers, not to mention his green coat and crimson under-waistcoat.

From G.o.dwin's by the city they come to Marlborough Street, and find Mrs.

Siddons nursing her little baby, and as handsome and charming as ever.

They see Charles Kemble there, and they wind up their day by calling on Mrs. Inchbald in her pleasant lodgings, with two hundred pounds just come in from Sheridan for a farce of sixty pages. G.o.dwin's attentions seem to have amused and pleased the fair, merry Amelia, who is not a little proud of her arch influence over various rugged and apparently inaccessible persons. Mrs. Inchbald seems to have been as jealous of Miss Alderson at the time as she afterwards was of Mary Wollstonecraft.

'Will you give me nothing to keep for your sake?' says G.o.dwin, parting from Amelia. 'Not even your slipper? I had it once in my possession.'

'This was true,' adds Miss Amelia; 'my shoe had come off and he picked it up and put it in his pocket.' Elsewhere she tells her friend Mrs.

Taylor that Mr. Holcroft would like to come forward, but that he had no chance.

That some one person had a chance, and a very good one, is plain enough from the context of a letter, but there is nothing in Mrs. Opie's life to show why fate was contrary in this, while yielding so bountiful a share of all other good things to the happy country girl.

Among other people, she seems to have charmed various French refugees, one of whom was the Duc d'Aiguillon, come over to England with some seven thousand others, waiting here for happier times, and hiding their sorrows among our friendly mists. G.o.dwin was married when Miss Alderson revisited her London friends and admirers in 1797--an eventful visit, when she met Opie for the first time.

The account of their first meeting is amusingly given in Miss Brightwell's memoirs. It was at an evening party. Some of those present were eagerly expecting the arrival of Miss Alderson, but the evening was wearing away and still she did not appear; 'at length the door was flung open, and she entered bright and smiling, dressed in a robe of blue, her neck and arms bare, and on her head a small bonnet placed in somewhat coquettish style sideways and surmounted by a plume of three white feathers. Her beautiful hair hung in waving tresses over her shoulders; her face was kindling with pleasure at the sight of her old friends, and her whole appearance was animated and glowing. At the time she came in Mr. Opie was sitting on a sofa beside Mr. F., who had been saying from time to time, 'Amelia is coming; Amelia will surely come. Why is she not here?' and whose eyes were turned in her direction. He was interrupted by his companion eagerly exclaiming, 'Who is that--who is that?' and hastily rising Opie pressed forward to be introduced to the fair object whose sudden appearance had so impressed him.' With all her love of excitement, of change, of variety, one cannot but feel, as I have said, that there was also in Amelia Alderson's cheerful life a vein of deep and very serious feeling, and the bracing influence of the upright and high-minded people among whom she had been brought up did not count for nothing in her nature. She could show her genuine respect for what was generous and good and true, even though she did not always find strength to carry out the dream of an excitable and warm-hearted nature.

IV.

There is something very interesting in the impression one receives of the 'Inspired Peasant,' as Alan Cunningham calls John Opie--the man who did not paint to live so much as live to paint. He was a simple, high-minded Cornishman, whose natural directness and honesty were unspoiled by favour, unembittered by failure. Opie's gift, like some deep-rooted seed living buried in arid soil, ever aspired upwards towards the light. His ideal was high; his performance fell far short of his life-long dream, and he knew it. But his heart never turned from its life's aim, and he loved beauty and Art with that true and unfailing devotion which makes a man great, even though his achievements do not show all he should have been.

The old village carpenter, his father, who meant him to succeed to the business, was often angry, and loudly railed at the boy when good white-washed walls and clean boards were spoiled by scrawls of lamp-black and charcoal. John worked in the shop and obeyed his father, but when his day's task was over he turned again to his darling pursuits. At twelve years old he had mastered Euclid, and could also rival 'Mark Oaks,' the village phenomenon, in painting a b.u.t.terfly; by the time John was sixteen he could earn as much as 7_s._ 6_d._ for a portrait. It was in this year that there came to Truro an accomplished and various man Dr. Wolcott--sometimes a parson, sometimes a doctor of medicine, sometimes as Peter Pindar, a critic and literary man. This gentleman was interested by young Opie and his performances, and he asked him on one occasion how he liked painting. 'Better than bread-and-b.u.t.ter,' says the boy. Wolcott finally brought his _protege_ to London, where the Doctor's influence and Opie's own undoubted merit brought him success; and to Opie's own amazement he suddenly found himself the fashion. His street was crowded with carriages; long processions of ladies and gentlemen came to sit to him; he was able to furnish a house 'in Orange Court, by Leicester Fields;' he was beginning to put by money when, as suddenly as he had been taken up, he was forgotten again. The carriages drove off in some other direction, and Opie found himself abandoned by the odd, fanciful world of fashions, which would not be fashions if they did not change day by day. It might have proved a heart-breaking phase of life for a man whose aim had been less single. But Opie was of too generous a nature to value popularity beyond achievement. He seems to have borne this freak of fortune with great equanimity, and when he was sometimes overwhelmed, it was not by the praise or dispraise of others, but by his own consciousness of failure, of inadequate performance. Troubles even more serious than loss of patronage and employment befell him later. He had married, unhappily for himself, a beautiful, unworthy woman, whose picture he has painted many times. She was a faithless as well as a weak and erring wife, and finally abandoned him. When Opie was free to marry again he was thirty-six, a serious, downright man of undoubted power and influence, of sincerity and tenderness of feeling, of rugged and unusual manners.

He had not many friends, nor did he wish for many, but those who knew him valued him at his worth. His second wife showed what was in her by her appreciation of his n.o.ble qualities, though one can hardly realise a greater contrast than that of these two, so unlike in character, in training, and disposition. They were married in London, at Marylebone Church, in that dismal year of '98, which is still remembered. Opie loved his wife deeply and pa.s.sionately; he did not charm her, though she charmed him, but for his qualities she had true respect and admiration.

V.

Opie must be forgiven if he was one-idead, if he erred from too much zeal. All his wife's bright gaiety of nature, her love for her fellow-creatures, her interest in the world, her many-sidedness, this uncompromising husband would gladly have kept for himself. For him his wife and his home were the whole world; his Art was his whole life.

The young couple settled down in London after their marriage, where, notwithstanding fogs and smoke and dull monotony of brick and s.m.u.t, so many beautiful things are created; where Turner's rainbow lights were first reflected, where Tennyson's 'Princess' sprang from the fog. It was a modest and quiet installation, but among the pretty things which Amelia brought to brighten her new home we read of blue feathers and gold gauze bonnets, tiaras, and spencers, scarlet ribbons, buff net, and cambric flounces, all of which give one a pleasant impression of her intention to amuse herself, and to enjoy the society of her fellows, and to bring her own pleasant contributions to their enjoyment.

Opie sat working at his easel, painting portraits to earn money for his wife's use and comfort, and encouraging her to write, for he had faith in work. He himself would never intermit his work for a single day. He would have gladly kept her always in his sight. 'If I would stay at home for ever, I believe my husband would be merry from morning to night--a lover more than a husband,' Amelia writes to Mrs. Taylor. He seemed to have some feeling that time for him was not to be long--that life was pa.s.sing quickly by, almost too quickly to give him time to realise his new home happiness, to give him strength to grasp his work. He was no rapid painter, instinctively feeling his light and colour and action, and seizing the moment's suggestion, but anxious, laborious, and involved in that sad struggle in which some people pa.s.s their lives, for ever disappointed. Opie's portraits seem to have been superior to his compositions, which were well painted, 'but unimaginative and commonplace,' says a painter of our own time, whose own work quickens with that mysterious soul which some pictures (as indeed some human beings) seem to be entirely without.

'During the nine years that I was his wife,' says Mrs. Opie, 'I never saw him satisfied with any one of his productions. Often, very often, he has entered my sitting-room, and, throwing himself down in an agony of despondence upon the sofa, exclaimed, "I shall never be a painter!"'

He was a wise and feeling critic, however great his shortcomings as a painter may have been. His lectures are admirable; full of real thought and good judgment. Sir James Mackintosh places them beyond Reynolds's in some ways.

'If there were no difficulties every one would be a painter,' says Opie, and he goes on to point out what a painter's object should be--'the discovery or conception of perfect ideas of things; nature in its purest and most essential form rising from the species to the genus, the highest and ultimate exertion of human genius.' For him it was no grievance that a painter's life should be one long and serious effort.

'If you are wanting to yourselves, rule may be multiplied upon rule and precept upon precept in vain.' Some of his remarks might be thought still to apply in many cases, no less than they did a hundred years ago, when he complained of those green-sick lovers of chalk, brick-dust, charcoal and old tapestry, who are so ready to decry the merits of colouring and to set it down as a kind of superfluity. It is curious to contrast Opie's style in literature with that of his wife, who belongs to the entirely past generation which she reflected, whereas he wrote from his own original impressions, saying those things which struck him as forcibly then as they strike us now. 'Father and Daughter' was Mrs.

Opie's first acknowledged book. It was published in 1801, and the author writes modestly of all her apprehensions. 'Mr. Opie has no patience with me; he consoles me by averring that fear makes me overrate others and underrate myself.' The book was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh.' We hear of one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs.

Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get.

Besides stories and novels, Mrs. Opie was the author of several poems and verses which were much admired. There was an impromptu to Sir James Mackintosh, which brought a long letter in return, and one of her songs was quoted by Sydney Smith in a lecture at the Royal Inst.i.tution. Mrs.

Opie was present, and she used to tell in after times 'how unexpectedly the compliment came upon her, and how she shrunk down upon her seat in order to screen herself from observation.'

The lines are indeed charming:--

Go, youth, beloved in distant glades, New friends, new hopes, new joys to find, Yet sometimes deign 'midst fairer maids To think on her thou leav'st behind.

Thy love, thy fate, dear youth to share Must never be my happy lot; But thou may'st grant this humble prayer, Forget me not, forget me not.

Yet should the thought of my distress Too painful to thy feelings be, Heed not the wish I now express, Nor ever deign to think of me; But oh! if grief thy steps attend, If want, if sickness be thy lot, And thou require a soothing friend, Forget me not, forget me not.

VI.

The little household was a modest one, but we read of a certain amount of friendly hospitality. Country neighbours from Norfolk appear upon the scene; we find Northcote dining and praising the toasted cheese. Mrs.

Opie's heart never for an instant ceased to warm to her old friends and companions. She writes an amusing account to Mrs. Taylor of her London home, her interests and visitors, 'her happy and delightful life.' She worked, she amused herself, she received her friends at home and went to look for them abroad. Among other visits, Mrs. Opie speaks of one to an old friend who has 'grown plump,' and of a second to 'Betsy Fry' who, notwithstanding her comfortable home and prosperous circ.u.mstances, has grown lean. It would be difficult to recognise under this familiar cognomen and description the n.o.ble and dignified woman whose name and work are still remembered with affectionate respect and wonder by a not less hard-working, but less convinced and convincing generation. This friendship was of great moment to Amelia Opie in after days, at a time when her heart was low and her life very sad and solitary; but meanwhile, as I have said, there were happy times for her; youth and youthful spirits and faithful companionship were all hers, and troubles had not yet come.

One day Mrs. Opie gives a characteristic account of a visit from Mrs.

Taylor's two sons. '"John," said I, "will you take a letter from me to your mother?" "Certainly," replied John, "for then I shall be sure of being welcome." "Fy," returned I. "Mr. Courtier, you know you want nothing to add to the heartiness of the welcome you will receive at home." "No, indeed," said Richard, "and if Mrs. Opie sends her letter by you it will be one way of making it less valued and attended to than it would otherwise be." To the truth of this speech I subscribed and wrote not. I have heard in later days a pretty description of the simple home in which all these handsome, cultivated, and remarkable young people grew up round their n.o.ble-minded mother.' One of Mrs. John Taylor's daughters became Mrs. Reeve, the mother of Mr. Henry Reeve, another was Mrs. Austin, the mother of Lady Duff Gordon.