Women of History Part 15

MADAME D'ARBLAY.

[BORN 1752. DIED 1840.]

MACAULAY.

The daughter of Dr Burney deserves to have the progress of her mind recorded from her ninth to her twenty-fifth year. When her education had proceeded no further than her hornbook she lost her mother, and thenceforward educated herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet-tempered man can well be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to have occurred to him that a parent has other duties to perform to children than that of fondling them. No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write, and before she was fourteen she began to find pleasure in reading. It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very small.

When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most celebrated writings of Voltaire and Moliere, and, what seems still more extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is particularly deserving of observation, that she appears to have been by no means a novel-reader. Her father's library was large, and he had admitted into it so many books which rigid moralists generally exclude, that he felt uneasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single novel--Fielding's "Amelia."

But the great book of human nature was turned over before f.a.n.n.y Burney.

A society, various and brilliant, was sometimes to be found in Dr Burney's cabin. Johnson and he met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously. One tie, indeed, was awanting to their mutual attachment.

Burney loved his own art, music, pa.s.sionately, and Johnson just knew the bell of St Clement's Church from the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; and in winter nights their conversations were sometimes prolonged till the fire had gone out, and the candles had burned away to the wicks. Burney's admiration of the powers which had produced "Ra.s.selas" and the "Rambler" bordered on idolatry. Johnson, on the other hand, condescended to growl out that Burney was an honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible not to like. Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street. That wonderful actor loved the society of children, partly from good nature, and partly from vanity.

The ecstasies of mirth and terror which his gestures and play of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of pure critics. He often exhibited all his powers of memory for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in Saint Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks.

f.a.n.n.y's propensity to novel-writing could not be kept down. She told her father she had written a novel ["Evelina"]. On so grave an occasion it was surely his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, to prevent her exposing herself if her book was a bad one, and if it were a good one to see that the terms which she made with the publisher were likely to be beneficial to her. Instead of this he only stared, burst out a-laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and never even asked the name of the work. The contract with Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were given for the copyright, and were accepted by f.a.n.n.y with delight. Her father's inexcusable neglect of his duty happily caused her no worse evil than the loss of 1200 or 1500. After many delays, "Evelina" appeared in 1778. Poor f.a.n.n.y was sick with terror, and durst hardly stir out of doors. Some days pa.s.sed before anything was heard of the book. Soon, however, the first accents of praise begin to be heard. The keepers of the circulating libraries reported that everybody was asking for "Evelina," and that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author.

Scholars and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that they could not tear themselves away from "Evelina." After producing other novels, for one of which, "Camilla," she is said to have received three thousand guineas, and encountering many strange vicissitudes, Madame D'Arblay died at the age of eighty-eight.

MADAME ROLAND.

[BORN 1754. DIED 1793.]

CARLYLE.

A far n.o.bler victim follows, one who will claim remembrance from several centuries--Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the wife of Roland. Queenly, sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to Riouffe in her prison.

"Something more than is usually found in the looks of women painted itself," says he, "in those large black eyes of hers, full of expression and sweetness. She spoke to me often at the grate; we were all attentive round her, in a sort of admiration and astonishment. She expressed herself with a purity, with a harmony and prosody, that made her language like music, of which the ear could never have enough. Her conversation was serious, not cold. Coming from the mouth of a beautiful woman, it was frank and courageous as that of a great man." "And yet her maid said, 'Before you she collects her strength; but, in her own room, she will sit three hours sometimes leaning on the window and weeping.'"

She has been in prison,--liberated once, but recaptured the same hour,--ever since the 1st of June, in agitation and uncertainty, which has gradually settled down into the last stern certainty--that of death.

In the Abbaye Prison, she occupied Charlotte Corday's apartment. Here, in the Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe; with ex-minister Claviere calls the beheaded twenty-two "_nos amis_, our friends," whom all are so soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of hers were written which all the world still reads.

But now, on the 8th of November, "clad in white," says Riouffe, "with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle," she is gone to the judgment-bar. She returned with a quick step; lifted her finger, to signify to us that she was doomed; her eyes seemed to have been wet.

Fouquier-Tinville's questions had been "brutal;" offended female honour flung them back on him with scorn, not without tears. And now, short preparation soon done, she too shall go her last road. There went with her a certain Lamarche, "director of a.s.signat-printing," whose dejection she endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her"--a remarkable request--which was refused. Looking at the statue of Liberty which stands there, she says, "O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!" For Lamarche's sake she will die first, to show him how easy it is to die. "Contrary to the order," says Samson. "Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a lady;" and Samson yielded.

n.o.ble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle, and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman's bosom! Like a white Grecian statue, serenely complete, she shines in that black wreck of things, long memorable. Honour to great Nature who, in Paris city, in the era of n.o.ble-sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her clear perennial womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopedies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques! Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a pen "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness and a kind of sacredness over all that preceded; so in her, too, there was an unnameable; she, too, was a daughter of the Infinite; there were mysteries which Philosophism had not dreamt of! She left long written counsels to her little girl. She said her husband would not survive her.

Some days afterwards, Roland, hearing the news of what happened on the 8th, embraces his kind friends at Rouen; leaves their kind house which had given him refuge; goes forth, with farewell too sad for tears. On the morrow morning, 16th of the month, "some four leagues from Rouen, Paris-ward, near Bourg-Baudoin, in M. Normand's avenue," there is seen, sitting leant against a tree, the figure of a rigorous wrinkled man, stiff now in the rigour of death, a cane-sword run through his heart, and at his feet this writing: "Whoever thou art that findest me lying, respect my remains; they are those of a man who consecrated all his life to being useful, and who has died, as he lived, virtuous and honest. Not fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat, on learning that my wife had been murdered. I wished not to remain longer on an earth polluted with crimes."

MARIE ANTOINETTE.

[BORN 1755. DIED 1793.]

CARLYLE.

On Monday, 14th October 1793, a cause is pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as these stone walls never witnessed--the trial of Marie Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To such changes of human fortune, what words are adequate?

Silence alone is adequate.

There are few printed things one meets with of such tragic, almost ghastly significance, as those bald pages of the _Bulletin du Tribunal Revolutionnaire_, which bear t.i.tle, "Trial of the Widow Capet." Dim, dim, as if in disastrous eclipse, like the pale kingdoms of Dis!

Plutonic judges, Plutonic Tinville; encircled nine times with Styx and Lethe, with Fire-Phlegethon and Cocytus, named of Lamentation! The very witnesses summoned are like ghosts; exculpatory, inculpatory, they themselves are all hovering over death and doom; they are known in our imagination as the prey of the guillotine. Tall _ci-devant_ Count d'Estaing, anxious to show himself patriot, cannot escape; nor Bailly, who, when asked if he knows the accused, answers with a reverent inclination towards her, "Ah, yes, I know Madame." Ex-patriots are here, sharply dealt with as Procureur Manuel; ex-ministers, shorn of their splendour. We have cold aristocratic impa.s.sivity, faithful to itself even in Tartarus; rabid stupidity of patriot corporals, patriot washerwomen, who have much to say of plots, treasons, August tenth, old insurrection of women. For all now has become a crime in her who has lost.

Marie Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her look, they say, as that hideous indictment was reading, continued calm. "She was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one plays on the piano."

You discern not without interest across that dim Revolutionary Bulletin itself, how she bears herself queen-like. Her answers are prompt, clear, often of laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. "You persist, then, in denial?" "My plan is not denial; it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that." Scandalous Hebert has borne his testimony as to many things; as to one thing concerning Marie Antoinette and her little son, wherewith human speech had better not further be soiled. She has answered Hebert; a juryman begs to observe that she has not answered to this. "I have not answered," she exclaims with n.o.ble emotion, "because nature refuses to answer such a charge brought against a mother. I appeal to all the mothers that are here." Robespierre, when he heard of it, broke out into something almost like swearing at the brutish blockheadism of this Hebert, on whose foul head his foul lie has recoiled. At four o'clock on Wednesday morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating, jury charging, and other darkening of counsel, the result comes out--sentence of death. "Have you anything to say?" The accused shook her head, without speech. Night's candles are burning out; and with her, too, Time is finishing, and it will be eternity and day.

This hall of Tinville's is dark, ill-lighted, except where she stands.

Silently she withdraws from it to die.

There was once a procession before, "on the morrow," says Weber, "the Dauphiness left Vienna. The whole city crowded out, at first with a sorrow which was silent. She appeared. You saw her sunk back into her carriage, her face bathed in tears; hiding her eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands; several times putting out her head to see yet again this palace of her fathers, whither she was to return no more. She motioned her regret, her grat.i.tude, to the good nation which was crowding here to bid her farewell. Then arose not only tears, but piercing cries on all sides. Men and women alike abandoned themselves to such expression of their sorrow. It was an audible sound of wail in the streets and avenues of Vienna. The last courier that followed her disappeared, and the crowd melted away."

The young imperial maiden of fifteen has now become a worn, discrowned widow of thirty-eight, grey before her time. This is the last procession. "Few minutes after the trial ended, the drums were beating to arms in all sections; at sunrise the armed force was on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities of the bridges, in the squares, crossways, all along from the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Revolution. By ten o'clock, numerous patrols were circulating in the streets; thirty thousand foot and horse drawn up under arms. At eleven, Marie Antoinette was brought out. She had on an undress of _pique blanc_; she was led to the place of execution in the same manner as an ordinary criminal, bound in a cart, accompanied by a Const.i.tutional Priest in lay dress, escorted by numerous detachments of infantry and cavalry. These, and the double row of troops all along her road, she appeared to regard with indifference. On her countenance there was visible neither abashment nor pride. To the cries of _Vive la Republique_, and Down with Tyranny, which attended her all the way, she seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to her confessor. The tricolour streamers on the house-tops occupied her attention in the Streets du Roule and Saint-Honore; she also noticed the inscriptions on the house-fronts. On reaching the Place de la Revolution, her looks towards the _Jardin National_, whilom Tuileries; her face at that moment gave signs of lively emotion. She ascended the scaffold with courage enough; at a quarter past twelve her head fell. The executioner showed it to the people amid universal long-continued cries of _Vive la Republique_."

SARAH SIDDONS.

[BORN 1755. DIED 1831.]

CUNNINGHAM.

This unrivalled actress, born in 1755, was, like her brother John Kemble, led upon the boards at a very early age; so young indeed was she, that the rustic audience, offended at her infantile appearance, began to hoot and hiss her off, when her mother Mrs Kemble, herself an actress, led her to the front of the stage, and made her repeat the fable of the boys and the frogs, which she did in such a manner as appeased the critics, and insured a favourable reception for her ever after. In her eighteenth year, she married Mr Siddons, an actor in her father's company; and the young couple soon after took an engagement to act at Cheltenham. "At that time," says Mr Campbell, "the Hon. Miss Boyle, the daughter of Lord Dungarvon, a most accomplished woman, and auth.o.r.ess of several pleasing poems, one of which, an "Ode to the Poppy," was published by Charlotte Smith, happened to be at Cheltenham.

She had come accompanied by her mother and her mother's second husband, the Earl of Aylesbury. One morning that she and some other fashionables went to the box-keeper's office, they were told that the tragedy to be performed that evening was "Venice Preserved." They all laughed heartily, and promised themselves a treat of the ludicrous in the misrepresentation of the piece. Some one who overheard their mirth, kindly reported it to Mrs Siddons. She had the part of _Belvidera_ allotted to her, and prepared for the performance of it with no very enviable feelings. It may be doubted whether Otway had imagined in _Belvidera_ a personage more to be pitied than her representative now thought herself. The rabble in "Venice Preserved" showed compa.s.sion for the heroine; and when they saw her feather-bed put up to auction, "governed their roaring throats, and grumbled pity." But our actress antic.i.p.ated refined scorners more pitiless than the rabble, and the prospect was certainly calculated to prepare her more for the madness than the dignity of her part. In spite of much agitation, however, she got through it. About the middle of the piece, she heard some unusual and apparently suppressed noises, and therefore concluded that the fashionables were in the full enjoyment of their antic.i.p.ated amus.e.m.e.nt, t.i.ttering and laughing, as she thought, with unmerciful derision.

She went home, after the play, grievously mortified. Next day, however, Mr Siddons met in the street Lord Aylesbury, who inquired after Mrs Siddons' health, and expressed not only his own admiration of her last night's exquisite acting, but related its effects on the ladies of his party. They had wept, he said, so excessively, that they were unpresentable in the morning, and were confined to their rooms with headaches. Mr Siddons hastened home to gladden his fair spouse with this intelligence. Miss Boyle soon afterwards visited Mrs Siddons at her lodgings, took the deepest interest in her fortunes, and continued her ardent friend till her death. She married Lord O'Neil of Shanes Castle, in Ireland. It is no wonder that Mrs Siddons dwells with tenderness, in her memoranda, on the name of this earliest encourager of her genius.

Miss Boyle was a beauty of the first order, and gifted with a similar mind, as her poetry and patronage of the hitherto unnoticed actress evince." A rumour of the newly-discovered genius having reached Garrick, Mrs Siddons began, through his patronage, that career of success which is so well known.

Mrs Siddons undoubtedly possessed the highest order of poetical conception for the purposes of stage delivery; yet, like her brother, not a little of the impression she produced was owing to her great physical powers, and the commanding dignity of her person. In her most violent scenes, the majesty of her mien was pre-eminent; and even when prostrate on the stage, she still lay graceful and sublime. As Madame de Stael says of her in her "Corrine," "_L'actrice la plus n.o.ble dans ses manieres, Madame Siddons, ne perd rien de sa dignite quand elle se prosterne contre terre._" Of her _Lady Macbeth_, which all critics now allow to be her _chef d'oeuvre_, Lord Byron said: "It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow; pa.s.sion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. In coming on in the sleeping scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut; she was like a person bewildered--her lips moved involuntarily, all her gestures seemed mechanical; she glided off and on the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life never to be forgotten."

"It was impossible," says an able critic, "for those who beheld Mrs Siddons in _Lady Macbeth_, to imagine the embodied in any other shape.

That tall, commanding, and majestic figure; that face, so sternly beautiful, with its firm lips and large dark eyes; that brow, capacious of a wild world of thought, overshadowed by a still gloom of coal-black hair; that low, clear-measured, deep voice, audible in whispers, so portentously expressive of strength of will, and a will to evil; the stately tread of those feet, the motions of those arms and hands, seeming moulded for empiry--all those distinguished the Thane's wife from other women, to our senses, our soul, and our imagination, as if nature had made Siddons for Shakspeare's sake, that she might impersonate to the height his sublimest and most dreadful creation.

Charles Lamb may smile--and his smile is ever pleasant--but we are neither afraid nor ashamed to say that we never read the tragedy--and we have read it a thousand and one nights--without seeing and hearing _that Lady Macbeth_--our study becoming the stage--and 'out d.a.m.ned spot,' a shuddering sigh, terrifying us in the imagined presence of a breathless crowd of sympathising spirits. That sleep-walker, in the power of her guilt, would not suffer us to be alone in our closet. Noiseless her gliding steps, and all alone in her haunted unrest, we saw her wringing her hands before a gazing mult.i.tude; their eyes, how unlike to hers! and we drew dread from the quaking all around us, not unmingled with a sense of the magnificent, breathed from the pa.s.sion that held the great a.s.semblage mute and motionless--yet not quite--that sea of heads all lulled; but the lull darkened as by the shadow of a cloud surcharged with thunder."

MRS GRANT.

[BORN 1755. DIED 1838.]

PROFESSOR CRAIK.

The late excellent Mrs Grant of Laggan, as she used to be designated to the end of her long life, from the parish of Inverness-shire, of which her husband had been clergyman, and with which her first publications were connected, affords another remarkable example both of the successful cultivation of literature by a woman in trying or unusual circ.u.mstances, and of the attainment thereby of many worldly in addition to higher advantages. She has herself told us the story of her early life and her first struggles, in an unfinished Memoir which has been published since her death. In the mere acquisition of knowledge she had no peculiar difficulties to encounter either from circ.u.mstances or any deficiency in herself. On the contrary, her faculties were quick and early developed, and her opportunities, though not affording her a regular education, were well suited to nourish and strengthen those tendencies and powers which chiefly gave her mind its distinctive character.

"I began to live," she observes, "to the purposes of feeling, observation, and recollection much earlier than children usually do. I was not acute, I was not sagacious, but I had an active imagination and uncommon powers of memory. I had no companion; no one fondled or caressed me, far less did any one take the trouble of amusing me. I did not, till I was six years of age, possess a single toy. A child with less activity of mind would have become torpid under the same circ.u.mstances. Yet, whatever of purity of thought, originality of character, and premature thirst for knowledge, distinguished me from other children of my age, was, I am persuaded, very much owing to these privations. Never was a human being less improved in the sense in which that expression is generally understood, but never was one less spoilt by indulgence, or more carefully preserved from every species of mental contagion. The result of the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which I was placed had the effect of making me a kind of anomaly very different from other people, and very little influenced by the motives, as well as very ignorant of the modes of thinking and acting prevalent in the world at large."