Women of History Part 16

It was this anomalous character in her case, happily free from any kind of grotesqueness or absurdity, and allied to everything virtuous and n.o.ble, that both directed her to literature and authorship in the first instance, and gave much of its interest to what she wrote.

[Annie Macvicar, Mrs Grant's maiden name, the daughter of Duncan Macvicar, "a plain, brave, pious man," having been taken by her parents to America, returned to Scotland, and married in 1779 Mr Grant, a chaplain at Fort-Augustus in Inverness-shire. She acquired a taste for farming, led a life of fervid activity, and had a large family of children, all promising, and the greater number of them beautiful. It would have been strange indeed if her literary aspirations had sprung out of the domestic habits of the mother of a large family, and the manager of a farm; but we are told by herself that she had begun to scrawl a kind of Miltonic verse when she was little more than nine years old. She had early written off many sc.r.a.ps of poetry, and distributed them among her friends, who had taken care to preserve them, while Mrs Grant had retained no copies. It was by a kind of amicable conspiracy that these friends set about the good work of collecting and publishing these pieces in such a way as would secure pecuniary relief to the author. The subscriptions amounted to three thousand names, and the "Original Poems, with some Translations from the Gaelic," appeared in 1803. Some years afterwards came her "Letters from the Mountains," which not only claimed the attention of the reading world, but inspired so much love and respect for the quiet virtues and literary abilities of the author, that many who knew her, and some who did not, contributed to help her in her hard struggle with the world. But Mrs Grant's life was destined to be a pa.s.sage through storm and sunshine. Her husband died, and her children, inheriting his tendency to decline, fell off one by one, so that every year brought her fresh trouble, yet still with a n.o.ble spirit that enabled her to surmount her afflictions by something like philosophy. In 1811 she published her "Essays on the Superst.i.tions of the Highlands of Scotland, with Translations from the Gaelic," in two volumes, and subsequently a poem, ent.i.tled "Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen," which excited little attention.]

Mrs Grant's life for some years after she gave up writing for the public had been in part devoted to an intellectual employment of another kind, the superintendence of the education of a succession of young persons of her own s.e.x who were sent to reside with her. From the year 1826 also, her means had been further increased by a pension of 100, which was granted to her by George IV., on a representation drawn up by Sir Walter Scott, and supported by Henry Mackenzie, Lord Jeffrey, and other distinguished persons among her friends in Edinburgh. During the period of nearly thirty years that she resided there, she was a princ.i.p.al figure in the best and most intellectual society of the Scottish metropolis, and to the last her literary celebrity made her an object of curiosity and attraction to strangers from all parts of the world. Even after the loss of the last of her daughters, her correspondence testifies that she still took a lively interest in everything that went on around her. "With all its increasing infirmities," she says, "and even with the acc.u.mulated sorrows of my peculiar lot, I do not find age so dark and unlovely as the Celtic bard seems to consider it. However imperfectly my labour has been performed, we may consider it nearly concluded; and even though my cup of sorrow has been brimful, the bitter ingredient of shame has not mingled with it. On all those who were near and dear to me, I can look back with approbation, and may tenderly cherish unspotted memories, fond recollections, and the hopes that terminate not here. I feel myself certainly not landed, but in a harbour from whence I am not likely to be blown out by new tempests." Even after this, she was destined to receive another severe shock from the death, in April 1837, in her twenty-eighth year, of her daughter-in-law, who had been married only three years, and to whom she was strongly attached. Still her courageous heart bore her up, and the zest with which she enjoyed intellectual pleasures continued almost as keen as ever.

ELIZABETH INCHBALD.

[BORN 1756. DIED 1821.]

CUNNINGHAM.

The daughter of a small farmer in Suffolk, of the name of Simpson.

Having lost her father in her infancy, she was left under the care of her mother, who continued to manage the farm; and in the pleasant seclusion of this cottage home, Miss Simpson was presented with abundant opportunities of gratifying her literary propensities. So sensibly had her imagination been wrought upon by the tales of fict.i.tious grief and happiness she had met with in the course of her desultory reading, that she formed the romantic resolution of visiting the metropolis, the scene of many of the stories which had so powerfully excited her sympathies.

This intention did not, as may be supposed, meet with the approbation of her friends; but so fixed was her determination to accomplish, _a tout prix_, the object she had in view, that she seized an opportunity of eloping from her home entirely without the knowledge of her family.

Early one morning in February 1772, she left Staningfield for London, and with a few necessary articles of apparel packed in a band-box, walked, or rather ran, a distance of two miles to the place from which the coach set out for the metropolis.

This step, in a girl of sixteen years of age, did not augur very favourably of her future conduct or respectability; but the subsequent tenor of her life affords additional proof that very admirable results will often arise out of indifferent and even reprehensible beginnings.

On her arrival at London, she sought a distant relation who lived in the Strand; but on reaching the house, was, to her great mortification, informed that she had retired from business, and was settled in North Wales. It was near ten o'clock at night, and her distress at this disappointment moved the compa.s.sion of the people of whom she had made her inquiries, who kindly accommodated her with a lodging. This civility, however, awakened her suspicions. She had read in "Clarissa Harlowe," of various modes of seduction practised in London, and feared that similar intentions were being meditated against her. A short time after her arrival, therefore, observing that she had awakened their curiosity, our young heroine seized her band-box, and, without uttering a single word, rushed out of the house, and left them to their conjectures that she was either a maniac or an impostor.

Her necessities drove her to the stage, where she met with considerable success, and performed princ.i.p.al characters when she was only eighteen years of age. After a residence of four years in Edinburgh with her husband, Mr Inchbald, also an actor of some celebrity, she returned to London, where she acted for several years at Covent Garden. Soon after she became an auth.o.r.ess. Her first piece, the comedy ent.i.tled "I'll Tell you What," was at first rejected by Colman of Haymarket, but finally approved and brought out with considerable success in 1785. In 1789 she retired from the stage, and devoted herself from that time entirely to literature. She wrote a number of popular dramatic pieces, and edited a new edition of "The British Theatre," and other dramatic collections; but it is to her two novels, "Nature and Art," and "The Simple Story,"

that she chiefly owes her reputation. She died at Kensington in 1821.

The mind of this auth.o.r.ess had an original cast, and her literary style was peculiar, terse, pointed, and impressive. By exemplary industry and prudence, she had raised herself into a state of comfortable independence; but she had a liberal heart, and deprived herself of many enjoyments in order to provide for relations who stood in need of her a.s.sistance. She was animated, cheerful, and intelligent in conversation, and her remarks were not taken on trust, but were the effects of acute penetration. She was very handsome in youth, and retained much of her beauty and elegance till her death.

ELIZABETH HAMILTON.

[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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.sics 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 the comedy 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 cla.s.ses.

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 been sent by the auth.o.r.ess, 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 in _the heartsome ingle-nook_ by her _ain 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 anecdote she 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.

COUNTESS DE VEMIEIRO.

[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 ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.sion than from circ.u.mstances,--qualities, indeed, which more particularly distinguish her s.e.x. 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 a.s.serting that this tragedy is the only one which the Portuguese theatre can properly be said to possess.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

[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 t.i.tle, "A Series of Plays, in which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Pa.s.sions of the Mind, each Pa.s.sion being the Subject of a Tragedy and a Comedy." A second volume of the "Plays of the Pa.s.sions" appeared in 1802, and a third in 1812. The tragedies are fine poems, n.o.ble in sentiment, and cla.s.sical 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," not contained 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 Pa.s.sions," 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.

JOSEPHINE.

[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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 the breath 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 n.o.bility which had preceded her elevation.

Pa.s.sionately fond of dress, and often blameably extravagant in that particular, she occasioned no small embarra.s.sment 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.