Part 10

“Her form was small and slight: her features wrinkled with age; but the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor lessened the fire of her eyes, the clearest, the brightest, and the most searching I have ever seen--they were singularly dark--positively black they seemed as they looked forth among carefully-trained tresses of her own white hair; and absolutely sparkled while she spoke of those of whom she was the venerated link between the present and the long past. Her manner on entering the room, while conversing, and at our departure, was positively sprightly; she tripped about from console to console, from window to window, to show us some gift that bore a name immortal, some cherished reminder of other days--almost of another world, certainly of another age; for they were memories of those whose deaths were registered before the present century had birth.... She was clad, I well remember, in a dress of rich pea-green silk. It was an odd whim, and contrasted somewhat oddly with her patriarchal age and venerable countenance, yet was in harmony with the youth of her step, and her unceasing vivacity as she laughed and chatted, chatted and laughed, her voice strong and clear as that of a girl, and her animation as full of life and vigour as it might have been in her spring-time.”--1825.

[Sidenote: A. M. Hall’s _Pilgrimages to English Shrines_.]

“Her brow was full and well sustained, rather than what would be called _fine_: from the manner in which her hair was dressed, its formation was distinctly visible; and though her eyes were half-closed, her countenance was more tranquil, more sweet, more holy--for it _had_ a holy expression--than when those deep intense eyes were looking you through and through. Small, and shrunk, and aged as she was, she conveyed to us no idea of feebleness. She looked, even then, a woman whose character, combining sufficient thought and wisdom, as well as dignity and spirit, could analyse and exhibit, in language suited to the intellect of the people of England, the evils and dangers of revolutionary principles. Her voice had a pleasant tone, and her manner was quite devoid of affectation or dictation; she spoke as one expecting a reply, and by no means like an oracle. And those bright immortal eyes of hers--not wearied by looking at the world for more than eighty years, but clear and far-seeing then--laughing, too, when she spoke cheerfully, not as authors are believed to speak--

‘In measured pompous tones,’--

but like a dear matronly dame, who had especial care and tenderness towards young women. It is impossible to remember how it occurred, but in reference to some observation I had made she turned briskly round and exclaimed, ‘Controversy hardens the heart, and sours the temper: never dispute with your husband, young lady; tell him what you think, and leave it to time to fructify.’”

SIR THOMAS MORE

1480-1535

[Sidenote: More’s _Life of Sir Thomas More_.]

“He was of a meane stature, well proportioned, his complexion tending to the phlegmaticke, his colour white and pale, his hayre neither black nor yellow, but betweene both; his eies gray, his countenance amiable and chearefull, his voyce neither bigg nor shrill, but speaking plainely and distinctly; it was not very tunable, though he delighted much in musike, his bodie reasonably healthfull, only that towards his latter ende by using much writing, he complained much of the ache of his breaste. In his youth he drunke much water, wine he only tasted of, when he pledged others; he loved salte meates, especially powdered beefe, milke, cheese, eggs and fruite, and usually he eate of corse browne bread, which it may be he rather used to punish his taste, than from anie love he had thereto. For he was singularly wise to deceave the world with mortifications, only contenting himselfe with the knowledge which God had of his actions: et pater ejus, qui erat in abscondito reddidit ei.”

[Sidenote: Campbell’s _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_. *]

“Holbein’s portrait of More has made his features familiar to all Englishmen. According to his great-grandson, he was of ‘a middle stature, well proportioned, of a pale complexion; his hair of a chestnut colour, his eyes gray, his countenance mild and cheerful; his voice not very musical, but clear and distinct; his constitution, which was good originally, was never impaired by his way of living, otherwise than by too much study. His diet was simple and abstemious, never drinking any wine but when he pledged those who drank to him, and rather mortifying than indulging his appetite in what he ate.’

[Sidenote: _Life of Sir Thomas More._ *]

“He is rather below than above the middle size; his countenance of an agreeable and friendly cheerfulness, with somewhat of an habitual inclination to smile; and appears more adapted to pleasantry than to gravity or dignity, though perfectly remote from vulgarity or silliness.”

CAROLINE NORTON

1808-1877

[Sidenote: Kemble’s _Records of a Girlhood_.]

“When I first knew Caroline Sheridan she had not long been married to the Hon. George Norton. She was splendidly handsome, of an un-English character of beauty, her rather large and heavy head and features recalling the grandest Grecian and Italian models, to the latter of whom her rich colouring and blue-black braids of hair gave her an additional resemblance. Though neither as perfectly lovely as the Duchess of Somerset, nor as perfectly charming as Lady Dufferin, she produced a far more striking impression than either of them, by the combination of the poetical genius with which she alone, of the three, was gifted, with the brilliant power of repartee which they (especially Lady Dufferin) possessed in common with her, united to the exceptional beauty with which they were all three endowed. Mrs. Norton was exceedingly epigrammatic in her talk, and comically dramatic in her manner of relating things.... She was no musician, but had a deep, sweet contralto voice, precisely the same in which she always spoke, and which, combined with her always lowered eyelids (‘downy eyelids’ with sweeping silken fringes), gave such incomparably comic effect to her sharp retorts and ludicrous stories.... I admired her extremely.--1827.

“The next time ... was at an evening party at my sister’s house, where her appearance struck me more than it had ever done. Her dress had something to do with this effect, no doubt. She had a rich gold-coloured silk on, shaded and softened all over with black lace draperies, and her splendid head, neck, and arms, were adorned with magnificently simple Etruscan ornaments, which she had brought from Rome, whence she had just returned, and where the fashion of that famous antique jewellery had lately been revived. She was still ‘une beauté triomphante à faire voir aux ambassadeurs.’”

[Sidenote: A personal friend.]

“The most beautiful of ‘the beautiful Sheridans,’ Caroline Norton will also live in the memory of her friends as one of the most fascinating of women. Her voice was exceedingly sweet and musical, her movements wonderfully graceful, and, with the solitary exception of Theodore Hook, whose rough, coarse wit spared no one, her queenly bearing won her general adulation and deference. Her face was a pure oval, her head was crowned by heavy braids of the darkest hair, while the warmth and light which suffused her expressive countenance gave her a somewhat un-English appearance. Her eyes were dark; black curly lashes swept over the warmly-tinted cheek; the lips were of geranium red; the teeth, dazzlingly white. Altogether she was a vivid piece of colouring, and as she was always very beautifully dressed, it did not require her literary reputation to make her at all times sought after and admired.”

[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]

“It seems but yesterday--it is not so very long ago certainly--that I saw for the last time the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Her radiant beauty was then faded, but her stately form had been little impaired by years, and she had retained much of the grace that made her early womanhood so surpassingly attractive. She combined, in a singular degree, feminine delicacy with masculine vigour; though essentially womanly, she seemed to have the force of character of man. Remarkably handsome she perhaps excited admiration rather than affection. I can easily imagine greater love to be given to a far plainer woman. She had, in more than full measure, the traditional beauty of her family, and no doubt inherited with it some of the waywardness that is associated with the name of Sheridan.”

THOMAS OTWAY

1651-1685

[Sidenote: _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1745.]

“You’ll be glad to know any trifling circumstance concerning Otway. His person was of the middle size, about five feet seven inches in height, inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful speaking eye, and that was all. He gave himself up early to drinking, and, like the unhappy wits of that age, passed his days between rioting and fasting, ranting jollity and abject penitence, carousing one week with Lord Pl----th, and then starving a month in low company at an ale-house on Tower Hill.”

[Sidenote: Sir Walter Scott’s _Memoir of Mrs. Radcliffe_. *]

“Otway, heavy, squalid, unhappy; yet tender countenance, but not so squalid as one we formerly saw; full-speaking, black eyes; it seems as if dissolute habits had overcome all his finer feelings, and left him little of mind, except a sense of sorrow.” _On a picture._

SAMUEL PEPYS

1632-1703

[Sidenote: _The Cornhill Magazine_, 1874. *]

“Pepys spent part of a certain winter Sunday, when he had taken physic, composing ‘a song in praise of a liberal genius (such as I take my own to be) to all studies and pleasures.’ The song was successful, but the diary is, in a sense, the very song that he was seeking; and his portrait by Hales, so admirably reproduced in Mynors Bright’s edition, is a confirmation of the diary. Hales, it would appear, had known his business, and though he put his sitter to a deal of trouble, almost breaking his neck ‘to have the portrait full of shadows,’ and draping him in an Indian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he was preoccupied about no merely picturesque effects, but to portray the essence of the man. Whether we read the picture by the diary, or the diary by the picture, we shall at least agree, that Hales was among the numbers of those who can ‘surprise the manners in a face.’ Here we have a mouth pouting, moist with desires; eyes greedy, protuberant, and yet apt for weeping too; a nose great alike in character and dimensions, and altogether a most fleshly, melting countenance. The face is attractive by its promise of reciprocity. I have used the word _greedy_, but the reader must not suppose that he can change it for that closely kindred one of _hungry_, for there is here no aspiration, no waiting for better things, but an animal joy in all that comes. It could never be the face of an artist; it is the face of a _viveur_--kindly, pleased, and pleasing, protected from excess and upheld in contentment by the shifting versatility of his desires. For a single desire is more rightly to be called a lust; but there is health in a variety, where one may balance and control another.”

ALEXANDER POPE

1688-1744

[Sidenote: _The Guardian_, 1713.]

“Dick Distich ... we have elected president, not only as he is the shortest of us all, but because he has entertained so just a sense of his stature as to go generally in black, that he may appear yet less. Nay, to that perfection is he arrived, that he stoops as he walks. The figure of the man is odd enough; he is a lively little creature, with long arms and legs: a spider is no ill emblem of him. He has been taken at a distance for a small windmill.”--1713.

[Sidenote: Johnson’s _Life of Pope_.]

“The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed on the nicest model. He has, in his account of the Little Club, compared himself to a spider, and, by another, is described as protuberant behind and before. He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy; but he was of a constitution originally feeble and weak; and, as bodies of a tender frame are easily distorted, his deformity was, probably, in part the effect of his application. His stature was so low, that to bring him on a level with common tables it was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid.... His dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword.... He sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or inferiors; but by no merriment, either of others or of his own, was he ever seen excited to laughter.”

[Sidenote: Tyer’s _Historical rhapsody on Mr. Pope_.]

“Pope, as Lord Clarendon says of (the ever memorable) Hales of Eaton, was one of the least men in the kingdom; who adds of Chillingworth, that he was of a stature little superior to him, and that it was an age in which there were many great and wonderful men of that size.... He inherited his deformity from his father, who turns out at last, from the information of Mrs. Racket his relation, to have been a linen-draper in the Strand.

‘My friend, this shape which you and I will admire, Came not from Ammon’s son, but from my sire,’

as he expresses himself in his first epistle to Arbuthnot. He was protuberant behind and before, in the words of his last biographer. But he carried a mind in his face, as a reverend person once expressed himself of a singular countenance. He had a brilliant eye, which pervaded everything at a glance.”

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER

1787-1874

[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]

“I have also seen and scraped acquaintance with Procter--Barry Cornwall. He is a slender, rough-faced, palish, gentle, languid-looking man, of three or four and thirty. There is a dreamy mildness in his eye; he is kind and good in his manners and, I understand, in his conduct. He is a poet by the ear and the fancy, but his heart and intellect are not strong.”--1824.

[Sidenote: S. C. Hall’s _Retrospect of a long Life_.]

“A decidedly rather pretty little fellow, Procter, bodily and spiritually: manners prepossessing, slightly London-elegant, not unpleasant; clear judgment in him, though of narrow field; a sound, honourable morality, and airy friendly ways; of slight, neat figure, vigorous for his size; fine genially rugged little face, fine head; something curiously dreamy in the eyes of him, lids drooping at the _outer_ ends into a cordially meditative and drooping expression; would break out suddenly now and then into opera attitude and a _Là ci darem là mano_ for a moment; had something of real fun, though in London style.”

[Sidenote: Fields’s _Yesterdays with Authors_.]

“The poet’s figure was short and full, and his voice had a low, veiled tone habitually in it, which made it sometimes difficult to hear distinctly what he was saying. When he spoke in conversation, he liked to be very near his listener, and thus stand, as it were, on confidential grounds with him. His turn of thought was apt to be cheerful among his friends, and he entered readily into a vein of wit and nimble expression. Verbal facility seemed natural to him, and his epithets, evidently unprepared, were always perfect. He disliked cant and hard ways of judging character. He praised easily. He impressed every one who came near him as a born gentleman, chivalrous and generous in a high degree.”

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

1786-1859

[Sidenote: Masson’s _de Quincey_.]

“In addition to the general impression of his diminutiveness and fragility, one was struck with the peculiar beauty of his head and forehead, rising disproportionately high over his small, wrinkly visage and gentle, deep-set eyes. His talk was in the form of really harmonious and considerate colloquy, and not at all in that of monologue.... That evening passed, and though I saw him once or twice again, it is the last sight I remember best. It must have been, I think, in 1846, on a summer afternoon. A friend, a stranger in Edinburgh, was walking with me in one of the pleasant, quiet, country lanes near Edinburgh. Meeting us, and the sole living thing in the lane beside ourselves, came a small figure, not untidily dressed, but with his hat pushed far up in front of his forehead, and hanging on his hindhead, so that the back rim must have been resting on his coat-collar. At a little distance I recognised it to be De Quincey; but, not considering myself entitled to interrupt his meditations, I only whispered the information to my friend, that he might not miss what the look at such a celebrity was worth. So we passed him, giving him the wall. Not unnaturally, however, after we passed, we turned round for the pleasure of a back view of the wee, intellectual wizard. Whether my whisper and our glance had alarmed him, as a ticket-of-leave man might be rendered uneasy in his solitary walk by the scrutiny of two passing strangers, or whether he had some recollection of me (which was likely enough, as he seemed to forget nothing), I do not know, but we found that he, too, had stopped, and was looking round at us. Apparently scared at being caught doing so, he immediately wheeled round again, and hurried his face towards a side-turning in the lane, into which he disappeared, his hat still hanging on the back of his head. That was my last sight of De Quincey.”--1846.

[Sidenote: Page’s _de Quincey_.]

“Pale he was, with a head of wonderful size, which served to make more apparent the inferior dimensions of his body, and a face which lived the sculptured past in every lineament from brow to chin. One seeing him would surely be tempted to ask who he was that took off his hat with such grave politeness, remaining uncovered if a lady were passing almost until she was out of sight, and would get for an answer likely enough, ‘Oh, that is little De Quincey, who hears strange sounds and eats opium. Did you ever see such a little man?’ Little he was, indeed, like Dickens and Jeffrey, the latter of whom had so little flesh that it was said that his intellect was indecently exposed.”

[Sidenote: James Payn’s _Literary Recollections_.]

“In the ensuing summer, after the publication of another volume of poems, I visited Edinburgh, and called upon De Quincey, to whom I had a letter of introduction from Miss Mitford. He was at that time residing at Lasswade, a few miles from the town, and I went thither by coach. He lived a secluded life, and even at that date had become to the world a name rather than a real personage; but it was a great name. Considerable alarm agitated my youthful heart as I drew near the house: I felt like Burns on the occasion when he was first about ‘to dinner wi’ a Lord.’... My apprehensions, however, proved to be utterly groundless, for a more gracious and genial personage I never met. Picture to yourself a very diminutive man, carelessly--very carelessly--dressed; a face lined, careworn, and so expressionless that it reminded one of ‘that chill changeless brow, where cold Obstruction’s apathy appals the gazing mourners heart’--a face like death in life. The instant he began to speak, however, it lit up as though by electric light; this came from his marvellous eyes, brighter and more intelligent (though by fits) than I have ever seen in any other mortal. They seemed to me to glow with eloquence. He spoke of my introducer, of Cambridge, of the Lake Country, and of English poets. Each theme was interesting to me, but made infinitely more so by some apt personal reminiscence. As for the last-named subject, it was like talking of the Olympian gods to one not only cradled in their creed, but who had mingled with them, himself half an immortal.”

ANN RADCLIFFE

1764-1823

[Sidenote: Kavanagh’s _English Women of Letters_. *]

“Ann Ward’s education was plain and somewhat formal. She was shy; she showed no extraordinary genius, and the times were not propitious to the development of female intellect. The young girl’s person was probably more admired than her mind. She was short, but exquisitely proportioned; she had a lovely complexion, fine eyes and eyebrows, and a beautiful mouth. She had a sweet voice too, and sang with feeling and taste.”

[Sidenote: Scott’s _Memoir of Ann Radcliffe_.]

“This admirable writer, whom I remember from about the time of her twentieth year, was, in her youth, of a figure exquisitely proportioned, while she resembled her father and his brother and sister in being low of stature. Her complexion was beautiful, as was her whole countenance, especially her eye, eyebrows, and mouth.”

[Sidenote: _Memoir of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe._]

“Mrs. Radcliffe, though a giant in intellect, was low in stature, and of a slender form, but exquisitely proportioned: her countenance was beautiful and expressive.”

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

1552-1618

[Sidenote: _The Nineteenth Century_, 1881. *]

“In appearance what manner of man was Raleigh when in Ireland? There was much change, of course, from the dashing captain of eight and twenty, when he was putting the unarmed men to the sword and hanging the women in Dingle Bay, to the admiral of sixty-five who, between the Tower and the scaffold, visited his old haunts in the county of Cork for the last time in the three summer months of 1617.

“But all accounts agree in giving him a commanding presence, a handsome and well-compacted figure, a forehead rather too high; the lower part of his face, though partly hidden by the moustache and peaked beard, showing rare resolution. His portrait, a life-sized head, painted when he was Major of Youghal, was recently presented to the owner of his house, where it had been years ago, by the senior member for the county of Waterford; and another original picture of him when in Ireland is in the possession of the Rev. Pierce W. Drew of Youghal. Both these Irish pictures show the same lofty brow and firm lips. There is an old and much-prized engraving by Vander Werff of Amsterdam that seems to combine all his characteristic features--the extraordinarily high forehead, the moustache and peaked beard, ill-concealing a too determined mouth. The likeness is most striking.”

[Sidenote: Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Persons_. *]

“He was a tall, handsome, and bold man; but his _næve_ was, that he was damnably proud.... In the great parlour at Downton, at Mr. Ralegh’s, is a good piece (an originall) of Sir W. in a white sattin doublet, all embroidered with rich pearles, and a mighty rich chaine of great pearles about his neck. The old servants have told me that the pearles were neer as big as the painted ones. He had a most remarkable aspect, an exceedingly high forehead, long-faced, and sourlie-bidded, a kind of pigge-eie.... He spake broad Devonshire to his dye-ing day. His voice was small, as likewise were my schoolfellowes, his gr. nephews.”

[Sidenote: _Publications of the Prince Society._ *]