“I had wandered away from my companion, Miss Jane Porter, to climb up a secret staircase in the wall, rather too difficult of ascent for a female foot, and from my elevated position I caught an accidental view of that distinguished lady through the arch of a Gothic window, with a background of broken architecture and foliage—presenting, by chance, perhaps, the most fitting and admirable picture of the authoress of the “Scottish Chiefs,” that a painter in his brightest hour could have fancied. Miss Porter, with her tall and striking figure, her noble face (said by Mr. Martin Shee to have approached nearer in its youth to his beau idéal of the female features than any other, and still possessing the remains of uncommon beauty,) is at all times a person whom it would be difficult to see without a feeling of involuntary admiration. But standing, as I saw her at that moment, motionless and erect, in the morning-dress, with dark feathers, which she has worn since the death of her beloved and gifted sister, her wrists folded across, her large and still beautiful eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and benevolent tranquility, while, around and above her, lay the material and breathed the spirit over which she had held the first great mastery—it was a tableau vivant which I was sorry to be alone to see.
“Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked the spirits of the ruins she stood among—a mind in which (by Sir Walter’s own confession) she had first bared the vein of romance which breathed so freely for the world’s delight? where the visions which sweep with such supernatural distinctness and rapidity through the imagination of genius—vision of which the millionth portion is probably scarcely communicated to the world in a literary lifetime—were Elizabeth’s courtiers, Elizabeth’s passions, secret hours, interviews with Leicester—were the imprisoned king’s nights of loneliness and dread, his hopes, his indignant, but unheeded thoughts—were all the possible circumstances, real or imaginary, of which that proud castle might have been the scene, thronging in those few moments of revery through her fancy? or was her heart busy with its kindly affections, and had the beauty and interest of the scene but awakened a thought of one who was most wont to number with her the sands of those brighter hours.
“Who shall say? The very question would perhaps startle the thoughts beyond recall—so illusive are even the most angelic of the mind’s unseen visitants?”
In another place we made the following memoranda of what we knew of her biography, etc.:—
“Miss Porter was the daughter of a gallant English officer, who died, leaving a widow and four children, then very young, but three of them destined to remarkable fame, Sir Robert Ker Porter, Jane Porter, and Anna Maria Porter. Sir Robert, as is well known, was the celebrated historical painter, traveller in Persia, soldier, diplomatist, and author, lately deceased. He went to Russia with one of his great pictures when very young, married a wealthy Russian princess, and passed his subsequent years between the camp and diplomacy, honored and admired in every station and relation of his life. The two girls were playmates and neighbors of Walter Scott. Jane published her “Scottish Chiefs,” at the age of eighteen, and became immediately the great literary wonder of her time. Her widowed mother, however, withdrew her immediately from society to the seclusion of a country town, and she was little seen in the gay world of London before several of her works had become classics. Anna Maria, the second sister, commenced her admirable series of novels soon after the first celebrity of Jane’s works, and they wrote and passed the brightest years of their life together in a cottage retreat. The two sisters were singularly beautiful. Sir Thomas Lawrence was an unsuccessful suitor to Anna Maria, and Jane was engaged to a young soldier who was killed in the Peninsula. She is a woman to have but one love in a lifetime. Her betrothed was killed when she was twenty years of age, and she has ever since worn mourning, and remained true to his memory. Jane is now the only survivor of the three; her admirable mother and her sister having died some twelve or fourteen years ago, and Sir Robert having died lately, while revisiting England after many years’ diplomatic residence in Venezuela.
“Miss Porter is now near seventy. She has suffered within the last two or three years from ill health, but she is still erect, graceful, and majestic in person and still possessed of admirable beauty of countenance. Her large dark eyes have a striking lambency of lustre, her smile inspires love in all who see her, and her habit of mind, up to the time we last saw her, (three or four years ago,) was that of reflecting the mood of others in conversation, thinking never of herself, and endeavoring only to make others shine, and all this with a tact, a playfulness and simplicity, an occasional unconscious brilliancy and penetration, which have made her, up to seventy years of age, a most interesting, engaging, and lovely woman. Considering the extent of her charm, over old and young, titled and humble, masters and servants, we sincerely think we never have seen a woman so beloved and so fascinating. She is the idol of many different circles of very high rank, and passes her time in yielding, month after month, to pressing invitations from the friends who love her. The dowager queen Adelaide is one of her warmest friends, the highest families of nobility contend for her as a resident guest, distinguished and noble foreigners pay court to her invariably on arriving in England, she has been ennobled by a decree of the king of Prussia, and with all this weight of honor on her head, you might pass weeks with her (ignorant of her history) without suspecting her to be more than the loveliest of women past their prime, and born but to grace a contented mediocrity of station.”
We know nothing more to the honor of the English nobility of this day, than that Jane Porter—such as she was—should have chosen and cherished the greater number of her friendships from among them. Utterly incapable of a servility or an obsequiousness as her gifted and lofty nature was always admitted to be, she still moved in the highest sphere of rank, with sympathies all expanded, and the imprint of congeniality, with all around her, stamped upon countenance and mien. Yet she had mingled, more or less, with all classes, and knew the world well. Had she found it necessary to sacrifice the slightest shadow of purity or independence to retain her position, or had she believed, or conjectured, that purer or simpler natures were to be found in the ranks below, she was not one to hesitate or compromise for an instant. But, with the intuitive perceptions of genius, and a disposition as open as the day, she chose this for her sphere, and lived in it as one who had no thought or need of managements, either to belong to, or to grace it. The class of society, in a country, with which simple and proud genius finds itself most at home, is its superior and true nobility; and, that England’s circles of high rank are so preferred, and so honored and brightened, by spirits like Jane Porter, is, we think, the evidence that proves most for England’s present civilization and glory.
OLE BULL’S NIAGARA.
(AN HOUR BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE.)
Saddle, as, of course, we are, under any very striking event, we find ourselves bestridden, now and then, with a much wider occupancy than the plumb-line of a newspaper column. Ole Bull possesses us over our tea-table; he will possess us over our supper-table—his performance of Niagara equi-distant between the two. We must think of him and his violin for this coming hour. Let us take pen and ink into our confidence.
The “origin of the harp” has been satisfactorily recorded. We shall not pretend to put forward a credible story of the origin of the violin; but we wish to name a circumstance in natural history. The house-cricket that chirps upon our hearth, is well known as belonging to the genus Pneumora. Its insect size consists almost entirely of a pellucid abdomen, crossed with a number of transverse ridges. This, when inflated, resembles a bladder, and upon its tightened ridges the insect plays like a fiddler, by drawing its thin legs over them. The cricket is, in fact, a living violin; and as a fiddler is “scarce himself” without his violin, we may call the cricket a stray portion of a fiddler.
Ole Bull “is himself” with his violin before him—but without it, the commonest eye must remark that he is of the invariable build of the restless searchers after something lost—the build of enthusiasts—that is to say, chest enormous, and stomach, if anything, rather wanting! The great musician of Scripture, it will be remembered, expressed his mere mental affliction by calling out “My bowels! my bowels!” and, after various experiments on twisted silk, smeared with the white of eggs, and on single threads of the silk-worm, passed through heated oil, the animal fibre of cat-gut has proved to be the only string that answers to the want of the musician. Without trying to reduce these natural phenomena to a theory (except by suggesting that Ole Bull may very properly take the cricket as an emblem of his instinctive pursuit), we must yield to an ominous foreboding for this evening. The objection to cat-gut as a musical string is its sensibility to moisture: and in a damp atmosphere it is next to impossible to keep it in tune. The string comes honestly enough by its sensitiveness (as any one will allow who has seen a cat cross a street after a shower)—but, if the cat of Ole Bull’s violin had the least particle of imagination in her, can what is left of her be expected to discourse lovingly of her natural antipathy—a water-fall?
But—before we draw on our gloves to go over to Palmo’s—a serious word as what is to be attempted to-night.
Ole Bull is a great creature. He is fitted, if ever mortal man was, to represent the attendant spirit in Milton, who
“Well knew to still the wild woods when they roared
And hush the moaning winds;”
but it seems to us that, without a printed programme, showing what he intends to express besides the mere sound of waters he is trusting far too rashly to the comprehension of his audience and their power of musical interpretation. He is to tell a story by music! Will it be understood?
We remember being very much astonished, a year or two ago, at finding ourself able to read the thoughts of a lady of this city, as she expressed them in an admirable improvisation upon the piano. The delight we experienced in this surprise induced us to look into the extent to which musical meaning had been perfected in Europe. We found it recorded that a Mons. Sudre, a violinist of Paris, had once brought the expression of his instrument to so nice a point that he “could convey information to a stranger in another room,” and it is added that, upon the evidence thus given of the capability of music, it was proposed to the French government to educate military bands in the expression of orders and heroic encouragements in battle! Hayden is criticised by a writer on music as having failed in attempting (in his great composition “The Seasons”) to express “the dawn of day,” “the husbandman’s satisfaction,” “the rustling of leaves,” “the running of a brook,” “the coming on of winter,” “thick fogs,” etc., etc. The same writer laughs at a commentator on Mozart, who, by a “second violin quartette in D minor,” imagines himself informed how a loving female felt on being abandoned, and thought the music fully expressed that it was Dido! Beethoven undertook to convey distinct pictures in his famous Pastoral Symphony, but it was thought at the time that no one would have distinguished between his musical sensations on visiting the country and his musical sensations while sitting beside a river—unless previously told what was coming!
Still, Ole Bull is of a primary order of genius, and he is not to wait upon precedent. He has come to our country, an inspired wanderer from a far away shore, and our greatest scenic feature has called on him for an expression of its wonders in music. He may be inspired, however, and we, who listen, still be disappointed. He may not have felt Niagara as we did. He may have been subdued where a meaner spirit would be aroused—as
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
(Seven o’clock, and time to go.)
* * * * * * *
(after the performance.)
We believe that we have heard a transfusion into music—not of “Niagara,” which the audience seemed bona-fide to expect, but—of the pulses of the human heart AT Niagara. We had a prophetic boding of the result of calling the piece vaguely “Niagara”—the listener furnished with no “argument,” as a guide through the wilderness of “treatment” to which the subject was open. This mistake allowed, however, it must be said that Ole Bull has, genius-like, refused to misinterpret the voice within him—refused to play the charlatan, and “bring the house down”—as he might well have done by any kind of “uttermost” from the drums and trumpets of the orchestra.
The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a “small, still voice” that replies within us to the thunder of waters. The musical mission of the Norwegian was to represent the insensate element as it was to him—to a human soul, stirred in its seldom-reached depths by the call of power. It was the answer to Niagara that he endeavored to render in music—not the call! We defer attempting to read further, or rightly, this musical composition till we have heard it again. It was received by a crowded audience, in breathless silence, but with no applause.
DR. LARDNER’S LECTURE.
We did not chance to hear Dr. Lardner’s excellent and amusing lecture on the “London literati,” etc., but the report of it in the “Republic” has scraped the moss from one corner of our memory, and we may, perhaps, aid in the true portraiture of one or two distinguished men by showing a shade or two in which our observation of them differed from that of the Doctor. We may remark here, that Dr. Lardner has been conversant with all the wits and scholars of England for the last two or three lustrums, and we would suggest to him that, with the freedom given him by withdrawal from their sphere, he might give us a book of anecdotical biography that would have a prosperous sale and be both instructive and amusing. We shall not poach upon the doctor’s manor, by the way, if we give our impression of one of these literati—himself—as he appeared to us, once in very distinguished company, in England. We were in a ball in the height of the season, at Brighton. Somewhere about the later hours, we chanced to be in attendance upon a noble lady, in company with two celebrated men, Mr. Ricardo and Horace Smith (the author of Brambletye House, and Rejected Addresses), Lady Stepney, authoress of the “New Road to Ruin,” approached our charming centre of attraction with a proposition to present to her the celebrated Dr. Lardner. “Yes, my dear! I should like to know him of all things!” was the reply, and the doctor was conjured forthwith into a magic circle. He bowed “with spectacles on nose,” but no other extraneous mark of philosopher or scholar. We shall not offend the doctor by stating that, on this evening, he was a very different looking person from his present practical exterior. With showy waistcoat, black tights, fancy stockings and small patent-leather shoes, he appeared to us an elegant of very bright water, smacking not at all, in manner no more than in dress, of the smutch and toil of the laboratory. We looked at and listened to him, we remember, with great interest and curiosity. He left us to dance a quadrille, and finding ourself accidentally in the same set, we looked at his ornamental and lover-like acquittal of himself with a kind of wonder at what Minerva would say! This was just before the doctor left England. We may add our expression of pleasure that the Protean facility of our accomplished and learned friend has served him in this country—making of him the best lecturer on all subjects, and the carver out of prosperity under a wholly new meridian.
But, to revert to the report of the Lecture:—
“The doctor gave some very amusing descriptions of the personal peculiarities of Bulwer and D’Israeli, the author of ‘Coningsby,’ observing that those who have read the works of the former, would naturally conclude him to be very fascinating in private society. Such, however, was not the case. He had not a particle of conversational facility, and could not utter twelve sentences free from hesitation and embarrassment. In fact, Bulwer was only Bulwer when his pen was in his hand and his meerschaum in his mouth. He is intimate with Count D’Orsay, one of the handsomest men of the day, and in his excessive admiration of that gentleman has adopted his style of dress, which is adapted admirably to the figure of the second Beau Brummell, but sits strangely on the feeble, rickety and skeleton form, of the man of genius.”
Now it struck us, on the contrary, that there was no more playful, animated, facile creature in London society than Bulwer. He seemed to have a horror of stilted topics, it is true, and never mingled in general conversation unless merrily. But at Lady Blessington’s, where there was but one woman present (herself), and where, consequently, there could be no têtes-à-têtes, Bulwer’s entrance was the certain precursor of fun. He was a brilliant rattle, and as to any “hesitation and embarrassment,” we never saw a symptom of it. At evening parties in other houses, Bulwer’s powers of conversation could scarce be fairly judged, for his system of attention is very concentrative, and he was generally deep in conversation with some one beautiful woman whom he could engross. We differ from the doctor, too, as to his style of dandyism. Spready upper works, trousers closely fitting to the leg, a broad-brimmed hat, and cornucopial whiskers, distinguished D’Orsay, while Bulwer wore always the loose French pantaloon, a measurable hat-brim, and whiskers carefully limited to the cheek. We pronounced the doctor’s astrology (as to the stars) based upon an error in “observation.”
The reporter adds:—
“D’Israeli he described as an affected coxcomb, with a restless desire to appear witty; yet he never remembered him to have said a good thing in his life except one, and that was generally repeated with the preface, ‘D’Israeli has said a good thing at last.’ ”
That D’Israeli is not a “bon-mot” man, is doubtless true. It never struck us that he manifested a “desire to appear witty.” He is very silent in the general melee of conversation, but we have never yet seen him leave a room before he had made an impression by some burst in the way of monologue—either an eloquent description or a dashing new absurdity, an anecdote or a criticism. He sits indolently with his head on his breast, taking sight through his eyebrows till he finds his cue to break in, and as far as our observation goes, nobody was ever willing to interrupt him. The doctor calls him an “affected coxcomb,” but it is only of his dress that this is any way true. No school-boy is more frank in his manners. When we were first in London, he was the immortal tenant of one room and a recess, and with manners indolently pensive. Three years after, returning to England, we found him master of a lordly establishment on Hyde Park, and, except that he looked of a less lively melancholy, his manners were as untroubled with affectation as before.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Numerous misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where more than one spelling was used, the most frequent spelling was adopted throughout the book. French diacritics were corrected.
Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.
A cover was created for this eBook by the Transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
[The end of Famous Persons and Places, by N.(Nathaniel) Parker Willis.]