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
pronunciation. 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 passing
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 Godwin 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. Godwin,
Mr. Godwin 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 poudré_, and in a pair of
new sharp-toed red morocco slippers, not to mention his green coat
and crimson under-waistcoat.
From Godwin'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. Godwin'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 Godwin, 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. Godwin 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.