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 noble
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 gratitude, 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 Constitutional
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
authoress 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 compassion for
the heroine; and when they saw her feather-bed put up to auction,
"governed their roaring throats, and grumbled pity." But our actress
anticipated 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 anticipated amusement,
tittering 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 noble 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; passion 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 damned 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 multitude; 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 passion that held the great
assemblage 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
circumstances, 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 circumstances 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
circumstances. 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 circumstances 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."
It was this anomalous character in her case, happily free from any kind
of grotesqueness or absurdity, and allied to everything virtuous and
noble, 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 scraps 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 passage 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
noble spirit that enabled her to surmount her afflictions by something
like philosophy. In 1811 she published her "Essays on the Superstitions
of the Highlands of Scotland, with Translations from the Gaelic," in two
volumes, and subsequently a poem, entitled "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 sex who were sent to reside with her. From the year 1826 also,
her means had been further increased by a pension of L100, 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 principal
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 accumulated 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 fictitious 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 compassion 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 principal 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 authoress. Her first piece, the comedy entitled "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 authoress 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
assistance. 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 circumstances 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 classics 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 amusement 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?