You ask from me some particulars of the valued life so recently closed.
Miss Sheppard was my friend of many years; I was with her to the last
hour of her existence; but this is not the time for other than a brief
notice of her career, and I comply with your request by sending you a
slight memorial, hardly full enough for publication.
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard, the authoress of "Charles Auchester,"
"Counterparts," etc., was born at Blackheath, in England. Her father was
a clergyman of unusual scholastic attainments, and took high honors at
St. John's College, Oxford. Mr. Sheppard, on the mother's side, could
number Hebrew ancestors, and this was the pride of his second daughter,
the subject of this notice. Her love for the whole Hebrew race amounted
to a passion, which found its expression in the romance of "Charles
Auchester."
Very early she displayed a most decided poetic predisposition,--writing,
when but ten years old, with surprising facility on every possible
subject. No metre had any difficulties for her, and no theme seemed dull
to her vivid intelligence,--her fancy being roused to action in a
moment, by the barest hint given either by Nature or Art. Her first
drama was written at this early age; it was called "Boadicea," and was
composed immediately after she had been shown a field at Islington where
this queen is said to have pitched her tent. Any one who asked was
welcome to "some verses by 'Little Lizzie,'" written in her peculiar and
fairy-like hand, (for when very young, her writing was remarkable for
its extreme smallness and finish.) given with childlike simplicity, and
artless ignorance of the worth of what she bestowed with a kiss and a
smile.
Her poems were composed at once, with scarcely a correction. Her earlier
ones, for the most part, were written at the corner of a large table,
covered with the usual heaps of "after-lessons," in a school-room, where
some twenty enfranchised girls were putting away copybooks, French
grammars, etc., and getting out play-boxes and fancy-work, with the
common amount of chatter and noise. Contrasted with such young persons,
this child looked a strange, unearthly creature,--her large, dark gray
eye full of inspiration, and every movement of her frame and tone of her
voice instinct with delicate energy.
At the same age she would extemporize for hours on the organ, after
wreathing the candlesticks with garden-flowers which she had brought in
her hand,--their scent, she would say, suggesting the wild, sweet
fancies which her fingers seemed able to call forth on the shortest
notice. Persons straying into the church, as they often did, attracted
by the sound of music, would declare the performer to be an experienced
masculine musician.
When but a year older, she was an excellent Latin scholar, and, to use
her father's words, she might then have "gone in for honors at Oxford."
French she spoke and wrote fluently, besides reading Goethe and Schiller
with avidity, and translating as fast as she read,--Schiller having
always the preference. At fourteen she began the study of Hebrew, of
which language she was a worshipper, and could not at that early age
even let Greek alone. Her wonderful power of seizing on the genius of a
language, and becoming for the time a foreigner in spirit, was noticed
by all her teachers; her ear was so delicate that no subtile inflection
ever escaped her, nor any idiom.
And now she surprised her most intimate friend by the present of a prose
story, sent to her, when absent, in chapters by the post. This was
succeeded by many other tales, and finally by "Charles Auchester,"
--which romance, as well as that of "Counterparts," was written
in the few hours she could command after her teaching was over:
for in her mother's school she taught music the greater part of every
day,--both theoretically and practically,--and also Latin.
Her health, always delicate, suffered wofully from this constant strain,
and caused her to experience the most painful exhaustion, which,
however, she never permitted to be an excuse for shirking an occupation
naturally distasteful to her,--and doubly so, that through all the din
of practice her thousand fancies clamored like caged birds eager for
liberty.
The moment her hour of leisure came, she would hide herself with her
best loved work in the quietest corner she could find; sometimes it was
a little room in-doors, sometimes the summer-house, sometimes under a
large mulberry-tree; and thus "Charles Auchester" and "Counterparts"
were written, the former without one correction,--sheet after sheet,
flung from her hand in the ardor of composition, being picked up and
read by the friend who was in all her literary secrets. At last this
same friend, finding she had no thought of publication, in a moment of
playful daring, persuaded her to send the manuscript to Benjamin
Disraeli, and he introduced it to his publishers. I quote from his
letter to the author, which may not be out of place here:--
"No greater book will ever be written upon music, and it will one day be
recognized as the imaginative classic of that divine art."
"Counterparts" and other tales soon followed. And about the same date
she presented, anonymously, a volume of stories to the young daughter of
Mr. John Hullah, of "Part Music" celebrity. They were in manuscript
printing, (if such a term may be used,) written by her own hand, and
remarkable for their curious beauty. The heading of each story was
picked out in black and gold. The stories are named "Adelaide's Dream,"
"Little Wonder, or, The Children's Fairy," "The Bird of Paradise,"
"Sprömkari," (from a Scandinavian legend,) "The First Concert," "The
Concert in the Hollow Tree," "Uncle, or, Which is the Prettiest?"
"Little Ernest," "The Nautilus Voyage." These stories are illustrated,
and have a lovely dedication to the little lady for whom they were
written.
The author had attended the "Upper Singing-Schools" for the sake of more
musical experience. Yet she then sang at sight perfectly, with any
number of voices. She has left three published songs, dedicated to the
Marchioness of Hastings, and a large number of manuscript poems.
Her character was in perfect keeping with the high tone of her books.
Noble, generous, and self-forgetting, tender and most faithful in
friendship, burning with indignation at injustice shown to another,
longing to find virtues instead of digging for faults,--her greatest
suffering arose from pained surprise, when persons proved themselves
less noble than she had deemed them.
Her rich imagination and slender purse were open to all beggars, but for
herself she asked nothing, and was constantly a willing sufferer from
her own inability to toady a patron or to make a good bargain with a
publisher.
She felt most warmly for her friends in America, whose comprehension of
her views, and honest, open appreciation of her books, inspired her with
an ardent desire to write for them a romance in her very best manner.
She had sketched two, and, doubtful which to proceed with first,
contemplated sending both to an American friend for his decision; but
constant suffering stayed her hand.
In the early spring she grew weaker day by day, and died on the 13th of
March, at Brixton, in England, at the age of thirty-two.
Those who loved either her person or her works will find her place
forever empty.
Among her manuscript papers I found this sketch, which has a peculiar
significance now that the writer has passed away. It has never been
printed.