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From The Edinburgh Review.
THREE NOBLE ENGLISH WOMEN.1

in this

is certain that Lady Stuart de Rothe-
say's two daughters both showed a
tendency, through atavism, to revert to
the Lindsay stock, drawing from it
stores of literary, musical, and artistic

taste.

No taste is more popular or more enduring than the taste for memoirs. The English, as a nation, are not supposed to excel in them, and, perhaps because we are not a very sociable Perhaps such women will never come people, it has come to be said that again, and for us at the century's close they manage these things better in their lives and letters may well have a France. In that country the supply double fascination. The first half of does seem to be inexhaustible, but we the century still affects the imagination have latterly had no cause to complain of the world, whether we think of the of lack of such provender at home. revolutions of '30 and '48, or go back to Even where ladies are concerned we the Empire and its fall, to the literary do not feel disposed at this moment to giants, to the drifting philosophies, or yield the palm to Frauce. We have to the political and social aspirations of had Lady de Ros' souvenirs; the bril- the whole European family. These liant letters of the ambassadress Lady four noble women mark the close of a Granville have just been published; social dynasty, of the great lady who and here we have two books, differing had in her natural sphere the airs greatly in many respects, yet ideutical and some of the dignity of history. that the women were English Foreign to her needs, as well as to her in blood and culture, in the way in tastes, would have been the vexatious which they developed their talents, fermentation, made up of egotism, resteven in their opposite qualities, and in lessness, and ambition, which poisons their unforgotten charms. They were, so much of modern womanhood. The as we have assumed, types of English rush and struggle of all the nonentities culture during the most cultured days, to arrive, and to be heard of, if it be but in the pages of a were not, society paper," had not then begun in the day of these really great persons. If it had, it could but have brought a smile to their fair and well-bred faces. Born in the pur ple, they had little to wish for and nothing to fear. Welded into the mass of their equally fortunate or even illustrious connections, they were by this very circumstance hedged in from the world while yet all its doors stood open to them. Society, which to women of no importance, as to the poor, is apt to prove a stepmother, was ready and willing to add gifts to those which these fortunate beauties already possessed by inheritance. If in some respects their views were limited, they proved themselves ready to learn, and apt ou au emergency to turn courier or cook, secretary or sick nurse. They had learnt in their childhood a courteous consideration for others; they were sparer the ennui, the petty worries, and the solitude which eat into provincial life; and. flattered as they were, it is greatly to their credit that they preserved to

when local

examinations

when grace and kindness were thought excellent, when smartness did not cover, and lead to, a multitude of sins, when voluble voices did not shriek in all the keys of self-advertisement, and when the routine of duty was still held to be sufficient both for the guidance and for the emotions of life. It may further be asserted that these beautiful women were types of race. Lady Burghersh was a Wellesley, and as such she bore the unmistakable stamp of her line. The Stuart sisters inherited not only from their father's side an hereditary gift of wit, but as, on the mother's side, they descended through the Yorkes, from the great house of the Lindsays, Earls of Balcarres, so it

1 1. The Letters of Lady Burghersh (afterwards Countess of Westmoreland) from Germany and France during the Campaign of 1813-14. Edited by

hier daughter, Lady Rose Weigall. 1 vol. London : 1893.

2. The Story of Two Noble Lives: being Memorials of Charlotte, Countess Canning, and Louisa,

Marchioness of Waterford.
Hare. 3 vols. London: 1893.

By Augustus J. C.

66

the last a love of nature, and a taste for rors of the Indian Mutiny, like Marosimple pleasures. This they managed chetti's angel above the fateful well of to retain, although life had always Cawnpore, rises the pale, sweet face of been presented to them as more or less Charlotte Canning, with a prayer for of a pageant. They lived for and pardon on its lips. All these women among distinguished men; they heard are now poco polvere che nulla of great questions and of world-wide sente; past fashion, past the midinterests; but one of them found love night show, past pain, and past the "in the huts where the poor men lie," leagues which once lay between the and another preserved to extreme old artist and her ideal. To some their age the love of a gifted son who always memories remain, like sweet leaves in greeted her birthday with a poem. The a precious volume stored, and now to world smiled on them when they were those who never knew them their lives born, and it must be remembered that and letters are given. their circumstances were such as to The charm of their correspondence develop the strongest elements of indi- cannot fail to make itself felt. It is as vidual character, so that they managed if history, reflected in the mirrors of to stand out in relief from society. If their boudoirs, wore another face; but they suffered, it was from those name- if any one imagines that these deliless pangs, from that " vague disease" cately nurtured women wrote of battlewhich outsiders consider to be either an affectation or a mania bred of idleness. They had to bear the pangs of solitude in a crowd, the bitterness of self-deception, and the shrivelling of the heart in that refrigerating chamber which is commonly spoken of as a fashionable life." They were exposed now and again to a great deal of the fierce white light which beats on any position of social success, and in which all the errors, littlenesses, and susceptibilities of women show up only too plainly, but they hád véry real dangers, and still more real sorrows to confront. They had often to find and to make their own occupations and palliatives; while in the case of Lady Waterford, her genius, extraordinary as that was, found itself handicapped all through life by the want of the training which the commonest art student can now obtain in the government schools of design, to say nothing of the studios of the best French teachers.

2

fields and civil strife with rosewater, he is vastly mistaken. The fascination of their papers lies in this, that while reading pages that would not have disgraced a statesman's pen, we still, through all the changes and chances of empire, hear the beating of a woman's heart, and can learn something of the happiness that these heroines, like many humbler women, had to win for themselves through self-conquest, resignation, and diligence.

The papers have been judiciously edited. In a few tender lines Lady Rose Weigall says all that is needful. Mr. Hare's task has been a heavier one, and if his volumes contain a few blunders and misprints it would be invidious to draw attention to them, since they can be easily and advantageously removed in another edition.1 He has worked up with great skill the overwhelming mass of family papers entrusted to him. The letters, journals, and confessions of three generations were enough to bewilder an editor. Yet happy is the man who has his box full of them, for readers in these latter days thirst more and more

Lady Burghersh and Lady Canning were shown to the world by their marriages. Called to posts of responsibility and of danger, they proved of what qualities they were all compact. We shall see Lady Burghersh facing John, third Earl of Bute, never was what Mr. 1 For example, Lady Anne Stuart, daughter of warfare and privations with a girlish Hare calls her, a "charming duchess of Northumbuoyancy through which pierce the berland," since her misconduct with Mr. Bird iron courage and the stout will of the volume would gain were its proofs read by some 'Wellesleys; while above all the hor-one conversant with Indian life.

caused Lord Percy to divorce her.

The second

It is

never rack his brain to invent strange
events and unnatural characters.
enough if he tells the tale, if he tells the
story of any person's life faithfully, and
can render that as living as possible.

for what is true in humanity, and for what is true to human nature. With out such truth a biography runs the risk of being an unnatural production. Too many memoirs are but controversy in masquerade; some are twaddle, The novelist, of course, is able to some are vague delineation, few, if turn many a corner adroitly where the any, are fair. If the biographer trusts biographer would find his task more to his fancy, his vanity, or even his difficult, and the novelist does not skill, his work is apt to turn out like really deal with flesh and blood. The the portrait with which an amateur biographer, for his greater honor and photographer astonishes a sitter; the his greater perplexity, stands between whole thing being out of focus, the the living and the dead. The veil is in proportions have grown ludicrously his hand, and he must decide how far wrong, and the likeness has been lost. he is justified in lifting it; he may Then, if he trusts to memory only, his have all the right to roll away the stone work will be like Memory's figure in that hides a grave, but how often will one of Lady Waterford's beautiful and he pause before he troubles that august suggestive sketches. He has to stand sleep. Assuredly if women are to be. before a canvas he can never fill. In placed at the bar of history, it is best vain he tries to catch "the fleeting to let them pose and drape themselves. shadows of delight." He puts up his No one would choose to tell half truths, hand to shade from his eyes the light yet who would like to tell the whole? of "days too fair, too bright to last; "Who would not hesitate to say to pasthe mists collect, and "tears the fading sion, heedlessness, or vanity, This is visions close." To work from genu- all old history now; but, none the ine, from original human documents less, those false steps were of your is the only true plan. Mr. Hare has prompting, you inflicted that wound, had taste and modesty enough to keep and thence those tears." Mr. Augushimself mainly within these lines. His production may not be called very striking; in fact, readers may be found ready to complain that his lengthy volumes are more sad than entertaining. But the accurate rendering of several acts out of the passion play of human life must perforce be sad. If there are great and beautiful presences in life there is also a constant strain; the moments of unreflecting gaiety are few, and so difficult to portray that it often seems as if the mystery of joy must elude us, while the mystery of pain is always with us.

Mr. Hare can boast that he has been respectfully faithful to the trust imposed in him. It is always the life itself that is the precious and the poignant thing. George Sand used to express her contempt for invented and startling situations, even in a novel.

!

There is disorder enough even in the natural course of things, to say nothing of occasional cataclysms and tempests and of the great unexpected; so an author need

66

tus Hare has, in every respect, acquitted himself well. He has not printed that which he ought not to have printed; he allows his dramatis per sonce to speak for themselves, and we only like him the better when, between the lines, he leaves us to "discern infinite passion, and the pain of finite hearts that yearn.”

That these fascinating women conquered their fellow-men is easily understood, seeing that they had all the weapons needed for such victories Let any man try to imagine what must have been the charm of Priscilla Burghersh, at twenty years of age. The lovely Irish girl was newly married she was lively and accomplished, and full of energy. She had a will of iron; the initiative of a field marshal, and to all the Wellesley grit she added something of the cold indifference to suffer ing which is part of the Irish character. But for this last characteristic she could hardly have endured so quietly the many terrible sights and sounds of