in an old castle. Miss Owenson, whom I saw in Dublin, tells me she is writing a tale of Hindostan. Let's keep to plain English for yours. Mrs. Opie was in London at the time of Sir Francis Burdett's forcible removal to the Tower in 1810 (he had barricaded his house, resisting what he considered an unjust arrest); and she speaks of the peculiar sensation she experienced, when returning late from a party to her rooms in Prince's Street, on seeing cannon planted in Hanover Square and soldiers watching by their guns. At Lady Charleville's Mrs. Opie saw "a venerable-looking blind woman, bowed by various cares." "This,' said Lady Charleville, "is Lady Sarah Napier. Will you sing her a ballad?" Mrs. Opie replied that she could not sing anything worth hearing, but she would try. "Surely," said Lady Sarah gently, "that was injudicious. Mrs. Opie would rather not have the attention of the company so loudly solicited." "Very true," replied Lady Charleville, "but your ladyship is always the best bred woman in the world, and I the worst, and I never see you without During a later visit to town Mrs. taking a lesson in manners." Mrs. Opie attended a brilliant soirée at the Opie sang "The Soldier's Farewell," house of Madame de Staël, who had inspired, apparently, by her immense recently left the court of Bernadotte, admiration for one of the young Naand was eloquent in his praise. She piers who accompanied his mother: produced a profile miniature of her fa-"He was wounded in every engagevorite, which she placed in the hand of ment abroad. I never saw a handSir Harry Englefield (a great virtuoso somer man I could not help looking of the day), anxiously awaiting his ver- at him! . . . he has his mother's outdict. "Carefully and long did he ex- line, enlarged into manly beauty, and amine the painting, and then, holding such fine dark eyes." it up to the light, observed, with a slow, distinct utterance, and in a rather loud voice, He is like a ferocious sheep!"" 6 "Corinne's" indignation was extreme, but Mrs. Opie says the resemblance was unmistakable. With all the vivacity and enthusiasm of her youth, the same enthusiasm she showed on behalf of the republican, Horne Tooke, Mrs. Opie joined in "Emperor-hunting," when the visit of the allied sovereigns in 1814 turned all the women's heads. Just room and time [she concludes one of her letters to her father] to say that I have seen and touched the emperor. Other ladies touched his hand, I squeezed his wrist only. I bribed the porter and got into his hotel !!! He was dressed in a scarlet uniform (ours) and wore our blue ribbon. His head is bald, his hair light, his complexion blond and beautiful, his eyes blue, his nose flattish, with a funny little button end to it, his mouth is small and his lips thin. His chest and shoulders are broad and finely formed, his manner graceful and dignified. He is the emperor of all the Russias, and therefore he is handsome, delightful, and so forth. At another party, given by Lady Cork, the guests suffered tortures from hope deferred. Blucher had been invited, but did not appear; every fresh arrival aroused expectation anew, only to be again disappointed. Lady Caroline Lamb, says Mrs. Opie, "did her possible" to keep up the flagging spirits of the invited guests, even to acting a charade; but when this was over, and the great man had not come, she too vanished. Then arrived Mrs. Wellesley Pole, bringing a beautiful prince - Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg; but saying she feared Blucher would not come. However, we now heard a distant, then a near hurrah, and a violent knocking at the door. The hurrahs increased and we all jumped up, exclaiming, “There's Blucher at last!" The door opened, the servant announced "General Blucher," and in strutted Lady Caroline in a cocked hat and a great coat! In the mean while Lord Hardwick had arrived from the British Gallery, where he had been in attendance on Princess Charlotte and the grand duchess, and to him Lady Caroline went with clasped hands and lifted eyes, saying she was come to ask the greatest favor would he give her some money? 'What 66 for ?" "Oh, to pay the servants for that | Phillips in 1816, Mrs. Opie was placed pretty hurruh; they did it so beautifully!" next to Sir Walter Scott, who told her So poor Lord Hardwick gave her a dollar, that he had cried over her "Father looking, I thought, rather silly at having and Daughter" "more than he ever his pocket so gracefully picked; and Lady Caroline ran down-stairs, delighted. 66 cried over such things." She asked Scott why, with such dramatic power, Even in the exceptionally brilliant he had never tried the drama? And circles of that exciting time Mrs. Opie he gave her an outline of a tragedy he was a special favorite. Her successes, had projected and even begun, during enjoyed with the simple gaiety of a which, she says, "his whole face bechild, are related with a child's candor came elevated in its character, and even to her father; she tells him how, all the features acquired dignity and grace through a dinner at Mackintosh's (a from the power of genius. Never shall philosophic dinner, at which she antic-I-never can I forget the fine exipated being starved with both cold and pression of his lifted eye." Wordshunger, for there was no fire, and three worth also was of the party, but she several hours for dining had been does not mention having spoken with named to different guests), J. W. Ward him. (afterwards Lord Dudley) whispered Meantime, during years, very briefly witty things in her ear more charm-summarized here, of social and inteling and more malicious, more Puck- lectual pleasure, of devoted attendance like than I had seen him for years." on her father, of steady literary work, How Lady Cork gave her an exquisite and of some passing thoughts of again training for a ball dress, "really hand- changing her name,1 an influence felt some; a wreath of white satin flowers from childhood was slowly gaining a worked upon net." How James Smith, stronger and stronger hold upon her. driving to a party at Fulham with her Dr. Alderson and the Gurney family and a friend, sang funny songs and re- had been lifelong friends; the sisters peated epigrams and bon mots all the Priscilla and Elizabeth (afterwards Mrs. way there, gave them an extempore Fry) were warmly attached to Amelia, comedy in the hall while waiting for and J. J. Gurney wrote from time to their carriage to return, and when time warning letters, in which he bade seated in it invented a romantic biog- her keep herself "unspotted from the raphy of Sir William Dunbar, in letters, world.” beginning, without a moment's pause, "When we last parted, my dear general, I was in the prime of life; every hope full of vigor," etc. How she meets Von Humboldt, who talks of "politics, science, literature, Greek, morals, church government, the characters of the emperor of Russia, king Miss Mitford this was not invariably the case. of Prussia, Blucher, and Platoff." How "old Albinia of Buckinghamshire" has made her promise to go to her "masked breakfast," and how, at another masquerade, a ball to the Duke of Wellington, she is to appear "full-time fixed for the wedding. It went off on agreedressed, but no train, and high feathers; with a pink domino of calico, made high and long, to give me height and disguise me, thrown over all, that I may be incog. till I am tired, and then appear as myself." Now what wilt thou say to me? [he thy countrified, drab-coated, Methodistical continues]. Perhaps thou wilt say that friend knows nothing of "the world," misinterprets the meaning of the apostle, and 1 Her biographer merely says that "she turned a deaf ear to such proposals." But according to "I doubt," she says in the letter previously quoted, "if it be permissible to ignore entirely the absolute Herbert Stuart (I forget names, but surely it was engagement Mrs. Opie was under to marry Lord Lord Herbert, a lame man). My good old friend Sir William Elford was invited by her to meet him at dinner; at that time all was arranged and the ment because, though each had enough to live on -he as a bachelor in lodgings, passing eight months of the year in the country houses of kinsfolk and friends, and she as a poor authoress without the encumbrance of rank- they could not muster enough to keep house and preserve a certain appearance in days when broughams and pages were not, and horses and men were essential to an estab At a breakfast given by Sir George lishment however modest." is frightened by the bugbear of a name as a child is by a ghost. There may be some truth in these observations of thine, and I must allow that the world is not idolatrous now as it was then. . . . but I refer particularly to the fashionable world, of which I am apt to entertain two notions - first, that into membership" in August, 1825. Had Mrs. Opie then known and loved Bishop Stanley and his son Arthur as she did in later years, her departure from Unitarianism might have taken another direction. Southey in one of there is much in it of real evil; second, his letters says: "I like her in spite of her Quakerism that there is much also in it which has a decided tendency to produce forgetfulness of God, and thus to generate evil indirectly. On the other hand, there is little in it, perhaps, which is positively good. nay, perhaps the better for it. It must always be remembered among what persons she had lived, and that religion was never presented to her in a serious form until she saw it in drab." He thanks her for her last letter, which an instructive inmate of my pocket-approval of his daughter's decision. Dr. Alderson expressed his warm He was dying; she would be left, as to close domestic ties, absolutely alone, and perhaps he thought her still buoyant and excitable temperament would them in the quieting discipline of the find a safe and supporting substitute for wider family of Friends. Mrs. Opie's Thou wilt observe, my dear friend, that I grief for her father's death, which took have underscored the words liked, admired, and flattered. It is because I know thou place in the following October, was no art so, and unless thou art of a very differ-less bitter because the event had been ent composition to thy friend it must afford long known to both of them to be apno small temptation to thee. . . . I really proaching. Her greatest comfort was should like to know how thy mind was in reflecting on their joint hope of reaffected by Lady Buckingham's day masquerade, because I am sure that if I could sing and converse in that way and procure all manner of favor and applause from innumerable lords and ladies, I should be as vain as a peacock thereupon. Now I confess that if thou art vain thy vanity does not show itself. union, and on the kind acts of her father's life; and her letters and journals during the years immediately following her loss show how unremittingly she toiled among the poor and sick and sinful, visiting hospitals, workhouses, and gaols, taking comfort and relief everywhere, and keeping a high ideal of religious duty before her eyes. But it seems morbid and distressing to find the innocent, sunny-tempered, sweetnatured Amelia Opie calling herself "vile," "cold and dead,” and suffering paroxysms of regret for unfulfilled duties." It is quite refreshing to come upon such an entry as: "Made a resolution not to speak slightingly again of if I can help it." The same letter mentions the serious illness of the writer's brother John, who died soon afterwards, to Mrs. Opie's lasting grief. She travelled all night from London to follow him to the grave, and thenceforward regularly attended the religious services of the Quakers. The loss of her old friends Hayley and Mrs. Inchbald, and of the lovely and gentle Priscilla Gurney, and a serious illness of Dr. Alderson's, further disinclined Mrs. Opie for general 1 "He prescribed," she says, "for four or five society, threw her much on the com- hundred persons at his house every week. panionship and sympathy of the Gur-forms in our large hall in the morning were so full neys, and disposed her to join the sect to which so many of her dearest surviving friends belonged. After long hesitation and mental conflict, the final step was taken, and she was "received The that I could scarcely pass; and this he did till the beginning of 1821, when, unable to go down-stairs, he received the people at my earnest desire in my little drawing-room, till he said he could receive no one again. Oh, it was the most bitter trial he or I ever experienced when he was forced to give up this truly Christian duty!” Of course Mrs. Opie's friends "in | French artists all declared resembled the world" were astonished and dis- a Phrygian helmet, and had un air mayed at the thought that she was classique; and she said of the medalgoing out of it. Lady Cork regarded lion when completed: "Though young the change mainly as a question of cos- and flattered, the thing is like, and David satisfied." She also made the acquaintance of Cuvier, the Duchesse de Broglie, and La Fayette : tume: Si vous êtes heureuse je ne suis pas malheureuse, used to be my motto to you. I must be glad that you are happy; but I must confess I have too much self not to feel it a tug at my heart, the no chance I have of enjoying your society again. Will your primitive cap never dine with me, and enjoy a quiet company? Your parliament friend does not wear a broad-brimmed hat, so pray, pray, pray do not put on the bonnet! Come to me and be my love in a dove-colored garb and a simple headdress. . . I could fill a paper with fun, but the cold water of your last makes me end my letter. ... And Lady Charleville wrote: Pour avoir le plaisir de te tutoyer, je t'écris, ma chère, en François, où l'on tutoyé naturellement celles que l'on aime. ... Et je te jure que, quand tu te ferois Bramine cela me seroit égale, tant que tu conserverais pour moi la même bonté que jadis!... Viens nous voir-j'en serai trop enchantée. Ton cœur n'est point changé, et je suis sûre que ta costume ne te rendra pas moins intéressante pour tes amis. The hero of my childhood, the idol of my youth, and I have found him far beyond my idea of him, high raised as it was! He is a handsome man of seventy-two, humble, simple, and blushing like a girl at his own praises, with manners the most perfect possible, and his bonhommie is so striking that one almost forgets his greatness and his fame. On returning to England, Mrs. Opie received perhaps the most honorable of many tributes to the worth of her mind and character, in the shape of a letter from Southey, accompanying a volume of his "Colloquies," in which, after urging on Mrs. Fry the establishment of societies for reforming the management of hospitals and infirmaries, which should do for them what she had already done for the prisons, he continues with a sort of stately fervor : I have another woman in my mind's eye -one who has been the liveliest of the lively, the gayest of the gay, admired for She did go to see them - at least, she her talents by those who knew her only in went to London, and took part in such her writings, and esteemed for her worth by decorous joys as her new convictions those who were acquainted with her in priOne who, having grown up in permitted"Yearly Meeting," "St. vate life. Giles' Schools Bazaar," and the "Afri- the laxest sect of semi-Christians, felt the can Meeting," at Freemason's Tavern, necessity of vital religion while attending where she saw some old acquaintances and who has now joined the lively faith for on her father in the infirmity of old age, -amongst them the Duke of Glouces- which her soul thirsted, not losing in the ter, of whom she says: "He seemed change her warmth of heart and cheerfulso glad to see me, and talked some ness of spirit, nor gaining by it any increase time, retaining my hand in his. I hope of sincerity and frankness, for with these friends behind were not scandalized!" Nature had endowed her, and society, even In 1829 Mrs. Opie revisited Paris, that of the great, had not corrupted them. divided between regret and anticipa-The resolution, the activity, the genius, the tion, deeply lamenting that she no benevolence required for such a work are longer had her husband beside her to be found in her, and were she present in to share her pleasure, nor her father to person as she is in imagination, I would whom to describe it; but resolved say to her, "Thou art the woman!"1 (Colloquies. Vol. ii., p. 322). "to keep recollection at bay." She sat to David for a medallion, which he said he wanted to take "because she had made him cry his eyes out." She her Quaker cap, which the wore 1 Could it could it have been a little touch of human jealousy which made Caroline Bowles write to Southey that " Friend Amelia" was "radically vulgar in all her notions"? To be sure she adds with quick repentance, "I am abominably spiteful, Not all the Quaker quietism which was "drawn away from the simplicity could be brought to bear upon her of the faith." Perhaps they had heard could quench in Amelia Opie her fas- that the Saint Simoniennes were anxcinated interest in revolutions, and it is ious to beguile the distinguished Enmost amusingly characteristic to find glishwoman to their meetings. "What her starting off to Paris in 1830 alone, a triumph it would be to them," a and telling nobody of her resolution Frenchman introduced by Cuvier said until she had started. On crossing to Mrs. Opie, "to get off that little the Place Royale she heard with in- cap and exchange it for a large black tense delight some young men singing hat and feathers!"— which, with a Casimir de la Vigne's "New National blue gown, formed the uniform of their Song: " Pour briser leurs masses profondes, Qui conduit nos drapeaux sanglants ? C'est la liberté des deux mondes sect. The Halls, who met her about this period, thus describe her: Her Despite somewhat of severity in her C'est La Fayette, en cheveux blancs! quick blue eye, her manner and appearance The name of La Fayette was like a were extremely prepossessing. greeting from a friend, and added to carriage was erect, her step firm and rapid, the "extraordinary elevation of spirit" her manner decided, her voice low and sweet in tone, her smile perfect sunshine. the adventure gave her. The memoShe flirted a fan with the ease and rable three days" were of course long grace of a Spanish donna, and if her bright, over before her arrival, and she was inquiring, and restless eyes made one rather astonished to find how many of their nervous at a first interview, the charm of traces had already been removed. In her smile and the winning grace of her fact, but for the tricolor waving over nature placed one at ease after a few the Tuileries, she might have doubted minutes' conversation. Still the incessant whether any revolution could have so sparkling of those quick blue eyes told that recently taken place. Mrs. Opie vis-"e'en in the tranquillest climes, light ited Mme. de Genlis, a really pretty breezes might ruffle the flower sometimes." old woman of eighty-seven, very unaffected, with nothing of smartness or state about her," who, on parting, embraced Mrs. Opie, exclaiming : "Je vous aime!" and at La Fayette's receptions saw crowds of celebrities who drew from her the very natural wish that they could "be ticketed" for the enlightenment of strangers. A few weeks after Mrs. Opie's arrival in Paris there were mutterings of a gathering storm-cordons formed round certain streets, the générale beating, National Guards bivouacking before the Tuileries and in the Place Vendôme. If a little of the old leaveu of love of beautiful adornment clung to the dainty delicacy and becoming arrangement of Mrs. Opie's Quaker cap and kerchief, she was true to the principles of her new sect in curbing her imagination. Mr. Hall (of course) asked her for a story for the "Amulet: " Thou knowest, or thou ought to know [she replied] that since I became a Friend I am not free to what is called make a story. I will write a fact for thy Annual, or any little matters of history, or truth, or a poem if thou wishest, but I must not lye, and say such and such a thing took place when it did not : dost thou understand me? 1 Her Quaker friends at home, however, looked jealously at these little It would be difficult by means of social and political excitements, includ- extracts to give any idea of the olding a quiet "seventh day" evening world charm which still pervades Mrs. spent with Queen Marie Amélie and Opie's writings, as the odor of pot the Duchesse d'Orléans, and told her pourri clings to a china jar. It lies in she had better come back before she the easy dialogue, the knowledge of human nature, the talent, as one of her critics says, "for perceiving truth with 1 Book of Memories. Virtue & Co. 1871. P.169. 4306 |