תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

her accomplished Norwich friend and correspondent, that she found Mrs. Inchbald.

"As pretty as ever, and much more easy and unreserved in her manner than when I last saw her. With her we passed an hour, and when I took my leave she begged I would call on her again. She is in charming lodgings, and has just received two hundred pounds from Sheridan for a farce containing sixty pages only." *

Mrs. Inchbald's second novel, "Nature and Art," published in 1794, never attained the popularity of "The Simple Story" it is hardly more than known by name now. But Leigh Hunt quotes some powerful scenes from it, and says, "Passages more beautiful and pathetic than those which we have selected are not to be found in the whole range of English prose." †

A great sorrow, to which was added the sting of self-reproach, befell her this year, in the death, under deplorable circumstances, of her sister Debby. Mrs. Inchbald had helped her repeatedly; but on one occasion, disgusted at the mode of life from which no arguments or persuasions could withdraw her, she refused to see her. On hearing of Debby's illness, Mrs. Inchbald hastened to supply her with every possible help and comfort; but after its fatal termination she bitterly reproached herself for having once turned her sister from her door, when she was suppliant and perhaps a penitent." Another family tragedy occurred in the following year. Her brother George, after his failures as actor and farmer, had been living for some time in an inn at Hamburg with a friend named Web. ber. They quarrelled, fought a duel, and George was shot dead. Webber was captured and imprisoned.

66

a

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

visitors.* Lord Abercorn soon called on Mrs. Inchbald after her visit to the Priory. He was a sworn admirer of beauty and originality, and must have fallen under the spell of whose potency Mrs. Shelley says :—

"I have heard that a rival beauty pettishly complained that when Mrs. Inchbald came into a room and sat in a chair in the middle of it, as was her wont, every man gathered round it, and it was vain for any other woman to attempt to gain attention."

It is not surprising to find that she was soon again one of the guests at Stanmore Priory.

Among Mrs. Inchbald's papers was one written about this time, and indorsed in her own writing, "Description of Me." Boaden attributes it to Charles Moore, who will be heard of again later.

"Age: between thirty and forty, which in the register of a lady's birth means a little size and rather tall. Figure: handsome and turned of thirty. Height: above the middle striking in its general air, but a little too stiff and erect. Shape: rather too fond of sharp angles. Skin: by nature fair, though a little freckled, and with a tinge of sand, which is the color of her eyelashes, but made coarse by ill treatment upon her cheeks and arms. Hair of a sandy auburn, and rather too straight as well as thin. Face: beautiful in effect, and beautiful in every feature. Countenance full of spirit and sweetness; exces. sively interesting, and, without indelicacy, voluptuous. Dress: always becoming, and very seldom worth so much as eightpence."

Mrs. Inchbald never appeared to less advantage than on the death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which occurred in 1797. She strongly disapproved of Godwin's marriage to the author of "The Rights of Woman," for reasons not made clear in Mr. Kegan Paul's account of the quarrel that followed; but, if Godwin's own letters speak correctly, her con

* Fanny Kemble relates an amusing encounter with one of Mrs. Inchbald's acquaintances in the "great" world: "An aristocratic neighbor of hers, driving with his daughter in the vicinity of her very humble residence, overtook her walking along the road one very hot day, and, stopping his carriage, asked her to let him have the pleasure of taking her home. She instantly declined, with the characteristic excuse that she had just come from the market gardener's, And, my lord, I-I—I have my pocket ff full of onions' an unsophisticated statement of facts which made them laugh extremely."

duct was certainly ungenerous, and her letters to him after his wife's death are singularly unsympathetic, and compare ill with Godwin's dignified expression of heartfelt grief. She tells him in effect that he will very soon forget his sorrow, and that had Mrs. Godwin lived longer he might have added remorse to regret !

Lawrence was now one of Mrs. Inchbald's friends, and painted her portrait, as did several less famous artists.

Rogers, too, sharp-tongued, but kindhearted and generous beyond contemporary belief, was much interested in her. Curran, after sending her "his admiration," called at her rooms, and made an attempt to reconcile her to Godwin, not at that time effectual. Lady Cork invited her to dinner, adding

"I should have done myself the pleasure of calling on you, but my carriage is painting, and I hate a chair in the morning or walking the streets when people are about. I would

walk to you any morning, at or before eleven

o'clock, if you would admit me, but I suspect your time is better employed than in paying and receiving morning visits."

The beautiful Duchess of Devonshire made an appointment with her in Kemble's box, but, as was frequently the case with that erratic though fascinating woman, was detained, and sent Lady Elizabeth Foster" in her place." * Mrs. Inchbald was present at most of the fashionable gatherings of the day, including a grand masquerade, for which, she wrote to an intimate friend, she meant to be

"At no expense at all. My domino is lent me. Have you an old blue handkerchief, or an old blue sash, or anything of a light-faded blue you can lend me, to decorate my faded person? Observe - anything blue! A blue work bag, a blue pin cushion, or a pair of blue garters I can fasten about me somewhere."

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

sharp illness the servant of the very landlady who had so ungraciously refused to allow a pail of water to be carried upstairs for her. A letter of this period shows the sharp contrasts of her life :

"I have been very ill indeed, but since the

I

weather has permitted me to leave off making my fire, scouring the grate, sifting the cinders, and all the et cetera of going up and down three long pairs of stairs with water or dust I feel quite another creature. am both willing and able to perform hard bodily labor, but then the fatigue of being a fine lady the rest of the day is too much for any common strength. Last Thursday I finished scrubbing my bedroom while a coach door to take me for an airing. with a coronet and two footmen waited at the At Lady Cork's the other evening I believe I was the only person (except the Jekylls) without a title.'

She goes on to describe some private theatricals, at a great house, in which she was urged to take part: "I positively protested that I would not act except with women older than myself. My age was asked. I stated fifty. There was then the greatest difficulty to find any woman so old." This seems to have been got over, however, for she gives other particulars :

"The drama fixed on has a supper in it, and I represented that the hurry of clearing the table (one of the comic incidents) will probably break the wine bottles and throw the hot dishes against the beautiful hangings of the room. The lady of the house, alarmed at my remark, cried out that she would have

everything counterfeit, and, ringing for her butler, ordered him to bespeak a couple of wooden fowls, a wooden tongue, wooden jel. lies, and so forth. Nav,' cried Monk Lewis (who is one of the performers), if your ladyship gives a wooden supper the audience will say all your actors are sticks!' It was not less entertaining to see the surprise of the grave elderly butler. He knew there was a supper to be given to the company after the play, but did not understand that there was also to be one in it; and with great humility represented that he thought the company would like a real supper better.'

In 1803, ill-health, and exhaustion from nursing others, compelled Mrs. Inchbald to give up her solitary struggles in Leicester Square, and go to Annandale House, Turnham Green, where fourteen Roman Catholic ladies resided, having separate bedrooms, but sharing the sitting-rooms and garden, and as a rule taking their meals together. Writing to Mrs. Phillips, she says:

[ocr errors]

Everything is clean in perfection-even my hands! which, heaven knows, they have not been before for many a day; and I don't know whether this doesn't constitute one of my chief comforts. Yet do not think I have forgot my affection for London-no; it is great consolation to me to plan that, 'if Buonaparte should come, and conquer,' I may then, without reproach, stand with a barrow of oranges and lemons in Leicester Square and have the joy to call that place my home." Bonaparte did not come, but Mrs. Inchbald went. The lady who presided over Annandale House had a violent temper, and Mrs. Inchbald's was not a patient one; a few months later found her in lodgings in the Strand.* She then resumed her play-writing and theatre-going, and went to see young Betty (though she hated prodigies"), who was acting in her Lovers' Vows, an adaptation of Kotzebue's play. She allowed him some merit, but was indignant at the vulgar want of taste which

66

exalted him above her friends the Kembles, her interest in whom never abated.

"Mrs. Siddons is restored as by a miracle," she tells Mrs. Phillips: "she had a nervous affection from her hip to her toe which made that side wholly useless, yet in torturing pain that kept her sleepless for months. She heard of a new-invented machine that performed cures by electricity... tried it, and was almost instantly cured. But she suffered agony in the trial as if burning lead was running through her veins where the sparks touched. And Mr. Siddons says her shrieks were such that he really expected the mob would break open the door and think he was killing her."

In 1808, Mrs. Inchbald wrote to Samuel Rogers, who greatly admired her Nature and Art":

66

"I consider myself so much obliged to you for the attention you paid me in calling yesterday that I cannot resist my desire to apologize for your reception. For the sake of a romantic view of the Thames I have shut my

[ocr errors]

*Her letters describe a tragedy seen from her eyrie, when a child fell from its mother's arms into the Thames, and the father, jumping in, succeeded in saving it, but was drowned himself. And they also give a comic picture of the interior of the room: My apartment is so small that I am black and blue with thumping against my furniture on every side. I can kindle my fire as I lie in bed, and put on my cap as I dine, for the looking-glass is obliged to stand on the same table as my dinner. But then I have a great deal of fresh air; more daylight than most people in Lon. don; and the enchanting view of the Thames, the Surrey hills, and three windmills."

self in an apartment which will not admit of a second person. It is therefore my wish to be thought never at home. But when the scruples of the persons who answer for me baffle this design, and I have received a token of regard which flatters me, I take the liberty thus to explain my situation." *

Some of Mrs. Inchbald's letters at this time give pathetic expression to her loneliness.

"My evenings now begin to be dull; they I are so long, and no fire to cheer them day, and in that I am poorer than the poorest have no evening's reward for the labor of the

wife or mother in the world. All the enter

tainment I require is the exchange of a few sentences, and that I sometimes do not obtain for days together. My sister's illness will most likely keep me here some time longer, for in this house my decreased expenses do not suffer me to feel the weight of hers."

It was a curious return to the associations of childhood which made her, this year, inquire into the prospect of protit

from

"A little piece of ground of the value of one to three thousand pounds. . . . I do not care how small a farm I am the mistress of, provided it will keep me a cow, a sheep, a pig, and a donkey, in case of invasion or other perilous event to the Bank of England."

In the same year Mr. Hoppner wrote to her announcing the establishment of the Quarterly Review, and requesting that she would become a contributor; a letter from John Murray confirmed the proposal; but she declined it after some hesitation; and when John Bell invited her to conduct his magazine, La Belle Assemblée, she said she had done with the fashionable world, and thought only of a better.

In the following February Mrs. Inchbald writes :

"I saw nothing of the conflagration of Covent Garden Theatre, but was a miserable spectator of all the horrors of Drury Lane, . . . I love sublime and terrific sights, but this was so terrible I ran from it; and in my own room was astonished by a prospect more brilliantly and calmly celestial than ever met my eye. No appearance of fire from my window except the light of its beams; and this was so powerful that the river, the houses on its banks, the Surrey hills beyond, every boat upon the water, every spire of a church, Somerset House and its terrace on this side-all looked like an enchanted spot, such as a poet paints in colors more bright than nature ever displayed in this foggy island."

"Rogers and his Contemporaries," by P. W. Clayden, Smith, Elder & Co., 1889. Vol. i, p. 46.

Dolly Simpson seemed to be improving a little in the early spring, and in May Mrs. Inchbald took her in a coach to visit their only surviving sister, Mrs. Hunt. She saw Dolly nearly every day until the 5th of June, when she left her, apparently as well as usual; but returning next day, she was shocked to find her dead. Dolly had never been a companion or help, and always more or less of a burden, to Mrs. Inchbald, but she deeply mourned and long missed her, especially as she found from her diaries and letters that Dolly had loved her more than she ever admitted in words.*

At fifty-five, Mrs. Inchbald began to withdraw herself from society, to refuse invitations, and shut out visitors.

"I have had my full share of the world," she tells Mrs. Phillips-"a busy share from fifteen to fifty. I should want taste did I not now enjoy that variety in life which I gain by soli. tude. Still, a medium has ever been wanting, both in my public and private life, to give a zest of true enjoyment. I had thirty-five years of perpetual crowd and bustle. I have now had five of almost continual loneliness and quiet-extremes justified only by necessity. Do not imagine you can render me, with all your praises, satisfied with my per. sonal attractions; though you know me so well as to know such things would be more gratifying to me than any other gifts in the world. Nor do not suppose you can alarm me by representing the state of apathy as a calamity. It is the blessing of old age-it is the substitute for patience. It permits me to look in the glass without screaming with horror, and to live upon moderate terms of charity with all young people (without much hatred or malice) although I can never be young again."

She had still some compensations in these declining years: she discovered the utility and delightfulness of a Circulating Library. The Edgeworths, father and daughter, opened a pleasant

:

* A letter to Mrs. Opie gives a touching in. stance of Mrs. Inchbald's tenderness for Dolly "I have not been from London yet, and I purposely did not date my letter, because I wished to have no presents this year, and had not time to explain why. My sister has been very ill again, and is in that kind of

weak state that she now never comes to see me, and I fear much the winter may prove fatal to her. She always partook of your presents, and I had rather not be reminded

of the loss I feel from the want of her occa

sional visits by having any feasts during her

absence,"

66

correspondence with her, and she could not fail to be gratified by the younger novelist's cordial praise of her "Simple Story; and though her nerves suffered from the groans, yells, and cheers" of the "O. P. rioters" as they passed her doors, and all her sympathies were with the managers, one suspects that she would not willingly have been quite out of the way of the excitement.

A more painful shock was the death of Sir John Moore, of whose family she had heard many particulars from his brother Charles, one of her warmest admirers in former days.

"Never mother doted on her children," she tells Mrs. Phillips, "as Mrs. Moore doted on her eldest son, the General, and her youngest child, the barrister. They were neither of them married-she had therefore more than ordinary love and attention from them both. Within ten months Charles, the barrister, my old acquaintance, was seized with brain fever; she was his nurse for three months; and at the end of five he was sent bound hands and feet to a private madhouse. . . . Not the slightest hope remains of their mother's recovery. All her children are now at her house except poor Charles. She takes no nourishment, nor says a word since this last fatal stroke but Don't leave me !' She is seventythree, but the most beautiful old woman that ever was seen, or poor Charles has made me believe so by his praises of her beauty and maternal virtues."

A series of letters from Charles Moore, found among her papers and printed by Boaden, show that when Mrs. Inchbald had attained the mature age of forty-two this then brilliant and prosperous young man did his utmost to induce her to marry him. She seems to have told him that his youth was the only fault she had to find with him, and very wisely refused to be laughed, persuaded, or argued out of that objection, though her affectionate regard for him was great.

Again Mrs. Inchbald had to change. her rooms, and this time she thought herself delightfully settled, with a view of Hyde Park. But she had not occupied her new apartments many days when she found that her landlord was in a state of siege from his landlord and next-door neighbor, the Reverend Mr. Este, who wanted to serve some document on him in order to obtain possession of the house. After a 66 dreadful knocking," to which no response was obtained, the wrathful clergyman struck

terror to her soul by shouting-" Where is the woman on the first floor? I can see her!" (" My shutters," says Mrs. Inchbald, "had been closed the whole morning.")" And I know who she is! Mrs. Inchbald! Mrs. Inchbald! Mrs. Inchbald!" The demonstration attracted a mob, and a gun was pointed from the window above hers-but luckily there was no bloodshed. How little,' "do those she pathetically observes, "do those persons possessed of houses and servants, know of the difficulties and dangers we poor lodgers experience every time we remove to a new lodging !"

66

[ocr errors]

The Twisses and the Kembles she still visited, and at their houses she met Lady Cork and many old friends; while Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Cosway, and one or two other brave spirits would take no denial, but forced their way into her retreat. She was drawing closer and closer, as years advanced, to the Church of which she had never been wholly neglectful, though its observances had sometimes been relaxed in the hurry of work and pleasure. Her confessors seem now to take the place in her affectionate and confidential friendship formerly occupied by her physicians (a long procession, only one of whom, Dr. Warren, has been mentioned here). Father Gaffey, a hardworking poor priest, falling seriously ill, she furnished him with all necessary comforts, though she was obliged to deny herself a servant in order to increase the annuity she paid Mrs. Hunt. As usual, she was called upon to find situations for all her unprosperous nieces and nephews, which could not have been an agreeable task, as some of them were only competent to undertake the duties of barmaids and game keepers.

An interview which must have brought all her dramatic sympathies and all her love for France (she was so ardent a Bonapartist as to be disappointed by the result of Waterloo) back in full force, took place when Kemble brought Talma to her lodgings. No record of their conversation has been preserved.

The most interesting literary encounter of these later years was a meeting with Madame de Staël, arranged by Mrs. Opie. "Corinne" was, said Mrs. Inchbald,

"

''Inquisitive as well as attentive, and entreated me to explain to her the motive why I shunned society. Because,' I replied, 'I dread the loneliness that will follow.' What!

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

will you feel your solitude more when you return from this company than you did before you came hither?' 'Yes.' 'I should think it would elevate your spirits. Why will you feel your loneliness more?' 'Because I have no one to tell that I have seen you. No one to describe your person to. No one to whom I can repeat the many encomiums you have passed on my "Simple Story." No one to enpassed on joy your praises but myself.' Ah! you have no children,' and she turned to an elegant young woman, her daughter, with a pathetic tenderness. She then so forcibly depicted a mother's joys that she sent me home more melancholy at the comparison of our situations in life than any contrast between riches and poverty could have made me. I called by appointment at her house two days after. I was told she was ill. Next morning my paper explained her illness. You have seen the death of her son in the papers? He was one of Bernadotte's aides-de-camp. The most beautiful young man that ever was seen-only nineteen. A duel with sabres, and the first stroke literally cut off his head!"

A great sorrow befell Mrs. Inchbald herself a few years later, which is best described in her own touching words :

"Many a time this winter, when I cried with cold, I said to myself, 'But, thank God, my sister has not to stir from her room; she has her fire lighted every morning. She how much more should I suffer, but from this would be less able to bear what I bear, and reflection! It almost made me warm when I reflected that she suffered no cold. And yet perhaps the severe weather affected her, for after only two days of dangerous illness she died I have now buried my whole familyI mean my Standingfield family, the only part to which I felt tender attachment. She died on February 14th (1816), aged 74."

In the same month of the same year Rogers invited Mrs. Inchbald to accompany him to Byron's box at Drury Lane to see Kean and meet the poet. But, of course, even so great a temptation as this was resisted.

Her old sense of humor, and power of vigorously express ng it, remained. About to move to Earl's Terrace. Kensington, she wrote to her constant friend, Mrs. Phillips :

"Such a horror I have of packing my trunks and furniture-of seeing new faces and hearing new voices with old observations-that I never leave one lodging for another but I wish myself in jail for debt without the benefit of

an Insolvent Act!"

And when settled in the boardinghouse she adds:

« הקודםהמשך »