What have I done?
I have some strange impression of a dream—
A fearful dream of death.
Young Ferdinand, who loved me!
Dead—dead—and by this desperate hand!’
After which Clara enters, and Theodora dies, completing the tragedy. One can picture the force and energy with which Charlotte would have poured forth her reproaches upon the head of Ferdinand, before giving him the fatal stab.
It may have been somewhere about this time—it was at all events before the year 1842—that Charlotte had once a scientific fit, and for several weeks threw herself with ardour into the study of Chemistry. At intervals in her life a marked interest is shown in certain scientific facts or subjects; sufficient, perhaps, to indicate that, had the bent been cultivated, she might possibly have shown some measure of power in that direction also. Books on Natural History always proved an attraction to her; and many little Natural History facts come incidentally into her correspondence, sometimes given from her own observation. In later years she even wrote two or three little books for children on semi-scientific subjects,—not without making mistakes, from the common error of trusting to old instead of to new authorities. But the early influences with which she was surrounded were not of a kind to call forth this tendency, if indeed it existed in any but a very slight degree. Her Father’s bent was strongly poetical and classical; and probably his influence over her mind in girlhood was stronger than any other. The poetic and the scientific may, and sometimes do, exist side by side; but the combination is not very usual.
A great event of Charlotte’s young days was the fancy-dress ball given by her parents in the spring of 1835. The Duke of Wellington himself was present; prominent still in the minds of men as the Deliverer of Europe, only twenty years earlier, from a tyrant’s thraldom. All the young Tuckers, not to speak of their parents, were ardent admirers of the Duke. Laura, still a mere child, in her enthusiasm slipped close up behind, when the Duke was ascending the stairs, and gently abstracted a fallen hair from the shoulder of the hero, which hair she preserved ever after among her choicest treasures; and Charlotte was no whit behind Laura in this devotion.
At the ball Frances made her appearance dressed as Queen Elizabeth,—‘very neat and very stately,’—while Charlotte represented ‘the star of the morning,’ in a dress of pure muslin, full and well starched, so nicely made and so beautifully white that the impression of it lasts still in the mind of a brother, after the lapse of more than half a century. The prettiness of her dress on that particular occasion was no doubt accentuated by the fact that in general Charlotte did not attire herself becomingly; and also by the fact of another young lady being present as a second ‘star of the morning.’ For the other ‘star’ had hired a dress for the evening; a muslin dress, which was by no means white, but dingy and tumbled. In contrast, Charlotte’s pure whiteness, relieved by a star upon her forehead, drew much attention. Since she was then only a girl of about fourteen, it appears that a close distinction was not drawn in those days, as in these, between girls ‘out’ and girls ‘not out.’ Her brother, St. George, a boy of twelve or thirteen, was also present, wearing a Highland costume.
The hero of the day appeared in evening dress, according to the then fashion, with a star on his breast. Frances, in her queenly apparel, presented him with a bag which contained a Commission to defend England,—a business which, one is disposed to think, he had already pretty well accomplished! The Duke received this offering graciously; and a day or two later the following playful letter arrived from him to Mr. Tucker:—