The family of Legaré (once spelled L’Egarée) is of the old stock of French Huguenots who furnished the best blood of Carolina. Madame Legaré, an honored ancestress of our subject, being a firm Huguenot, immediately after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes sent to America her only child, Solomon, then seventeen years old; parting with him, as she believed, forever in this life, that he might be saved from peril, and not be tempted to abandon his faith. This boy—called by his descendants “The Huguenot”—went first to Canada, and in 1685 to Charleston, South Carolina. He became the ancestor of a numerous posterity, of which, during the Revolution, thirteen bearing the name were patriot soldiers, active in the cause of American liberty.
On the death of her husband, Madame Legaré left her native France and came to America. Here she found her son married, and the father of nine children. She had given him up for religion’s sake; God restored him to her arms, able to minister to her declining years. Her grandson, the great-grandfather of Hugh and Mary Legaré, died in 1774, at the age of seventy-nine. Yet, when the Colonies entered into a compact for mutual defense, he resolutely refused to be put on the list of the “aged and noncombatant,” saying he was able to “shoulder his musket with any man,” besides managing a charger equal to any trooper; he “would not be insulted by being laid aside.” Thus our heroine had a great-grandfather and two grandfathers, besides other relatives, in the patriot army of the Revolution, where youths of sixteen and eighteen often fought beside their grandsires.
The father of Miss Legaré married a lady whose grandfather, Alexander Swinton, of a Scottish family, was sent from England, about 1728, as surveyor-general of the province of South Carolina. He lost a large estate by the villainy of executors and guardians; but after his death, Hugh Swinton, his son, was taken to Scotland by his uncle, and educated as became a young gentleman of birth and fortune, being married to a descendant of that John Hayne who fled from the persecution of the Puritans by Charles II. and his bishops, and fixed his home in Carolina. Thus, on both sides, a heritage of honor and religious faith is derived from her ancestors by the lady who fills a place in our humble annals.
The name of Hugh Swinton Legaré is endeared to all South Carolinians, the more so as his genius and literary attainments commanded celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic. His sister’s talents are not inferior to his, though she has filled no place in the national councils nor at foreign courts, but in a quiet and uneventful life has made her impression on the social and intellectual advancement of the day. The youngest of three children who survived the father, she was born in Charleston, South Carolina, where her childhood and youth were spent. Mrs. Legaré, left a widow before she had completed her twenty-eighth year, devoted her time and means entirely to the education of her little ones. She was a woman of extraordinary mental powers, and her mind had been sedulously cultivated. Her ideas of education were broad and comprehensive, and her efforts were directed to the training of her children in such a manner as to make their lives exemplary, useful, and happy, as well as to develop their intellects. How well she succeeded the honorable career of all her children testifies. The noble character and life of her eldest daughter, Mrs. Bryan, and the brilliant fame achieved by the son, add evidence to the fact that she was one of those mothers whose offspring rise up to call her blessed. Mrs. Legaré died on the 1st of January, 1843, in the seventy-second year of her age.
It was not strange that the children should grow up cherishing a deep and intense love for so excellent a mother. Mary, an infant when bereft of her father, very early showed a fondness for study, and a special predilection for the languages and the fine arts. Even before she was able to express emotions of admiration or delight, she evinced a remarkable sensibility both to melody and color. When less than three years old, she would be affected to tears or moved to joyous mirth by different musical sounds. Beautiful pictures had for her young fancy irresistible fascination at an age when she could hardly be supposed able to recognize the objects they represented. Her mother frequently observed of her little Mary that, when she showed signs of impatience or weariness, or fretted for want of amusement, all that was necessary to soothe her discontent or charm her into happiness was to furnish her with paper and a pencil. The child would amuse herself for hours with her drawings. Her decided talents for music and painting—coloring in particular—were soon perceived by this tender mother, who determined to give her daughter every possible aid in the cultivation of tastes so congenial to her own, Mrs. Legaré being herself accomplished in no ordinary degree in both these lady-like pursuits.
Miss Legaré had resolved to make herself mistress of the languages even before she could read and write English with any great proficiency. She had in these studies, and other branches of scholarship, the best teachers that could be procured. Her mother was her first instructor in music. But it was otherwise in the art to which she had determined especially to devote herself; no efficient teacher of drawing could be found. Although remuneration for lessons was liberal—thirty dollars per term being paid—it was almost impossible to find any one capable of giving proper instruction. The young girl was therefore obliged to practice unaided the art she began to love with increased enthusiasm, and her progress was still more retarded by the want of models or scenes in nature that might take her fancy. The low country of South Carolina—affording the only landscapes she had ever seen—abounds in flat and swampy districts. There is much beauty for an unaccustomed eye in the bleached wilderness of pine-land, with its stately, solemn groves, through which the wind surges with ocean-like murmur; but it is not of the kind available for the artist. Nor is that of the swamp, with its immeasurable extent of wood and impenetrable undergrowth, through which may be seen at intervals the dark, turbid water soaking its way through masses of tangled weeds, the slimy abode of reptiles, or the hiding-place of the water-fowl. There are green morasses choked with vegetation, into which the sunbeams never penetrate; or over the quagmire, rank with decay, rise giant trees, twined with thick creepers, and burying the matted brush beneath them in black shadow. The trees are often loaded with the gray hanging moss that forms the ornament of woods in the low lands. The mixture of gloom and beauty, of luxuriance and horror, is a striking novelty to the Northern visitor. The ragged thickets, too, are alternated with islands of lovely verdure; the water-lily decks the dark lakelet with its broad leaves and white flowers; and graceful vines festoon the evergreens, mingling bright blossoms with their leaves of sombre verdure.
Such scenes presented little to tempt the copyist, yet, notwithstanding her difficulties and discouragements in painting, Miss Legaré continued to struggle on toward the idea of perfection in her untutored imagination. Her brother Hugh was wont to remark that “her passion lay there,” in the painter’s art. She found not much sympathy in this chosen pursuit, till some time in the year 1827, when she became acquainted with a gentleman who possessed a similar taste, cultivated in a high degree by superior knowledge of art. This was Colonel John S. Cogdell, who at that time had considerable celebrity as an amateur painter. Miss Legaré submitted her efforts to his careful criticism, and received from him the instruction she needed. She has attributed her subsequent success to his aid. He procured for her study the finest new pictures that could be obtained. Among the artists whose works were now introduced to her, Doughty became, to her fancy, the beau ideal of excellence. Even when a child she had been accustomed to turn away in disgust, with a “’Tis not pretty, mamma,” from flaring or exaggerated colors in a picture. Doughty’s subdued coloring, and soft, dreamy style, kindled her imagination, and aroused her ardent emulation. “Could I but paint one picture like Doughty’s!” she would often exclaim; and it may be said her earliest initiation into the school of Nature, and into an apprehension of her seductive beauties, was by seeing the works of this eminent American landscape-painter, whom his country allowed to languish in bitter penury, for want of the appreciation his genius should have commanded. Miss Legaré’s first attempt to copy one of his paintings succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of herself and her friends. Colonel Cogdell encouraged her still more by saying, “You have an eye for color, which must insure you success in copying nature.”
In truth, the young artist did not long remain satisfied with spending all her energies merely in copying the works of others. Though she had never visited any other region than the low forest country of her native state, she endeavored to create scenes by combining various objects into a single composition. Landscapes and rustic scenes in every variety were her delight; yet, having never seen a mountain, nor the country in any aspects different from the monotonous views in her neighborhood, how was she to produce an original picture? How do justice in any way to the powers of which she felt conscious? It was not so easy for a lady to travel. In the South particularly, she would be hampered in many ways; and “Mrs. Grundy” would have devoted to death by torture any young girl who could have done so heinous a thing as take a journey of observation by herself! Miss Legaré, therefore, was shut in to contemplation of the boundless ocean and the swamp forest almost as limitless. Dark scenes and deep shadows, with warm glowing skies became features in her paintings, and her trees of great variety, clear, deep water, and skies were pronounced by critics superior to those of the artists she most admired. She adopted in a measure the style of Ruysdael, mingled, in the more delicate shades, with the warmth of Cuyp.
In the summer of 1833 her longing wish was gratified. She went, accompanied by her mother, to spend the warm season amid the glorious mountain scenery of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. This region has been thought to surpass in magnificence and majesty any mountainous district in the Atlantic States. Miss Legaré was far more delighted with these mountains than with the scenery of Lake George and the Hudson, which she had visited the year before, finding it, as well as the Alleghany range, to disappoint her expectations. But when, on her approach to Asheville, her eyes rested on the exhaustless variety of form and tint, blended into soft harmony, on the distant Blue Ridge, the beauty and sublimity of the scene filled her with emotions she had no language to express. There was awful grandeur as well as touching loveliness in the view. Pisgah and surrounding peaks towering skyward—the summit covered with vapor that glowed with gorgeous colors, like a drapery of scarlet and gold—the vast mass played on by the mellow purple and violet tints peculiar to lofty mountains—the delicate azure mingling with fairy lights of golden violet—all softened into harmony by an atmosphere so transparent, so Claude-like in its purity, that it seemed the movement of a bird could be discerned at a distance of forty or fifty miles! Miss Legaré here realized, for the first time, what few out of Italy can realize, the naturalness of Claude’s landscapes; the exquisite art of his unequaled coloring, which gives to his delineations of Alpine scenery so wonderful an effect.
Miss Legaré’s intense enjoyment of the beauties of nature in this favored region during a three months’ residence gave her an invincible repugnance to the work of copying the productions of any human artist. She always painted in oil; and, having brought no materials with her, could not transfer to her sketches the colors she so admired while on the spot. But memory had faithfully treasured these delicious pictures, and on her return to Charleston she lost no time in putting them on canvas. “A View on the Suwannee,” now in possession of the widow of Colonel Cogdell, was pronounced by him a master-piece. Another view on the French Broad, illustrating the distinguishing characteristics of the scenery of that river, was purchased in 1834 by the proprietors of the Art Union in New York. The first scene that had so struck Miss Legaré was painted on too large a scale. It was, however, much admired; and the same subject, represented in smaller compass, is esteemed a finer picture.