CHAPTER III
MAINLY MARIA EDGEWORTH
There is a portrait of Mrs. Bushe that is now in the possession of one of her many great-grandchildren, Sir Egerton Coghill. It is a small picture, in pastel, very delightful in technique, and the subject is worthy of the technique. Nancy Crampton was her name, and the picture was probably done at the time of her marriage, in 1793, and is a record of the excellent judgment of the future Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
It would be hard to find a more charming face. From below a cloud of brown curls, deep and steady blue eyes look straight into yours from under level brows. The extreme intellectuality of the expression does not master its sweetness. In looking at the picture the lines come back—
“One in whose gentle bosom I
Can pour my inmost heart of woes.”
No wonder that in the troublous days of the Union, when bribes and threats assailed the young barrister who was already a power in the land, no wonder indeed that he often, as he says in one of his letters, “heav’d a sigh, and thought of Nancy,” and knew “with delight” that on her heart he could repose his own when weary.
Here, I think, may fitly be given some lines that the Chief wrote, when he was an old man, to accompany the gift to his wife of a white fur tippet.
To a Tippet.
Soon as thy milk-white folds are prest
Like Wreaths of Snow about her breast,
Oh guard that precious heart from harm
Like thee ’t is pure, like thee ’t is warm.
Love and wit are immortal, we know, but the spirit is rare that can inspire them after nearly fifty years of married life; yet rarer, perhaps, the young heart that can persuade them still to dwell with it and to overlook the silver head.
I grieve that I have been unable to find any of Mrs. Bushe’s earlier letters. She was a brilliant creature in all ways, and had a rare and enchanting gift as an artist, which, even in those days, when young ladies of quality were immured inexorably within the padded cell of the amateur, could scarce have failed to make its mark, had she not, as the Chief, with marital complacency, observed, devoted herself to “making originals instead of copies.”