Elizabeth Sheppard, the author of "Charles Auchester," was born at Blackheath, near London, in 1837. Her father was a clergyman of the Established Church, and her mother a Jewess by descent,—which serves to account for the daughter's strong Jewish sympathies in this remarkable display of hero-worship. Left an orphan at a tender age, she was thrown upon her own resources, and chose school-teaching for her profession. She was evidently a good linguist and musician, for she taught music and the languages before she was sixteen. She had decided literary ambition also, and wrote plays, poems, and short stories at an age when other children are usually engaged in pastimes. Notwithstanding the arduous nature of her work and her exceedingly delicate health, she devoted her leisure hours to literary composition. How this frail girl must have toiled is evidenced by the completion of "Charles Auchester" in her sixteenth year. In her seventeenth she had finished "Counterparts,"—a work based upon a scheme even more ambitious than that of her first story. When it is considered that these two romances were written at odd moments of leisure intervening between hours of wearing toil in the school-room, and that she was a mere child and very frail, it will be admitted that the history of literary effort hardly records a parallel case. Nature however always exacts the penalty for such mental excesses. This little creature of "spirit, fire, and dew" died on March 13, 1862, at the early age of twenty-five.
Apart from its intrinsic merits as a musical romance, there are some features of "Charles Auchester" of more than ordinary interest. It is well known that Seraphael, its leading character, is the author's ideal of Mendelssohn, and that the romance was intended to be a memorial of him. More thoroughly to appreciate the work, and not set it down as mere rhapsody, it must be remembered that Miss Sheppard wrote it in a period of Mendelssohn worship in England as ardent and wellnigh as universal as the Handel worship of the previous century had been. It was written in 1853. Mendelssohn had been dead but six years, and his name was still a household word in every English family. He was adored, not only for his musical genius, but also for his singular purity of character. He was personally as well known in England as any native composer. His Scotch Symphony and Hebrides Overture attested his love of Scotch scenery. He had conducted concerts in the provinces; he appeared at concerts in London in 1829 and in subsequent years, and was the idol of the drawing-rooms of that day. Some of his best works were written on commissions from the London Philharmonic Society. He conducted his "Lobgesang" at Birmingham in 1840, and he produced his immortal "Elijah" in the same town in 1846,—only a year before his death. There were numerous ties of regard, and even of affection, binding him to the English people. From a passing remark in the course of the romance, we learn that it opens about the year 1833, when Mendelssohn was in his prime; and as it closes with his death, it thus covers a period of fourteen years,—the most brilliant and productive part of his life.
Curious critics of "Charles Auchester" have found close resemblances between its characters and other musicians. There is good reason to believe that Starwood Burney was intended for Sterndale Bennett, not only from the resemblance of the names in sound and meaning, but also from many other events common to each. It requires, however, some stretch of the imagination to believe that Charles Auchester was intended as a portrait of Joachim the violinist; that Aronach, the teacher at the St. Cecilia School, was meant for Zelter; Clara Benette for Jenny Lind; and Laura Lemark for Taglioni. It is altogether likely that the author in drawing these characters had the types in mind, and without intending to produce a parallel or to preserve anything like synchronism, invested them with some of the characteristics of the real persons, all of whom, it may be added, except Taglioni, were intimately associated with Mendelssohn.
All this lends the charm of human interest to the book; but, after all, it is the author's personality that invests it with its rare fascination. It would not bear searching literary criticism; fortunately, no one has been so ungracious as to apply it. It is more to the purpose to remember that here is a young girl of exquisite refinement, rare intellectuality, and the most overwhelming enthusiasm, who has written herself into her work with all her girlish fancies, her great love for the art, her glowing imagination, and that rapturous devotion for the hero of her exalted world which is characteristic of her sex at sixteen. And in doing this she has pictured her dreams with most glowing colors, and told them with delicate naïveté and exuberant passion. In a word, she has expressed the very spirit of music in language, and in a language so pure and adoring as to amount to worship. In Disraeli's words, it is "the imaginative classic of the divine art." To those who have not lost their early enthusiasms, this little book will come like the perfume of a flower, or some tone of a well-remembered voice, recalling the old days and reviving an old pleasure. To those who have lost such emotions, what is left but Lethe?
In preparing the work for publication, I have added some brief notes, indicating the connection between the real and the ideal, and making the meaning of the text clearer to the general reader of to-day. Anything which will throw light upon this charming romance should be welcome, and the more so that the gifted author has been strangely neglected both in musical and general biographical dictionaries. It is to be hoped that an adequate sketch of her life may some day appear.
George P. Upton.
Chicago, 1891.
CHARLES AUCHESTER.