I repeat, it is a most curious thing to observe this mob of illustrious and kindly gentlemen handing down to posterity such unanimous abuse of a lady, who, whatever her defects, had done them infinite courtesies. And she is dead and cannot defend herself.
She left a journal, however, which Lord Ilchester has lately edited. And few studies can be more delightful than to turn from the picture painted of her by her friends(?) to her intimate and faithful likeness of herself. The tart, even the boisterous, tongue is indeed not concealed, as when she told a political friend that “I regretted he had not lived in the Middle Ages and given his faith to orthodox points, as he would have made one of the firmest pillars of the church, instead of being a milk and water politician now.” But there are many other things besides tartness and boisterousness.
Unfortunately the Journal stops before the great days of Holland House began. What would we not give for the lady’s account of those conversations with Moore and Ticknor and Macaulay? What for portraits of them and of others such as she well knew how to draw? For her pen was no mean one. It could bite and sting, could emphasize lights and shadows quite as strongly as some of those that etched the figures at her table and the scenes in her drawing-room. You may meet such a type as the following any day in Italy; but only an artist could so render it. “The old Marchesa was also delightful, not to the eye, for she was hideous, nor to the ear, for she squalled, nor to the nose, for she was an Italian; yet, from her unbounded desire of pleasing, the tout ensemble created more agreeable sensations than many more accomplished could have inspired.” Or match this with an English married couple: “The first thing she did was to live apart from him, and keep up a love correspondence with him; hence to the world they appeared enamoured of one another. She is a little mad, and parsimony is her chief turn. She is good-natured and a little clever. Trevor has no judgment and slender talents. His foibles are very harmless and his whole life has been insipidly good. His ridicules are a love of dress coats, volantes, and always speaking French. Au reste, he is very like other people, only better.” And, as will appear from these two, her portraits, though satirical, are not all unkindly, or at least she sweetens the bitterest of them with a touch of human charity.
Just a few sketches she has of the great men who afterwards became so widely identified with her, enough to increase our ardent desire for more. Thus the following of Wordsworth, interesting in every word for both painter and painted, if somewhat astounding: “Sent an invitation to Wordsworth, one of the Lake poets, to come and dine, or visit us in the evening. He came. He is much superior to his writings, and his conversation is even beyond his abilities. I should almost fear he is disposed to apply his talents more towards making himself a vigorous conversationist in the style of our friend Sharp, than to improve his style of composition.... He holds some opinions on picturesque subjects with which I completely differ, especially as to the effects produced by white houses on the sides of the hills; to my taste they produce a cheerful effect. He, on the contrary, would brown, or even black-work them; he maintained his opinion with a considerable degree of ingenuity.” With which compare the snub administered by Henry Taylor, when she sneered at Wordsworth’s poetry: “Let me beg you to believe, Lady Holland, that this has not been the sort of thing to say about Wordsworth’s poetry for the last ten years.”
But the Journal is far less interesting for its portraits of others than for that of the lady herself, who is seen there complete, and human, and not unlovely.
When she was young, she was beautiful. “I observed a portrait of Lady Holland, painted some thirty years ago,” says Macaulay. “I could have cried to see the change. She must have been a most beautiful woman.”
A mere child, she was married to a man she detested, who perhaps deserved it. “At fifteen, through caprice and folly, I was thrown into the power of one who was a pompous coxcomb, with youth, beauty, and a good disposition, all to be so squandered!” I imagine that Sir Godfrey Webster was a rough English squire of the Western type, fond of beef, beer, hunting, and rural politics, fond also of his wife, after his fashion, but believing that wives should bake, brew, and breed, and utterly intolerant of my lady’s freaks and fancies, of her social ambitions and her sentimental whims. To her he appeared a simple brute. When he “in a paroxysm threw the book I was reading at my head, after having first torn it out of my hands,” I can divine something of how he felt. So perhaps could she; but the incident gave her all the gratification of martyrdom.
“Ah, me!” she writes, “what can please or cheer one who has no hope of happiness in life? Solitude and amusement from external objects is all I hope for; home is the abyss of misery!” Condemned to the exile of a country house, I am sorry to say that she revenged herself by devising cruel tricks against her husband’s aunt, who, however, was most apt at paying back. Later her despair drove her nearly to suicide. “Oftentimes in the gloom of midnight I feel a desire to curtail my grief, and but for an unaccountable shudder that creeps over me, ere this the deed of rashness would be executed. I shall leave nothing behind that I can regret. My children are yet too young to attach me to existence, and Heaven knows I have no close, no tender ties besides. Oh, pardon the audacity of the thought.”
Then Lord Holland appeared and her whole life was altered. With such an early career and with a temper so erratic one would hardly expect that an irregular connection, even though legalized as soon as possible by divorce and marriage, would turn out well. It did. When she first meets her lover, he is “quite delightful.” A number of years later she recognizes that life with him has transformed her character. Every hour she continues “to wonder [sic] and admire the most wonderful union of benevolence, sense, and integrity in the character of the excellent being whose faith is pledged with mine. Either he has imparted some of his goodness to me, or the example of his excellence has drawn out the latent good I had—as certainly I am a better person and a more useful member of society than I was in my years of misery.”
Although she was still young and very beautiful, the ardent suit of other lovers makes no impression on her. She gets rid of them as best she can and consults her husband as to the most effective manner of doing so.