The last years of this brilliant and beloved woman were devoted to futile attempts to solve the problem of Perpetual Motion. I wish she had given us her memories instead.
Helen Ghika was born at Bucharest, Wallachia, the 22nd of January, 1829. The Ghika family is of an ancient and noble race. It originated in Albania, and two centuries ago the head of it went to Wallachia, where it had been a powerful and ruling family. In 1849, at the age of twenty, the Princess was married to a Russian, Prince Koltzoff Massalsky, a descendant of the old Vikings of Moldavia; her marriage has not been a congenial one.
A sketch of the distinguished woman, Helen Ghika, the Princess Massalsky, who, under the nom de plume of Dora D'Istria, has made for herself a reputation and position in the world of letters among the great women of our century, will at least have something of the charm of novelty for most American readers. In Europe this lady was everywhere known, beloved by many personal friends, and admired by all who had read her works. Her thought was profound and liberal, her views were broad and humane. As an author, philanthropist, traveller, artist, and one of the strongest advocates of freedom and liberty for the oppressed of both sexes, and of her suffering sisters especially, she was an honour to the time and to womanhood. The women of the old world found in her a powerful, sympathizing, yet rational champion; just in her arguments in their behalf, able in her statements of their needs, and thoroughly interested in their elevation and improvement.
Her works embrace a vast range of thought, and show profound study and industry. The subjects are many. They number about twenty volumes on nationality, on social questions more than eight, on politics eighteen or twenty. Her travels fill fifteen books, and, beside all this, she wrote three romances, numerous letters and articles for the daily papers, and addresses to be read before various learned societies, of which she was an honoured member. M. Deschanel, the critic of the Journal des Débats, has said of her that "each one of her works would suffice for the reputation of a man." As an artist, her paintings have been much admired. One of her books of travel, A Summer on the Banks of the Danube, has a drawing by its author, a view of Borcia in Roumania. From a notable exhibition at St. Petersburg she received a silver medal for two pictures called "The Pine" and "The Palm," suggested to her by Heine's beautiful little poem:
"A pine-tree sleeps alone
On northern mountain-side;
Eternal stainless snows
Stretch round it far and wide.
"The pine dreams of a palm
As lonely, sad, and still,
In glowing eastern clime
On burning, rocky hill."
This princess was the idol of her native people, who called her, with the warm enthusiasm of their race, "The Star of Albania." The learned and cultivated also did her homage. Named by Frederika Bremer and the Athenians, "The New Corinne," she was invested by the Greeks with the citizenship of Greece for her efforts to assist the people of Candia to throw off the oppressor's yoke, this being the first time this honour had ever been granted to a woman.
The catalogue of her writings fills several pages, the list of titles given her by learned societies nearly as many more and, while born a princess of an ancient race and by marriage one also, she counted these titles of rank as nothing compared with her working name, and was more widely known as Dora D'Istria than as the Princess Koltzoff Massalsky.
There is a romantic fascination about this woman's life as brilliant as fiction, but more strange and remarkable in that it is all sober truth—nay, to her much of it was even sad reality. Her career was a glorious one, but lonely as the position of her pictured palm-tree, and oftentimes only upheld by her own consciousness of the right; she has felt the trials of minds isolated by greatness. Singularly gifted by nature with both mental and physical, as well as social superiority, the Princess united in an unusual degree masculine strength of character, grasp of thought, philosophical calmness, love of study and research, joined to an ardent and impassioned love of the grand, the true, and the beautiful. She had the grace and tenderness of the most sensitive of women, added to mental endowments rare in a man. Her beauty, which had been remarkable, was the result of perfect health, careful training, and an active nature. Her physical training made her a fearless swimmer, a bold rider, and an excellent walker—all of which greatly added to her active habits and powers of observation in travelling, for she travelled much. Only a person of uncommon bodily vigour can so enjoy nature in her wildest moods and grandest aspects.