"To gratulate the sweet return of morn."
The Duchess of Tyrconnel was indeed an extraordinary woman, highly gifted by nature, instructed by education, (in these days, certainly an unusual occurrence), and still more learned from her own assiduity and perseverance. All this was the more remarkable, when we pause to consider the period in which she lived! The vast powers of her mind were demonstrated by the universality of her knowledge, the various accomplishments which she possessed, her acquaintance, even to a colloquial knowledge, with several different languages, the numerous acquirements, in all of which she excelled. No less distinguished was the Duchess of Tyrconnel for her singular modesty, her unaffected manners, and that retiring grace, at once characteristic of those high endowments which flung around her such imposing charms. Indeed it has generally been remarked and acknowledged, that affectation and conceit are seldom found to be connected with genius, but are the satellites of those who would usurp her throne; and that the never-failing attendant upon true genius is simplicity of manners.
The Duchess had been educated at the convent of Vernon sur le Seiné, where she was wont
"To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows, richly dight, Casting a dim religious light."
Here, during her novitiate, the Duchess (then Lady Katherine O'Nial) formed a friendship with a young lady, an inmate at the convent, which terminated only in death. The friend of her youth was the beautiful Lady Adelaide Alençon, daughter of the Duke of Alençon. They became dear and inseparable friends, from similarity of taste and talent. The idem velle—the idem nolle—was theirs! The same, or nearly the same, distinguished talents, a similar and uncontrollable wish for information, led them on in the paths of science and of literature, of virtue and of religion. Then, oh! how delightful it was, after a short sojourn with their friends, again to return to the sacred convent, and to hear at early morn the solemn anthem from the hallowed choir, which pealed over rock and flood, deeply re-echoed by the convent walls: or if at eve they returned, to hear floating upon the silent and slumbering bosom of the Seiné the sad and solemn evening vesper, which was wafted to the skies!
But this pure and disinterested friendship was doomed to be only of short duration. Lady Adelaide Alençon's powers of mind were superior to the fragile tenement they illuminated and adorned, and over-studiousness brought on a consumption, which unfortunately was a hereditary disease. The physicians ordered the patient to remove to Tours, from thence to the aromatic isles of the Heyéres. But, alas! it was all in vain! The promises at first were fair, like expanding snow-drops on the cold breast of spring, which blow—then bloom—then die! But each sad succeeding account only brought fresh accession of regret; and at an early age, in the ever-blooming green islands of the Heyéres, the lovely and the gifted Lady Adelaide Alençon drooped, and pined, and died! deeply deplored by all her relatives, and justly and duly lamented by her friends.
"The hectic form, the beauteous maid, That just as life its charms displayed, To death devoted, glides away; With brilliant eye, that watery gleams, While still the rosy spectre dreams Of many a morrow gay."
Upon the deeply regretted event of Lady Adelaide Alençon's death, the Duchess made a vow that if she married, her first female child should be called after her first regarded, her early and lamented friend; and to this cause our heroine was indebted for the illustrious name which she bore.