We stop with this mere description. The Kossuth questions are discussed sufficiently elsewhere. Our object has been to aid the distant reader in imagining the personal appearance of the man whose thoughts of lightning reach them, gleaming gloriously even through the clouds of impoverished language on which they travel. We close with a prayer—God keep Kossuth to take the field for Hungary!
DEATH OF LADY BLESSINGTON.
The Parisian correspondent of the London Morning Post thus makes the first mention of this unexpected event:—
“We have all been much shocked this afternoon by the sudden death of Lady Blessington. Her ladyship dined yesterday with the Duchess de Grammont, and returned home late in her usual health and spirits. In the course of this morning she felt unwell, and her homœopathic medical adviser, Dr. Simon, was sent for. After a short consultation, the doctor announced that his patient was dying of apoplexy, and his sad prediction was unhappily verified but too rapidly, as her ladyship expired in his arms about an hour and a half ago.”
We doubt whether a death could have taken place, in private life, in Europe, that would have made a more vivid sensation than this, or have been more sincerely regretted. Indeed, a possessor of more power, in its most attractive shape, could hardly have been named, in life public or private—for the extent of Lady Blessington’s friendships with distinguished men of every nation, quality, character, rank and creed, was without a parallel. Her friends were carefully chosen—but, once admitted to her intimacy, they never were neglected and never lessened in their attachment to her. She has a circle of mourners, at this moment, in which there is more genius, more distinction, and more sincere sorrowing, than has embalmed a name within the lapse of a century. Noblemen, statesmen, soldiers, church-dignitaries, poets and authors, artists, actors, musicians, bankers,—a galaxy of the best of their different stations and pursuits—have received, with tears at the door of the heart, the first intelligence of her death.
The deceased will have a biographer—no doubt an able and renowned one. Bulwer, who enjoyed her friendship as intimately, perhaps, for the last ten years of her life, as any other man, might describe her best, and is not likely to leave, undone, a task so obviously his own. Without hoping to anticipate, at all, the portraiture, by an abler hand, of this remarkable woman, we may venture to send to our readers this first announcement of her death, accompanied with such a sketch of her qualities of mind and heart as our own memory, of the acquaintance we had the privilege of enjoying, enables us easily to draw.
Lady Blessington, as her writings show, was not a woman of genius in the creative sense of the term. She has originated nothing that would, of itself, have made a mark upon the age she lived in. Her peculiarity lay in the curiously felicitous combination of the best qualities of the two sexes, in her single character as it came from nature. She had the cool common sense and intrepid unsubserviency which together give a man the best social superiority, and she had the tact, the delicacy and the impassioned devotedness which are essentials in the finest compounds of woman. She did not know what fear was,—either of persons or of opinions,—and it was as like herself when she shook her gloved fist in defiance at the mob in Whitehall, on their threatening to break her carriage windows if she drove through, as it was to return to London after her long residence on the continent, and establish herself as the centre of a society from which her own sex were excluded. Under more guarded and fortunate circumstances of early life, and had she attained “the age of discretion” before taking any decided step, she would probably have been one of those guiding stars of individualism, in common life, alike peculiar, admirable and irreproachable.
Lady Blessington’s generous estimate of what services were due in friendship—her habitual conduct in such relations amounting to a romantic chivalry of devotedness—bound to her with a naturalness of affection not very common in that class of life, those who formed the circle of her intimacy. She did not wait to be solicited. Her tact and knowledge of the world enabled her to understand, with a truth that sometimes seemed like divination, the position of a friend at the moment—his hopes and difficulties, his wants and capabilities. She had a much larger influence than was generally supposed, with persons in power, who were not of her known acquaintance, many an important spring of political and social movement was unsuspectedly within her control. She could aid ambition, promote literary distinction, remove difficulties in society which she did not herself frequent, serve artists, harmonize and prevent misunderstandings, and give valuable counsel on almost any subject that could come up in the career of a man, with a skill and a control of resources of which few had any idea. Many a one of her brilliant and unsurpassed dinners had a kindly object which its titled guests little dreamed of, but which was not forgotten for a moment, amid the wit and eloquence that seemed so purposeless and impulsive. On some errand of good will to others, her superb equipage, the most faultless thing of its kind in the world, was almost invariably bound, when gazed after in the streets of London. Princes and noblemen, (who, as well as poets and artists, have aims which need the devotion of friendship,) were the objects of her watchful aid and ministration; and we doubt, indeed, whether any woman lived, who was so valuable a friend to so many, setting aside the high careers that were influenced among them, and the high station and rank that were befriended with no more assiduity than lesser ambitions and distinctions.
The conversation, at the table in Gore House, was allowed to be the most brilliant in Europe, but Lady Blessington herself seldom took the lead in it. Her manners were such as to put every one at his ease, and her absolute tact at suggestion and change of topics, made any one shine who had it in him, when she chose to call it forth. She had the display of her guests as completely under her hand as the pianist his keys; and, forgetful of herself—giving the most earnest and appreciative attention to others—she seemed to desire no share in the happiness of the hour except that of making each, in his way, show to advantage. If there was any impulse of her mind to which she gave way with a feeling of carelessness, it was to the love of humor in her Irish nature, and her mirthfulness at such moments, was most joyously unrestrained and natural.
In 1835, when we first saw Lady Blessington, she confessed to forty, and was then exceedingly handsome. Her beauty, it is true, was more in pose and demeanor than in the features of her face, but she produced the full impression of great beauty. Her mouth was the very type of freshness and frankness. The irregularity of her nose gave a vivacity to her expression, and her thin and pliant nostrils added a look of spirit which was unmistakable, but there was a steady penetration in the character of her eye which threw a singular earnestness and sincerity over all. Like Victoria, Tom Moore, the Duke of Wellington and Grisi, she sat tall—her body being longer in proportion than her limbs—and, probably from some little sensitiveness on this point, she was seldom seen walking. Her grace of posture in her carriage struck the commonest observer, and, seated at her table, or in the gold and satin arm-chair in her drawing room, she was majestically elegant and dignified. Of the singular beauty of her hands and arms, celebrated as they were in poetry and sculpture, she seemed at least unconscious, and used them carelessly, gracefully and expressively, in the gestures of conversation. At the time we speak of, she was in perfect maturity portion and figure, but beginning, even then, to conceal, by a peculiar cap, the increasing fullness under her chin. Her natural tendency to plethora was not counteracted by exercise, and when we saw her last, two years ago, she was exceedingly altered from her former self, and had evidently given up to an indolence of personal habits which has since ended in apoplexy and death.