“Her hair was ‘darkly brown,’ very soft and beautiful, and always tastefully arranged; her figure, as before remarked, slight, but well-formed and graceful; her feet small, but her hands especially so, and faultlessly white and finely shaped; her fingers were fairy fingers; her ears also were observably little. Her face, though not regular in ‘every feature,’ became beautiful by expression,—every flash of thought, every change and colour of feeling lightened over it as she spoke,—when she spoke earnestly. The forehead was not high, but broad and full; the eyes had no overpowering brilliancy, but their clear intellectual light penetrated by its exquisite softness; her mouth was not less marked by character, and, besides the glorious faculty of uttering the pearls and diamonds of fancy and wit, knew how to express scorn, or anger, or pride, as well as it knew how to smile winningly, or to pour forth those short, quick, ringing laughs which, not excepting even her bon-mots and aphorisms, were the most delightful things that issued from it.”—1832.
S. C. Hall’s
Retrospect of a
Long Life.
“Small of person, but well formed. Her dark silken hair braided back over a small, but what phrenologists would call a well-developed head; her forehead full and open, but the hair grew low upon it; the eyebrows perfect in arch and form; the eyes round—soft or flashing as might be—gray, well formed, and beautifully set; the lashes long and black, the under lashes turning down with delicate curve, and forming a soft relief upon the tint of her cheek, which, when she enjoyed good health, was bright and blushing; her complexion was delicately fair; her skin soft and transparent; her nose small (retroussé), slightly curved, but capable of scornful expression, which she did not appear to have the power of repressing, even though she gave her thoughts no words, when any despicable action was alluded to.”—About 1835.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
1775-1864
Crabb Robinson’s
Diary.
“He was a man of florid complexion, with large full eyes, and altogether a leonine man, and with a fierceness of tone well suited to his name; his decisions being confident, and on all subjects, whether of taste or life, unqualified, each standing for itself, not caring whether it was in harmony with what had gone before or would follow from the same oracular lips. But why should I trouble myself to describe him? He is painted by a master hand in Dickens’s novel Bleak House, now in course of publication, where he figures as Mr. Boythorn. The combination of superficial ferocity and inherent tenderness, so admirably portrayed in Bleak House, still at first strikes every stranger,—for twenty-two years have not materially changed him,—no less than his perfect frankness and reckless indifference to what he says.”—1830.
S. C. Hall’s
Retrospect of a
Long Life.
“... He was at that time sixty years of age, although he did not look so old; his form and features were essentially masculine; he was not tall, but stalwart; of a robust constitution, and was proud even to arrogance of his physical and intellectual strength. He was a man to whom passers-by would have looked back and asked, ‘Who is that?’ His forehead was high, but retreated, showing remarkable absence of the organs of benevolence and veneration. It was a large head, fullest at the back, where the animal propensities predominate; it was a powerful, but not a good head, the expression the opposite of genial. In short, physiognomists and phrenologists would have selected it,—each to illustrate his theory.”—1836.
Harriet
Martineau’s
Biographical
Sketches.