And, now the shadow comes, off, like a fly—
A pestilent and stinking fly—he goes!
But it is unpardonable to make even Nero say, "I have to rinse my mouth after her kiss."
The fine qualities of the composition give the blemishes relief, and the material deserved that Mr. Story should work it up to its utmost possible perfection.
Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher. With Letters and other Family Memorials. Edited by the Survivor of her Family. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
There are in this work several elements of a gentle but unfailing interest, such as generally attaches to the class of books to which it belongs. It gives us some delineations of bygone manners and social changes, glimpses of many more or less notable persons, and above all the record of a life which, without being in the usual sense of these terms eventful or distinguished, stands forth as one in a great degree self-determined and bearing a strong impress of individuality. Mrs Fletcher was one of those women who easily become the central figures of the circles in which they move, and who owe this position, not to any transcendent qualities, but to the combined and irresistible influence of great personal charms, a high degree of mental vivacity, and those sympathetic and harmonizing qualities which it is so difficult to define, but which are equally distinct from mere amiability on the one hand and intense self-devotion on the other. There seems to be in such characters a hint of heroic possibilities that would only be narrowed and despoiled of some of their charm if put to the test of action. Lord Brougham compared Mrs. Fletcher to Madame Roland, but she had neither the soaring intellect nor the self-assertive tendencies that mark the representative of a cause. Principle, however, counted for much more with her than with the sex generally, and one can easily believe that her tenacity in adhering to it would have been proof against any ordeal whether of persecution or persuasion. This trait was not more strikingly illustrated by the strength and fervency of her Whiggism amid the reactionary tide produced by the excesses of the French Revolution than by the circumstances of her marriage. The only child of a small landed proprietor in Yorkshire, she had no lack of opportunities for gratifying her father's ambition by marrying in a rank far above her own. Nor was it her ardent affection for the man of her choice that made her strong against entreaties and reproaches. She would probably have been capable of any sacrifice of feeling imposed by her sense of duty, but it was this latter sentiment that forbade the sacrifice. "I was not, perhaps," she writes, "what in the language of romance is called in love with Mr. Fletcher, but I was deeply and tenderly attached to him. He had inspired a confidence and regard I had never felt for any other man. I could not bear the thought of marrying in opposition to my father's will, but I was resolved on principle never to marry so long as Mr. Fletcher remained single." He was twenty years her senior, without fortune, and hindered, instead of aided, in his struggle at the Scottish bar by his prominence as an advocate of reform. These, she admits, were "sound and rational objections," and could she have prevailed on Mr. Fletcher to release her from the engagement, this solution, she confesses, would have been less painful to her than offending her father. But her lover remaining firm, she decided after two years, having come of age in the interval, to take the step dictated by honor as well as inclination, and which the event proved to have been, as she anticipated, "best for the interest and happiness of all parties."
Her married life lasted thirty-seven years, and she survived her husband nearly thirty more, dying in 1858 at the age of eighty-seven. Her career was, on the whole, one of singular happiness and prosperity, made so in part by fortunate circumstances, but in a still greater degree by her sunny temperament, her power of attracting and retaining friends, her unflagging interest in public affairs and her unshaken belief in human progress. Jeffrey and Brougham were among her earliest friends, Carlyle and Mazzini among her latest, and there have been few Englishmen of note in the present century whose names do not appear in the list. Unfortunately, they appear for the most part as names only. They occur incidentally in a record intended not for the public, but for the writer's own family, whose interest in her personal history needed no stimulant and called for no extraneous details. Here and there we find a passage calculated to whet if not to satisfy a more general curiosity, such as the account of a conversation with Wordsworth after his return from Italy in 1837, and some letters from Mazzini written soon after his first arrival in England, But even these belong not to the memoir itself, but to the editor's additions. The book is therefore not to be judged by a mere literary standard, or read with expectations founded on a general knowlege of the writer's position and associations. On all with whom she came in contact Mrs. Fletcher produced the impression of a character singularly round and complete. Something of the same influence is felt in the perusal of her unaffected narrative, and with readers of a reflective turn may prove a sufficient compensation for the lack of more ordinary attractions.