Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

Though Willis's sonnet speaks of her eyes as hazel, they have been described elsewhere as black. It is probable that their color varied and intensified with every thought or emotion. Her hair was of that golden brown that flashes like bronze in the sunlight. In height she was five feet and five inches. "Her personal grace," said one of her admirers, a judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, "was not acquired; a creature of such absolute natural perfection was physically unable to make an ungraceful movement."

One who knew her in daily life writes: "The unspeakable grace, the light of the eye, the expression of the face, they come back to me as I think of her, but I cannot convey them to others. It was the light in a porcelain vase. You could draw the outlines of the vase, but when the light was quenched it could be known no more."

Enshrined in this form of almost unearthly loveliness was a spirit of even rarer beauty, a character that would have made even an ugly woman a force. In every relationship she wielded an exquisite influence. With a nature profoundly and silently religious were combined a high sense of duty, a ready sympathy, an absolute frankness and simplicity, a clear, practical judgment, and a rapid insight into character.

In conversation she drew out the best thoughts of others intuitively and without vanity, reserving her own brilliant intellect and ready wit for those who really enjoyed it.

To her children, her self-abnegation, her gentleness, her faultless judgment, the intense womanliness of her nature, made her an ideal mother. She was as tenderly loved by women as she was chivalrously worshipped by man. Her twenty-nine years of life were all too short for those who prized and lost her.

"Say that no envious thought could have been possible in her presence," is another woman's tribute to her; "that her sunny ways were fascinating to all alike; that she was as kind and attentive to the stupid and tedious as if they were talented and of social prominence." Of the effect everywhere produced by so exquisite a personality there are countless evidences. It was not restricted to any age, sex, or social class. Mr. William Amory claims to have been in his youth the most distinguished man in Boston, because he was not in love with Emily Marshall.

A carpenter, whose shop was near the house in which she lived after her marriage, failed to go home to his dinner one day, and being asked the reason, replied that he had seen Mrs. Otis go out earlier in the day and he hoped that she might come back that way, adding that he would rather see her any day than eat his dinner.

Franklin Place became the favorite walk with the young men of Boston, many of whom never failed once or twice daily to pass her house, with the hope of catching a glimpse of her at one of its windows. Dr. Malcolm's church, of which she was a member, also added many devotees to its congregation, William Lloyd Garrison being among the number, who confessed that he occasionally went there with the hope of seeing the lovely face of Emily Marshall.

Nor was the repute of her beauty confined to her native city. Wherever she went her unusual presence was instantly felt; she needed no society correspondent to herald her, no princely admirer to create prestige for her. Her claim to the world's homage was self-evident. She was a queen in her own right.

When she visited Philadelphia, so great was the desire to see her that the young girls were let out of school before the usual closing hour, that they might have an opportunity to see her as she passed along the street.