My Shipmate Louise: The Romance of a Wreck, Volume 1 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

I sat at the bottom of the table on the right hand of the chief-officer, and was able to command a pretty good view of the people that I was to be associated with, as I might suppose, for the next three or four, and perhaps five months. There were several girls amongst us—two Miss Joliffes, three Miss Brookes’s, Miss Hudson, and four or five more. Miss Hudson was exceedingly pretty—hair of dark gold, and a skin delicate as a lily, upon which lay a kind of golden tinge—oh, call it not freckles! though I daresay the charming effect was produced by something of that sort. Her eyes were large, moist, violet in hue, with slightly lifted eyebrows, which gave them an arch look. Mr. Sylvanus Johnson, who sat next me, after staring at her a little, muttered in my ear in a dramatic undertone: ‘Perdita has expressed that girl, sir:

Violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes

Or Cytherea’s breath.’

‘If that be her mother next to her,’ said I, ‘fix your attention upon her, Mr. Johnson, and Perdita’s fancy will exhale!’

And indeed Mrs. Hudson was a very extraordinary, and I may say violent contrast to her daughter: a pursy lady of about fifty, with a heavy underlip, puffed-out cheeks of a bluish tint, and a wig, the youthful hue of which defined every trace of age in her countenance, till one thought of her as being some score years older than she really was.

But the interior was wonderfully humanised by these ladies. Their dress, the sparkle of jewels in their ears, on their fingers and throats, here and there a turban seated high on some motherly head—it was the age of turbans and feathers—the soft notes of the girls running an undertone of music through the deeper voices of the matrons and the growling of us males grumbling conversation across and up the table, whipped the fancy ashore, and made one think of drawing-rooms and guitars and Books of Beauty.

There was one lady, however, who held my eye from the start. She was Miss Louise Temple, and I cannot express how deep was the admiration her charms excited in me. I told you that I had caught a glimpse of her at Gravesend; but, down to this moment, I had been unable to obtain a fair view of her. Her hair that, to judge by the coils of it, when let down would have reached to below her knees, was of a wonderful blackness without either gloss or deadness. She wore it in a manner that was perfectly new in those days: in twinings which heaped it up to the aspect of a crown; whilst behind it was brushed up in a way to exhibit the lovely form of the head from the curve of the neck to where the beautiful tresses lay piled. Her face was perfectly colourless, the complexion clear, and the skin exquisitely delicate. Her mouth was small, the upper lip slightly curved, and there was the hint of a pout in the faint, scarce perceptible protrusion of the under lip. Her nose was perfectly straight, like a Greek woman’s; but it had the English indent under the brow, and therefore had the beauty, which to my fancy, no Greek profile ever yet possessed.

But her eyes! How am I to describe them? What impression can I hope to convey by such terms as large, black, soft, and fluid? The lids were delicately veined, the eyelashes long, and between these fringes the eyes shone of a dark liquid loveliness, full of the light, as it seemed to me, of a high intelligence, with spirit and haughtiness in every glance. They were the most dramatic, by which I do not mean theatric, pair of twinklers that ever sparkled star-like under the beauty of a woman’s brow; created, you might have thought, for the interpretation of the Shakespearean imaginations, with all capacity in them of surprise, scorn, resentment, melting tenderness, and of every fine and noble passion. She was attired in a dress of black cloth, simple as a riding habit of to-day, and so fitting her figure as to express without exaggeration every point of grace in the curves and fulness of her tall but still maidenly form.

I caught her glance for a moment: I am sure she remembered me as the passenger she had addressed on the poop; yet there was not the faintest expression of recognition in the full, firm, swift stare she honoured me with. She looked away from me as haughtily as a queen, with flashing inspection of the others of the row of us that confronted her, though it seemed to me that her gaze lingered a little on the Honourable Mr. Colledge, who was seated immediately opposite.