The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

"A few days after, she showed me a dagger with a silver hilt, which she had bought at the mart. She was delighted with the beauty and sharpness of the steel. I took the blade, and pressed on her with it, exclaiming, Rather than suffer thee to kill thyself, I myself will do it.' She retreated in alarm, and I flung the dagger away. I took her by the hand, and led her to the garden, into the vine-bower, and said, Thou mayest depend on me: there is no hour when, if thou wert to utter a wish, I would hesitate for a moment. Come to my window at midnight and whistle, and I will, without preparation, go round the world with thee. What right hast thou to cast me off? How canst thou betray such devotion? Promise me now.' She hung her head and was pale. 'Günderode,' said I, if thou art in earnest, give me a sign. She nodded.

"Two months passed away, when I again came to Frankfort. I ran to the chapter-house of the canonesses, opened the gate, and lo! there she stood, and looked coldly at me. 'Günderode,' I cried, may I come in?' She was silent, and turned away. 'Günderode, say but one word, and my heart beats against thine.' 'No,' she said, 'come no nearer, turn back, we must separate.' 'What does this mean?' I asked. 'Thus much, that we have been deceived, and do not belong to one another.' Ah! I turned away. First despair; first cruel blow, so dreadful to a young heart! I, who knew nothing but entire abandonment to my love, must be thus rejected."

A short period elapsed, when news was brought to Bettine that a young and beautiful lady, who was seen walking a long time at evening beside the Rhine, had been found the next morning, on the bank, among the willows. She had filled her handkerchief with stones, and tied it about her neck, probably intending to sink in the river; but, as she stabbed herself to the heart, she fell backward; and they found her thus lying under the willows by the Rhine, in a spot where the water was deepest. It was the poor, unhappy Günderode.

The next day, Bettine, who was then with her brother and a small party of friends, sailing on the Rhine, landed at Rudesheim. "The story was in every one's mouth. I ran past all with the speed of wind, and up to the summit of Mount Ostein, a mile in height, without stopping. When I had come to the top, I had far outstripped the rest; my breath was gone, and my head burned. There lay the splendid Rhine, with his emerald island gems. I saw the streams descending to him from every side, the rich, peaceful towns on both banks, and the slopes of vines on either side. I asked myself if time would not wear out my loss. And then I resolved to raise myself above grief; for it seemed to me unworthy to utter sorrow which the future would enable me to subdue."

The dithyrambic exuberances in this relation, the romantic extravagances of sentiment, illustrate both the strength and the weakness of a genius bordering close on disease. They show how much such a genius needs to apply to itself the balancing and rectifying criticisms of a sober wisdom. They may also contribute something to awaken and enrich more cold and sluggish natures, which are yet aspiring and docile.

Lucy Aikin has left record of the warm and faithful friendships with which she was blessed by some of the most gifted and amiable women of her time. She was a person of strong character, of highly cultivated talents, and quite remarkable for her powers of conversation, an accomplishment which seems hastening to join the lost arts. The parties which modern fashion gathers, are not so much groups of friends, drawn together for rational and affectionate communion, as they are jabbering herds, among whom all individuality and docile earnestness are lost in the general buzz and clack of simultaneous speech.

One of these friends was Miss Benger, an estimable literary lady, who had considerable celebrity a quarter of a century ago. Miss Aikin has written a brief memoir of her. The following extract sufficiently shows the cordiality and comfort of their union: "To those who knew and enjoyed the friendship of Miss Benger, her writings, pleasing and beautiful as they are, were the smallest part of her merit and her attraction. Endowed with the warmest and most grateful of human hearts, she united to the utmost delicacy and nobleness of sentiment, active benevolence, which knew no limit but the furthest extent of her ability, and a boundless enthusiasm for the good and fair, wherever she discovered them. Her lively imagination, and the flow of eloquence which it inspired, aided by one of the most melodious of voices, lent an inexpressible charm to her conversation; which was heightened by an intuitive discernment of character, rare in itself, and still more so in combination with such fertility of fancy and ardency of feeling. As a companion, whether for the graver or the gayer hour, she had, indeed, few equals; and her constant forgetfullness of self, and unfailing sympathy for others, rendered her the general friend, favorite, and confidante of persons of both sexes, all classes, and all ages. Many would have concurred in judgment with Madame de Staël, when she pronounced Miss Benger the most interesting woman she had seen during her visit to England. Of envy and jealousy there was not a trace in her composition; her probity, veracity, and honor were perfect. Though as free from pride as from vanity, her sense of independence was such, that no one could fix upon her the slightest obligation capable of lowering her in any eyes. She had a generous propensity to seek those most, who needed her offices of friendship. No one was more scrupulously just to the characters and performances of others, no one more candid, no one more deserving of every kind of reliance. It is gratifying to reflect to how many hearts her unassisted merit found its way. Few persons have been more widely or deeply deplored in their sphere of acquaintance; but even those who loved her best could not but confess that their regrets were purely selfish. To her the pains of sensibility seemed to be dealt in even fuller measure than its joys: her childhood and early youth were consumed in a solitude of mind, and under a sense of contrariety between her genius and her fate, which had rendered them sad and full of bitterness; her maturer years were tried by cares, privations, and disappointments, and not seldom by unfeeling slights or thankless neglect. The irritability of her constitution, aggravated by inquietude of mind, had rendered her life one long disease. Old age, which she neither wished nor expected to attain, might have found her solitary and ill-provided: now she has taken the wings of the dove to flee away and be at rest."

Miss Aikin also held a constant intercourse, through a large part of her life, with Joanna Baillie, whom she always regarded with profound honor and love. She had a personal acquaintance with almost every literary woman of celebrity in England, from the last decade of the eighteenth, to the middle of the nineteenth, century. And of all these, with the sole exception of Mrs. Barbauld, she says, Joanna Baillie made by far the deepest impression on her. "Her genius," writes this admiring friend, "was surpassing; her character, the most endearing and exalted." No one had suspected the great genius of Joanna Baillie, so thick a veil of modest reserve had covered it. Soon after the publication of her "Plays on the Passions," Miss Aikin says, "She and her sister I well remember the scene arrived on a morning call at Mrs. Barbauld's. My aunt immediately introduced the topic of the anonymous tragedies, and gave utterance to her admiration with that generous delight in the manifestation of kindred genius which distinguished her. But not even the sudden delight of such praise, so given, could seduce our Scottish damsel into self- betrayal. The faithful sister rushed forward to bear the brunt, while the unsuspected author lay snug in the asylum of her taciturnity. She had been taught to repress all emotions, even the gentlest. Her sister once told me that their father was an excellent parent; when she had once been bitten by a dog thought to be mad, he had sucked the wound, at the hazard, as was supposed, of his own life; but that he had never given her a kiss. Joanna spoke to me once of her yearning to be caressed, when a child. She would sometimes venture to clasp her little arms about her mother's knees, who would seem to chide her; but I know she liked it. Be that as it may, the first thing which drew upon Joanna the admiring notice of society was the devoted assiduity of her attention to her mother, then blind as well as aged, whom she waited on day and night.

"An innocent and maiden grace still hovered over Miss Baillie to the end of her old age. It was one of her peculiar charms, and often brought to my mind the line addressed to the vowed Isabella, in Measure for Measure: I hold you for a thing enskyed and saintly. If there were ever human creature pure in the last recesses of the soul, it was surely this meek, this pious, this noble-minded, and nobly-gifted woman, who, after attaining her ninetieth year, carried with her to the grave the love, the reverence, the regrets, of all who had ever enjoyed the privilege of her society." The graves of these friends are side by side in the old churchyard at Hampstead.

The exquisite delicacy and wealth of Mrs. Hemans's nature, her winning beauty, modesty, and sweetness, drew a circle of dear friends around her wherever she tarried. In her poems and letters and memoirs, they numerously appear, in becoming lights, men and women, lofty and lowly in rank, from Wordsworth and Scott, to whom she paid visits, giving and receiving the choicest delight, to her own dependants, who worshipped her. She tells one of her correspondents, "I wish I could give you the least idea of what kindness is to me, how much more, how far dearer, than fame." The most interesting of her many prized friendships is that which she formed with Miss Jewsbury, who, having long admired her with the whole ardor of her powerful nature, passed a summer in Wales, near Mrs. Hemans, for the express purpose of making her acquaintance. The enthusiastic admiration on one side, the grateful appreciation of it on the other, the spiritual purity and earnestness and high literary and personal aspirations on both sides, quickly produced an attachment between these two gifted women, which yielded them full measures of encouragement, comfort, and bliss. They had just those resemblances and those contrasts of person and mind, together with community of moral aims, which made them delightfully stimulative to each other. Miss Jewsbury dedicated to her friend her "Lays of Leisure Hours," addressed her in the poem "To an Absent One," and described her in the first of the "Poetical Portraits" contained in the same book. Also, in her "Three Histories," Mrs. Hemans is the original of Egeria. "Egeria was totally different from any other woman I had ever seen, either in Italy or England. She did not dazzle, she subdued, me. I never saw another woman so exquisitely feminine. Her movements were features. Her strength and her weakness alike lay in her affections. Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight; and if, in her depression, she resembled night, it was night wearing her stars. She was a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings." Miss Jewsbury married, and went to India, where she soon died. Mrs. Hemans paid a heartfelt tribute to her memory, in the course of which she says, "There was a strong chain of interest between us, that spell of mind on mind, which, once formed, can never be broken. I felt, too, that my whole nature was understood and appreciated by her; and this is a sort of happiness which I consider the most rare in earthly affection."