Women of History Part 13

LADY HUNTINGDON.

[BORN 1707. DIED 1791.]

ISAAC TAYLOR.

The broad facts of this n.o.ble lady's history afford ground enough for the repute she has enjoyed as a woman of much tact and ability, of great energy, and of a munificent temper; while the use she made of her influence and fortune for the promotion of the Methodistic movement, that is to say, of Christianity itself, sufficiently attests her piety and zeal. It must also be inferred, from the circ.u.mstance of her having retained the friends.h.i.+p and regard of many among the leading persons of her time through a long period of years, that she possessed qualities of mind and attractions of manner that were of no ordinary sort; for it is certain that those who ridiculed, or even hated her Methodism, still yielded themselves, in frequent instances, to her personal influence. So far, an idea of Lady Huntingdon may be gathered from facts that are beyond doubt. There is, however, so little that is discriminative in the extant eulogies of her friends and correspondents, or of her biographers, and there is so little that bears a clearly-marked individuality in her own letters, that a distinct image of her mind and temper is not easy to obtain.

As to the position a.s.signed to her among the founders of Methodism, it is due to her rather on the ground of what she did for it as its patroness, which was almost immeasurable, than because she imprinted upon it any characteristics of her own mind. Calvinistic Methodism was not her creation. In the centre of the brilliant company of her pious relatives and n.o.ble friends, and with a numerous attendance of educated and Episcopally-ordained ministers, and, beyond this inner circle, a broad _penumbra_ of lay preachers chosen by herself, and educated, maintained, and employed at her cost, and acting under her immediate direction, she seems to sit as a queen. Something of the regal style, something of the air of the autocrat, was natural to one who, with the consciousness of rank, and with the habitude of one accustomed to the highest society, was gifted with a peculiar governing ability, and was actually wielding an extensive influence over men and things. It would have been wonderful indeed if nothing of the sort had been perceptible in her manner and style; yet, that her main intention was pure and beneficent, and that ambition was not her pa.s.sion, will be felt and confessed by every candid reader of her letters.

Her letters indicate much business-like ability, and they show always a pertinent adherence to the matter in hand. They are, therefore, more determinate by far than Whitefield's, and indeed are little less so than Wesley's, whose letters are eminent examples of succinct determinativeness; they bespeak an unvarying and genuine fervour, and a simple-hearted onward tendency toward the one purpose of her life--the spread of the gospel, and the honour of her Saviour. Lady Huntingdon's are, moreover, marked by often-repeated, but not to be questioned, professions of the deep sense she had of her own unworthiness and unprofitableness. Such are the ingredients, few and perpetually recurrent, of these compositions: a severe monotony--not severe in the sense of harshness--is their characteristic. Yet Lady Huntingdon was always the object of a warm personal affection with those who were nearest to her. With them it is always "Our dear Lady Huntingdon;" and putting out of view formal eulogies, it is unquestionable that, if she governed her connection as having a right to rule it, her style and behaviour, like Wesley's, indicated the purest motives and the most entire simplicity of purpose. This, in truth, may be said to have been the common characteristic of the founders of Methodism, especially of the two Wesleys--a devotedness to the service and glory of the Saviour Christ, which none who saw and conversed with them could question.

MARIA THERESA.

[BORN 1717. DIED 1780.]

CARLYLE.

Maria Theresa, in high spirits about her English subsidy and the bright aspects, left Vienna for Presburg, and is celebrating her coronation there as Queen of Hungary in a very sublime manner. Sunday, 25th June, 1741, that is the day of putting on your crown--iron crown of St Stephen, as readers know. The chivalry of Hungary, from Palfy and Esterhazy downward, and all the world, are there s.h.i.+ning in loyalty and barbaric gold and pearl. A truly beautiful young woman, beautiful to soul and eye,--devout, too, and n.o.ble, though ill formed in political or other science,--is in the middle of it, and makes the scene still more noticeable to us. "See, at the finish of the ceremonies, she has mounted a high swift horse, sword girt to her side,--a great rider always this young queen,--and gallops, Hungary following like a comet's tail, to the Konigsberg, to the top of the Konigsberg; there draws sword, and cuts grandly, flouris.h.i.+ng to the four quarters of the heavens: 'Let any mortal, from whatever quarter coming, meddle with Hungary if he dare!'

Chivalrous Hungary bursts into pa.s.sionate acclaim; old Palfy, I could fancy, into tears; and all the world murmurs to itself, with moist gleaming eyes, _Rex Noster_."

As for this brave young Queen of Hungary, my admiration goes with all the world--not in the language of flattery, but of evident fact: the royal qualities abound in that high young lady; had they left the world and grown to mere costume elsewhere, you might find certain of them again here. Most brave, high, and pious-minded; beautiful, too, as I have said, and radiant with good nature, though of temper that will easily catch fire; there is perhaps no n.o.bler woman there living; and she fronts the roaring elements in a truly grand feminine manner, as if heaven itself, and the voice of duty, called her. "The inheritances which my father left me, we will not part with these. Death, if it so must be, but not dishonour; listen not to that thief in the night."

Maria Theresa has not studied at all the history of the Silesian Duchies. She knows only that her father and grandfather peaceably held them; it was not she that sent out Seckendorf to ride two thousand five hundred miles, or broke the heart of Frederick-William and his household. Pity she had not complied with Frederick, and saved such rivers of bitterness to herself and mankind!

Her husband, the Grand Duke, an inert but good-tempered and well-conditioned duke after his sort, goes with her. Him we shall see trying various things, and at length take to banking and merchandise, and even meal-dealing on the great scale. "Our armies had most part of their meal circuitously from him," says Frederick of times long subsequent. Now, as always, he follows loyally his wife's lead, never she his. Wife being intrinsically, as well as extrinsically, the better man, what other can he do?

At one time she seriously thought of taking "the command of her armies,"

says a good witness. "Her husband has been with the armies once, twice, but never to much purpose; and this is about the last time, or last but one, this in winter 1742. She loves her husband thoroughly all along, but gives him no share in business, finding he understands nothing except banking. It is certain she chiefly was the reformer of her army"

in years coming; "she athwart many impediments. An ardent rider, often on horseback at paces furiously swift, her beautiful face tanned by the weather. Honest to the bone, athwart all her prejudices. Since our own Elizabeth, no woman, and hardly one man, is worth being named beside her as a sovereign ruler. 'She is a living contradiction of the Salic law,'

say her admirers."

META MOLLER.

[1750.]

LETTERS.

Klopstock first beheld Meta Moller in pa.s.sing through Hamburg in April 1751. In a letter to one of his friends, written soon after this, he describes her as mistress of the French, English, and Italian languages, and even conversant with Greek and Latin literature. She was then in her twenty-fourth year, he in his twenty-seventh. Their marriage took place about three years afterwards. Here is Meta's own narrative of the rise and course of their true love, given in one of her letters to Richardson, a narrative which will bear a hundred readings, and a hundred more after that, and still be as fresh and as touching as ever:--

"You will know all what concerns me. Love, dear sir, is all what me concerns. And love shall be all what I will tell you in this letter. In one happy night I read my husband's poem, 'The Messiah.' I was extremely touched with it. The next day I asked one of his friends who was the author of this poem, and this was the first time I heard Klopstock's name. I believe I fell immediately in love with him. At the least, my thoughts were ever with him filled, especially because his friend told me very much of his character. But I had no hopes ever to see him, when quite unexpectedly I heard that he should pa.s.s through Hamburg. I wrote immediately to the same friend, for procuring, by his means, that I might see the author of the 'Messiah' when in Hamburg. He told him that a certain girl in Hamburg wished to see him, and for all recommendation showed him some letters in which I made bold to criticise Klopstock's verses. Klopstock came, and came to me. I must confess that, though greatly prepossessed of his qualities, I never thought him the amiable youth whom I found him. This made its effect. After having seen him for two hours I was obliged to pa.s.s the evening in a company which never had been so wearisome to me. I could not speak. I could not play. I thought I saw nothing but Klopstock.

"I saw him the next day, and the following, and we were very seriously friends. But the fourth day he departed! He wrote soon after, and from that time our correspondence began to be a very diligent one. I sincerely believed my love to be friends.h.i.+p. I spoke to my friends of nothing but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They rallied me, and said I was in love. I rallied them again, and said that they must have a very friends.h.i.+pless heart if they had no idea of friends.h.i.+p to a man as well as to a woman. Thus it continued eight months, in which time my friends found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in mine. I perceived it likewise, but I would not believe it. At the last, Klopstock said plainly that he loved; and I startled as for a wrong thing. I answered that it was no love, but friends.h.i.+p, as it was what I felt for him; we had not seen one another enough to love (as if love must have more time than friends.h.i.+p). This was sincerely my meaning, and I had this meaning till Klopstock came again to Hamburg. This he did a year after we had seen one another for the first time. We saw; we were friends; we loved; and we believed that we loved; and a short time after I could even tell Klopstock that I loved. But we were obliged to part again, and wait two years for our wedding. My mother would not let marry me a stranger. I could marry then without her consentment, as by the death of my father my fortune depended not upon her; but this was an horrible idea for me, and thank heaven I have prevailed by prayers. At this time, knowing Klopstock, she loves him as her lifely son, and thanks G.o.d that she has not persisted. We married, and I am the happiest wife in the world."

This was written in March 1758, after they had been about four years married. Writing again in the beginning of May, she thus sketches the life they led together: "It will be a delightful occupation for me to make you more acquainted with my husband's poem. n.o.body can do it better than I, being the person who knows the most of that which is not yet published, being always present at the birth of the young verses, which begin always by fragments here and there of a subject of which his soul is just then filled. He has many great fragments of the whole work ready. You may think that persons who love as we do have no need of two chambers; we are always in the same. I, with my little work, still only regarding sometimes my husband's sweet face, which is so venerable at that time with tears of devotion and all the sublimity of the subject, my husband reading me the young verses and suffering my criticism."

With this we may compare what Klopstock says, writing of her: "How perfect was her taste! how exquisitely fine her feelings! she observed everything even to the slightest turn of the thought. I had only to look at her, and could see in her face when even a syllable pleased or displeased her; and when I led her to explain the reason of her remarks, no demonstration could be more true, more accurate, or more appropriate to the subject. But, in general, this gave us very little trouble, for we understood each other when we had scarcely began to explain our ideas."

But all this happiness, too bright for earth, or for long endurance, was about to be suddenly extinguished. There is another letter from Meta to Richardson, dated 26th August, in which she informs him that she has a prospect of being a mother in the month of November, and of thus attaining what has been her only wish ungratified for these four years.

She writes from Hamburg, where she was on a visit to her family, while her husband had been obliged to make a journey to Copenhagen. It was the first time that they had been separated. It is remarkable that she seems to have had more than a mere apprehension, almost an a.s.sured foreboding, of what awaited her. Klopstock rejoined her at last about the end of September; her last lines, written to him before his return, are dated the 26th of that month. The two following months they spent together at Hamburg. From that place poor Meta was never to return. There, where she had first drawn breath, she died in childbed on the 28th of November.

[Klopstock lived till 1803, and was then buried under a lime tree in the churchyard of Ottenson, near Altona, by the side of his Meta and the child that slept in her arms.]

ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.

[1720.]

JAMES BRUCE.

The piety and domestic virtues of Elizabeth Blackwell ent.i.tle her to rank among the best women whose names have found their way into public history; a fortune which has happened to her and Lady Rachel Russel, and two or three other virtuous women; but which has, in the instance of most of their s.e.x who have attained to celebrity, been a calamity upon their memory, being a rank at which it is not easy for a woman to arrive by the practice of those private and retiring virtues and graces which are the real solid ornaments of the female character. Elizabeth Blackwell was the daughter of a stocking merchant in Aberdeen, where she was born about the beginning of last century. The first event of her life which is now known, was her secret marriage with Alexander Blackwell, and her elopement with him to London. He had received a finished education, and was an accurate Greek and Latin scholar. He had studied medicine under the famous Boerhaave, and, in travelling over the Continent, had lived in the best society, and had acquired an extensive knowledge of the modern languages. He was, however, unsuccessful in his endeavours to secure a comfortable livelihood. After having in vain attempted to get into practice as a physician, and having now a wife also to provide for, he applied for the situation of corrector of the press to a printer of the name of Wilkins, and for some time continued in that employment. He then set up a printing establishment in the Strand, but became involved in debt, and was thrown into prison.

It was this circ.u.mstance that brought into practice the talents and virtues of Mrs Blackwell. She resolved, by an unexampled labour for a woman, to effect the delivery of her husband. She had in her girlish days practised the drawing and colouring of flowers, a suitable and amiable accomplishment of her s.e.x. Engravings of flowers were then very scarce, and Mrs Blackwell thought that the publication of a Herbal might attract the notice of the world, and yield her such a remuneration as would enable her to discharge her husband's debts. She now engaged in a labour which is at once a n.o.ble and marvellous monument of her enthusiastic and untiring conjugal affection, and interesting evidence of the elegant and truly womanly nature of her own mind. Having submitted her first drawings to Sir Hans Sloane and Dr Mead, these eminent physicians encouraged her to proceed with the work. She also received the kindest countenance from Mr Philip Miller, a well-known writer on horticulture. Amongst those who were honoured in patronising her labour of piety was Mr Rand of the Botanical Garden at Chelsea. By his advice Mrs Blackwell took lodgings in the neighbourhood of this garden, from which she was furnished with all the flowers and plants which she required for her work. Of these she made drawings, which she engraved on copper, and coloured with her own hands. Her husband supplied the Latin names and the descriptions of the plants, which were taken princ.i.p.ally from Miller's "Botanic.u.m Officinale," with the author's permission.

In 1737, the first volume, a large folio, came out under the following t.i.tle, "A Curious Herbal, containing 500 Cuts of the most useful Plants which are now used in the Practice of Physic. Engraved in Folio Copperplates, after Drawings by Eliz. Blackwell." The profits which Mrs Blackwell received from this work enabled her to relieve her husband from prison. The adventures of Blackwell after his release are well known. Having devoted much of his attention to agricultural science, he obtained for some time a lucrative employment from the Duke of Chandos.

He was subsequently invited to Sweden on account of a work he had published on agriculture. He went there, leaving his wife in England. He was received with honour at the court of Stockholm, where he lived with the prime minister, in the enjoyment of a salary from the government.

During this period of prosperity he had continued to send large sums of money to his wife, who was now making arrangements to leave England with her only child and join her husband. But heaven, which often brings human histories to a very different conclusion from what readers of romances are disposed to acquiesce in, for the wise end of impressing men with the most solemn conviction of the reality of another world, which is the appointed place of rest and reward for goodness, saw fit to remove from this n.o.ble woman the husband whom she had loved so ardently, and for whom she had wrought a work of such singular piety, and to take him from the world by a melancholy and frightful death. A conspiracy against the const.i.tution of Sweden was formed by Count Tessin; and Blackwell, it is believed innocently, was suspected of being concerned in the plot. He was seized and put to the torture. He was beheaded in July 1747.

Laet.i.tIA BARBAULD.

[BORN 1743. DIED 1825.]

JOHNSTONE.

The only daughter of Dr John Aikin, a Dissenting minister. Her youth was spent in entire seclusion, and her education was entirely domestic. At two years of age, it is stated on the authority of her mother, she could read with tolerable ease, and, at two years and a half, as well "as most women." It is at least certain that, from the instructions of her father, Miss Aikin acquired a competent knowledge of Latin; and that she was not indebted, for even a single lesson, either to professional female tuition, or to the teachers of the fas.h.i.+onable accomplishments, considered so important in forming the minds and manners of young ladies. Dr Aikin became a teacher at the Dissenting academy in Warrington, in Lancas.h.i.+re, when his daughter was about fifteen. This seminary enjoyed high celebrity. The teachers were all men of distinguished talents. Dr Priestley and Dr Enfield were of their number.

In such a society the genius of Miss Aikin was fostered and animated; and her poems, published in 1773, rose into immediate popularity. Verse had the quality of comparative rarity in those days, and a female poet had a clear and unoccupied field.

In 1744, Miss Aikin married Rochemont Barbauld, a young gentleman who, having been sent to Warrington for instruction previous to entering the church, imbibed, with a pa.s.sion for her, the tenets of the sect to which her family belonged. Mr Barbauld obtained the charge of a congregation in Suffolk, and at Palgrave opened a seminary for the instruction of youth. The acquirements and habits of Mrs Barbauld eminently qualified her to be the coadjutor of her husband in this undertaking, and she afterwards received pupils of a very tender age as her peculiar charge.

Of this number were Mr Denman the barrister, and Sir William Gell.

Having no child of her own, she adopted the infant of her brother, Dr Aikin; and for his use, and that of her infant cla.s.s, were composed those early lessons and hymns in prose which confirmed her literary reputation.

After a long interval, Mrs Barbauld resumed her pen, and published a selection of papers from the cla.s.sic essayists, with a Life of Richardson, and a selection from his correspondence. In 1808 she lost her husband, who had for a long time suffered under that mental affliction which makes death a welcome release. After this event, she published a selection of the British novelists, and then her poem, "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,"--a production far more ambitious, though much less successful, than her early and quieter performances. Its tone is that of gloomy prediction, its spirit desponding and altogether infelicitous. That was no palliation for the virulence of party feeling by which this useful and elegant author, now venerable even for years, was a.s.sailed by certain periodical writers. She never again appeared before the public. She died at the age of eighty-two, ent.i.tled to the veneration and grat.i.tude of every one who has a child to train for this life, and for a higher state of existence.