HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.

“We dined at Mr. H.’s,” says Bozzy, in his delightful book of twaddle, which has proved such an evidence of the world’s love of idle gossip—“We dined at Mr. H.’s (Dr. Johnson and myself), and Mr. H. expected Miss Helen Maria Williams. He gave her Ode on Peace to Dr. Johnson; and when this amiable, elegant, and accomplished young lady entered, he (Dr. J.) took her hand in the most courteous manner, and repeated the finest stanza of her poem. He complained of ill health, and said to Miss Williams, ‘I am very ill, when you are near me; what should I be if you were at a distance?’”

Young, amiable, elegant, and a poetess! Sylphs, nymphs, and muses, how ye glided before me when, at sixteen, I read this passage in a green arbour at B—— Castle! Then, to think of Dr. Cerberus growling gallantries: hearts of stone! what were your callosity under the influence of Helen Maria’s eyes! I immediately wrote an ode to Helen Maria Williams, with all the rhymes borrowed from Pope’s Essay on Man, and all the spirit from Anna Matilda’s Farewell to Della Crusca (my constant study). My ode was quite as good as the poetry of rhyming young ladies of sixteen generally is. There was not an original thought in it; but then there were such pretty sounding words! and it began, too, I remember, with “Oh! thou.” I was most desirous to send my ode to Miss Williams without knowing any thing of her “whereabouts,” partly for her sake, and very much for my own; for I really thought the composition Sapphic, and when my volume of poems was published immediately after, (my début in authorship, of which nobody ever heard,) I was no less anxious to print it. But I did not. Still, however, my imagination was full of its fair subject, of whom I only knew what Bozzy had told me; and the lapse of time which had intervened since he wrote, never suggested itself.

I was then in the commencement of my intimacy with Mrs. Le Fanu, the presiding priestess of the muses in Dublin; and I wrote to her on the subject, and received the following pleasant and sensible letter, which I have just tossed out of my portfolio, and which has brought the long forgotten subject to my recollection, in all its original freshness. The whole letter is so fair a specimen of the style of the literary ladies of the old school, so like the charming conversation of the writer, and so good a lesson to young ladies who write odes, and who read and write sentimental novels, (besides its coming from a Sheridan,) that I will transcribe it at large.

“Imagine to yourself, ma belle amie, how very gay I must feel, when I tell you I have had a confinement of near five weeks. I caught a feverish cold and sore throat, and, at the end of a fortnight, supposing myself in a manner well, I went out to take the air, or rather the damp, (for nothing else was to be had;) and I came home with rheumatic pains, first in my lungs, which removed to my right shoulder and arm, which confined me to my bed, where I was as agreeably as St. Laurence on his gridiron. Thank God I am better, and hope revives, though the season be cheerless; but every day brings us nearer the spring, and as Madame de Sévigné observes, no one stops short in the midst of a month, or a bad road, for want of power to get through it. So vive la patience, best friend in sickness or sorrow. You recollect, no doubt, Mason’s beautiful personification of it, in Elfrida. ‘Patience here, her meek hands folded on her modest breast, in mute submission lifts the adoring eye, even to the storm that wrecks her.’ The following is (I think) no bad invocation to the temperate goddess:—

You are precisely at the age; you are exactly of the character of mind to admire more the splendid than the useful virtues. They ever attract and still deceive. How many have lulled themselves into perfect self-satisfaction upon the strength of quick feelings, tender emotions, and easily excited sympathies, who have never practised the every-day qualities that come perpetually into play, and are essential to human happiness. Good humour, according to Johnson’s definition, endurance of the follies and absurdities of others, appear qualities of such easy attainment, that they are neglected as vulgar. What a mistake—how fatal in its consequences! Talents extort admiration; but genuine and habitual affectionate feelings alone beget love. Well has Rousseau insisted so much upon the ‘cœur aimant’ of Julie. I know two women, both highly gifted, the one of very striking and generally admired talents, the other possessing taste and powers of conversation in a very high degree, yet neither of them can boast the possession of one friend even in their own families. For, ‘proud with opinion of superior merit,’ it tinctures their manners, it renders even their condescension offensive. And à propos to remarkable women, Helen Maria Williams’s history is briefly as follows:—I believe it is many years since she first came forward as a literary character. The novel of Julia was, I think, her first publication: it has merit, but certainly a very bad tendency—some of the poetry in it is, I think, very beautiful. She was soon known to Dr. Johnson and other literary characters. She was at that time not more than twenty. The year after the French revolution, she was in Paris, and was present at a meeting of the National Assembly, of which she gives a very lively picture. In Paris she met a Mr. Stone, a married man; but with a noble disdain of every opinion we are bound by the laws of God and man to respect, she chose this gentleman for her companion in a tour to Switzerland. Perhaps you will think me harsh in my judgment, but certainly a woman possessing those talents that necessarily imply strong and delicate feelings, more justly incurs blame than another, when she sacrifices to passion the respectability of her character, and voluntarily incurs contempt when she might command respect and admiration. She becomes useless when she might highly benefit her fellow-creatures.⁠[28]⁠

“As I have not been out, I gave your two commissions to Tom. Archer has not yet received the English edition of St. Clair. He also called at Power’s music shop, who lays the fault upon Stevenson that Castle Hyde has not yet come out. He has had it, I know not what time, to put basses to it.

“I have just been reading St. Clair for the third time, and was more pleased with it than at first, but I think the hero and heroine very dangerous people. You will tell me that the catastrophe would prevent any mischief arising from the witchery of such characters. I do not think so, for we all know that people are not punished in this world because they are vicious; and (as Horatio has it) ‘to be good’ is not always ‘to be happy.’ Moralists lead you into errors, and often throw you into despair, when they tell you so; for if you are good to the best of your lights and means, and the events of your life are disastrous, you will certainly not feel happy, though you may be resigned; and you will then, like Burgher’s Leonora, either be tempted to arraign Providence, or reject altogether doctrines, of which you have found the fallacy.”

Time passed: and it became my turn to receive odes from young ladies in the country, beginning “Oh thou,” quite as good and as poetical as my own. Yet oh! how many successive idols of admiration had my fancy erected in the interval. There was Miss Edgeworth, and Madame de Staël, and Madame Cottin, and Miss Baillie, and a long et cetera of literary females, to each and all of whom I felt the sincerest gratitude for the amusement and instruction they afforded me, though I did not write them odes to tell them so.

On my arrival in Paris in 1816, I found that I also had my petit bout de réputation, such as it was; that my letters of recommendation were letters of supererogation, and that I had nothing to do, but sit quiet (no very easy task by the by for me), and to see and receive all that was best worth seeing and receiving in France. On looking over a list of visitors, one day, presented by Pierre, the porter of the Hôtel d’Orléans, I read the immortal name of Humboldt, and under it, Helen Maria Williams, Rue de Bondi. A visit from Humboldt was always an epoch; and a visit from Helen Maria, the amiable and elegant, the subject of my first ode, was no vulgar event. I made my inquiries as to the present position of the admired of Dr. Johnson, and the adored of Bozzy; and learned that for the last quarter of a century she had lived in literary retirement, in the neighbourhood of the Sévignés, and the Ninons; that she was much beloved and esteemed, surrounded by a circle of sober, sedate, literary friends, and much liée with the enlightened Protestant party in France, and their excellent chief, who (with the name of the protestant Pope, given him by Napoleon) was respectable and influential with all parties. I immediately returned her visit, wrote my name at her door, and shortly after received an invitation to a soirée, which I accepted.

I happened to be asked, for this very same evening, to a ball at Lord H——k’s; and was accordingly obliged to go to Miss Williams’s sober and learned party in all the tulle and tiffany of a robe purée. We were ushered into just such a room as that, in which one might suppose Mad. du Deffand received her coterie. A few wax lights dimly discovered its gloomy vastness; and “in the haze of distance,” a row of large, dark bonnets, was visible, which, on a nearer approach, obviously gave shelter to as many intelligent, but not very blooming countenances. Small groups of men recalling the hommes de lettres of old France, were scattered, in earnest conversation; and tea and refreshments were serving round by a servant, who looked as wise, and literary as the rest of the party.

My celebrated hostess rose to receive me from her ponderous chair, which formed the centre of her circle, with as much graciousness and cordiality as can well be conceived. Every look was a welcome, every word an eulogium, and every tone as musical and as modulated as the most fastidious ear could desire. But oh! Sylphs, nymphs, and Muses, and you, bright image of my youthful dreams, young, elegant, and amiable, Helen Maria Williams, did I at last find you in the bulky, formless, and faded old lady, who now stood before me! Although I ought to have expected this, I was not prepared for it. In spite of Mrs. Le Fanu’s letters, written years before, I had not got a step farther than Bozzy’s description: and when the high bred Miss Williams handed me, with true French ceremony, to the bergère at her right, and thus incorporated me with the learned ladies of her society, it required some minutes to recover from the shock of my disappointment. My frippery appearance, too, was such an anomaly in this demure and sober circle. What I would have given for a douillette bien ouattée, or a coal-box bonnet to cover my bare head; (the identical head with which I had appeared at Lady Cork’s a few years before, and which I have worn, for divers reasons of convenience and economy, down to this very winter, 1828, when I find it more decent, though not quite so economical, to shelter it under the shade of a hat or a beret, afin de prendre mon parti). Let me add, that it is easier to take arms against twenty Popes, and Emperors of Austria, and stand the attacks of fifty Quarterlies, with the new reinforcement of Mr. L—— to boot, than to stare the first symptom of a furrow in the face, and announce such an epoch without shrinking: thus then I fairly announce myself to be no longer what the Journal des Débats once so pleasantly called me, “Cette jeune dame, qui a été jeune si long-tems.”⁠[29]⁠

As neither wit, learning, nor age, exempts a French woman from the interests of the toilette, (and Madame Dacier herself was, I have no doubt, a petite maîtresse,) we had scarcely warmed into intimacy over the subject of Madame de Staël’s new work on the Revolution (which, by the by, drew forth some very entertaining and characteristic anecdotes of that lady’s recent residence in Paris, and her admiration for the Emperor of Russia, and the Duke of Wellington), when one of the ladies complimented me on my dress; it was said to be à la rigueur, for the season, and supposed to be from the fabrique of Le Roi. When I said that I made all my own dresses myself, exclamations from all sides poured in! Did ever any body make a dress, that did not serve her time to the mysteries of the craft; but, above all, a literary lady—an authoress—a femme savante, working at the needle! I soon set them right as to my learning, by the assurance, that, except a very little bog Latin picked up from a hedge schoolmaster in the wilds of Ireland, I knew nothing of any learning whatever; that my authorship had originated in dire necessity; that being obliged to read and write books for many hours per day, I never talked of them; and that above all, “Mon métier à moi, c’êtait d’étre femme;” and so the conversation took a very enjouée turn.

The amiable protestant Pope, and others of the gentlemen, enlarged our circle; and the hours passed away so lightly, that it was late when I left the dim rooms and clever circle of Helen Maria Williams, for the splendid and brilliant salon of our ex-Irish lady lieutenant, in the Faubourg St. Honoré, (by the by, one of the few vice-queens who have left behind them an indelible remembrance of virtues, that threw a lustre upon her high position, and of accomplishments that render it the fashion to be gifted, even in that land, where talent is but another word for proscription!) I cannot better close these recollections of my acquaintance with Miss Williams, than by giving one, or two, of the many notes with which she honoured me, as being extremely illustrative of a certain pretty tone of cajolerie, which always flattered its object, without degrading the writer. “Vous me flattez, coquin, mais n’importe; flattez toujours.”⁠[30]⁠

“What poetical fictions did I indulge myself in, when I believed all Lady Morgan’s kind promises, repeated with all her graces and enchantments, of returning soon to the Rue de Bondi. I feel quite disposed to bouder; and yet Lady Morgan can instantly make her peace with me, by consenting to come with Sir Charles on Sunday next. I shall be extremely flattered, if I am not refused. Milles tendres complimens.

“H. M. Williams.”

“Thursday, Rue de Bondi.”

“Miss H. M. Williams, lest she should not be so fortunate as to find Lady Morgan at home, writes this note to express her regret, and almost even to complain that her ladyship has only found time to bestow upon her one transient visit, since her arrival at Paris. Lady Morgan is not one of those passing travellers, whom having seen once, one can easily be resigned to see no more. H. M. W. is therefore extremely flattered to hear from her friend Mr. Warden, that Lady Morgan had expressed something like a kind purpose of returning. Will she do H. M. W. the honour of passing an hour with her on Sunday evening next, with Sir Charles, to whom she begs her particular compliments. H. M. W. wishes it the more, as she expects a friend on Sunday, who has the greatest desire to be presented to Lady Morgan, whom he has long admired at a distance.”

“Friday, July 5th, Rue de Bondi.”

Oh! dear! I am ready to pamer over this allusion to my “graces and enchantments,” after being called an Irish she wolf, in Blackwood’s, and indexed in the Quarterly for “my unwomanly brutality.” Since I wrote the above, in great gaieté de cœur, I received a letter from a mutual friend of Miss Williams and myself, inclosing the following paragraph from a French paper.

“Death of Helen Maria Williams.

“We ought to devote a few lines to the memory of a literary lady, whose name is dear to the friends of public liberty. Mrs. Helen Maria Williams, the author of a vast number of political and poetical works, lately died at Paris, after a long illness. This lady left England for France, to assist in the important events of the Revolution. Since 1790, she has constantly resided at Paris. She contracted an intimate acquaintance with the most ardent and most disinterested patriots. She was the friend of Madame Roland, and the Girondins. Since that period, she has related the different events of our Revolution in a series of works published at London, and which have served to direct the opinion of England and the United States to the facts of the French Revolution. To these literary claims, she joined qualities of mind equally affectionate and intelligent. She was always the patron of the poor; and frequently, in the class of unfortunate literary men, her kindness was extended to that independent merit, which is ashamed to solicit. She published her ‘Souvenirs de la Révolution,’ the analysis of which was suppressed by the Censorship. The last wishes of this distinguished woman were in favour of the heroes who overcame barbarity at Navarin. Her death has plunged her family and numerous friends in the bitterest grief.”—Constitutionnel.