Table of Contents
Temple Bar, 1874. *
“Of his personal appearance we have at least two portraits by good hands. Before us are three carefully-engraved portraits of him, but there is a great dissimilarity between the three except in the wig. Sir Godfrey Kneller painted one of these portraits, which is entirely unlike the two others; let us, however, give Sir Godfrey the credit of the best picture, and judge Addison’s appearance from that. The wig almost prevents our judging the shape of the head, yet it seems very high behind. The forehead is very lofty, the sort of forehead which is called ‘commanding’ by those people who do not know that some of the least decided men in the world have had high foreheads. The eyebrows are delicately ‘pencilled,’ yet show a vast deal of vigour and expression; they are what his old Latin friends, who knew so well the power of expression in the eyebrow, would have called ‘supercilious,’ and yet the nasal end of the supercilium is only slightly raised, and it droops pleasantly at the temporal end, so that there is nothing Satanic or ill-natured about it. The eyebrow of Addison, according to Kneller, seems to say, ‘You are a greater fool than you think yourself to be, but I would die sooner than tell you so.’ The eye, which is generally supposed to convey so much expression, but which very often does not, is very much like the eyes of other amiable and talented people. The nose is long, as becomes an orthodox Whig; quite as long, we should say, as the nose of any member of Peel’s famous long-nosed ministry, and quite as delicately chiselled. The mouth is very tender and beautiful, firm, yet with a delicate curve upwards at each end of the upper lip, suggestive of a good joke, and of a calm waiting to hear if any man is going to beat it. Below the mouth there follows of course the nearly inevitable double chin of the eighteenth century, with a deep incision in the centre of the jaw-bone, which shows through the flesh like a dimple. On the whole a singularly handsome and pleasant face, wanting the wonderful form which one sees in the faces of Shakespeare, Prior, Congreve, Castlereagh, Byron, or Napoleon, but still extremely fine of its own.”
Johnson’s
Lives of the Poets.
“Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often mentioned as that timorous or sullen taciturnity, which his friends called modesty by too mild a name. Steele mentions, with great tenderness, ‘that remarkable bashfulness, which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit;’ and tells us ‘that his abilities were covered only by modesty, which doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all that are concealed.’ Chesterfield affirms that ‘Addison was the most timorous and awkward man that he ever saw.’ And Addison, speaking of his own deficiency in conversation, used to say of himself that, with respect to intellectual wealth, ‘he could draw bills for a thousand pounds though he had not a guinea in his pocket.’ … ‘Addison’s conversation,’ says Pope, ‘had something in it more charming than I have found in any other man. But this was only when familiar; before strangers, or, perhaps, a single stranger, he preserved his dignity by a stiff silence.’ ”
HARRISON AINSWORTH
1805–1882
S. C. Hall’s
Retrospect of a Long Life.
“I saw little of him in later days, but when I saw him in 1826, not long after he married the daughter of Ebers of New Bond Street, and ‘condescended’ for a brief time to be a publisher, he was a remarkably handsome young man—tall, graceful in deportment, and in all ways a pleasant person to look upon and talk to. He was, perhaps, as thorough a gentleman as his native city of Manchester ever sent forth.”
A personal
friend.
“Harrison Ainsworth was certainly a handsome man, but it was very much of the barber’s-block type of beauty, with wavy scented hair, smiling lips, and pink and white complexion. As a young man he was gorgeous in the outré dress of the dandy of ’36, and, in common with those other famous dandies, d’Orsay, young Benjamin Disraeli, and Tom Duncombe, wore multitudinous waistcoats, over which dangled a long gold chain, numberless rings, and a black satin stock. In old age he was very patriarchal-looking. His gray hair was swept up and back from a peculiarly high broad forehead; his moustache, beard, and whiskers were short, straight, and silky, and the mouth was entirely hidden. His eyes were large and oval, and rather flat in form—less expressive altogether than one would have expected in the head of so graphic a writer. The eyebrows were somewhat overhanging, and the nose was straight and flexible. Up to the day of his death he was always a well-dressed man, but in a far more sober fashion than in his youth.”
Ainsworth’s
Rookwood.
“What have we to add to what we have here ventured to record, which the engraving which accompanies this memoir will not more happily embody? (This refers to a portrait by Maclise which appeared in The Mirror.) Should that fail to do justice to his face—to its regularity and delicacy of feature, its manly glow of health, and the cordial nature which lightens it up—we must refer the dissatisfied beholder to Mr. Pickersgill’s masterly full-length portrait exhibited last year, in which the author of The Miser’s Daughter may be seen, not as some pale, worn, pining scholar—some fagging, half-exhausted, periodical romancer—but, as an English gentleman of goodly stature and well-set limb, with a fine head on his shoulders, and a heart to match. If to this we add a word, it must be to observe, that, though the temper of our popular author may be marked by impatience on some occasions, it has never been upon any occasion marked by a want of generosity, whether in conferring benefits or atoning for errors. His friends regard him as a man with as few failings, blended with fine qualities, as most people, and his enemies know nothing at all about him.”
JANE AUSTEN
1775–1817
Tytler’s Jane Austen and her Works. *
“In person Jane Austen seems to have borne considerable resemblance to her two favourite heroines, Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse. Jane, too, was tall and slender, a brunette, with a rich colour—altogether ‘the picture of health’ which Emma Woodhouse was said to be. In minor points, Jane Austen had a well-formed though somewhat small nose and mouth, round as well as rosy cheeks, bright hazel eyes, and brown hair falling in natural curls about her face.”
Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen. *
“As my memoir has now reached the period when I saw a great deal of my aunt, and was old enough to understand something of her value, I will here attempt a description of her person, mind, and habits. In person she was very attractive; her figure was rather tall and slender, her step light and firm, and her whole appearance expressive of health and animation. In complexion she was a clear brunette, with a rich colour; she had full round cheeks, with mouth and nose small and well-formed, bright hazel eyes, and brown hair forming natural curls close round her face. If not so regularly handsome as her sister, yet her countenance had a peculiar charm of its own to the eyes of most beholders. At the time of which I am now writing, she never was seen, either morning or evening, without a cap; I believe that she and her sister were generally thought to have taken to the garb of middle age earlier than their years or
