LADY E ASTLAKE.*
LADY EASTLAKE wrote much about literature and art, and expressed in her journals and letters many opinions on politics. Time has reversed many of her judgments ; yet they are still worth attention. She was a woman of great ability and much culture; she lived among well-born, clever, and well-informed people. In short, she represented favour- ably those who "stand on the old ways," who find the world conveniently arranged for them, and do not like the idea of its being changed, who have their canons of taste about books and pictures, and resent any questioning of their truth. She wrote for the Quarterly for nearly fifty years, con- tributing thirty-five articles, more than a third being dated during Lockhart's reign as editor. Daring the years 1872- 1882 she wrote for the Edinburgh, mostly on art-subjects. But it is from the journals which she kept with much regularity • Journals and CorreTondenoa of Lady Buotioko., 2 Tols. London: John X nr ray. 1395.
for the seven years, 1842-49 (it was in 1849 that she was married), and from the letters which she wrote with a frequency surprising in a woman so constantly occupied, that we get the most vivid picture of her thoughts and feelings.
Elizabeth Rigby was born in 1809 at Norwich, the daughter of a physician, one of the cultivated society for which Norwich was eminent among provincial towns. She soon developed a taste for both art and letters. The former was her favourite; but circumstances made the latter the occupa- tion of her life. Her first publication Wc13 a translation _from the German of a work on The Art Collections of England. An article on Goethe for the Foreign Quarterly _Review was her first contribution to periodical literature. In 1841 Murray published her Letters from the Baltic. The book was itself a success, and it introduced her to Lock- hart, then editor of the Quarterly. Thenceforward she could find a place for all that she chose to write. It is interesting to find her solicited for contribution to a new "Lady's Magazine," and declining the request with the epigrammatic remark that "what is not good enough for a man's taste is too bad for a woman's." In 1842 the family had moved to Edinburgh, and here Miss Rigby began a regular journal. She does not mince matters in the expression of her views. "There is nothing more mischievous," she writes on one occasion, 'than to imagine that the State represents the will of the people." It is interesting to see that this fine old true-blue sentiment does not stand the ,test of practical experience. When, some years later, .she travels in Italy, then divided between Kings and Grand Dukes, who were admirable exponents of her political theories, she cannot find words too strong for her in- dignation at their methods of government. She was at Edinburgh daring the eve of the Disruption. What do the malcontents want ? she asks, "that the present lay and Government patronage may be exchanged for the fickle voice of the people?" A few months afterwards she goes to what she is pleased to call "Mr. Guthrie's Conventicle," and is very contemptuous of his sermon. He told his congrega- tion that it was "the elders and higher classes who persecuted" Christ. "I wonder," interjects the diarist, "who it was that crucified Him !" The Evangelists seem to have thought that the Chief Priests and Elders had a good deal to do with it. A little further on we find an account of a Free Church service, so savagely abusive of both minister and people, that we are inclined to wonder at its appearance. The editor thinks it "an interesting relic." Perhaps it is ; but there are some relics which it is better not to exhibit. More pleasing -are her notices of Edinburgh society, of Lord Jeffrey, for instance, "a small dapper man with splendid eyes," and " Christopher North," "looking like a wild man, but talking like the most polished and excellent." Meanwhile, we have an °biter dictun against the mischief of Art Unions, and a curious little personal glimpse,—" I used to like a bold, flourishing kind of man who would not be repelled; now I care only for those who must be encouraged." In the Quarterly, meanwhile, she was inveighing against writers who try to combine instruction with amusement, a censure which would condemn a good deal of popular literature. The first of Miss Rigby's Quarterly articles to excite much atten- tion was that in which she reviewed Jane Eyre and Vanity _Fair. She proved by "evidence incontrovertible" that Jane _Eyre was written by a man. The evidence was drawn chiefly from the descriptions of dress. No woman, it was urged, could have written them, an excellent argument, but for the fact, which the reviewer, of course, could not know, that the woman who did write them was so circumstanced as to know as little about dress as a woman well could.
In April, 1849, Elizabeth Rigby was married to Charles Lock Eastlake, R.A. In the following year Mr. Eastlake was chosen President of the Royal Academy. Twenty-nine out of -the thirty-three Academicians present voted for him, he giving his own vote to Landseer. A few days afterwards he was knighted, according to custom. Thenceforth we are fol- lowing the fortunes of "Lady Eastlake." Her position was the passport to all the great functions of the day. She de- scribes the lying-in-state of the Duke of Wellington as a failure. "It was not the chamber of death, being obviously got up for the crowd of spectators instead of solely in honour of the mighty dead." The funeral itself was more impressive. Those who had been in the Cathedral and those who had seen
the procession in the streets agreed that each sight was the most solemn and gorgeous they had ever witnessed. Then comes the scene at the Oxford Commemoration, where Sir Charles had the D.C.L. conferred upon him, being compli- mented by the orator guod coniugem part ic ipe mfamae et laborunt clarissimam ha bet, an interpretation which the con iux claris- sima does not like. "I object," she says, "to people fancy- ing that he has not fully sufficient merits on his own account without dragging me in."
In 1851 Sir Charles accepted the post of director of the National Gallery. After this we hear a good deal about the purchase of pictures, especially in Italy. A Ghirlandajo, for instance, is bought at Florence. It was in a church. The priest and the congregation consent ; the Archbishop is willing ; the Pope has approved, but the Academy interferes when it discovers that the destination of the picture is the National Gallery of England. A splendid Moroni is bought in Turin. Then there is a romantic story of a Fra Angelico which had been offered to Sir Charles in London, and turns up again unexpectedly, is bought, restored with great skill, and finally goes to the bottom on its voyage to England. This, however, was a private venture. The letters give a very strong impression that the Government of unreformed Italy were shamefully careless of their national treasures. Of French art as it was in the sixties Lady Eastlake cannot express herself too strongly. "Dozens of magnificent rooms and miles of wall were hung with abominations which disgust and fatigue the eye ; hardly a picture would have been admitted into our exhibition." This was written after a visit to the Salon.
In 1860 Lady Eastlake undertook the completion of Mrs. Jameson's unfinished work, The History of Our Lord as Exam- plified in Works of Art. It appeared four years afterwards, and was reviewed by Lady Eastlake herself in the Quarterly. The editor mentions this fact apparently without a suspicion that there was anything unusual in the proceeding. We must own to a certain amount of astonishment when we turn to the review itself, and read as follows,—" Lady Eastlake has performed her part with rare fidelity and judgment." She writes "out of the fullness of a gifted and richly stored mind, and in her own spirited and graceful style." Of course this was not written by Lady Eastlake, but inserted by the editor. Probably it was well-deserved praise; but if it was expedient—a thing bard to see—that one of the joint-authors should write the review, it was obviously necessary that every word of praise should be rigidly excluded. It looks all the worse when we contrast the praise with the savage ferocity with which the Quarterly has attacked writers who did not belong to its own circle or party.
In 1865 Sir Charles East'ake died. Her loss was the occasion of a little book, Fellowship : Letters addressed to my Sister Mourners, in which she expressed the thoughts in which she had found some solace for her grief. In 1870 she pub- lished a memoir of her husband. The eighteen years of her widowhood were full almost to the last of mental activity. No cloud came over her intellect; her faculties were intact ; only she became more and more disinclined to move. Finally she passed away without pain and struggle within a few weeks of completing her eighty-fourth year. She bad had a full and happy life, which she left without reluctance. Who could wish for more ?
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