Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie. Amelia Opie

business been concluded, when the servant announced Lord Erskine, who came in with books in his hands, and when he saw me he cried, “I am glad to see you here, for I want you to read something for me.” He then gracefully bowed to Madame de Staël and presented the two books to her, containing, he said, his most celebrated speeches; and opening the first volume he turned to the first page, on which he had written a dedication to la Baronne de Staël in English, which he begged me to read to her. “No, no, not so,” she exclaimed eagerly, taking the book from me, “I can read it myself.” Accordingly she began; while I, myself an author, soon felt painful sympathy with poor Lord E.’s feelings; for the writing was, I dare say, difficult for her, a foreigner, to read; and the poor writer’s smooth and elegant periods were, in a great measure, deprived of their charm, by their meaning being sometimes stammered out, and, possibly, not entirely understood. However, the lady was flattered with what she did understand, and Lord E. soon recovered the steadiness of his nerves: and taking up the second volume, which contained his speeches at the Old Bailey trials in the year 1794, he read some favourite passages to her, and finished by alluding to the evident dislike which the Lord Chief Baron Eyre, who presided at them, entertained for him, and how strongly he proved it during the trial of Horne Tooke, who was the second person tried for his life, and was (like the first person, Thomas Hardy) entirely acquitted. He then related what had passed between himself and the Chief Justice, after the trial was over and the crowd dispersed, and which I, who was present, well remembered having, by accident, overheard. Liking to be near the eloquent man and to hear him speak, I had contrived to get so near as to overhear what passed, and which I thought was too loud, not to be intended to be heard. The judge had, I saw, to repeat what he said; but at length he was answered in a manner which he little expected; for the indignant speaker replied, “My lord, I am willing to give your lordship such an answer as an aggrieved man of honour like myself is willing to give to the man who has repeatedly insulted him, and I am willing and ready to meet your lordship, at any time and place that you may choose to appoint.” At this point of his story our hostess cried, “What! my lord, that was a challenge, n’est ce pas?” “Yes, ma’am.” “Well, what did he say?” “Oh! nothing to the purpose; but I assure you I was irritated into saying what I did.” “Yes, indeed,—I was behind you, Lord E. (said I,) and heard all that passed; and though such things were quite new to me, I felt sure what was said by you amounted to a challenge; but when I told the friends with whom I went home what had passed, they said I was a silly girl and that I was mistaken.” He looked at me with some surprise, and, I fear, with a doubt of my veracity; but I could affirm to the truth of my assertion. I do not wonder, however, as he did not then know me personally, and was not conscious of my proximity, or that of any one else perhaps, that he was inclined to distrust my truthfulness; but it was a fact, that the circumstance and the words he related, were, I believe, witnessed and overheard by me alone; and a curious fact or coincidence it was, that this conversation, overheard by me in the year 1794, I should be present to hear related to the Baronne de Staël by Lord E. himself in the year 1813. The circumstance and the words he has published at the end of the trial of Horne Tooke; and I could, with a safe conscience, underwrite all that he there relates. I fear that he really believed I was romancing, or he would have named this odd corroboration of his conduct, which no doubt he thought the noble daring of a man of worldly honour.

      Among Mrs. Opie’s loose papers was one written within a short time of her death, containing some introductory remarks to a reminiscence she purposed to write of this eventful period. It begins—

      “‘Tis pleasant from the loophole of retreat

      To look on such a world,”

      wrote Cowper: but these words do not exactly express my present feelings; for from my loophole of retreat I am looking with pleasure, not on the world as it is, but on the world as it was.

      The occurrences of the year 1794 have lately been pressing with such power on my remembrance, demanding from me a decided confession that it was the most interesting period of my long life, (or nearly such,) that I am inclined to give an account of what made it so, and acknowledge that it was the opportunity unexpectedly afforded me of attending the trials of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall, at the Old Bailey, for High Treason. What a prospect of entertainment was opening before me when (while on a visit at Southgate, near London) I heard that at these approaching trials, to which I hoped to obtain admission, I should not only hear the first pleaders at the bar, but behold, and probably hear examined, the first magnates of the land; and on the event depended, not a nisi prius cause, or one of petty larceny, but interests of a public nature, and most nearly affecting the safety and prosperity of the nation; aye, and much personally interesting to myself; as I knew, in the secret of my heart, that my own prospects for life might probably be changed and darkened by the result. To such a height had party-spirit reached on both sides, in my native city and elsewhere, that even innocent men were accused of treasonable intentions and practices, who talked, when excited by contradiction, the fearful things they would never have thought of acting; and I had reason to believe that if the “felons” about to be tried should not be “acquitted felons,” certain friends of mine would have emigrated to America, and my beloved father would have been induced to accompany them!

      This was, indeed, an alarming idea to me, who was only beginning to taste the pleasures of London society, and who could still say, in spite of the excitement of party feeling, and my unity of opinion with the liberals of that day, “England! with all thy faults I love thee still;” and when, on the 28th of the 10th mo., the trial of Thomas Hardy began at the Sessions-house in the Old Bailey, existence acquired, in my eyes, a new but painful interest; and, with the pleasing anticipations of the unexpected enjoyment awaiting me, were mingled some apparently well-founded fears of evil to come. How vividly do I often now, in my lone and lonely portion, live over the excitements of those far distant days, in the many, many evening hours, which I pass not unwillingly alone.

      “Alone! if ’tis to be alone, when mem’ry’s spells are cast

      To summon phantoms from the dead, and voices from the past,

      Long woven in the tangled web of the mysterious brain,

Till time and space are things of naught, and all is ours again.”^[5]

      Yes! how often (as I said) do I recall with all these alternate emotions of pain and pleasure, of disappointment and fruition, the last days of October, and the first five days of November, 1794! * * *

      Here the manuscript breaks off.

[5]	From a charming Poem called the Desert Dream, written by Anna Savage, and published in the Monthly Magazine for April, 1847.—A. O.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      FRENCH EMIGRANTS; LETTER TO MRS. TAYLOR; LETTER OF THE DUKE D’AIGUILLON; VISIT TO LONDON, AND LETTER FROM THENCE; LONDON AGAIN; LETTER FROM MRS. WOLLSTONECROFT; FIRST INTRODUCTION TO MR. OPIE; MR. OPIE’S EARLY HISTORY; RETURN TO NORWICH; PREPARATIONS FOR MARRIAGE.

      The sufferings endured by the upper and proscribed classes in France during the time of the French Revolution, obliged (as is well known) multitudes of them to take refuge in this country; and, in the year 1797, London and its suburbs alone were found, by an official return, to contain seven thousand and forty-one Aliens. Many of these were subjected to the extremes of want and misery; their condition exciting the compassion, as well as the indignation, of the humane. Amongst them were not a few men of high standing and repute, who were received into society, and found friends among the wealthier classes of the community. It was just at this period, that the celebrated Count de Lally Tolendal, published his “Defence of the French Emigrants;” a work well known all over Europe, as soon as it was published. To this gentleman Mrs. Opie addressed a “Quatrain,” on reading his “Defence of his Father,” which subsequently appeared among her published poems. This favour he acknowledged, in a letter dated from Cossey, (near Norwich,) accompanied by a French poem of one hundred lines, which she preserved among her papers.