THE LATE LADY STIRLING-MAXWELL (THE HON. MRS. NORTON).

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5142, 15 September 1877, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE LATE LADY STIRLING-MAX-WELL (THE HON. MRS. NORTON).

(From the Atheiueum, July 23.) Of the women of our time who have left a name not soon to be forgotten in the world of literature and fashion, few have occupied a position more remarkable than the once beautiful and always eloquent and fearless Caroline Norton. The sense that she was a co-heiress of Sheridan’s literary fame prematurely fevered her young life, and fired her with the ambition of being a humorist ere the ordinary education of girlhood had begun. At thirteen her friends and family were amazed by the comic talent of “The Dandies’ Rout,” in which the foppery of the day was quizzed with pencil as well as pen. Her first publication that attracted notice was entitled “ The Sorrows of Rosalie,” which the Ettriok Shepherd praised extravagantly in “Noctes Ambrosianre,” and it was followed somewhat later by “The Undying One,” a version of the story of “The Wandering Jew," which was deemed worthy of high commendation in the Edinburgh Review. But though at all times she loved versification, .and had faith in her faculty in rhyme, her real powers, like that of her grandsire, lay in the exercise of a more unfettered art. Liko him, she was in talk inimitable, in versatility of illustration inexhaustible, in irony and invective irresistible. Her lot in life certainly was hard. Betrothed before her days of tutelage were over to a worthless, stupid, and indolent man, with whom, as she herself has said, she had not interchanged half-a-dozen serious sentences, she had not been married long before she began to repent and repine. Mr. Norton was a_ younger sou, with a small fortune, a barrister ydthout capacity or business, and a sensualist who was not particular how his enjoyments were paid for. He coaxed his wife into asking the Home Secretary to make Mm a police magistrate; and bullied her into earning more than his salary by her pen. AVritiugagamsttimeiuperiodicalsof all kinds, from week to week, and mouth to month, without leisure for study or revision, it could not be expected that her compositions should display the highest degree of excellence. But from 1830 to 1836 her name was up, and half : the publishers of London wore competing for fragments, sketches, tales, verses, or anything else she chose to give them. In one year she reminded her ungrateful husband that she had made £I4OO in this way ; and as she was then in the zenith of female loveliness, she was universally sought after in society, and became the centre of a circle to which every one of wit or celebrity longed to bo admitted. The once gay and still fascinating Melbourne came with the rest, and, having been her father’s contemporary and friend, soon grew familiar. Sir. Norton tried' hard to turn his acquaintance to account, alternately begging, for a moro lucrative office or a loan of money. Tho Minister was disgusted; and . with Leycoster Stanhope and Edward Ellice-tried to make him treat his wife more worthily. But repulsion, the result of many feuds, had grown inveterate, and at

last Mr. Norton sought £IO,OOO damages from the patron he had long toadied, as compensation for improper intercourse with his wife. Tile jury, without quitting the box, pronounced her innocent, and the charge a slander. Thenceforth they lived apart, war being renewed from time to time between them on various money questions, and regarding the care of their children. Nothing could be more trying to a proud and sensitive nature than the persistent cruelty to which she was exposed. But it must be owned that the taste for publicity early imbibed, the delusion that the world’s sympathy can be enlisted by pathos and sarcasm skilfully combined, and, above all, the instinctive love of controversy, continually impelled her to renew the struggle in which her passion and her pride were engaged. Though always maintaining a distinguished position in society, she gave herself in after years much more culture and reflection, and her later works evince accordingly far more thought and power'. “ Stuart of Dunleath ” and “Old Sir Douglas” are incomparably the best fruits of her inventive genius. With fine discrimination of character, and eloquent pleadings for all that is weak in right and unacknowledged in good, there is combined a pitiless vivisection of pretentious pharisaism that is equally entertaining and instructive. Like all her family, she had the gift of good English. In the judgment of many, her sister, Lady Dufferin, excelled her far in the beauty and tenderness of lyric verse ; nobody wrote better prose in pamphlet, criticism, or novel., Latterly she wrote a good deal anonymously, and took as much pains with a critique of pictures or the review of a new book as if her name had-been prefixed at the beginning or, her well-known initials had been appended at the close. She had survived the zest for popularity, and sometimes seemed almost as if she had learned to enjoy, or at all events to provoke, its opposite. One fine quality she evinced in all her ways of thinking, acting, and writing—an unaffected disdain of affectation. Nothing could be simpler or more direct, nothing more tender or noblo than her ordinary conversation ; but the iron had entered her soul, and every now and then there was a spice of mockery or scorn bitter as wormwood. And now her troubled life is over, and the weary tale of making bricks without straw is almost forgotten, and the uncompensated wrongs of her youth have been effaced with honor, by the devotion and the love shown her in old age. Truly applicable are the touching lines written on the passing, away of a still more illustrious spirit

i( Aud I will bid the Arcadian cypress wave, Pluck the green laurel from Pcneus’ side ; And pray thy spirit may such quiet have, That not an unkind thought be murmured o’er thy grave."