Born [Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan], in London, 1808. Precocious literary ability. Married (i.) to Hon. George Chappie Norton, 30 June 1827; rupture with him, 1836. Edited “La Belle Assemblée,” 1832–36; “The English Annual,” 1834. Prolific writer of poems and novels; contributed frequently to periodicals. Husband died, 24 Feb. 1875. Married (ii.) to Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 1 March 1877. Died, 15 June 1877. Works: “The Sorrows of Rosalie” (anon.), 1829; “The Undying One,” 1830 (2nd edn. same year); “Poems” (Boston), 1833; “The Wife and Woman’s Reward” (anon.), 1835; “The Dream,” 1840; “Lines” [on the Queen], [1840]; “A Voice from the Factories” (anon.), 1836; “The Child of the Islands,” 1845; “Aunt Carry’s Ballads for Children,” 1847; “Stuart of Dunleath,” 1851; “English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century” (priv. ptd.), 1854; “A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill,” 1855; “The Centenary Festival” (from “Daily Scotsman”), [1859]; “The Lady of La Garaye,” 1862 [1861]; “Lost and Saved,” 1863; “Old Sir Douglas” (from “Macmillan’s Mag.”), 1868 [1867]. She edited: “A Residence at Sierra Leone,” 1849; Miss Stapleton’s “The Pastor of Silverdale,” 1867; “The Rose of Jericho,” 1870.
Personal
Sheridan’s daughter and poetess, sat nearer to us, looking like a queen, certainly one of the most beautiful women I ever looked upon.
I hope you will not take it ill if I implore you to try at least to be calm under these trials. You know that what is alleged (if it be alleged) is utterly false, and what is false can rarely be made to appear true. The steps which it will be prudent to take, it will be impossible to determine until we know more certainly the course that is intended to be pursued. You ought to know him better than I do, and must do so. But you seem to me to be hardly aware what a GNOME he is. In my opinion he has somehow or other made this whole matter subservient to his pecuniary interest. Since first I heard that I was to be proceeded against, I have suffered more intensely than I ever did in my life. I have had neither sleep nor appetite, and I attribute the whole of my illness to the uneasiness of my mind. Now, what is this uneasiness for? Not for my own character, because, as you justly say, the imputation upon me is as nothing. It is not for the political consequence to myself, although I deeply feel the consequences which my indiscretion may bring upon those who are attached to me, and follow my fortunes. The real and principal object of my anxiety and solicitude is you, and the situation in which you have been so unjustly placed by the circumstances which have taken place.
I cannot contemplate without deep emotion the effect of your verdict upon the fate of this lady. In the pride of beauty, in the exuberance of youthful spirits, flattered by the admirers of her genius, she may have excited envy, and may not have borne her triumph with uniform moderation and meekness; but her principles have been unshaken, her heart has been pure. As a wife her conduct has been irreproachable; as a mother she has set a bright example to her sex.
One of the pleasantest dinners I ever enjoyed was with Mrs. Norton. She now lives with her uncle, Mr. Charles Sheridan, who is a bachelor…. The beauty of Mrs. Norton has never been exaggerated. It is brilliant and refined. Her countenance is lighted by eyes of the intensest brightness, and her features are of the greatest regularity. There is something tropical in her look; it is so intensely bright and burning, with large dark eyes, dark hair, and Italian complexion. And her conversation is so pleasant and powerful without being masculine, or rather it is masculine without being mannish; there is the grace and ease of the woman with a strength and skill of which any man might well be proud. Mrs. Norton is about twenty-eight years old, and is, I believe, a grossly slandered woman. She has been a woman of fashion, and has received many attentions which doubtless she would have declined had she been brought up under the advice of a mother; but which we may not wonder she did not decline, circumstanced as she was. It will be enough for you, and I doubt not you will be happy to hear it of so remarkable and beautiful a woman, that I believe her entirely innocent of the grave charges that have been brought against her. I count her one of the brightest intellects I have ever met.
I dined this day with Rogers, the Dean of the poets…. It was not till dinner was half over that he was called out of the room, and returned with a lady under his arm. A lady, neither splendidly dressed nor strikingly beautiful, as it seemed to me, was placed at the table. A whisper ran along the company, which I could not make out. She instantly joined our conversation, with an ease and spirit that showed her quite used to society. She stepped a little too near my prejudices by a harsh sentence about Goethe, which I resented. And we had exchanged a few sentences when she named herself, and I then recognized the much-eulogized and calumniated Honorable Mrs. Norton, who, you may recollect, was purged by a jury finding for the defendant in a crim. con. action by her husband against Lord Melbourne. When I knew who she was, I felt that I ought to have distinguished her beauty and grace by my own discernment, and not waited for a formal announcement. You are aware that her position in society was, to a great degree, imperilled.
At the Bunsens’ yesterday. I saw Mrs. Norton and looked at her well. Her beauty is, perhaps, of too high an order to strike at first, especially as she is now above forty. It did not give me much artistic pleasure, but I could see that I should probably think her more and more beautiful. Also, I did not see her speak or smile, as she was listening to music.
She was at this time apparently about forty, still very handsome, and singularly attractive in her manners and conversation, her figure, though fine, was not tall or commanding; her countenance, of the Roman cast, was beautiful, and a profusion of black hair descending in curls on her shoulders set off the brilliant colour of her skin. Long acquainted with the men most celebrated for rank, talent, and fashion in her day, she had the ease of manner and varied conversation which, more than anything else, these advantages confer, but at the same time she had lost none of the native kindliness and sweetness of her disposition. She was uniformly courteous and affable to such a degree indeed, that no one could discover from her manner whose conversation, of those she met in society, she really preferred. There is no one perfect, however, in this world, and Mrs. Norton had one blemish in society, which increased rather than diminished with the lapse of time. She has associated so frequently with the first in talent and station, that her mind had become impregnated, as it were, with the atmosphere which they breathed. Hence her conversation consisted too much of anecdotes—many of them trivial enough—of eminent men.
When I first knew Caroline Sheridan, she had not long been married to the Hon. George Norton. She was splendidly handsome, of an un-English character of beauty, her rather large and heavy head and features recalling the grandest Grecian and Italian models, to the latter of whom her rich colouring and blue-black braids of hair give her an additional resemblance. Though neither as perfectly lovely as the Duchess of Somerset nor as perfectly charming as Lady Dufferin, she produced a far more striking impression than either of them, by the combination of the poetical genius with which she alone of the three was gifted, with the brilliant wit and power of repartee which they (especially Lady Dufferin) possessed in common with her, united to the exceptional beauty with which they were all three endowed. Mrs. Norton was extremely epigrammatic in her talk, and comically dramatic in her manner of relating things. I do not know whether she had any theatrical talent, though she sang pathetic and humorous songs admirably, and I remember shaking in my shoes when, soon after I came out, she told me she envied me, and would give anything to try the stage herself. I thought as I looked at her wonderfully, beautiful face, “Oh, if you did, what would become of me?”
It seems but yesterday—it is not so very long ago certainly—that I saw for the last time the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Her radiant beauty was then faded, but her stately form had been little impaired by years, and she had retained much of the grace that made her early womanhood so surpassingly attractive. She combined in a singular degree feminine delicacy with masculine vigor; though essentially womanly, she seemed to have the force of character of man. Remarkably handsome, she, perhaps, excited admiration rather than affection. I can easily imagine greater love to be given to a far plainer woman. She had, in more than full measure, the traditional beauty of her family, and no doubt inherited with it some of the waywardness that is associated with the name of Sheridan.
One of the most charming persons whom I ever met in my life was the Hon. Mrs. Caroline Norton, and one of the most delightful dinners at which my wife and I were ever present was at her house. As I had been familiar with her poems from my boyhood, I was astonished to find her still so beautiful and young—if my memory does not deceive me, I thought her far younger looking than myself. Mrs. Norton had not only a graceful, fascinating expression of figure and motion, but narrated everything so well as to cast a peculiar life and interest into the most trifling anecdote. Mrs. Norton had marvellously beautiful and expressive eyes, such as one seldom meets thrice in a life. As a harp well played inspires tears or the impulse to dance, so her glances conveyed, almost in the same instant, deep emotion and exquisite merriment.
To account for the extraordinary fascination she exercised over old and young, even after she had attained the age when most women cease to exert an influence upon the mind masculine, we must remember that her magic was quite as much due to her mental as to her personal gifts. She had acquired the art, without using any so-called art, of looking half her age, and was sometimes mistaken for her son’s wife.
Was then [1843] very handsome. Her hair, which was decidedly black, was arranged in flat bandeaux, according to the fashion of the time. A diamond chain, formed of large links, encircled her fine head. Her eyes were dark and full of expression. Her dress was unusually décolletée, but most of the ladies present would in America have been considered extreme in this respect.
General
Shepherd,—“Her poetry? That’ll no be easy, sir; for there’s a saftness and a sweetness, and a brichtness, and abune a’ an indefinite, and indescribable, and undefinable, and unintelligible, general, vague, dim, fleetin’ speerit o’ feminine sympathy and attraction—na, na, na, these are no the richt words ava—a celestial atmosphere o’ the balm o’ a thousand flowers, especially lilies and roses, pinks, carnations, violets, honeysuckle, and sweetbriar—an intermingled mawgic o’ the sweetest scents in natur—heaven and earth breathin’ upon ane anither’s faces and breasts—hangin’ ower yon bit pathetic poem, Rosalie, that inclines ane to remember the fair young lady that wrote it in his prayers!”
| “Mrs. Norton.” The god, stepping forward a pace, | |
| Kiss’d her hand in return, with respect in his face, | |
| But said, “Why indulge us with nothing but sighs? | |
| You best prove your merits when cheerful and wise: | |
| Be still so; be just to the depths of your eyes.” | |
| Then he turn’d to us all, and repeated in tones | |
| Of approval so earnest as thrill’d to one’s bones, | |
| Some remarks of hers (bidding us learn them all too) | |
| On the art of distinguishing false love from true. | |
| After which, as he seated her near him, he cried, | |
| “’Twas a large heart, and loving, that gave us this guide.” |
This lady is the Byron of our modern poetesses. She has very much of that intense personal passion by which Byron’s poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and nature of Wordsworth. She has also Byron’s beautiful intervals of tenderness, his strong practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an artificial imitation, but a natural parallel: and we may add that it is this her latest production, which especially induces, and seems to us to justify, our criticism.
The imagination of Mrs. Norton is chiefly occupied with domestic feelings and images, and breathes melodious plaints or indignations over the desecrations of her sex’s loveliness; that of Miss Barrett often wanders amidst the supernatural darkness of Calvary, sometimes with anguish and tears of blood, sometimes like one who echoes the songs of triumphal quires…. Mrs. Norton is beautifully clear and intelligible in her narrative and course of thought and feeling; Miss Barrett has great inventiveness, but not an equal power in construction. The one is all womanhood; the other all wings. The one writes from the dictates of a human heart in all the eloquence of beauty and individuality; the other like an inspired priestess—not without a most truthful heart, but a heart that is devoted to religion, and whose individuality is cast upward in the divine afflatus, and dissolved and carried off in the recipient breath of angelic ministrants.
Mrs. Norton has been styled the Byron of her sex. Though she resembles that great poet in the energy and mournfulness so often pervading her pages, it would be erroneous to confound her sorrowful craving for sympathy, womanly endurance, resignation, and religious trust, with the refined misanthropy of Childe Harold.
This brilliant volume has not materially softened our suspicion that the present purveyors of our popular literature are on a false tack. We still doubt whether any great good will come of this eternal reproduction in imaginative works, of the “Condition of England Question.”… She has been for years devoting her abilities to the cause which she now maintains;—none can have forgotten, in particular, her verses on the factory children, nor her letters on mendicancy in the public journals, though her claim to these last may have been unsuspected until her present avowal. Nor will Zoilus be able to point out any sentiment in these cantos at variance with the simplicity and generosity of their apparent scope and purpose…. It will be enjoyed now and remembered in honour hereafter, not because of its formal doctrine, but for the sake of its vivid and varied transcripts of human life and passion—pictures which would, we suspect, have been still more likely to further the artist’s views, had her graceful drawing and rich colouring dispensed with the texts and commentaries now blazoned round them on too conspicuous frames…. We wish we had room for a score more of these masterly sketches—but we hope we have given enough, not to excite attention, for that such gifts employed with such energy must at once command, even were the name on the title-page a new one—but enough to show that we have not observed with indifference this manifestation of developed skill—this fairest wreath as yet won in the service of the graver Muses for the name of Sheridan.
Her ear for the modulation of verse is exquisite; and many of her lyrics and songs carry in them the characteristic of the ancient Douglases, being alike “tender and true.” It must be owned, however, that individuality is not the most prominent feature of Mrs. Norton’s poetry.
Melancholy is the prevailing tendency of her mind; and though we cannot but regret that one whose society never fails to confer pleasure should have so often been disappointed in its search herself, we can not but rejoice that circumstances should have thrown her genius in that which was perhaps its natural channel, and enriched our literature, both in poetry and prose, with so many gems of the pathetic, which are indelibly engraven on the memory of all who are acquainted with them.
“The Child of the Islands” was written in the maturity of her youth and beauty. Under guise of a Birthday Ode to the Prince of Wales, it conveyed a tender appeal to the rich to consider the sufferings of the poor, and more especially of poor children. The subject was at that date a new and important one in politics. The Factory Bill had done something to better the condition of children, but they were still put to brutal uses in mines, and subject to solitary confinement in prisons; and Mrs. Norton’s verses, and still more the prose “Notes” she appended to them, show her to have been in close and womanly sympathy with this kind of human misery. Here and there, too, in the same poem, is heard the true ring of poetic music; as when she recalls some happy hour,
| “In meadow walks and lovely loitering lanes;” |
| “Still gleams my lone lake’s unforgotten blue.” |
| “Love not! love not! the thing you love may die!” |
A sort of soda-water Byron.
What strikes us in her poetry is the earnestness of feeling, the masculine cast of thought, and the mode in which her own personality is made to furnish dramatic colour and action. It is thus evident that she wrote because she wished to express her own feelings, and leave a record of her many trials, and not from a dilettante longing to figure in print.
She is said to be the original of George Meredith’s “Diana of the Crossways,” that brilliant, complex character who stands out alive, humanly wrong and lovable among all the heroines of novels. Mrs. Norton was no mere fashionable writer of pretty trifles. Without her rank, her genius would have found her recognition, for she poured her warm, womanly heart-blood into her writings in defence of the poor and oppressed.
Mrs. Norton’s work was not conceived in any dilettante spirit. It shows from first to last, that steady progress which only comes of conscientious application and continuous study. Her longer works lack the sustained interest which can alone make such poems permanently popular, but they contain stanzas which give felicitous expression to genuine feeling and ennobling thought. Lockhart, in the Quarterly, called her “the Byron of poetesses,” but except for the connubial infelicity which withered both of their lives, and the occasional expression of the emotions stirred by their common experience, the analogy cannot be said to hold good. Each, like Wordsworth’s nightingale, was “a creature of a fiery heart;” but Mrs. Norton was chastened and refined by the sufferings that irritated and degraded Byron. Mrs. Norton’s tender and womanly feeling was everywhere evident in her life and work. Her sympathy with the poor and the suffering was keen and constant.
A passage from “The Dream,” quoted by Lockhart, rivals in passionate energy almost anything of Byron’s; but there is no element of novelty in Mrs. Norton’s verse, any more than there is any element of general human interest in the impassioned expression of her personal sorrows. Mrs. Norton had already (1856) proclaimed the sufferings of overworked operatives in “A Voice from the Factories,” a poem accompanied by valuable notes. In “The Child of the Islands” (i.e. the Prince of Wales), 1845, a poem on the social condition of the English people, partly inspired by such works as Carlyle’s “Chartism” and Disraeli’s “Sybil,” she ventured on a theme of general human interest, and proved that, while purely lyrical poetry came easily to her, compositions of greater weight and compass needed to be eked out with writing for writing’s sake. Much of it is fine and even brilliant rhetoric, much too is mere padding, and its chief interest is as a symptom of that awakening feeling for the necessity of a closer union between the classes of society which was shortly to receive a still more energetic expression in Charles Kingsley’s writings…. The emotion itself is usually sincere—always when her personal feelings are concerned—but the expression is conventional. She follows Byron as the dominant poet of her day, but one feels that her lyre could with equal ease have been tuned to any other note. Her standard of artistic execution was not exalted. Though almost all her lyrics have merit, few are sufficiently perfect to endure, and she will be best remembered as a poetess by the passages of impassioned rhetoric imbedded in her longer poems.
“The Outward Bound,” “Bingen on the Rhine,” and other things are at least passable, and one of the author’s latest and most ambitious poems, “The Lady of La Garaye,” has a sustained respectability.
Her poetic gift was not great, but her verse is spirited, and has frequently a ring of genuine pathos.
It was as a poetess that Mrs. Norton was chiefly known. Her verse was graceful and harmonious, but more emotional than intellectual. Wrath at injustice and cruelty stirred the depths of her soul; her heart was keenly alive to the social evils around her and she longed passionately for power to redress them. The effect of her own wrongs and sufferings was to quicken her ardour to help her fellow women smarting under English law as it at that time existed.
