Born September 23, 1812, the second daughter of the First Earl of Granville, for some years Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Court of Russia, and subsequently Ambassador to the Court of France. In 1833 she married Captain Alexander George Fullerton, eldest son of George A. Fullerton, Esq., of Ballintoy Castle, Ireland. She commenced her career as an authoress with a novel entitled “Ellen Middleton,” published in 1844, and which caused a great sensation. “Grantley Manor,” a novel bearing on the war of creeds, appeared in 1847; “The Old Highlander,” 1849; “Lady Bird,” 1852; “The Life of St. Frances of Rome,” 1855; “La Comtesse de Bonneval, histoire du temps de Louis XIV.,” 1857; “The Countess Bonneval; her Life and Letters,” 1858; “Apostleship in Humble Life; a sketch of the life of Elizabeth Twiddy,” 1860; “Laurentia, a tale of Japan,” 1861; “Rose Leblanc,” 1861; “Too Strange not to be True,” 1864; “Constance Sherwood; an autobiography of the sixteenth century,” 1865; “A Stormy Life,” 1867; “The Helpers of the Holy Souls,” 1868; “Mrs. Gerald’s Niece,” 1869; “The Gold-digger and other Verses,” 1872; “Dramas from the Lives of the Saints—Germaine Cousin, the Shepherdess of Pibrac,” 1872; “Seven Stories,” and “The Life of Louisa de Carvajal,” 1873; “A Sketch of the Life of the late Father H. Young,” 1874; “The Life of Mère Marie de la Providence,” 1875; “The Miraculous Medal,” 1880; “A Will and a Way,” 1881. She has also translated “The Life, Virtues, and Miracles of the Blessed John Berchmans,” by F. Deynoodt (1866); “The Miracle at Metz,” by Verdenal, (1866); “The Life of the Marchesa G. Faletti di Barolo,” by S. Pellico, 1866; “Natalie Narischkin, Sister of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul” by Mrs. Craven, 1877; “The Notary’s Daughter,” by Mdme. d’Aulnoy, and “The House of Penarvan,” by Jules Sandeau, 1878; “The Life of Mère Duchesne,” 1879, and “Life of the Ven. Madeleine Barat,” 1880; both by the Abbé Baunard; and “Elaine,” by Mrs. Augustus Craven, 1882. In 1846 Lady Georgiana Fullerton became a convert to Roman Catholicism.
Personal
Like those who are not only of the highest birth but the highest breeding, Georgiana Leveson was distinguished throughout her life by the utmost modesty and simplicity of character and manners.
She loved the poor. She begged for them, she worked for them, she economized for them. She deprived herself of luxuries constantly for their sake. A friend tells how she walked long distances rather than hire a cab, that she might add to her insatiable purse for the poor. She was not unmindful of the duties of her state in life. She played her part as hostess in her husband’s house with grace and elegance. She wrote for the poor, not for the public. The money paid her by the publishers found its way to the poor.
She was tall and largely built, her face was plain, but full of bright intelligence and gentle humour, naturally a merry face; she always dressed in black, wearing a shawl across her shoulders, and no gloves. She said that gloves cost too much money, and that she had much rather give the half-crown to the poor. Having had many occasions of speaking with her, I would describe the impression she made on her contemporaries as so marked that in entering even a crowded room Lady Georgiana would have been one of the first people to be noticed, from her majestic figure and the plain severity of her dress. She was very nobly born. Her father, Lord Granville, served his country for a long series of years as Ambassador to France. Her mother, an excellent, conscientious woman, was daughter to that beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom so many anecdotes survive, and whose life-size portrait by Gainsborough disappeared so mysteriously some years ago. Sir Joshua Reynolds also repeatedly painted the Duchess, the best known portrait being the one wherein she is playing with her child. It was after this lovely grandmother that the little girl was named Georgiana…. Of her manifold charities one knows not how to speak. She was the kindest and most industrious of women. The charge of orphans, sick people, and schools was a daily matter of course to her, as to many another; but in touching ever so slightly upon her sphere of activity, one became aware of the odds and ends which were, so to speak, stuffed into the crevices from year’s end to year’s end.
Ellen Middleton, 1844
While I was there Lady Georgiana Fullerton gave me to read so much as she has written of the novel she has been for sometime about. It is a very extraordinary performance, and if the second part of it is as good as the first, it will be excellent; as it is, it is deeply interesting.
Who is Lady Georgiana Fullerton? Who is that Countess of Dacre, who edited “Ellen Wareham,”—the most passionate of fictions—approached only in some particulars of passion by this? The great defect of “Ellen Middleton” lies in the disgusting sternness, captiousness, and bullet headedness of her husband. We cannot sympathize with her love for him. And the intense selfishness of a rejected lover precludes that compassion which is designed. Alice is a creation of true genius. The imagination, throughout, is of a lofty order, and the snatches of original verse would do honor to any poet living. But the chief merit, after all, is that of the style—about which it is difficult to say too much in the way of praise, although it has, now and then, an odd Gallicism—such as “she lost her head,” meaning she grew crazy. There is much, in the whole manner of this book, which puts me in mind of “Caleb Williams.”
The tale is very well told, with no exaggeration of style, or attempt at studied effect, the authoress trusting to arrest the reader’s interest rather by the pathetic character of her incidents, and the apparent nature and probability with which they follow each other, than by any elaborate overworking…. Still, with all these merits, our verdict on it is not in her favour. The interest she excites is a false one…. The book is further disfigured by a tinge of that Anglo-Catholic semi-religious tone, which is rapidly degenerating into a kind of sentimental mysticism, and desecrates high and holy things into the mere make-weights of a questionable tale.
In that novel, for the first time, her full character was unveiled to the world, and probably to herself. The charm, the interest, the refined beauty, the fervent imagination; above all, the vivid colouring of latent passion, gave it a vitality which is still felt after a lapse of four and forty years.
The tale on which her chief fame rests was the product of the heart-searchings that she underwent, at the very time when the thoughts and studies of good men were tending to discover neglected truths in the Church of England.
Grantley Manor, 1847
I know not whether the pleasures of your country life allow you any leisure for reading. If they do, let me recommend to you Lady Georgiana Fullerton’s last novel, “Grantley Manor.” I have reached only as far as the seventeenth page, in which I find a piece of eloquence such as I never found in any other novel for the sublimity of the thought and for the purity of the expression.
We cannot pass from Bulwer to Lady Georgiana Fullerton without taking a perilous leap. “Grantley Manor” is a novel having the rose-color of Young England and the purple light of Puseyism on its pages, and doubtless presents a very one-sided view of many important matters with which it deals; but it evinces talent of a very high order, and is one of the most pleasing novels of the season. The author is perhaps too elaborate in her diction, and is stirred too often by an ambition for the superfine, to catch that flowing felicity of style which should be the aim of the novelist—a style in which sentences should only represent thought or fact, and never dazzle away attention from the matter they convey. But with some faults of manner and some blunder in plot, the novel evinces considerable dramatic power, and has a number of striking characters. The interest is well sustained, though rapidity of movement in the story is ever subsidiary to completeness of delineation in the characters. No one can criticise the novel with any justice to the writer, without keeping constantly in mind that her object is not so much a consistent or even probable story, as a forcible and subtle representation of character, as influenced by events best calculated to bring out all its hidden virtues or vices.
It possesses more than ordinary interest, and bears the mark of genius and power. We have rarely read a novel written by a lady which indicated more ability or contained less that was extravagant or offensive…. Judging from the work before us Lady Georgiana Fullerton is a gifted and highly cultivated woman, endowed with fine powers of observation, and possessing very considerable knowledge of the human heart, and mastery over its passions. Her characters are drawn with freedom and delicacy, within the bounds of nature, and with a nearer approach to individuality, as in Margaret and old Mrs. Thornton, than is common save in authors of the very highest rank. She intersperses her work with many wise and just, if not profound and original, remarks, and hits off many of the petty vices, annoyances, and foibles of conventional and every-day life not unsuccessfully. In a purely literary point of view, we may object, however, to a too visible effort at intense writing, a want of calmness and repose, and the attempt to give us a vivid impression of the exquisite beauty of her heroines by dissecting and lining it feature by feature, instead of leaving it to be depicted by the imagination of her readers from the effects it is seen to produce on those within the sphere of its influence.
General
She stands, for her rare ability, rich and chaste imagination, high culture, and varied knowledge, elevation and delicacy of sentiment, purity, strength, and gracefulness of style, and the moral and religious tendency of her writings, at the head of contemporary female writers. She lives and writes for her religion, and seeks, through rare knowledge of the human heart and of the teachings of the church, combined with the graces and charms of fiction, to win souls to the truth, or at least to disarm the prejudices and disperse the mists of ignorance which prevent them from seeing and loving it. Her works have done much in this direction, and deserve the warm gratitude of Catholics.
“A Will and a Way” has the moving elements of a great historical tragedy. It gives us truer glimpses of that time of tragedies than we get anywhere outside the more honest parts of Carlyle. Lady Georgiana Fullerton fills each inch of her great canvas so carefully, giving no hasty blotches of crimson merely for effect, that she interprets even the philosophy of the Revolution by means of her social sketches better than many pretentious writers. The reader who has not the time to collate the memoirs of the period may yield himself to the guidance of Lady Georgiana Fullerton for a knowledge of France in the throes of the Terror. She does not exaggerate even the smallest incident for her purpose. Each touch, as we said before, has the true color of truth. There is enough matter in this book to fill a dozen novels and make them absorbingly interesting, and enough suggestion for many months of high thinking.
As to literary fame, she may be described as having written one first-rate book and a number fairly above the average.
