Legends and Lyrics, Pt 1 | Page 6

a most melancholy affair it was. All the
bride's sisters were not to be recognised, they had cried so. The mother
sat in the house, and could not appear. And the bride was sobbing so,
she could hardly stand! The most melancholy spectacle of all to my
mind was, that the bridegroom was decidedly tipsy. He seemed rather
affronted at all the distress. We danced a Monferrino; I with the
bridegroom; and the bride crying the whole time. The company did
their utmost to enliven her by firing pistols, but without success, and at

last they began a series of yells, which reminded me of a set of savages.
But even this delicate method of consolation failed, and the wishing
good-bye began. It was altogether so melancholy an affair that Madame
B. dropped a few tears, and I was very near it, particularly when the
poor mother came out to see the last of her daughter, who was finally
dragged off between her brother and uncle, with a last explosion of
pistols. As she lives quite near, makes an excellent match, and is one of
nine children, it really was a most desirable marriage, in spite of all the
show of
distress. Albert was so discomfited by it, that he forgot to
kiss the bride as he had intended to do, and therefore went to call upon
her yesterday, and found her very smiling in her new house, and
supplied the omission. The cook came home from the wedding,
declaring she was cured of any wish to marry--but I would not
recommend any man to act upon that threat and make her an offer. In a
couple of days we had some rolls of the bride's first baking, which they
call Madonnas. The musicians, it seems, were in the same state as the
bridegroom, for, in escorting her home, they all fell down in the mud.
My wrath against the bridegroom is somewhat calmed by finding that it
is considered bad luck if he does not get tipsy at his wedding."
Those readers of Miss Procter's poems who should suppose from their
tone that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast, would be
curiously mistaken. She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great
delight in humour. Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she was very
ready at a sally or a reply, and in her laugh (as I remember well) there
was an unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery. She was
perfectly unconstrained and unaffected: as modestly silent about her
productions, as she was generous with their pecuniary results. She was
a friend who inspired the strongest attachments; she was a finely
sympathetic woman, with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble
nature. No claim can be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of
any of the
conventional poetical qualities. She never by any means
held the opinion that she was among the greatest of human beings; she
never suspected the existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind
against her; she never recognised in her best friends, her worst enemies;
she never cultivated the luxury of being misunderstood and
unappreciated; she would far rather have died without seeing a line of

her composition in print, than that I should have maundered about her,
here, as "the Poet", or "the Poetess".
With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a woman,
fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way to the close
of this brief record, avoiding its end. But, even as the close came upon
her, so must it come here.
Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be
dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favourite pursuits must
be balanced by action in the real world around her, she was
indefatigable in her endeavours to do some good. Naturally enthusiastic,
and conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty
to her neighbour, she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects.
Now, it was the visitation of the sick, that had possession of her; now,
it was the sheltering of the houseless; now, it was the elementary
teaching of the densely ignorant; now, it was the raising up of those
who had wandered and got trodden under foot; now, it was the wider
employment of her own sex in the general business of life; now, it was
all these things at once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathise and
eager to relieve, she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness
that disregarded season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under
such a hurry of the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest
constitution will commonly go down. Hers, neither of the strongest nor
the weakest, yielded to