Letters from Egypt | Page 3

and
are--the pick of them--of open speech, more liberal, more genial, better
comrades. Was it wonderful to hear them, knowing her as they did,
unite in calling her coeur d'or? And women could say it of her, for the
reasons known to women. Her intimate friendships were with women
as with men. The closest friend of this most manfully-minded of
women was one of her sex, little resembling her, except in downright
truthfulness, lovingness, and heroic fortitude.
The hospitable house at Esher gave its welcome not merely to men and
women of distinction; the humble undistinguished were made joyous

guests there, whether commonplace or counting among the hopeful.
Their hostess knew how to shelter the sensitively silent at table, if they
were unable to take encouragement and join the flow. Their faces at
least responded to her bright look on one or the other of them when
something worthy of memory sparkled flying. She had the laugh that
rocks the frame, but it was usually with a triumphant smile that she
greeted things good to the ear; and her own manner of telling was
concise, on the lines of the running subject, to carry it along, not to
produce an effect--which is like the horrid gap in air after a blast of
powder. Quotation came when it sprang to the lips and was native. She
was shrewd and cogent, invariably calm in argument, sitting over it, not
making it a duel, as the argumentative are prone to do; and a strong
point scored against her received the honours due to a noble enemy. No
pose as mistress of a salon shuffling the guests marked her treatment of
them; she was their comrade, one of the pack. This can be the case only
when a governing lady is at all points their equal, more than a player of
trump cards. In England, in her day, while health was with her, there
was one house where men and women conversed. When that house
perforce was closed, a light had gone out in our country.
The fatal brilliancy of skin indicated the fell disease which ultimately
drove her into exile, to die in exile. Lucie Duff Gordon was of the order
of women of whom a man of many years may say that their like is to be
met but once or twice in a lifetime.

MEMOIR
Lucie Duff Gordon, born on June 24, 1821, was the only child of John
and Sarah Austin and inherited the beauty and the intellect of her
parents. The wisdom, learning, and vehement eloquence of John Austin,
author of the 'Province of Jurisprudence Determined,' were celebrated,
and Lord Brougham used to say: 'If John Austin had had health, neither
Lyndhurst nor I should have been Chancellor.' He entered the army,
and was in Sicily under Lord William Bentinck; but soon quitted an
uncongenial service, and was called to the Bar. In 1819 he married
Sarah, the youngest daughter of John Taylor of Norwich, {1} when

they took a house in Queen Square, Westminster, close to James Mill,
the historian of British India, and next door to Jeremy Bentham, whose
pupil Mr. Austin was. Here, it may be said, the Utilitarian philosophy
of the nineteenth century was born. Jeremy Bentham's garden became
the playground of the young Mills and of Lucie Austin; his
coach-house was converted into a gymnasium, and his flower-beds
were intersected by tapes and threads to represent the passages of a
panopticon prison. The girl grew in vigour and in sense, with a strong
tinge of originality and independence and an extreme love of animals.
About 1826 the Austins went to Germany, Mr. Austin having been
nominated Professor of Civil Law in the new London University, and
wishing to study Roman Law under Niebuhr and Schlegel at Bonn.
'Our dear child,' writes Mrs. Austin to Mrs. Grote, 'is a great joy to us.
She grows wonderfully, and is the happiest thing in the world. Her
German is very pretty; she interprets for her father with great joy and
naivete. God forbid that I should bring up a daughter here! But at her
present age I am most glad to have her here, and to send her to a school
where she learns--well, writing, arithmetic, geography, and, as a matter
of course, German.' Lucie returned to England transformed into a little
German maiden, with long braids of hair down her back, speaking
German like her own language, and well grounded in Latin. Her mother,
writing to Mrs. Reeve, her sister, says: 'John Mill is ever my dearest
child and friend, and he really dotes on Lucie, and can do anything with
her. She is too wild, undisciplined, and independent, and though she
knows a great deal, it is in a strange, wild way. She reads everything,
composes