Memorials and Other Papers | Page 8

not have been asked by any greater
man in this world, nor granted by any less. Had no other distinction
settled upon Kate, this would have been enough to fix the gaze of her
own nation. But her whole life constituted Kate's supreme distinction.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that, from the year 1624 (that is, the
last year of our James I.), she became the object of an admiration in her
own country that was almost idolatrous. And this admiration was not of
a kind that rested upon any partisan-schism amongst her countrymen.
So long as it was kept alive by her bodily presence amongst them, it
was an admiration equally aristocratic and popular,--shared alike by the
rich and the poor, by the lofty and the humble. Great, therefore, would
be the demand for her portrait. There is a tradition that Velasquez, who
had in 1623 executed a portrait of Charles I. (then Prince of Wales),
was amongst those who in the three or four following years ministered
to this demand. It is believed, also, that, in travelling from Genoa and
Florence to Rome, she sat to various artists, in order to meet the interest
about herself already rising amongst the cardinals and other dignitaries
of the Romish church. It is probable, therefore, that numerous pictures
of Kate are yet lurking both in Spain and Italy, but not known as such.
For, as the public consideration granted to her had grown out of merits

and qualities purely personal, and was kept alive by no local or family
memorials rooted in the land, or surviving herself, it was inevitable that,
as soon as she herself died, all identification of her portraits would
perish: and the portraits would thenceforwards be confounded with the
similar memorials, past all numbering, which every year accumulates
as the wrecks from household remembrances of generations that are
passing or passed, that are fading or faded, that are dying or buried. It is
well, therefore, amongst so many irrecoverable ruins, that, in the
portrait at Aix-la-Chapelle, we still possess one undoubted
representation (and therefore in some degree a means for identifying
other representations) of a female so memorably adorned by nature;
gifted with capacities so unparalleled both of doing and suffering; who
lived a life so stormy, and perished by a fate so unsearchably
mysterious.

THE ORPHAN HEIRESS
I.
VISIT TO LAXTON.

My route, after parting from Lord Westport at Birmingham, lay, as I
have mentioned in the "Autobiographic Sketches," through Stamford to
Laxton, the Northamptonshire seat of Lord Carbery. From Stamford,
which I had reached by some intolerable old coach, such as in those
days too commonly abused the patience and long-suffering of Young
England, I took a post-chaise to Laxton. The distance was but nine
miles, and the postilion drove well, so that I could not really have been
long upon the road; and yet, from gloomy rumination upon the unhappy
destination which I believed myself approaching within three or four
months, never had I weathered a journey that seemed to me so long and
dreary. As I alighted on the steps at Laxton, the first dinner-bell rang;
and I was hurrying to my toilet, when my sister Mary, who had met me
in the portico, begged me first of all to come into Lady Carbery's
[Footnote: Lady Carbery.--"To me, individually, she was the one sole
friend that ever I could regard as entirely fulfilling the offices of an
honest friendship. She had known me from infancy; when I was in my
first year of life, she, an orphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or

eleventh."--See closing pages of "Autobiographic Sketches."]
dressing-room, her ladyship having something special to communicate,
which related (as I understood her) to one Simon. "What Simon? Simon
Peter?"--O, no, you irreverend boy, no Simon at all with an S, but
Cymon with a C,--Dryden's Cymon,--
"That whistled as he went for want of thought.'"
This one indication was a key to the whole explanation that followed.
The sole visitors, it seemed, at that time to Laxton, beside my sister and
myself, were Lord and Lady Massey. They were understood to be
domesticated at Laxton for a very long stay. In reality, my own private
construction of the case (though unauthorized by anything ever hinted
to me by Lady Carbery) was, that Lord Massey might probably be
under some cloud of pecuniary embarrassments, such as suggested
prudentially an absence from Ireland. Meantime, what was it that made
him an object of peculiar interest to Lady Carbery? It was the singular
revolution which, in one whom all his friends looked upon as sold to
constitutional torpor, suddenly, and beyond all hope, had kindled a new
and nobler life. Occupied originally by no shadow of any earthly
interest, killed by