It was characteristic of Mme. Malibran that she fired all her fellow-artists with the ardor of her genius.  Her resources and knowledge were such that she could sing in any school and any language.  The music of Mozart and Cimarosa, Boieldieu and Eossini, Cherubini and Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer, furnished in equal measure the mold into which her great powers poured themselves with a sort of inspired fury, like that of a Greek Pythoness.  She had an artistic individuality powerful to create types of its own, which were the despair of other singers, for they were incapable of reproduction, inasmuch as they were partly forged from her own defects, transformed by genius into beauties.  In all those accomplishments which have their root in the art temperament, she was a sort of Admirable Crichton.  She played the piano-forte with great skill, and, with no special knowledge of drawing, possessed marked talent in sketching caricatures, portraits, and scenes from nature.  She composed both the music and words of songs and romances with a felicitous ease.  She excelled in feminine works, such as embroidery, tapestry, and dressmaking, and always modeled her own costumes.  It was a saying with her friends that she was as much the artist with her needle as with her voice.  She wrote and spoke five languages, and often used them with different interlocutors with such readiness and accuracy that she rarely confused them.  Her wit and vivacity as a conversationalist were celebrated, and her mots had the point as well as the flash of the diamond.  Her retorts and sarcasms often wounded, but she was quick to heal the stroke by a sweet and childlike contrition that made her doubly fascinating.

Impassioned, ardent, the prey of an endless excitement, her restless nature would quickly return from its flights to the every-day duties and responsibilities of life, and her instincts were so strong and noble that she was eager to repair any errors into which she might be betrayed.  Lavish in her generosity to others, she was personally frugal, even penurious.  A certain brusque and original frankness, and the ingenuousness with which she betrayed every impression, often involved her in compromising positions, which would have been fatal to a woman in her position less pure and upright in her essential nature.  Fond of dolls, toys, and trifles, she was also devoted to athletic sports and pastimes, riding, swimming, skating, shooting, and fencing.  Sometimes her return from a fatiguing night at the opera would be marked by an exuberance of animal spirits, which would lead her to jump over chairs and tables like a schoolboy.  She was wont to say, “When I try to restrain my flow of spirits, I feel as if I should be suffocated.”  Her reckless gayety and unconventional manners led to strange rumors.  She would wander over the country attired in boy’s clothes, and without an escort, and a great variety of innocent escapades led a carping world to believe that she indulged excessively in stimulants, but the truth was that she never drank anything but a little wine-and-water.