Mr. Rose Mackrell, in his Memoirs, was the first who revealed to the world, that the Mademoiselle de Levellier of the French Count fighting with the Carlists—­falsely claimed by him as a Frenchwoman—­was, in very truth, Carinthia Jane, the Countess of Fleetwood, to whom Carlists and Legitimises alike were indebted for tender care of them on the field and in hospital; and who rode from one camp through the other up to the tent of the Pretender to the throne of Spain, bearing her petition for her brother’s release; which was granted, in acknowledgement of her ’renowned humanity to both conflicting armies,’ as the words translated by Dr. Glossop run.  Certain it is she brought her wounded brother safe home to England, and prisoners in that war usually had short shrift.  For three years longer she was the Countess of Fleetwood, ’widow of a living suicide,’ Mr. Rose Mackrell describes the state of the Marriage at that period.  No whisper of divorce did she tolerate.

Six months after it was proved that Brother Russett had perished of his austerities, or his heart, we learn she said to the beseeching applicant for her hand, Mr. Owain Wythan, with the gift of it, in compassion:  ‘Rebecca could foretell events.’  Carinthia Jane had ever been ashamed of second marriages, and the union with her friend Rebecca’s faithful simpleton gave it, one supposes, a natural air, for he as little as she had previously known the wedded state.  She married him, Henrietta has written, because of his wooing her with dog’s eyes instead of words.  The once famous beauty carried a wrinkled spot on her cheek to her grave; a saving disfigurement, and the mark of changes in the story told you enough to make us think it a providential intervention for such ends as were in view.

So much I can say:  the facts related, with some regretted omissions, by which my story has so skeleton a look, are those that led to the lamentable conclusion.  But the melancholy, the pathos of it, the heart of all England stirred by it, have been—­and the panting excitement it was to every listener—­sacrificed in the vain effort to render events as consequent to your understanding as a piece of logic, through an exposure of character!  Character must ever be a mystery, only to be explained in some degree by conduct; and that is very dependent upon accident:  and unless we have a perpetual whipping of the tender part of the reader’s mind, interest in invisible persons must needs flag.  For it is an infant we address, and the storyteller whose art excites an infant to serious attention succeeds best; with English people assuredly, I rejoice to think, though I have to pray their patience here while that philosophy and exposure of character block the course along a road inviting to traffic of the most animated kind.

     Etext editor’s bookmarks