I liked these two sisters exceedingly, although they were authoresses. I made the acquaintance of their brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, the traveller, artist, diplomatist, and author, in 1829, at a house in Bolton Row, and was much pleased with him and some lively accounts he gave of society in Russia. The sisters I did not meet until 1830 or 1831, when they were staying with my friend William Mackinnon, M.P., at Hyde Park Place, just opposite Cumberland Gate. They were quiet, perfectly unaffected, rather retiring, very ladylike elderly ladies, neat and plain in their attire, and taking no pains to conceal the snow which Time was throwing on their hair. Jane, the elder sister, had still a good figure, was tall, and must have been rather handsome; Anna Maria was shorter and fairer. I should think she could never have had any pretension to personal beauty, but the expression of her countenance was gentleness and sweetness itself.
There was nothing blue, nothing of the précieuse, or professional authoress, about either of them, and I have seen them sensitively shrink at any allusion to their works, and almost run out of the room from an explosion of compliment and praise. One night, at rather a numerous party at my brother Highlander’s, I saw their sensitiveness put to a severe test by old Sotheby the poet and translator, commonly called “Old Botherby.”
Mackinnon had introduced him to the sisters.
Addressing Anna Maria, who looked the elder of the
two, he said in his peculiarly unctuous manner:
| 114 | JANE AND ANNA PORTER | [CHAP. XI |
Miss Jane reddened, and could say nothing; but when Sotheby went off at a tangent to explode to some other literary lion or lioness, she whispered, “How absurd! How can that old gentleman expect one to be flattered by such outrageous compliments, or expect that one can bear such things said to one’s face?”
Old Botherby was soon back to our corner of the drawing-room. I fancy he had been collecting information, for he told Anna Maria that she had written “The Hungarian Brothers,” and that that romance was, in its way, as admirable, as unrivalled, as perfect, as “The Scottish Chiefs.” The poor little authoress winced, and when old Sotheby was again gone, she said she had rather never go into society at all than be frequently exposed to such assaults.
The last years of Miss Porter were saddened by domestic losses. Shortly before I met her she had lost her aged mother, and within a twelvemonth of that time poor Anna Maria died. In 1842 Miss Porter accompanied her brother to St. Petersburg, and he was suddenly carried off by apoplexy as they were on the point of returning to England.
Jane survived until 1850, when she ended her days at
Bristol, at the good old age of seventy-four. I did not see her after 1833, but I was told,
and can well believe it, that she was patient, amiable, and even cheerful to the last, and
that her intellect was in no way affected by age. It was a remarkable and
| CHAP. XI] | THE MISSES PORTER | 115 |
Though not so old as was Botherby, when he paid his compliments, I should not like again to peruse the whole of either “The Scottish Chiefs” or “The Hungarian Brothers”; but I still remember the exquisite delight with which I read these works and other romances by the same writers, in the days of my boyhood, and I still think them pleasant and even improving reading for young people.
In this generation, young men, and young women too, appear to be getting rather too fond of realities, and much too indifferent to romance and sentiment. Too much romance is bad. Granted; but so is too much stern reality or worldly calculation. The hearts and intellects of young people will not be much elevated or improved by constant delineations of the weaknesses, absurdities, follies, and crimes of everyday life. We ought, at least now and then, to give them more generous, more glowing, more ideal pictures; and set up the heroes and heroines of our tales on the pedestal of romance, in a purer atmosphere. The danger now is, not that our sons and daughters will become too romantic, but that they will become too worldly, material, and selfish, and too apt to take mere Cockney or provincial slang for wit and humour. With only a few modifications, and one or two additional acquirements, another Jane and another Anna Maria Porter would not be misplaced in England, in the year 1856.
Jane, as we have seen, ended her days at Bristol;
Anna Maria died in the neighbourhood of that
city, at Montpelier, the residence of Mrs. Colonel
Booth. Mother and daughters had resided at Thames Ditton;
| 116 | JANE AND ANNA PORTER | [CHAP. XI |
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