The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842) - Gredos ...

The Salamanca Corpus: The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire (1842)
dismount from her pony, ask him to strike up a jig or a hornpipe, whilst she footed it away
upon the grass,
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Her brother the surgeon used to remark, that the most vivacious youths of his day were dull
and phlegmatic in comparison with his lively sister.
At that period the wealthier families repaired to Carlisle during the winter months.
Here her numerous and agreeable qualities of head and heart procured her a ready
admittance into every family circle. Among the most distinguished of the acquaintance she
here made was Miss Gilpin, sister to Sir Joseph Gilpin, a surgeon of the royal navy, who
lately died at Bath. The Gilpins are descendants of Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the
North, and formerly lived at Scaleby Castle. This lady survived Miss Blamire some years,
but unfortunately I have not been able to procure the date of her death, or any particulars of
her life. That she was of a congenial spirit, and of kindred pursuits, is manifest from her
graphic picture entitled “The Village Club,” printed in the appendix, and her co-operation
with Miss Blamire in the composition of “The Cumberland Scold.” That they were much
together, and loved one another dearly, may readily be believed. They not only lived
together under the same roof, Miss Gilpin occupying the parlour on the ground-floor, and
Miss Blamire the room above, in the lodgings of the Misses Forester; (the house is still
standing, and is No. 14
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Finkle Street, now tenanted by MrsCartmell;) but they also used to resort together to
Gilsland Spa in the summer, for the benefit of their health. It was at this place that my
worthy friend the late Mrs Russell of Knottyholm, Canobie, widow of Dr Russell, the
historian already mentioned, met with Miss Blamire near the close of her life. She had then
lost much of that vivacity which was so characteristic of her earlier years, but none of that
amiability of which she was ever possessed; she was pensive, but not melancholy, and
amused herself by playing on the flageolet, which Mrs Russell said she did exceedingly
sweetly.
Even so early as her twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year—if the two epistles to her
friends at Gartmore were written about the same date—we find her playfully complaining
of rheumatism, and exclaiming,
“O girls! these aches play me sad tricks.”
And in her thirty-seventh year, in her elegant “Call to Hope,” written after a long
illness when not expecting to recover, she seems to have been afflicted with something like
asthma; the whole of the paragraph commencing “Then dost thou fly me?—Goddess, stay!”
cannot be read but with interest. From the frequent allusions to the state of her health to be
[xxxv]