R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

The Women Poets of the 'Seventies 127very strong; certainly her last volume of poems appearedin 1862, but she herself survived it by fifteen years, andI find it hard to refuse admittance to so brilliant andlovely a lady. Perhaps you remember Fanny Kemble'sdescription of Caroline Norton at an evening party,amongst the members of her family, these Sheridans sofamous for their beauty? there were gathered together' Mrs Sheridan, the mother of the Graces, more beautifulthan anybody but her daughters; Lady Graham, theirbeautiful aunt; Mrs Norton, Lady Dufferin, GeorgianaSheridan, duchess of Somerset and queen of beauty byuniversal consent; and Charles Sheridan, their youngerbrother, a sort of younger brother of the Apollo Belvidere.Certainly I never saw such a bunch of beautiful creaturesall growing on one stem. I remarked it to Mrs Norton,who looked complacently round her tidy drawing-roomand said, "Yes, we are rather good-looking people"'.This was the lady whom Lockhart in the Quarterlycalled the Byron of poetesses, but who lives in thememory chiefly for her looks, her misfortunes, and herwit. You may remember the story of how, when she waspaying a call, she caught sight of the clock, and exclaimed,'Good gracious, it's seven o'clock; I shall belate; please call me a cab at once'. Her hostess confessedthat the clock was a quarter of an hour slow: the timewas really a quarter past seven. ' Oh, in that case,' saidMrs Norton, ' please call me two cabs.'And if we admit Mrs Norton, it is ungracious to excludeMrs Clive, the author of that once popular novel PaulFerroll; for though Mrs Clive, beside the glitter of MrsNorton, was but a provincial and pathetic figure, withher lameness and ill-health, she was certainly the moreconsiderable poet of the two. Not that her verse wasinspired by any originality. One suspects that she hadread Gray's Elegy a little too often—I am thinking