Volume I Part 1 (1/2)

Charles Auchester

Volume 1

by Elizabeth Sheppard

INTRODUCTION

The romance of ”Charles Auchester,” which is really a memorial to Mendelssohn, the coe bore the naer,” a French pseudonym, which for some time served to conceal the identity of the author Its motto was a sentence froht in these days say, The Beautiful is dead” The dedication was also to the sauished writer, and ran thus: ”To the author of 'Contarini Fleested this i dedication, Mr Disraeli replied in a note to the author: ”No greater book will ever be written upon inative classic of that divine art”

Rarely has a book had a more propitious introduction to the public; but it was destined to encounter the proverbial fickleness of that public The author was not without honor save in her own country It was reserved for Aenius Thence her fame travelled back to her own ho the fruits of her enthusiastic toil Other works followed fro them ”Counterparts,”--a musico-philosophical romance, dedicated to Mrs Disraeli, which had a certain success; ”Rumor,” of which Beethoven, under the name of Rodomant, is supposed to have been the hero; ”Beatrice Reynolds,”

”The Double Coronet,” and ”Almost a Heroine:” but none of them achieved the popularity which ”Charles Auchester” enjoyed They shone only by the reflected light of this wonderful girl's first book The republication of this roeneration an old enthusiash they may smile as they read and reeneration of music-lovers

Elizabeth Sheppard, the author of ”Charles Auchester,” was born at Blackheath, near London, in 1837 Her father was a clergyman of the Established Church, and her mother a Jewess by descent,--which serves to account for the daughter's strong Jewish sympathies in this remarkable display of hero-worshi+p Left an orphan at a tender age, she was thrown upon her own resources, and chose school-teaching for her profession She was evidently a good linguist and es before she was sixteen She had decided literary ambition also, and wrote plays, poee when other children are usually engaged in pasti the arduous nature of her work and her exceedingly delicate health, she devoted her leisure hours to literary coirl must have toiled is evidenced by the completion of ”Charles Auchester” in her sixteenth year In her seventeenth she had finished ”Counterparts,”--a work based upon a scheme even more ambitious than that of her first story When it is considered that these two ro between hours of wearing toil in the school-room, and that she was a mere child and very frail, it will be admitted that the history of literary effort hardly records a parallel case Nature however always exacts the penalty for such mental excesses This little creature of ”spirit, fire, and dew” died on March 13, 1862, at the early age of twenty-five

Apart from its intrinsic merits as a musical romance, there are some features of ”Charles Auchester” of more than ordinary interest It is well known that Seraphael, its leading character, is the author's ideal of Mendelssohn, and that the rohly to appreciate the work, and not set it down as mere rhapsody, it must be remembered that Miss Sheppard wrote it in a period of Mendelssohn worshi+p in England as ardent and wellnigh as universal as the Handel worshi+p of the previous century had been It ritten in 1853 Mendelssohn had been dead but six years, and his nalish faenius, but also for his singular purity of character He was personally as well known in England as any native composer His Scotch Symphony and Hebrides Overture attested his love of Scotch scenery He had conducted concerts in the provinces; he appeared at concerts in London in 1829 and in subsequent years, and was the idol of the drawing-rooms of that day Some of his best works ritten on commissions fro” at Birham in 1840, and he produced his immortal ”Elijah” in the same town in 1846,--only a year before his death There were nu hi remark in the course of the romance, we learn that it opens about the year 1833, when Mendelssohn was in his prime; and as it closes with his death, it thus covers a period of fourteen years,--the most brilliant and productive part of his life

Curious critics of ”Charles Auchester” have found close resemblances between its characters and other ood reason to believe that Starwood Burney was intended for Sterndale Bennett, not only fro, but also from many other events coination to believe that Charles Auchester was intended as a portrait of Joachim the violinist; that Aronach, the teacher at the St Cecilia School, was meant for Zelter; Clara Benette for Jenny Lind; and Laura Leether likely that the author in drawing these characters had the types into produce a parallel or to preserve anything like synchronism, invested them with some of the characteristics of the real persons, all of wholioni, were intimately associated with Mendelssohn

All this lends the charm of human interest to the book; but, after all, it is the author's personality that invests it with its rare fascination It would not bear searching literary criticisracious as to apply it It is irl of exquisite refine enthusiasirlish fancies, her great love for the art, her glowing iination, and that rapturous devotion for the hero of her exalted world which is characteristic of her sex at sixteen And in doing this she has pictured her drea colors, and told them with delicate _navete_ and exuberant passion In a word, she has expressed the very spirit ofas to ainative classic of the divine art” To those who have not lost their early enthusiasms, this little book will come like the perfume of a flower, or so the old days and reviving an old pleasure To those who have lost such e the work for publication, I have added so the connection between the real and the ideal, and eneral reader of to-day

Anything which will throw light upon this charifted author has been strangely neglected both in raphical dictionaries It is to be hoped that an adequate sketch of her life o, 1891_

CHARLES AUCHESTER

CHAPTER I

I never wrote a long letter inthe paper, holding the pen init to and froh; for I have ements with my free-will to write more than a letter,--a life, or rather the life of a life Let none pause to consider what this means,--neither quite Gerin

There are es in books which, I am informed, and I suppose I am to assure myself, are introduced expressly to intensify and illustrate the chief and peculiar interest where an interest is, or to allure the attention of the implicit, where it is not But how does it happen that the delineations of the Gods ainative enius, are so infinitely h to serve, the Ideal--can endure the graceless ignorance of his subject betrayed by rapher, accepted and acco, can do anything but shudder at the re, crude, mistakable portraits of Shakspeare, of Verulam, of Beethoven? Heaven send my own may not make h a kind of artistic interlight, a few remembered lineaments, I be not self-condemned to blush for the spiritual craft whose first law only I had learned

I kno rown persons entertain of their childhood as real, which are factitious, and founded upon elder experience, until they becoreat part we neglect our earliest iue, which were the truest and best we ever had I believe none can recall their childish esti within their present intiy is perfect between my conceptions then and my positive existence now So every one must feel who is at all acquainted with the liabilities of those who follow art

The e his individuality in his expansive association with the individuality of others; the man of science quenches self-consciousness in abstraction; and not a feho folloith hot energy so, become, in its exercise, as itself, nor for a solitary moment are left alone with their personality to remember even that as separate and distinctly real

But all artists, whether acknowledged or ae of immortality, in life as in art, consists in their self-acquaintance, their self-reliance, their exact self-appreciation with reference to their masters, their models, their one supreland farthest frorandfather and father had resided, acquiring at once a steady profit and an honorable commercial fame Never mind what they were, or in which street or square their stocked warehouses were planted, alluring the eyes and hearts of the pupils of Adas well; but my elder brother, the eldest of our family, was established there when I first recall the on the premises He was indeed very many years my senior, and I little knew him; but he was a steady, excellent person, with a tolerable tenor voice and punctilious filial observances towards our adh his ancestors were generally Saxon, an infusion of Noreneration or two behind hi of Claire Renee de Fontenelle soh my father always maintained that they flowed directly fro for the house upon the Continent when he first found her out, eely, her still but roain to revisit it

My irlhood, as she was in her maturest years, a domestic presence of purity, kindliness, and home-heartedness; she had been accustomed to every kind of householdexquisite Frorace is born, the prudence hich wisdom dwells, and many an attribute of virtue; but froht to nalory lies; and whatever enlightenment my destiny has boasted, streams from that radiant point I know that there are enuinely rejoice in descent from Mahomet, from Attila, or from Robin Hood, as froolden link in y as that which connects it with eternity and with all that in lorious[1]