Lady Blessington and Count Dorsey, Volume 3 of Famous Affinities of History. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Famous Affinities of History by Lyndon Orr, Volume 3. Lady Blessington and Count Dorsey. Often there has arisen some man who, either by his natural gifts, or by his impudence, or by the combination of both, has made himself a recognised leader in the English fashionable world. One of the first of these men was Richard Nash, usually known as Bone Nash, and flourished in the 18th century. Nash was a man of doubtful origin, nor was he attractive in his looks, for he was a huge, clumsy creature with features that were both irregular and harsh. Nevertheless, for nearly 50 years Bone Nash was an arbiter of fashion. Goldsmith, who wrote his life, declared that his supremacy was due to his pleasing manners, his assiduity, flattery, fine clothes, and as much wit as the ladies had whom he addressed. He converted the town of Bath from a rude little hemlet into an English Newport, of which he was the social autocrat. He actually drew up a set of written rules, which some of the best-born and the best-read people follow slavishly. Even better known to us is George Brian Brummel, commonly called Beau Brummel, who, by his friendship with George IV, then Prince Regent, was an oracle at court on everything that related to dress and etiquette and the proper mode of living. His memory has been kept alive most of all by Richard Mansfield's famous impersonation of him. The play is based upon the actual facts, for after Brummel had lost the royal favour, he died an insane pauper in the French town of Caen. He, too, had a distinguished biographer, since Bulwa Lyssen's novel, Pelham, is really the narrative of Brummel's curious career. Long after Brummel, Lord Rainley led the gilded youth of London, and it was at this time that the notorious Lola Montes made her first appearance in the British capital. These three men, Nash, Brummel, and Rainley, had the advantage of being Englishmen and, therefore, of not incurring the old-time English suspicion of foreigners. A much higher type of social arbiter was a Frenchman who, for twenty years during the early part of Queen Victoria's reign, gave law to the great world of fashion, besides exercising a definite influence upon English art and literature. This was Count Albert Guillaume d'Orsay, the son of one of Napoleon's generals and descended by a morgantanic marriage from the king of Württemberg. The old general, his father, was a man of high courage, impressive appearance, and keen intellect, of which qualities he transmitted to his son. The young Count d'Orsay, when he came of age, founds the Napoleonic era ended, and France governed by Louis XVIII. The king gave Count d'Orsay a commission in the army in a regiment stationed at Valence in the southeastern part of France. He had already visited England and learned the English language, and he had made some distinguished friends there, among whom were Lord Byron and Thomas Moore. On his return to France, he was given life at Valence, where he showed some of the finer qualities of his character. It is not merely that he was handsome and accomplished, and that he had the gift of winning the affections of those about him. Unlike Nash and Brummel, he was a gentleman in every sense, and his courtesy was of the highest kind. At the balls given by his regiment, although he was more courted than any other officer, he always sought out the plainest girls and showed them the most flattering attentions. No wallflowers were left neglected when d'Orsay was present. It is strange how completely human beings are in the hands of fate. Here was a young French officer courted in a provincial town in the Valley of the Rome. Who would have supposed that he was destined to become not only a Londoner, but a favourite at the British court, a model of fashion, a dictator of etiquette, widely known for his accomplishments, the patron of literary men, and of distinguished artists. But all these things were to come to pass by a mere accident of fortune. During his first visit to London, which has already been mentioned, Count d'Orsay was invited once or twice to receptions given by the Earl and Countess of Blessington, where he was well received, though this was only an incident of his English sojourn. Before the story proceeds any further, it is necessary to give an account of the Earl and of Lady Blessington, since both of their careers had been, to say the least, unusual. Lord Blessington was an Irish peer for whom an ancient title had been revived. He was remotely descended from the stewards of Scotland, and therefore had royal blood to boast of. He had been well educated, and in many ways was a man of pleasing manner. On the other hand, he had early inherited a very large property, which yielded him an income of about £30,000 a year. He had estates in Ireland, and he owned nearly the whole of a fashionable street in London, with the buildings erected on it. This fortune, and the absence of anyone who could control him, was him willful and extravagant, and had wrought in him a curious love of personal display. Even as a child, he would clamour to be dressed in the most gorgeous uniforms, and when he got possession of his property, his love of display became almost a monomania. He built a theatre as an adjunct to his country house in Ireland, and imported players from London and elsewhere to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers to try on their various costumes and to parade up and down, with his beautiful prints and now as a Roman emperor. In London, he hung about the green rooms and was a well-known figure wherever actors or actresses were collected. Such was his love of the stage that he sought to marry into the profession and set his heart on a girl named Mary Campbell Brown, who was very beautiful to look at, but who was not conspicuous either for her mind or for her morals. When Lord Blessington proposed marriage to her, she was obliged to tell him that she already had one husband still alive, but she was perfectly willing to live with him and dispense with the marriage ceremony. So for several years, she did live with him and bore him two children. It speaks well for the Earl that when the inconvenient husband died, a marriage at once took place and Mrs Brown became a countess. Then, after other children had been born, the lady died, leaving the Earl a widower at about the age of 40. The only legitimate son born of this marriage followed his mother to the grave, and so for the third time the earldom of Blessington seemed likely to become extinct. The death of his wife, however, gave the Earl a special opportunity to display his extravagant tastes. He spent more than 4,000 pounds on the funeral ceremonies, importing from France a huge black velvet catafalque, which had shortly before been used at the public funeral of Napoleon's marshal, duroc, while the house blazed with enormous wax tapers and glittered with cloth of gold. Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London. Having now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures, and he borrowed large sums of money in order to buy additional estates and houses and to experience the exquisite joy of spending lavishly. At this time, he had his lands in Ireland, a townhouse in St James's Square, another in Seymour Place and still another, which was afterward to become famous as Gore House in Kensington. Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs Morris Farmer and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier story of her still young life must here be told because her name afterward became famous and because the tale illustrates wonderfully the raw, crude, lawless period of the Regency when England was fighting her long war with Napoleon, when the Prince Regent was imitating all the vices of the old French kings, when prize fighting, deep drinking, dueling and dicing were practised without restraint in all the large cities and towns of the United Kingdom. It was, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has said, an age of folly and of heroism for while it produced some of the greatest black arts known to history, it produced also such men as Wellington and Nelson, the two pits, Sheridan, Byron, Shelley and Sir Walter Scott. Mrs Morris Farmer was the daughter of a small Irish landowner named Robert Power, himself the incarnation of all the vices of the time. He was little lore in Ireland, not even that which comes from public opinion and Robert Power rode hard to hounds, gambled recklessly and assembled in his house all sorts of reprobates with whom he held frightful orgies that lasted from sunset until dawn. His wife and his young daughters viewed him with terror and the life they led was a perpetual nightmare because of the bestial carousings in which their father engaged, wasting his money and mortgaging his estates until the end of his wild career in sight. There happened to be stationed at Clonmel, a regiment of infantry in which there served a captain named Morrison Ledger Farmer. He was a man of some means, but eccentric to a degree. His temper was so utterly uncontrolled that even his fellow officers could scarcely live with him and he was given to strange caprices. It happened that at a ball in Clonmel he met the young daughter of Robert Power, then a mere child of 14 years. The young daughter was seized with an infatuation for the girl and he went almost at once to her father asking for her hand in marriage and proposing to settle a sum of money upon her if she married him. The hard-riding squiree jumped at the offer. His own estate was being stripped bare. Here was a chance to provide for one of his daughters or rather to get rid of her and he agreed that she should be married out of hand. Going home he roughly informed the girl that he so bullied his wife that she was compelled to join him in this command. What was poor little Margaret Power to do? She was only a child. She knew nothing of the world. She was accustomed to obey her father as she would have obeyed some evil genius who had her in his power. There were tears and lamentations. She was frightened half to death yet for her there was no help. Therefore, while not yet 15, her marriage took place and she was the unhappy slave she had there no beauty whatsoever. She was wholly undeveloped, thin and pale and with rough hair that fell over her frightened eyes yet Farmer wanted her and he settled his money on her just as he would have spent the same amount to gratify any other sudden whim. The life she led with him for a few months showed him to be more of a devil than a man. He took a peculiar delight in terrifying her in subjecting her to every sort of outrage nor did he refrain even from beating her with his fists. The girl could stand a great deal but this was too much. She returned to her father's house where she was received with the bitterest reproaches but where at least she was safe from harm since her possession of a dowry made her a person of some small importance. Not long afterward Captain Farmer fell into a dispute with his colonel, Lord Caledon and in the course of it he drew his sword on his commanding officer. The court martial which was convened for him to have had him shot were it not for the very general belief that he was insane so he was simply cashiered and obliged to leave the service and but take himself elsewhere. Thus the girl whom he had married was quite free, free to leave her wretched home and even to leave Ireland. She did leave Ireland and established herself in London where she had some acquaintances among them the Earl of Blessington. As already said he had met her in Ireland time to time he saw her in a friendly way. After the death of his wife he became infatuated with Margaret Farmer. She was a good deal alone and his attentions gave her entertainment. Her past experience led her to have no real belief in love. She had become however in a small way interested in literature and art with an eager ambition to be known as a writer. As it happened Captain Farmer whose name she bore had died some months before Lord Blessington had decided to make a new marriage. The Earl proposed to Margaret Farmer and the two were married by special licence. The Countess of Blessington to give the lady her new title was now 28 years of age and had developed into a woman of great beauty. She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant expression which was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid loveliness accompanied by grace, simplicity and a form of exquisite proportions. The ugly duckling had become a swan for now there was no trace of her former plainness to be seen. Not yet in her life had love come to her. Her first husband had been thrust upon her and had treated her outrageously. Her second husband was much older than she and though she was not without a certain kindly feeling for one who had been kind to her she married him first of all for his title and position. Having been reared in poverty she had no conception of the value of money and though the Earl was remarkably extravagant the new Countess was even more so. One after another their London houses were opened and decorated with the utmost lavishness. They gave innumerable entertainment not only to the nobility and to men of rank but because this was Lady Blessington's peculiar fad to artists and actors and writers of all degrees. The American N.P. Willis in his pencilings by the way has given an interesting sketch of the Countess and her surroundings while the younger Disraeli Lord Beckinsfield depicted Dorsey as Count Mirabelle in Henrietta Temple. Willis says in a long library lined alternately with splendidly bound books and mirrors and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon Hyde Park I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture to my eye as the door opened was a very lovely one. A woman of remarkable beauty half buried in a photo of yellow satin reading by a magnificent lamp suspended from the centre of the arched ceiling, sofas, couches, Ottomans and busts arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room enameled tables covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every corner and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings. All this crowded sumptuousness was due to the taste of Lady Blessington. Admitted she received royal dukes such as Batesman, such as Palmerston, Canning, Castle Ray, Russell and Broham, actors such as Kemble and Matthews, Artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie and Men of Letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton and the Two Disraelis. To maintain this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money totaling about half a million pounds sterling by mortgaging his different estates and giving his promissory notes to money lenders. Of course he did not spend this sum immediately. He might have lived in comparative luxury upon his income but he was a restless, eager improvident nobleman and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings of his wife. In all this display which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the 30s a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional life if she has not already given herself over and been loved in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in many ways and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came her development into a beautiful woman content for the time to be languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to her. When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced and in fact there could be no love life in such a marriage a marriage with a man much older than herself scatterbrained, showy and having no intellectual gifts so for a time she sought satisfaction in social triumphs in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit them in her salon and in spending money right and left with a lavish hand but after all in a woman of her temperament none of these things could satisfy her inner longings beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity, imaginative and eager such a nature as hers would in the end be starved unless her heart could be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender. After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied her surroundings wearied her there was a call within her for something more than she had yet experienced the earl her husband was by nature no less restless and so without knowing the reason which indeed she herself did not understand he readily assented to a journey on the continent as they travelled southward they reached at length the town of Valence where Count Dorsey was still quartered with his regiment a vague, indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman who was now a woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to the heart the mere sound of the French officer's voice the mere sight of his face the mere knowledge of his presence stirred her as nothing had ever stirred her until that time yet neither he nor she appears to have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking it was enough that they were soothed and satisfied in each other's company oddly enough the earl of Blessington became as devoted to Dorsey as did his wife the two urged the Count to secure a leave of absence and to accompany them to Italy this he was easily persuaded to do and the three passed weeks and months of a langurous and alluring intercourse among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy just what's passed between the Count Dorsey and Margaret's Blessington at this time cannot be known for the secret of it has perished with them but it is certain that before very long they came to know that each was indispensable to the other the situation was complicated by the earl of Blessington who, entirely unsuspicious proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet Gardner his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife he pressed the match upon the embarrassed Dorsey and offered to settle the sum of £40,000 upon the bride the girl was less than 15 years of age she had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence and in addition Dorsey was now deeply in love with her stepmother on the other hand his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing more difficult people had begun to talk of the almost open relations between Count Dorsey and Lady Blessington Lord Byron, in a letter written to the Countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way of your Dorsey the manners and morals of the time were decidedly irregular yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of what everyone was saying therefore much against his real desire yet in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington Dorsey agrees to the marriage with Lady Harriet 15 years of age this made the intimacy between Dorsey and the Blessingtons appeared to be not unusual but as a matter of fact the marriage was no marriage the unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself while the whole family, returning to London made their home together in Seymour place could Dorsey have foreseen the future he would never have done what must always seem and act so utterly unworthy of him for within two years Lord Blessington fell ill and died had not Dorsey been married he would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington as it was he was bound fast to her stepdaughter and since at that time there was no divorce court in England and since he had no reason for seeking a divorce he was obliged to live on through many years in a most ambiguous situation he did however separate himself from his childish bride and having done so with Lady Blessington at Gore House by this time however the companionship of the two had received a sort of general sanction and in that easygoing age most people took it as a matter of course the two were now quite free to live precisely as they would Lady Blessington became extravagantly happy and Count Dorsey was accepted in London as an oracle of fashion everyone was eager to visit Gore House and there they received all the notable men of the time the improvidence of Lady Blessington however was in no respect diminished she lived upon her jointure recklessly spending capital as well as interest and gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic works from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful statuary Dorsey had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had come to Lady Blessington from her husband he was a skillful painter and he practised his art in a professional way his portrait of the Duke of Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had been made of him the Iron Duke was in fact a frequent visitor at Gore House and he had a very high opinion of Count Dorsey Lady Blessington herself engaged in writing novels of high life some of which were very popular in their day but of all that she wrote there remains only one book which is of permanent value her conversations with Lord Byron a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet but her nemesis was destined to overtake the pair money flowed through Lady Blessington's hands like water and she could never be brought to understand that what she had might not last forever finally it was all gone yet her extravagance continued debts were heaped up mountain high she signed notes of hand without even reading them she incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation for a long time her creditors held a loop not believing that her resources were in reality exhausted but in the end there came a crash as sudden as it was ruinous as if moved by a single impulse those to whom she owed money took out judgements against her and descended upon Gore House in a swarm this was in the spring of 1849 when Lady Blessington was in her 60th year and Dorsey 51 it is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the wreck of a great establishment such as her own of the scene in Gore House Mr Madden Lady Blessington's literary biographer has written an execution for a debt £4,000 was at length put in by a house largely engaged in the silk, lace, India shawl and fancy jewellery business this sum of £4,000 was only a nominal claim but it opened the floodgates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors Mr Madden writes still further on the 10th of May 1849 I visited Gore House for the last time the auction was going on there was a large assemblage of people of fashion the well-known library salon in which the conversations took place was crowded but not with guests the armchair in which the Lady of the Mansion to sit was occupied by a stout coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion busily engaged in examining a marble hand extended on a book the fingers of which were modelled from a cast of the absent mistress of the establishment people, as they passed through the room poked the furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of various kinds that lay on the table and some made jests and rippled jokes on the scene they witnessed at this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value pictures by Lawrence and Lanseer a library consisting of thousands of volumes vases of exquisite workmanship chandeliers of Ormalou and precious porcelains all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical prices Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself she knew that the hour had struck and very soon she was on her way to Paris with a Count d'Orsay had already gone having been threatened with arrest by Prince Louis Bonaparte to whom he owed 500 pounds d'Orsay very naturally went to Paris for, like his father he had always been an ardent Bonaparteist and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had been chosen president of the Second French Republic during the Prince's long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay who had helped him both with money and with influence d'Orsay now expected some return for his former generosity it came but it came too late in 1852 shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor the Count was appointed director of fine arts but when the news was brought to him he was already dying Lady Blessington died soon after coming to Paris before the end of the year 1849 comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed yet one may quote some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her night book they seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only for a little while and that deep down in her heart she had condemned herself a woman's head is always influenced by her heart but a man's heart is always influenced by his head the separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of two hearts that have loved but have ceased to sympathise while memory still recalls what they once were to each other people are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them a woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it it is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than to be pardoned for it memory seldom fails when it's office is to show us the tunes of our buried hopes end of Lady Blessington and Count Dorsay Byron and the Countess Buccioli volume 3 of famous affinities of history by Lady Blessington this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org famous affinities of history by London Orre volume 3 Byron and the Countess Buccioli in 1812 when he was in his 24th year Lord Byron was more talked of than any other man in London he was in the first flush of his brilliant career having published the early cantos of Child Harrod moreover he was a peer of the realm handsome, ardent and possessing a personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist Byron's childhood had been one to excited him strong feelings of revolt and he had inherited a passionate and passionate nature his father was a gambler and a spin thrift his mother was eccentric to a degree Byron himself throughout his boyish years had been morbidly sensitive because of a physical deformity a lame, misshapen foot this and the strange treatment which his mother according him left him headstrong, willful a mist from the first an enemy to whatever was established and conventional he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he formed at eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl named Mary Duff at ten his cousin Margaret Parker excited in him a strange, unchildish passion at fifteen came one of the greatest crises of his life when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth whose grandfather had been killed in a duel by Byron's great uncle young as he was he would have married her immediately but miss Chaworth was two years older than he and absolutely refused to take seriously the devotion of a schoolboy Byron felt the disappointment kingly and after a short stay at Cambridge he left England visited Portugal and Spain and traveled eastward as far as Greece and Turkey at Athens he wrote the pretty little poem to the quote made of Athens Miss Theresa Macri daughter of the British Vice Council he returned to London to become at one leap the most admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite he was possessed of striking personal beauty Sir Walter Scott said of him his countenance was a thing to dream of his glorious eyes his mobile, eloquent face fascinated all and he was besides a genius of the first rank with these endowments he plunged into the social whirlpool denying himself nothing and receiving everything adulation, friendship and unstinted love darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the east made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems such as The Jower and The Corsair a German wrote of him that he was positively besieged by women from the humblest maid servants up to ladies of high rank he had only to throw his handkerchief to make a conquest some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be thrown no wonder that he was sated with so much adoration that he wrote of women so pretty but inferior creatures I look on them as grown up children but like a foolish mother I am constantly the slave of one of them give a woman a looking glass and burnt almonds and she will be content the liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that between Byron and Lady Carolyn Lamb Byron has been greatly blamed for his share in it there was much to be said on the other side Lady Carolyn was happily married to the right honorable William Lamb afterward Lord Melbourne and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen Victoria he was an easygoing, genial man of the world who placed too much confidence in the honor of his wife she on the other hand was a sentimental fool always restless always in search of some new excitement she thought herself a poet and scribbled verses which her friends politely admired and from which they escaped as soon as possible when she first met Byron she cried out that pale face is my fate and afterward she added mad, bad and dangerous to know it was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point of open scandal but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer this woman older than he flung herself directly at his head naturally enough it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly her romantic impetuosity became tiresome and very soon she fell to talking always of herself thrusting her poems upon him and growing vexed and peevish when he would not praise them as was well said he grew moody and she fretful when their mutual egotism jarred in a burst of resentment she left him but when she returned she was worse than ever she insisted on seeing him on one occasion she made her way into his rooms disguised as a boy at another time when she thought that he had slighted her she tried to stab herself with a pair of scissors still later she offered her favors to anyone who would kill him Byron himself wrote of her you can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said and done her story has been utilized by mrs. Humphrey Ward in her novel the marriage of William Ash perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation at any rate in 1813 he proposed marriage to ms. Ann Milbank who at first refused him but he persisted and in 1815 the two were married Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making a terrible mistake during the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf and made the wrong responses to the clergyman after the wedding was over in handing the bride into the carriage which awaited them he said to her ms. Milbank are you ready it was a strange blunder for a bridegroom and one which many regarded at the time as ominous for the future in truth no two persons could have been more thoroughly mismated Byron the human volcano and his wife a prim narrow minded and pivish woman their incompatibility was evident enough from the very first when they returned from their wedding journey and someone asked Byron about his honeymoon he answered call it rather a treacle moon it is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic troubles only five weeks after their daughter's birth they parted lady Byron declared that her husband was insane while after trying many times to win from her something more than a tepid affection he gave up the task in a sort of despairing anger it should be mentioned here for the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades afterward by ms. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of lady Byron that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta Lee lord Byron's sister and that even on her deathbed she sent an amicable message to ms. Lee Byron however stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him left England and after travelling down the Rhine through Switzerland he took up his abode in Venice his joy at leaving England and ridding himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him he expressed in these lines once more upon the waters yet once more and the waves bound beneath me as a seed that knows his rider welcome to the roar meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion money poured in upon him from his English publisher for two cantos of child Harrod and Manfred Murray paid him $20,000 for the fourth canto Byron demanded and received more than $12,000 in Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore but eventually he parted from them both where he was about to enter upon a new phase of his curious career he was no longer the Byron of 1815 four years of high living and much brandy and water had robbed his features of their refinement his look was no longer spiritual he was beginning to grossed out yet the change had not been altogether unfortunate he had lost something of his competuosity and his sense of humor had developed in his 30th year in fact he had at last become a man it was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called quote a star on the stormy horizon of the poet unquote this woman was Teresa Countess Guccioli whom he first came to know in Venice she was then only 19 years of age and she was married to a man who was more than 40 years her senior unlike the typical Italian woman she was blonde with dreamy eyes and an abundance of golden hair and her manner was at once modest and graceful she had known Byron for a very short time when she found herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never dreamed it was written of her she had thought of love but as an amusement and she now became its slave to this love Byron gave immediate response and from that time until his death he cared for no other woman the two were absolutely mated nevertheless there were difficulties which might have been expected Count Guccioli while he seemed to admire Byron watched him with Italian subtlety the English poet and the Italian Countess met frequently when Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever the Countess remained beside him and he was just recovering when Count Guccioli appeared on the scene and carried off his wife Byron was in despair he exchanged the most ardent letters with the Countess yet he dreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband whenever he wrote out he went armed with sword and pistols amid all this storm and stress Byron's literary activity was remarkable he wrote some of his most famous poems at this time and he hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united once for all this came about in the end through the persistence of the pair the Countess Guccioli openly took up her abode with him not to be separated until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence this was in 1822 when Byron was in his 35th year he never returned to Italy but died in the historic land for which he gave his life as truly as if he had fallen into the battle Teresa Guccioli had been in all but name his wife for just three years much has been said in condemnation of this love affair but in many ways it is less insurable than almost anything in his career it was an instance of genuine love a love which purified and exalted this man of dark and moody moments it saved him from those fitful passions and orgies of self indulgence which had exhausted him it proved to be an inspiration which at last led him to die for a cause approved by all the world as for the woman what shall we say of her she came to him unspotted by the world a demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected a pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two the countess gladly left behind her palaces her equipages society and riches for the love of the poet who had won her heart unlike the other women who had cared for him she was unselfish in her devotion she thought more of his fame than he did himself Emilia Castellar has written she restored him and elevated him the mire and set the crown of purity upon his brow then when she had recovered this great heart instead of keeping it as her own possession she gave it to humanity for 27 years after Byron's death she remained as it were widowed and alone then in her old age she married the Marquis de Boise but the marriage was purely one of convenience her heart was always Byron's whom she defended with vivacity in 1868 she published her memoirs of the poet filled with interesting and affecting recollections she died as late as 1873 sometime between the year 1866 and that of her death she is said to have visited Newstead Abbey which had once been Byron's home she was very old a widow and alone but her affection for the poet lover of her youth was still as strong as ever Byron's life was short if measured in years only measured by achievement it was filled to the very full his genius blazes like a meteor in the records of English poetry and some of that splendor gleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from and made him worthy of his historic ancestry of his country and of himself end of Byron and the Countess Cruthioli the story of Madame Dastal volume 3 of famous affinities of history this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org famous affinities of history by Lyndon Orr volume 3 the story of Madame Dastal each century or sometimes each generation is distinguished by some special interest among those who are given to fancies not to call them fads thus at the present time the cultivated few are taken up with what they choose to term the new thought or the new criticism or on the other hand with socialistic theories and projects 30 years ago when Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously by some people there were many who made a cult of estatism it was just as interesting when their leader walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in his medieval hand or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guide him as bunthorn in patience when Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense muscular Christianity was a phrase taken up by many followers a little earlier puseism and a primitive form of socialism were invoked with the intellectuals there are just as many different fashions and thought as in garments and they come and go without any particular reason today they are discussed and practiced everywhere tomorrow they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something new 40 years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its thunderings France and Germany were affected by what was generally styled sensibility sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and the half sister of sentiment sentiment is a fine thing in itself it is consistent with strength and humor and manliness but sentimentality and sensibility are poor, cheaping creatures that run scuttering along the ground quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy which they do not at all deserve no one need be ashamed of sentiment it simply gives temper to the blade and mellowness to the intellect sensibility, on the other hand is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks it is in fact all humbug just as sentiment is often all truth therefore to find an interesting phase of human folly we may look back to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of sensibility the great prophets of this false god or goddess were Russo in France and Goethe with Schiller in Germany together with a host of midgets who shook and shivered in imitation of their masters it is not for us to catalog these persons some of them were great figures in literature and philosophy and strong enough to shake aside the silliness of sensibility but others, while they profess to be great as writers or philosophers are now remembered only and their devotion to sensibility made them conspicuous in their own time they dabbled in one thing and another they cripped from every popular writer of the day the only thing that actually belonged to them was a high degree of sensibility and what, one may ask was this precious thing, this sensibility it was really a sort of Saint Vitus's dance of the mind and almost of the body when two persons in any way interested in each other were brought into the same room one of them appeared to be seized with a rotary movement the voice rose to a higher pitch than usual and assumed a tremolo then, if the other person was also endowed with sensibility he or she would rotate and quake in somewhat the same manner their cups of tea would be considerably agitated they would move about in as unnatural a manner as possible and when they left the room they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath it was not an exhibition of love or at least, not necessarily so you might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet or a gallant soldier or a celebrated traveler or for that matter before a remarkable buffoon like Caliostro or a freak like Caspar Hauser it is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing and denoted an abnormal state of mind only among people like the Germans and French of that period forbidden to take part in public affairs could it have flourished so long and have put forth such rank and fetid outcropes from its prank the elective affinities of Goethe and the loose morality of the French royalists which rushed on into the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy and anarchy of the revolution of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one which today stands forth as representing sensibility in her own time she was thought to be something of a philosopher and something more of a novelist she consorted with all the clever men and women of her age but now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact that Napoleon stooped to a hater and because she personifies sensibility criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy which was not her own it is seen that she was indebted to the brains of others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delfine and Corrine but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique this woman was Anne-Louise Germain Necker usually known as Madame de Stal there was much about Mademoiselle Necker's parentage that made her interesting her father was the Genevies banker and minister of Louis XVI who failed wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France her mother, Suzan Kurshaw as a young girl had won the love of the famous English historian who at first refused him and then almost frantically tried to get him back but by this time Gibbon was more comfortable in single life and less infatuated with Mademoiselle Kurshaw who presently married Jacques Necker Monsieur Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated catch her mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond description and yet was soldering to its fall the rumblings of the revolution could be heard by almost every year and yet society and the court refusing to listen plunged into the wildest travelry under the leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette it was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant forms of luxury and met the cleverest man of that time Voltaire, Rousseau, Lamartine Chateaubriand, Volni she set herself to be the most accomplished woman of her day not merely in bellettres but in the natural and political sciences thus when her father was drawing up his monograph on the French finances Germain labored hard over a supplementary report studying documents, records and the most complicated statistics so that she might obtain a mastery of the subject I mean to know everything that anybody knows she said with an arrogance which was rather admired and so young a woman but unfortunately her mind was not great enough to fulfill her aspiration the most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge a knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man but which was superficial enough to the accomplished specialist in her 20th year 1786 it was not best that she should marry her evils as well as her heart studies had told upon her health and her mother believed that she could not be at once a blue stalking and a woman of the world there was something very odd about the relation that existed between the young girl and this mother of hers in the swiss province where they had both been born the mother had been considered rather bold and forward her pension for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that have been told about her she was by no means coy with the gallants of Geneva yet after her marriage and when she came to Paris she seemed to be transformed into a sort of swiss puritan as such she undertook her daughters bringing up and was extremely careful about everything that Germain did and about the company she kept on the other hand the daughter who in the city of Calvin had been rather dull and quiet in her ways launched out into a gate such as she had never known in Switzerland mother and daughter in fact changed parts the country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris while the quiet unemotional young genivies became the light of all the Parisian salons whether social or intellectual the mother was a very beautiful woman the daughter who was to become so famous as best described by these two very uncomplementary English words dumpy and frumpy she had bulging eyes which are not emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gérard and her hair was unbecomingly dressed there are reasons for thinking that Germain bitterly hated her mother and was intensely jealous of her charm of person it may also be that Madame Necker envied the daughter's cleverness even though that cleverness was little more than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons at any rate that you never cared for each other and Germain gave her father the affection which her mother neither received nor sought it was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that the marriage was arranged for Mademoiselle Necker with the Baron de Stal Holstein who then represented the court of Sweden in Paris many eyebrows were lifted when this match was announced Baron de Stal had no personal charm nor any reputation for wit his standing in the diplomatic corps was not very high his favorite occupations were playing cards and drinking enormous quantities of punch could he be considered a match for the extremely clever Mademoiselle Necker whose father had an enormous fortune and who was herself considered the gem of wit and mental power ready to discuss political economy or the romantic movement of socialism or platonic love many differed about this Mademoiselle Necker was to be true rich and clever but the Baron de Stal was of an old family and had a title moreover his easygoing ways even his punch drinking and his card playing made him a desirable husband at that time of French social history when the aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased with wanton license and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet ambassador might retire and when the mob grew dangerous for Paris was now approaching the time of revolution and all aristocrats were more or less in danger at first Madame de Stal rather sympathized with the outbreak of the people but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with the royalists it was then that she became indiscreet and abused the privilege of the embassy in giving shelter to her friends she was obliged to make a sudden flight across the frontier when she did not return until Napoleon loomed up a political giant on the horizon a victorious general, consul and emperor Madame de Stal's relations with Napoleon have as I remarked above been among her few titles to serious remembrance the corsican eagle and the dumpy little genivies make indeed a peculiar pair and for this reason writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture Napoleon, says one did not wish anyone to be near him who was as clever as himself no, adds another because she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody even of the greatest man who ever lived Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance observes the third she knew too much and was always trying to force her knowledge upon others the legend has sprung up that Madame de Stal was too wise and witty to be acceptable to Napoleon and many women repeated with unction that the conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman perhaps worthwhile to look into the fact and to decide whether Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to this rather comic creature even though at the time many people thought her a remarkable genius in the first place knowing Napoleon as we have come to know him through the pages of Madame de Remoussa, Frederick Masson and others, we can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier would sit at dinner hastening to finish his meal the ceremony into 20 minutes gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup of coffee and then being interrupted by a fussy little female who wanted to talk about the ethics of history or the possibility of a new form of government Napoleon himself was making history and writing it in fire and flame and as for governments he invented governments all over Europe as soon as his imperial will what patience could he have with one human English writer an ugly coquette an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage a blue stocking who spent much of her time in pestering men of genius and drawing from them sarcastic comment behind their backs Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion but he was most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by pedantry consequently he found Madame de Stal a good deal of a nuisance in the salons of Paris and its vicinity he cared not the least for her epigrams she might go somewhere else and write all the epigrams she pleased when he banished her in 1803 she merely crossed the Rhine into Germany and established herself at Weimar the emperor received her son Auguste de Stal Holstein with much good humor though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother my dear Baron said Napoleon if your mother were to be in Paris for two months I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of the castles which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show a lady no let her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly all Europe is open to her Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg and if she wishes to write liabilities on me England is a convenient and inexpensive place only Paris is just a little to near thus the emperor jibed the boy he was only 15 or 16 and made fun of the exiled blue stocking but there was not a sign of malice in what she said nor indeed of any serious feeling at all the legend about Napoleon and Madame de Stal must therefore go into the wastebasket except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in boring him for the rest she was an earlier George sand, unattractive in person yet able to attract loving love for love's sake though seldom receiving it in return throwing herself at the head of every distinguished man and generally finding that he regarded her overtures as a mockery to enumerate the men for whom she professed to care would be tedious since the record of her passions has no reality about it save perhaps with two exceptions she did care deeply and sincerely for Henri Benjamin Constain the brilliant politician and novelist he was one of her coterie in Paris and their common political sentiments formed a bond of friendship between them Constain was banished by Napoleon in 1802 and when Madame de Stal followed him into exile a year later he joined her in Germany the story of their relations was told by Constain in Adolf while Madame de Stal based Delfine on her experiences with him it seems that he was puzzled by her order she was infatuated by his genius together they went through all the phases of the tender passion and yet at intervals they were tired of each other and separate for a while and she would amuse herself with other men at last she really believed that her love for him was entirely worn out I always loved my lovers more than they loved me she said once and it was true yet on the other hand she was frankly false to all of them and hence arose these intervals in one of them she fell in with the young Italian named Rocca and by way of a change she not only amused herself with him but even married him at this time 1811 she was 45 while Rocca was only 23 a young soldier who had fought in Spain and who made eager love to the she philosopher when he was invalided at Geneva the marriage was made in terms imposed by the middle aged woman who became his bride in the first place it was to be kept secret and second she would not take her husband's name but he must pass himself off as her lover even though she bore him children the reason she gave for this extraordinary exhibition of her vanity was that a change of name on her part would put everybody out in fact she said when the style were to change her name it was unsettled the heads of all Europe when all the treasure of your youth has been given in vain when you can no longer hope that the reflection of these first rays will shine upon the end of your life when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you of the dawn and when the twilight is pale and colorless as a livid specter that precedes the night your heart revolves and you feel that you have been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth equally striking is another prose passage of hers which seems less the careful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of her termigant it is odd that the first two sentences recall two famous lines of Byron man's love is of a man's life a thing apart this woman's whole existence the passage by Madame de Stal is longer and less pecan love is woman's whole existence it is only an episode in the lives of men reputation, honor, esteem everything depends upon how a woman conducts herself in this regard whereas according to the rules of an unjust world the laws of morality itself are suspended in men's relations with women they may pass as good men though they have caused women the most terrible suffering which it is in the power of one human being to inflict upon another they may be regarded as loyal though they have betrayed them they may have received from a woman marks of a devotion which would so link two friends to fellow soldiers that either would feel dishonored if he forgot them and they may consider themselves free of all obligations by attributing the services to love as if this additional gift of love detracted from the value of the rest one cannot help noticing how lacking ineateness of expression is this woman who wrote so much it is because she wrote so much that she wrote in such a muffled manner it is because she thought so much that her reflections were either not her own or were never clear it is because she loved so much and had so many lovers Benjamin Constant, Vincenzo Monti the Italian poet Monsieur de Narbonne and others as well as Young Rocca that she found both love and lovers tedious she talked so much that her conversation was almost always mere personal opinion thus she told Goethe that he never was really brilliant until after he had got through a bottle of champagne Schiller said that to talk with her was to have a rough time and that after she left him he always felt like a man who was just getting over a serious illness she never had time to do anything very well there is an interesting glimpse of her in the recollections of Dr. Bollman at the period when Madame d'Astal was in her prime the worthy doctor set her down as a genius an extraordinary eccentric woman in all that she did she slept but a few hours out of the 24 and was uninterruptedly and fearfully busy all the rest of the time while her hair was being dressed and even while she breakfasted she used to keep on writing nor did she ever rest sufficiently to examine what she had written such then was Madame d'Astal a type of the time in which she lived so far as concerns her worship of sensibility of sensibility and not of love for love is too great to be so scattered and made a thing to prattle off to cheapen and thus destroy so we find that the last that germane d'Astal that she was much red and much fetid and much followed came finally to that last halting place where confessedly she was merely an old woman eccentric and unattractive she sued her former lovers for the money she had lent them she scolded and found fault as perhaps befits her age but such is the natural end of sensibility and of the woman who typifies it for succeeding generations end of the story of Madame d'Astal by Lindon Orre Volume 3 The Story of Karl Marx Some time ago I entered a fairly large library one of more than 200,000 volumes to seek the little brochure on Karl Marx written by his old friend and genial comrade Wilhelm Lieberman and his old friend as I made a note of its number my friend the librarian came up to me and I asked him whether it was not strange that a man like Marx should have so many books to vote it to him for I had roughly reckoned the number at several hundred not at all said he and we have here only a feeble nucleus of the Marx literature just enough in fact to give you a glimpse of what that was to give you a glimpse of what that literature really is these are merely the books written by Marx himself and the translations of them with a few expository monographs anything like a real Marx collection would take up a special room in this library and would have to have its own special catalog you see that even these two or three hundred books contain large volumes of small pamphlets in many languages German, English, French, Italian, Russian Polish, Yiddish, Swedish, Hungarian Spanish, and here he concluded pointed to a recently numbered card is one in Japanese my curiosity was sufficiently excited to look into the matter somewhat further I visited another library which was appreciably larger and whose managers were evidently less guided by their prejudices here were several thousand books on Marx and I spent the best part of the day in looking them over what struck me as most singular was the fact that there was scarcely a volume about Marx himself practically all the books dealt with his theory of capital and his other socialist views the man himself his personality and the facts of his life were dismissed in the most meager fashion and the comic theories were discussed with something that verged upon fury even such standard works as those of Minring and Spargo which profess to be partly biographical sum up the personal side of Marx in a few pages in fact in the latter's preface he seems conscious of this defect and says whether socialism proves in the long span of centuries to be good or evil or a curse Karl Marx must always be an object of interest as one of the great world figures of immortal memory as the years go by thoughtful men and women will find the same interest in studying the life and work of Marx than they do in studying the life and work of Cromwell of Wesley or of Darwin to name three immortal world figures of vastly divergent types singularly little is known of Karl Marx and his most adorant followers they know his work having studied his Das Kapital with the devotion and earnestness with which an older generation of Christians studied the Bible but they are very generally unacquainted with the man himself although more than 26 years have elapsed since the death of Marx there is no adequate biography of him in any language doubtless some better equipped writer such as Franz Minkreg or Edward Bernstein will someday give us the adequate and full biography for which the world now waits here is an admission that there exists no adequate biography of Karl Marx and here is also an intimation that simply as a man and not merely as a great firebrand of socialism Marx is well worth studying and so it has occurred to me to give in these pages one episode of his career that seems to me quite curious together with some significant touches concerning the man as apart from the socialist let the thousands of volumes already in existence suffice for the latter the motto of this paper is not the Virgilian arms and the man I sing but simply the man I sing and the woman Karl Marx was born nearly 94 years ago May 5th 1818 in the city which the French call Treves and the Germans Treve among the vine clad hills of the Mosle today the town is commonplace enough when you pass through it but when you look into its history and seek out that history's evidences you will find that it is not always a rather sleepy little place it was one of the chosen abodes of the emperors of the west after Rome began to be governed by Gauls and Spaniards rather than by Romans and Italians the traveler often pauses there to see the Porta Nigra that immense gate once strongly fortified and he will doubtless visit also what is left of the fine Baas and the amphitheater Treve therefore has a right to be governed imperial and it was the birthplace of one whose sway over the minds of men has been both imperial and imperious Karl Marx was one of those whose intellectual achievements were so great as to dwarf his individuality and his private life what he taught with almost terrific vigor made his very presence in the continental monarchies a source of imminent danger to country kings and emperors were league together against him soldiers were called forth and blood was shed because of him but little by little his teaching seems to have leavened the thought of the whole civilized world so that today thousands who barely know his name are deeply affected by his ideas and believe that the state should control and manage everything for the good of all Marx seems to have inherited little from either of his parents his father Heinrich Marx was a provincial Jewish lawyer who had adopted Christianity probably because it was expedient and because it enabled him to hold local offices and gain some social consequence he had changed his name from Mordecai to Marx the elder Marx was very shrewd and tactful and achieved a fair position among the professional men and small offices in the city of Trevay he had seen the horrors of the French Revolution and was philosopher enough to understand the meaning of that mighty upheaval and of the Napoleonic era which followed Napoleon indeed had done much to relieve his race from petty oppression France made the Jews in every respect the equals of the Gentiles Marcellus Marshals Marsena was a Jew and therefore when the Imperial Eagle was at the zenith of its flight the Jews in every city and town of Europe were enthusiastic admirers of Napoleon some even calling him the Messiah Karl Marx's mother it is certain endowed him with none of his gifts she was a Netherlandish Jewish of the strict domestic and conservative type of children and her home and detesting any talk that looked to revolutionary ideas or to a change in the social order she became a Christian with her husband but the word meant little to her it was sufficient that she believed in God and for this she was teased by some of her skeptical friends replying to them she uttered the only epigram which has ever been ascribed to her yes, she said thank God but not for God's sake but for my own she was so little affected by change of scene that to the day of her death she never mastered German but spoke almost wholly in her native Dutch had we time we might dwell upon the unhappy paradox of her life in her son Karl she found an especial joy as did her husband Karl's early youth he would doubtless have been greatly pained by the radicalism of his gifted son as well as by his personal privations but the mother lived until 1863 while Karl was everywhere stirring the fires of revolution driven from land to land both feared and persecuted as often half famished as Mr. Spargo says it was the irony of life that the son who kindled a mighty hope in the hearts of unnumbered thousands of his fellow human beings a hope that is today inspiring millions of those who speak his name with reverence and love should be able to do that only by destroying his mother's hope and happiness in her son and that every step he took should fill her heart with great agony when young Marx grew out of boyhood he was attractive to all those who met him tall, lithe and graceful he was so extremely dark that his intimates called him denigre his loosely tossing hair gave to him a still more exotic appearance but his eyes were true and frank his nose denoted strength and character and his mouth was full of kindness in its expression his liniments were not those very late in life he died in 1883 his hair and beard turned white but to the last his great mustache was drawn like a bar across his face remaining still as black as ink and making his appearance very striking he was full of fun and gaiety as was only natural there soon came into his life someone who learned to love him he gave a deep and unbroken affection there had come to Trevay which passed from France to Prussia with the downfall of Napoleon a Prussian nobleman the Baron Lugwood von Vesfallen holding the official title of National Advisor the Baron was of Scottish extraction on his mother's side being connected with the Düssel family of Auregel he was a man of rank and might have shown all the arrogance and supercilesness of the average Prussian official but when he became associated with Hendrik Marx he invents none of that condescending manner the two men became firm friends and the Baron treated that provincial lawyer as an equal the two families were on friendly terms von Vesfallen's infant daughter who had the formable name of Johanna Berthet Julie Ginny von Vesfallen but who was usually spoken of as Ginny became in time an intimate of Sophie Marx she was four years older than Carl but the two grew up together he a high spirited manly boy and she a lovely and romantic girl the Baron treated Carl as if the lad were a child of his own he influenced him he loved romantic literature and poetry by interpreting to him the great masterpieces from Homer and Shakespeare to Goethe and Lessings he made a special study of Dante whose mysticism appealed to his somewhat dreamy nature and to the religious instinct that always lived in him in spite of his dislike for creeds and churches the lore that he invited in early childhood stood Carl instead when he began his school life and his preparation for the university he had an absolute genius for study and was no less fond of the sports and games of his companions so that he seemed to be marked out for success at sixteen years of age he showed a precocious ability for planning and carrying out his work with thoroughness his mind was evidently a creative mind one that was able to think out problems without fatigue his taste was shown in his fondness for the classics in studying, which he noted subtle distinctions of meaning that usually escaped even the mature scholar penetration thoroughness creativeness and a capacity for labor were the boy's chief characteristics which such gifts and such a nature he left home for the University of Bonn here he disappointed all his friends his studies were neglected he was a morose restless and dissatisfied he fell into a number of scrapes and ran into debt through sundry small extravagances all the reports that reached his home were most unsatisfactory what had come over the boy who had worked so hard in the gymnasium at Treve the simple fact was that he had become lovesick separation from Ginny von Vesvalen had made him conscious of a feeling which he had long entertained without knowing it they had been close companions he had looked into her beautiful face and seen the luminous response of her lovely eyes but its meaning had not flashed upon his mind he was not old enough to have a great consuming passion he was merely conscious of her charm as he could see her every day he did not realize how much he wanted her and how much a separation from her would mean as absence makes the heart grow fonder so it may suddenly draw aside the veil behind which the truth is hidden at Bonn young Marx felt as if a blaze of light had flashed before him and from that moment his studies his companions and the ambitions that he had hitherto cherished all seemed to flat and stale at night and in the daytime there was just one thing which filled his mind and heart the beautiful vision of Ginny von Vesvalen meanwhile his family and especially his father had become anxious at the reports which reached them Karl was sent for and his stay in Bonn was ended now that he was once more in the presence of the girl who charmed him so with his old time spirits he wooed her adorately and though she was more coy now that she saw his passion she did not discourage him but merely prolonged the ecstasy of this wonderful love-making as he pressed her more and more and no one guessed the story there came a time when she was urged to let herself become engaged to him here was seen the difference in their ages a difference had an effect upon their future it means much that a girl should be four years older than the man who seeks her hand she was four years wiser and a girl of twenty is in fact a match for a youth of twenty-five brought up as she had been in an aristocratic home with the blood of two noble families in her veins and being want to hear the easy and somewhat cynical talk of her she knew better than poor Carl the unwisdom of what she was about to do she was noble the daughter of one high official and the sister of another those whom she knew were persons of rank and station on the other hand young Marx though he had accepted Christianity was the son of a provincial Jewish lawyer with no future and with a bad record at the university when she thought of all these things she may well have hesitated but the earnest pleading and intense ador of Carl Marx broke down all barriers between them and they became engaged without informing Ginny's father of their compact then they parted for a while and Carl returned to his home filled with romantic thoughts he was also full of ambition and a desire for achievement he had won the loveliest girl in Trevay and now he must go forth into the world and conquer it for her sake he begged his father to send him to Berlin and showed how much more advantageous was that new and splendid university where Hegel's fame was still in the ascendant in answer to his father's questions the younger Marx replied I have something to tell you explain all but first you must give me your word that you will tell no one I trust you wholly said the father I will not reveal what you may say to me well returned the son I am engaged to marry Ginny von Vesfallen she wishes to keep it a secret from her father but I am at liberty to tell you of it the elder Marx was at once shocked and seriously disturbed Baron von Vesfallen was his old and intimate friend no thought of romance between their children ever came to his mind it seemed disloyal to keep the whole verlobong of Carl and Ginny a secret for should it be revealed what would the Baron think of Marx their disparity of rank and fortune would make the whole affair stand out as something wrong and underhand the father endeavored to make his son see all this he begged him to go and tell the Baron but young Marx was not to be persuaded send me to Berlin he said and we shall again be separated but I shall work and make a name for myself so that when I return neither Ginny nor her father will have occasion to be disturbed by our engagement with these words he half satisfied his father and before long he was sent to Berlin where he fell manfully upon his studies his father had insisted that he should study law but his own taste were for philosophy and history he attended lectures in jurisprudence quote as a necessary evil in quote but he read omnivorously in subjects that were nearer to his heart the result was that his official record was not much better than it had been in Bonn the same sort of restlessness too took possession of him when he found that Ginny would not answer his letters no matter how eagerly and tenderly he wrote to her there came no reply even the most passionate pleadings left her silent and unresponsive Carl could not complain for she had warned him that she would not write to him she felt that their engagement being secret was anomalous and that until her father knew of it she was not free to act as she might wish here again was seen the wisdom of her mature years but Carl could not be equally reasonable he showered her with letters which still she would not answer he wrote to his father in words of fire at last driven to despair he said that he was going to write to the Baron von Vesvalen reveal the secret and ask for the Baron's fatherly consent it seemed a reckless thing to do and yet it turned out to be the wisest the Baron knew that such an engagement meant a social sacrifice and that apart from the matter of rank young Marx was without any fortune to give the girl the luxuries to which she had been accustomed other and more eligible suitors were always within view but here Ginny herself spoke out more strongly than she had ever done to Carl she was willing to accept him with what he was able to give her she cared nothing for any other man and she begged her father to make both of them completely happy thus it seemed that all was well yet for some reason or other Ginny could not write to Carl and once more he was almost driven to distraction he wrote bitter letters to his father who tried to comfort him he himself sent messages of friendly advice but what young man in his teens was ever reasonable so violent was Carl that at last his father wrote to him I am disgusted with your letters their unreasonable tone is loathsome to me I should never had expected it of you haven't you been lucky from your cradle up finally Carl received one letter from his betrothed and transfused him with the ecstatic joy for about a day and then sent him back to his old unrest this hour may be taken as a part of Mark's curious nature which was never satisfied but was always reaching after something which could not be had he fell to writing poetry of which he sent three volumes to Ginny which must have been rather trying to her since the verse was very poor he studied the higher mathematics English and Italian some Latin and a miscellaneous collection of works on history and literature but poetry almost turned his mind in latter years he wrote everything was centered on poetry as if I were bewitched by some uncanny power luckily he was wise enough after a time to recognize how halting was when compared with those of the great masters and so he resumed his restless solitary work he still sent his father letters that were like wild cries they evoked in reply a very natural burst of anger complete disorder silly wandering through all branches of science silly brooding at the burning oil lamp in your wildest you see eyes a horrible setback and disregard for everything decent and in the pursuit of this senseless and purposeless learning you think to raise the fruits which you are to unite you with your beloved one what harvest do you expect to gather from them which will enable you to fulfill your duty toward her writing to him again his father speaks of something that Carl had written as a mad composition which denotes clearly how you waste your ability and spin knights in order to create such monstrosities the young man was even forbidden to return home for Easter holidays this meant giving up the sight of Jenny whom he had not seen for a whole year but fortune arranged it otherwise for not many weeks later death removed the parent who had loved and whom he had loved though neither of them could understand the other the father represented the old order of things the son was born to discontent and to look forward to a new heaven and new earth returning to Berlin Carl resumed his studies but as before they were very desolatory in their character and began to run upon social questions which were indeed setting Germany into a government he took his degree and thought of becoming an instructor at the University of Jena but his radicalism prevented this and he became the editor of a liberal newspaper which soon however became so very radical as to lead to his withdrawal it now seemed best that Marx should seek other fields of activity to remain in Germany was dangerous to himself and discreditable to Jenny's relatives or status as Prussian officials in the summer of 1843 he went forth into the world at last an international Jenny who had grown to believe in him as against her own family asked for nothing better than to wander with him if only that they might be married and they were married in the same summer and spent a short honeymoon at Bignen on the Rhine made famous by Mrs. Norton's poem it was the brief glimpse of sunshine that was to proceed year after year of anxiety and want leaving Germany Marx and Jenny went to Paris where he became known to some of the intellectual lights of the French capital such as Bakinen the great Russian anarchist Proudhon, Cabret and Saint-Sémon Norton of all was his intimacy with the poet Hiené the marvelous creature whose fascination took on a thousand forms and whom no one could approach without feeling his strange allurement since Gauls death down to the present time there has been no figure in German literature comparable to Hiené his prose was exquisite his poetry ran through the whole gamut of humanity the sensations that come to us from the outer world in his poems are sweet melodies and passionate cries of revolt stirring ballads of the sea and tender love songs strange is Zee's last seam when coming from this cynic for cynic he was deep down in his heart though his face when in repose was like the conventional pictures of Christ his fascinations destroyed the face of many a woman and it was only after many years of self-indulgence that he married the faithful Mathilde Marat in what he termed a conscience marriage soon after he went to his mattress grave as he called it a hopeless paralytic to Hiené came Marx and his beautiful bride one may speculate as to Ginny's estimate of her husband she had not seen him very much at that time he was a merry lighthearted youth a jovial comrade in one of whom any girl would be proud but since his long stay in Berlin and his absorption into the theories of men like Ingels and Bauer he had become a very different sort of man at least to her groping lost in his brown studies dreamy at times morose he was by no means a sympathetic and congenial husband for a high-bred spirited girl such as Ginny von Westfallen his natural drift was toward a beer garden a group of frowsy followers the reek of vile tobacco and the smell of sour beer one cannot but think that his beautiful wife must have been repelled by this though with her constant nature she still loved him in Heinrich Heiné she found a spirit that seemed akin to hers Mr. Spargo says and in what he says one must read with a great deal between the lines the admiration of Ginny Marx for the poet was even more adorned than that of her husband he fascinated her because as she said he was so modern while Heiné was drawn to her because she was so sympathetic it must be that Heiné held the heart of this beautiful woman in his hand he knew so well the art of fascination he knew just how to supply the void which Marx had left the two were indeed affinities in heart and soul yet for once the cynical poet stayed his hand and said no word that would have been his friend Ginny loved him with a love that might have been blazed into lasting flame but fortunately there appeared a special providence to save her from herself the French government at the request of the king of Prussia banished Marx from his dominions and from that day until he had become an old man he was a wanderer and an exile with few friends and little money sustained by nothing but Ginny's fidelity and by his infinite faith in a cause that crushed him to the earth there is a curious parallel between the life of Marx and that of Richard Wagner down to the time when the latter discovered a royal patron both of them were hounded from country to country both of them worked laboriously for so scanty a living as to verge at times upon starvation both of them were victims to a cause in which they earnestly believed an economic cause in the one case an artistic cause in the other Wagner's triumph came before his death and the world has accepted his theory of the music drama the cause of Marx is far greater and more tremendous because it strikes at the base of human life and social well-being the clash between Wagner and his critics was a matter of poetry and dramatic music it was not vital to the human race the cause of Marx is one that is only now beginning to be understood and recognized by millions of men and women in all the countries of the earth in his lifetime he issued a manifesto that has become a classic among economists he organized the great international association of workmen which set all Europe ablaze and extended even to America his great book Capital Das Kapital which was not completed until the last years of his life is read today by thousands as an almost sacred work like Wagner and his wife Mina the wife of Marx's youth clung to him through his utmost vicitudes denying herself the necessities of life so that he might not starve in London where he spent his latest days he was secure from danger yet still a sort of persecution seemed to follow him for some time nothing that he wrote could find a printer wherever he went people looked at him askance he and his six children lived upon the sum of five dollars a week which was paid him by the New York Tribune through the influence of the late Charles when his last child was born and the mother's life was in serious danger Marx complained that there was no cradle for the baby and a little later that there was no coffin for its burial Marx had ceased to believe in marriage despised the church and cared nothing for government yet unlike Wagner he was true to the woman who had given up so much for him he never sank to an artistic degeneracy though he rejected creeds he was nevertheless a man of genuine religious feeling though he believed all present government to be an evil he hoped to make it better or rather he hoped to substitute for it a system by which all men might get an equal share of what is right and just for them to have such was Marx and thus he lived and died his wife who had long been cut off from her relatives died about a year before him when she was buried he stumbled and fell into her grave and from that time until his own death he had no further interest in life he had been faithful to a woman and to a cause that cause was so tremendous as to overwhelm him in sixty years only the first great stirrings of it could be felt its teachings may end up in nothing but only a century or more of effort and of earnest striving can make it plain whether Karl Marx was a world mover or a martyr to a cause that was destined to be lost End of the story of Karl Marx


I started out as a physics major in undergraduate schooling, and I was always interested in astronomy. I mean, since I was a baby, it was just fascinating to me. I started an internship at the University of Colorado in Boulder with the High Altitude Observatory, which is a place that has solar data, and they study the sun, and I immediately fell in love with the images that I was seeing. I was so impressed with this big ball of fire, that's what I used to think the sun was, and all of a sudden it became this incredible ball of magnetic field and plasma, and to find out that we actually don't know a whole lot about the sun. We do, but there's so much we still have to explore, and it just caught my attention, and that's when I became interested in solar physics specifically. Luckily, I was able to do a PhD program through the University of Oslo in Norway while I was actually still residing in Boulder, Colorado, and it was somewhat of a flexible PhD program, and I was able to take classes in Oslo, but continue to work full-time in Boulder. So it was this fantastic experience and this wonderful program, and after I got my PhD from University of Oslo, I had an opportunity to work at Rice University as a research scientist there, and then an opportunity opened up at Goddard, which is a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and I came here to actually work as the associate director for science originally, and then after three years in that role, I switched over to being lab chief for one of the labs in the Heliophysics Science Division. So it was kind of a long, interesting, somewhat different path than some people take.