Amelia Opie (b. 1769, d. 1853), daughter of Dr. Alderson of Norwich, was well known as a writer of tales and novels, and as a leader in the literary and artistic society of the first half of this century. Her first story was “Father and Daughter” (1801), and it was followed by “Adeline Mowbray” (1804). Both enjoyed high reputation and wide popularity. She also published a collection of “Poems” (1802), “Simple Tales” (1806), and “Tales of Real Life” (1813). Her “Memorials,” containing passages from her diaries and letters, edited by Cecilia Brightwell (1854), have considerable historic interest.

Personal

  Mrs. Opie’s habits are very singular. At Norwich she lives in seclusion, attends at the Quaker meeting-house, and visits nobody. When she comes to town, her house is the scene of an eternal levée, and who is so busily gay as Mrs. Opie?

  I owed Mrs. Opie a grudge for having made me in my youth cry my eyes out over her stories; but her fair, cheerful face forced me to forget it. She long ago forswore the world and its vanities, and adopted the Quaker faith and costume; but I fancied that her elaborate simplicity, and the fashionable little train to her pretty satin gown, indicated how much easier it is to adopt a theory than to change one’s habits.

  Dined with Amelia Opie: she was in great force and really jolly. Exhibited her gallery containing some fine portraits by her husband, one being of her old French master, which she insisted on Opie painting before she would accept him. She is enthusiastic about Father Mathew, reads Dickens voraciously, takes to Carlyle, but thinks his appearance against him; talks much and with great spirit of people, but never ill-naturedly.

  During Mr. Opie’s life, excitements abounded. After his death and when her mourning was over, she wrote little novels, read them to admiring friends in Norwich, who cried their eyes out at the pathetic scenes, read in her dramatic manner, and then she carried them to London, got considerable sums by them, enjoyed the homage they brought to her feet, sang at supper-tables, dressed splendidly, did not scruple being present at Lady Cork’s and others’ Sunday concerts, and was very nearly marrying a younger brother of Lord Bute. Lord Herbert Stewart’s carriage appeared, and made a great clatter in the narrow streets of Norwich; and the old gentleman was watched into Dr. Alderson’s house; and the hours were counted which he spent, it was supposed, at Mrs. Opie’s feet. But it came to nothing. For a while she continued her London visits; and her proud father went about reading her letters about her honors. But she suddenly discovered that all is vanity: she took to gray silks and muslin, and the “thee” and “thou,” quoted Habakkuk and Micah with gusto, and set her heart upon preaching. That, however, was not allowed.

  I knew her as a Quakeress, and as the gayest and pleasantest member of the pleasantest and most intelligent society in London. Unluckily, as a Norwich woman, she was thrown among the Gurneys, and took a fancy to Joseph John, who, after she had very literally set her Quaker cap at him, married a pretty girl of seventeen. She had been previously engaged to Lord Herbert Stewart—a match which had gone off, because in that age, when broughams and pages were not, they could not muster money enough for such an establishment as their wants required in married people, so she remained the artist’s widow, yearning ever after the Quakerly proselytism for her old pleasant society, and certainly attending the May meetings that she might creep into more parties under their cover.

  Her countenance was animated, bright and beaming; her eyes soft and expressive, yet full of ardour; her hair was abundant and beautiful, of auburn hue, and waving in long tresses. Her figure was well formed, her carriage fine, her hands, arms, and feet well shaped—and all around and about her was the spirit of youth and joy and love.

  She joined the Society of Friends conscientiously she adhered to it with perfect fidelity, and she never repented. But it was the work of the influence of zealous friends, and it changed little in her life…. It was a sacrifice, no doubt, but it was not made in the fervent and productive years; hence it never worked any of those radical changes which gives so much significance to renunciation.

  When Mrs. Opie became a gay widow, we often met her at the house of a mutual friend, where her eccentric conduct amused some, and disgusted others. I have seen her astonish a grave circle of elderly people by jumping up and dancing a shawl-dance then in vogue on the stage, flourishing away to a tune of her own singing, apparently unconscious of the effect she was producing. She used to carry about with her in all her visits a pretty little stringed instrument, in the classic form of a lyre, and sing her own songs, with great expression, to that accompaniment. She said she could always find out the secrets of a young girl’s heart, if she could sing to her alone. She tried her experiment on me and proved right.

  A bird-of-paradise suddenly descending to pick up crumbs in an English farmyard could scarcely have created more astonishment among Dame Partlet’s brood than did this pea-hen among the superbly dressed and jewelled dames of the Parisian salon. The good General seemed to know her well, rose and greeted her with the grace of the days he had so largely helped to spoil—when a French gentleman was known to be the gentleman par excellence. Dear Mrs. Opie: she seemed utterly indifferent to the murmurs of inquiry and surprise that would have confounded any one less self-possessed and turned to us with that sweet naïveté which was at all periods of her life her especial charm.

  She had a temperament both excitable and indolent, and essentially pleasure-loving. With a sufficient income, absolute independence and leisure, many flatterers, and no close home ties or duties, she might easily have drifted into aimless self-indulgence in the world où l’on s’amuse, had she been without the restraints of deepened religious feeling, and a creed which especially enjoined temperance, moderation and quietness.

General

  Mrs. Opie has pathetic scenes, but the object is not attained; for the distress is not made to arise from the unnuptial union itself, but from the opinions of the world against it; so that it may as well betaken to be a satire on our prejudices in favour of marriage as on the paradoxes of sophists against it.

  We cannot place Mrs. Opie so high in the scale of intellect as Miss Edgeworth; nor are her Tales, though perfectly unobjectionable on the score of morality, calculated to do so much good. They are too fine for common use, and do not aim at the correction of errors, and follies of so extensive and fundamental a nature. She does not reason so powerfully; and she is not sufficiently cheerful: indeed, she is too pathetic to be read with much advantage to practical morality. Her writings, however, are very amiable and very beautiful, and exhibit virtuous emotions under a very graceful aspect. They would do very well to form a women that a gentleman should fall in love with, but can be of no great use in training ordinary mortals to ordinary duties.

  Mrs. Opie’s “Lays for the Dead” is a book of truest beauty: and, although the perusal of it resembles (from the mournfulness of its subjects) a visit to a churchyard, the effect it produces upon us is of a most pleasing character. It hushes all unquiet emotion; bids the cares of earth far into the distance; and awakens a calm, sweet pensiveness of feeling, which nothing could make us wish to change. We seem to converse with the Past and the Departed, and to stand on the very shore of the great ocean of Eternity.

  Her stories, “Father and Daughter,” “Tales of the Heart,” “Temper,” etc., as their titles show, were tales of real life, written with a rather too obvious moral, and hardly vigor enough to keep them alive.

  It would be impossible to attempt a serious critique of Mrs. Opie’s stories. They are artless, graceful, written with an innocent good faith which disarms criticism. That Southey, Sydney Smith, and Mackintosh should also have read them and praised them may, as I have said, prove as much for the personal charm of the writer, and her warm sunshine of pleasant companionship, as for the books themselves. They seem to have run through many editions and to have received no little encouragement. Morality and sensation alternate in her pages. Monsters abound there. They hire young men to act base parts, to hold villainous conversations which the husbands are intended to overhear. They plot and scheme to ruin the fair fame and domestic happiness of the charming heroines, but they are justly punished, and their plots are defeated.

  As a novelist Mrs. Opie is a woman of first-rate genius; all she does flows from the heart, and where she depicts the heart in its delicate and morbid feelings she has scarcely any equal, and never a superior. But in painting character in general (except some few admirable instances), in devising incident, or in weaving the plot of a tale, she is very defective, and sins so frequently against probability, that one wonders how she could manage so badly or devise such absurdities. The truth is she has nothing of mere cleverness and very little tact. All she does well, she does exceedingly well; there is no mediocrity either in her faults or her beauties; such is the force of her genius, that when she pours forth her own feelings she takes yours by storm, and you can praise her only by your emotions and your tears; she leaves you no power to discuss her merits.

  Mrs. Opie’s poems still retain some hold upon public attention. Judged by our own canons of taste, she cannot be refused credit for real poetical feeling.

  It is recorded of Mrs. Inchbald, that on making Mrs. Opie’s acquaintance, she (Mrs. Inchbald) exclaimed after a short conversation, “You’re cleverer than your books!” It was most true. Mrs. Opie was rapid, careless, often superficial; and, if we were to judge her by her novels and tales, we might say that any present reading of them would leave a poor impression of their author’s power. Yet she sometimes constructed and developed a plot extremely well; and there were some social points upon which she was really strong. She was a good observer; and her remarks on matters of conduct and principle were sometimes delivered with wisdom and even with weight.

  Mrs. Opie’s poems are simple in diction. Two or three of them are deservedly found in every anthology, and one, “There seems a voice in every gale,” is well known as a hymn. Her novels, which were among the first to treat exclusively of domestic life, possess pathos and some gracefulness of style, but belong essentially to the lachrymose type of fiction, and are all written to point a moral.