Mathilde Blind

Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)

Oil on canvas

Source: Rowley, Fifty Years of Work without Wages, facing 108

See Rowley's comment below

Image capture and formatting by George P. Landow.

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In his memoirs, Rowley offers the following description of Mathilde Blind:

A constant visitor at the Madox Browns' was Mathilde Blind. Dr. Richard Garnett in his interesting memoir of her says that when first he knew her she was one of the most beautiful young women in London. She retained a dis- tinction to the last. Intellectually she was a lambent spirit, a great Shelleyite and lover of Byron. She wrote many fine books, and much verse only short of first-rate quality by her inability naturally to command our idiom, which is always the hall-mark of the freest poetry. She was full of fire in all causes of freedom, whether Italian or in regard to the cruelties of Crofter evictions. (With regard to the latter her "Heather on Fire" is a striking composition.) In Italian affairs she became a close friend of Joseph Mazzini ; in fact, she was disposed to devote her life and her fine talents to his person and his great mission. But Mathilde was blighted by a Teutonic pessimism which saddened her life, while Mazzini was full of religious feeling and hope. On these rocks they split. All the same, Mathilde Blind must be classed among the most religious and spiritual beings we have known intimately. All her yearnings were for more light, more justice, truer happiness for all. Sir Alfred Mond, Mr. Robert Garnett, and I were her trustees. She left the residue io of her property to Newnham College as an aid to the poorer students to carry on their education. No more lovable and enlightened woman has come within the wide circle of our appreciation than Mathilde Blind. Her fine sonnet I print here contains at the least one of the finest images in contemporary verse.

The Dead

The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold
Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:
They have forged our chains of being for good or ill;
And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.
Our perishable bodies are the mould
In which their strong, imperishable will —
Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil
Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.

Vibrations infinite of life in death.
As a star's travelling light survives its star!
• So may we hold our lives, that when we are
The fate of those who then will draw this breath,
They shall not drag us to their judgment bar,
And curse the heritage which we bequeath. [108-9]

Bibliography

Rowley, Charles. Fifty Years of Work without Wages. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911. University of California at Los Angeles copy made available online by Internet Archive. Web. 9 November 2012.

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Last modified 14 November 2012