University of Virginia Library

FANNY TRELLINGER.

Fanny Trellinger is a belle by mistake. She does not understand
it herself. And, if continually “trying on” hearts,
like shoes, and dropping them with as little ceremony as mis-fits
of morocco, prove a young lady to be a coquette, Fanny Trellinger
is a coquette. Yet she does not deserve to be called one.

Miss Trellinger is a blonde of whom even Buchanan Read, that
skilful idealizer of the pencil, could scarce make a beauty. Her
eyes, hair, waist and shoulders might belong to the most neglected
of wall-flowers. She dresses well, from obedience to unconscious
good taste, but forgets her dress and her looks, from the
moment she leaves her mirror till she comes back to it again. If
she has any mere personal charm it is one which is seldom recognized
except by painters—(though it indicates a delightful quality
in a woman, but it can belong to none but the habitually self-forgetful)—her
mouth has those blunt corners which the tension
of a forced smile alters to a sharp angle. Probably no man ever
admired Miss Fanny from seeing her, merely. She reaches
hearts without paying the toll of beauty for passing in at the

eyes. To feel her fascination, one must converse with her; and
the invariable attraction, which affects those who approach her
thus near, is as mysterious to most lookers-on, as, to a child is
the sudden jumping of needles when brought into the neighborhood
of a magnet. It does not seem to require particular qualities to be
subject to her influence. All kinds of men, from a Wall-street
tetrarch to an unbuttered asparagus in his first tail-coat, find her
delightful. She might seem, indeed, indiscriminate in her liking;
for, though her magnetism depends on what is entirely within her
own control, she exercises it on every new comer who approaches
her—withholding it from none except those she has rejected or
known enough of. Few people in this world being capable (as
the doctors say) of “clearly telling what ails them,” the secret
of this omni-fascination does not get out, even through the confessions
of its victims; and Miss Trellinger shops at Stewart's—
of all the belles who go there, the one whose silks and muslins
minister to conquests the most unaccountable.

It would be vain to look for the secret of this invisible charm,
in the education, or reading, or conversational talent of Miss
Fanny. Within the ordinary outline of school-routine, she was
left to educate herself; her reading is pursued with no system,
and is rather less, than more, than that of other young ladies;
and, in conversation she says singularly little. It is doubtful
whether her most desperate admirer ever quoted any remark of
hers as peculiar or clever, and she never, herself, entertained the
remotest idea of expressing a thought so as to make an impression.
We seem, thus far, to have almost proved that her fascination
is neither of person nor mind—yet it is not so, altogether.

Whether from some bent of the mind early taken, or from an

accident of combined mental qualities, it is difficult to say—but
Miss Trellinger's most powerful instinct is curiosity as to undisclosed
qualities of character. This is united, of course, with
sanguine belief in the superiority of concealed qualities to those
upon the surface; and the taste, like that for love and pleasure
seems not to diminish by disappointment. Every man who approaches
her as a new acquaintance, is a new enigma of intense
interest; and she sets aside his first politenesses, or quietly waits
for their exhaustion, and brings him as soon as possible to the
state of communicativeness when he will talk freely of himself
and tell his hates and loves, hopes and ambitions. A botanist
does not more attentively and patiently take to pieces a complex
flower. Her natural tact and ingenuity at inspiring confidence
and provoking the betrayal of secret springs of thought and propensity,
are, perhaps, enough, alone, to stamp her as a superior
girl, and, differently trained, they might have been the basis of
very uncommon character for a woman.

All unconscious that she is doing more than to gratify a simple
thirst for the discovery of heroic qualities, dormant and unappreciated,
Miss Fanny, meantime, plays a game that no art or
fascination could outdo. Forgetful of herself, and perfectly honest
in her desire to know deeply the character within, her manifest
sincerity puts incredulity at once to sleep; and the self-love
of the heart she strives to read, throws down its defences, and
believes it has found, at last, the fond intensity with which
sighed to be appreciated! The manner of Miss Trellinger
without being carressing, is that of earnest, exclusive and grave
attention. Her eyes are fastened on the lips of the speaker; the
tones in which she gives her assent, or puts her simple and ingenuous
yet most pertinent questions, are subdued to an appealing

contralto by the interest she really feels; and the expression of
her countenance while she listens, says, more earnestly than Coriolanus:—

The love that is incidentally and inevitably made to Miss
Fanny, all this time, she receives with the sanguine appreciation,
with which she believes in each character while studying it. It
is the love of a hero, a poet, a philosopher, a chivalrie and high-hearted
gentleman—or so she estimates and answers it. Her notion
of love is as elevated as her expectation of quality in the
man she seeks, and by the dignity and earnestness of her brief
responses of tenderness, she really inspires that kind of impassioned
respect which is the ground-work of affections the most lasting.

It will be seen that while the temporary intimacies of Miss
Trellinger look, to careless observers, like any other of the flirtations
going on in society, the unseen weapons with which she
achieves her conquests are more formidable than is suspected.
As was remarked before, her victims could not, or would not precisely
tell what had attracted and won them; and their perseverance
in attention, after being dropped and slighted by her, is
even more a subject of bewildered wonder, to her female acquaintances,
than the conquest itself. She passes, very naturally, for
heartless, capricious and hypocritical—for one who does her utmost
to captivate, for the sake of the triumph only. Her acute
perceptions are always waiting for her glowing imagination to exhaust
itself, however; and a sudden arrival at the termination of
a shallow character, or an unconscious disclosure of a quality inconsistent
with her ideal, inspires her with a disappointment or

disgust proportionate to her expectations, and, it is only by intercourse
abruptly ended that she can avoid even a rude expression
of her feeling. There is, in the world, unquestionably, such
character as Miss Fanny Trellinger seeks with this thirst insatiable.
Should she find it, she would “love with a continuance,”
there is little doubt; but she may find, that, with such men, the
expectations from the love of woman are large; and she may regret
that some of the intensity of her nature had not been expended
on that self-culture which alone can satisfy, in the un-impassioned
intervals of possessed affection.