University of Virginia Library

JENNY EVELAND.

“A man who loses his sight,” says Dugald Stewart, “improves
the sensibility of his touch: but who would consent, for such a
recompense, to part with the pleasures which he receives from
the eye?” The expense at which most kinds of distinction are
acquired, seems expressed in this. The right arm of the sculptor
has twice the muscular development of the left—exercised as it
alone is, with the constant lift of the leaden hammer which drives
his chisel. But, inseparable as is this enlargement of the
thought-conveying portion of the body (and of a corresponding
portion of the brain) from the specific labor and construction
which can alone bring fame to the worker in marble, it is, no less,
an unequal development of the system, and, just so far, a lessening
of its perfection. The Apollo Belvidere is a perfect type of a
man's figure and limbs, in healthful development; but he never
could have excelled, as a human sculptor, without a special exercise

of brain and muscle, which would have enlarged them at the
expense of equal distribution of forces, and so destroyed him as a
model, either of perfect health or perfect beauty. While the
possession of genius, therefore, may be consistent with entire
harmony of proportion, the development of it, or the labor of concentrating
it upon any special pursuit to create a fame, enlarges
the exclusively-exerted portions of the system, and destroys its
healthful balance.

In the difference between a mean indolence and the lofty resistance
of Nature to this partial development, which is demanded
of genius—in the perpetual struggle between an instinct to exert
all the faculties equally, and an ambition for the distinction which
is only attainable by exclusive exercise of one—lies the “motive
power” of the character of Jenny Eveland. It was only by prefacing
a sketch of her with the foregoing somewhat abstract
explanation, that her apparent uncertainty and variableness of
aim and effort could be justly drawn.

Miss Eveland has superiority distributed throughout her
nature. Her face has been too long subject to strong emotions
to be invariably attractive. At times it would be called plain.
It is capable, however, of most illuminated beauty, and it is
always expressive, always frank and noble, with the irregular
features which are necessary to the highest expression, her form,
in all else, is the perfection of feminine symmetry. Never giving
her movements a thought, she walks with a lithe grace and freedom
that betrays her at once, to the observing, as a woman of perfect
make. Her head is admirably set on. An Indian girl, bred in
the forest like a fawn, would not be more creet, nor of more unconscious
elasticity of carriage and mien. An unusually arched
instep to an exquisite foot gives her the mark of high breeding,

which is most looked to in the East, and her slender, and yet
roundly beautiful hand, with its tapering fingers, has a look of
discriminating elegance that the most careless of her friends
recognize and admire. A bright hazel eye, earnest and fearless;
profuse brown hair, whose natural waves are controlled with difficulty
by her comb, bright teeth, and one of those voices of
“clouded contralto” which betray the tearfulness of a throat used
to keeping down sadness, are other peculiarities, which go to form
her portrait, and which share in the delightful impression she
makes on all who have the happiness to know her.

But, though the mind of Jenny Eveland is gifted as symmetrically
as her person—(perhaps because it is)—she has no
believers in her genius, except those who can recognise it without
the evidence of its works—as some book it has written, some
statue it has chiselled, or some picture it has drawn. Feeling
constantly the capacity to write as famous authors write, and to
image beauty, with clay or pencil, as sculptors and painters do, she
talks the language of genius to those who can understand her,
and has all the inspired impulses of genius,—its longings for
creative expression, its profound trances of inaction and melancholy,
its visions, and its recognitions. Unusually trying circumstances
in her life have shown that she has energy, industry, and
an almost absolute power of self-control—but, of course, with a
nature in such complete proportion, she must needs “listen to
its loudest voice,” and, if her quick blood and impatient limbs
call her off to dance, she must throw aside pen or pencil—if her
heart says it is time to be gay, she must abandon sadness, though
poem or picture demand that she should dwell on it for completion.
If this be fickleness and idleness, the angels in heaven,
(whose thoughts of beauty come, as they come to genius, but are

not arrested to be put into books or pictures, nor patiently carved
in marble) are fickle and idle.

Yet, from the curse of industry—from the “sweat of the
brow”—no humanity is exempt, and ambition, which is the shape
under which it compels proud minds to action, makes the large
endowments, of Jenny Eveland, gifts of uneasy possession. It is
not enough for her that she has glorious imaginings—that she
can exchange the passwords of inspiration with poets and painters,
that she can go abroad from common thoughts as the dove from
the ark, and return with tidings of what could be found with such
wings only. The fever to prove this superiority to the world
burns constantly within her. She would fain apply her seal to
the impressible events and opinions of the time. Love, that
would only call upon her affections, and that would leave unemployed
her finest powers, could not content her. Fame, on the
other hand, if it gave her no scope for the boundless tenderness of
her heart, would suffice as poorly. She is too gifted for common
love—she is too fond and sympathetic to breathe only the thin
atmosphere of the gifted. And, in this embarrassment of a
nature too proportionate for a world which “the curse” has made
one of unequal development, the youth of Jenny Eveland is passing
unsatisfied away.