criticism, showing a
minute attention to every inflection of my voice, every gesture, every
attitude, which, combined with expressions of enthusiastic admiration,
with which this discriminating and careful review of my performance
invariably terminated, was as strong a dose of the finest flattery as
could well have been offered to a girl of my age, on the very first step
of her artistic career. I used to read over the last of these remarkable
criticisms, invariably, before going to the theater, in order to profit
by every suggestion of alteration or hint of improvement they contained;
and I was in the act of reperusing the last I ever received from him,
when my father came in and said, "Lawrence is dead."

I had been sitting to him for some time previously for a pencil sketch,
which he gave my mother; it was his last work, and certainly the most
beautiful of his drawings. He had appointed a day for beginning a
full-length, life-size portrait of me as Juliet, and we had seen him
only a week before his death, and, in the interval, received a note from
him, merely saying he was rather indisposed. His death, which was quite
unexpected, created a very great public sensation, and there was
something sufficiently mysterious about its circumstances to give rise
to a report that he had committed suicide.

The shock of this event was terrible to me, although I have sometimes
since thought it was fortunate for me rather than otherwise. Sir Thomas
Lawrence's enthusiastically expressed admiration for me, his constant
kindness, his sympathy in my success, and the warm interest he took in
everything that concerned me, might only have inspired me with a
grateful sense of his condescension and goodness. But I was a very
romantic girl, with a most excitable imagination, and such was to me the
melancholy charm of Lawrence's countenance, the elegant distinction of
his person, and exquisite refined gentleness of his voice and manner,
that a very dangerous fascination was added to my sense of gratitude for
all his personal kindness to me, and my admiration for his genius; and I
think it not at all unlikely that, had our intercourse continued, and
had I sat to him for the projected portrait of Juliet, in spite of the
forty years' difference in our ages, and my knowledge of his disastrous
relations with my cousins, I should have become in love with him myself,
and been the fourth member of our family whose life he would have
disturbed and em