Lives of Celebrated Women

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Goodrich Samuel Griswold. Lives of Celebrated Women

LUCRETIA AND MARGARET DAVIDSON

MRS. ADAMS

MRS. WASHINGTON

MADAME DE STAEL

LADY HESTER STANHOPE

HANNAH MORE

MRS. BARBAULD

MADAME DE GENLIS

JOSEPHINE

MARIE ANTOINETTE

MADAME ROLAND

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND

ISABELLA OF SPAIN

JOAN OF ARC

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“There stood on the banks of the Saranac a small, neat cottage, which peeped forth from the surrounding foliage – the image of rural quiet and contentment. An old-fashioned piazza extended along the front, shaded with vines and honeysuckles; the turf on the bank of the river was of the richest and brightest emerald; and the wild rose and sweetbrier, which twined over the neat enclosure, seemed to bloom with more delicate freshness and perfume within the bounds of this earthly paradise. The scenery around was wildly yet beautifully romantic; the clear blue river, glancing and sparkling at its feet, seemed only as a preparation for another and more magnificent view, when the stream, gliding on to the west, was buried in the broad, white bosom of Champlain, which stretched back, wave after wave, in the distance, until lost in faint blue mists that veiled the sides of its guardian mountains, seeming more lovely from their indistinctness.”

Such is the description which the younger subject of these memoirs gives us of the home of her parents, Dr. Oliver and Margaret Davidson, in the village of Plattsburg, Vermont. Amidst scenery so well calculated to call forth and foster poetical talent, Lucretia Maria Davidson was born on the 27th September, 1808. Of her earliest childhood there is nothing recorded, except that she was physically feeble, and manifested extreme sensibility of disposition. She was sent to school when she was four years old, and there was taught to read and to imitate, in sand, the printed characters. Books now possessed for her a greater charm than childish sports. The writing paper began to disappear mysteriously from the table, and Lucretia was often observed with pen and ink, to the surprise of her parents, who knew that she had never been taught to write. The mystery remained unexplained until she was six years old, when her mother, in searching a closet rarely visited, found, behind piles of linen, a parcel of little books filled with hieroglyphics. These were at length deciphered by her parents, and proved to be metrical explanations of rudely-sketched pictures on the opposite page; the explanations being made in Roman letters, most unartistically formed and disposed. Not long after, Lucretia came running to her mother in great agitation, the tears trickling down her cheeks, and said, “O mamma! mamma! how could you treat me so? My little books – you have shown them to papa, – Anne, – Eliza! I know you have. O, what shall I do?” Her mother tried to soothe the child, and promised never to do so again. “O mamma,” replied she, a gleam of sunshine illumining the drops, “I am not afraid of that, for I have burned them all.” “This reserve,” says one whose kindred spirit could sympathize with that of Lucretia, “proceeded from nothing cold or exclusive in her character; never was there a more loving or sympathetic creature. It would be difficult to say which was most rare, her modesty, or the genius it sanctified.”

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She died on the 27th August, 1825. Her literary labors will surprise all who remember that she had not yet reached her seventeenth birthday. They consist of two hundred and seventy-eight poetical pieces, of which there are five regular poems, of several cantos each; three unfinished romances; a complete tragedy, written at thirteen years of age; and twenty-four school exercises; besides letters, of which forty are preserved, written in the course of a few months, to her mother alone. Indeed, we cannot but look upon Lucretia Davidson as one of the wonders of humanity. Her early productions excited even the admiration of Byron; and the delicacy, dutifulness, and exaltation, of her character seemed almost to have realized angelic purity and beauty of soul, in a tenement of clay.

The little Margaret, as we have seen, was the object of Lucretia’s fondest affection. She used to gaze upon her little sister with delight, and, remarking the brightness and beauty of her eyes, would exclaim, “She must, she will be a poet!” She did not live to see her prediction verified, but to use her mother’s fond expressions, “On ascending to the skies, it seemed as if her poetic mantle fell, like a robe of light, on her infant sister.”

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