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There are those who in "Charles Auchester," charmed by the simplicity and truth of that first part called "Choral Life," objected to the rest on the score of extravagance. But this book records the adoration of music, and in an age replete with the dilettanti of indifference may we not thank God for one enthusiast?
Her father was a clergyman of unusual scholastic attainments, and took high honors at St. John's College, Oxford. Mr. Sheppard, on the mother's side, could number Hebrew ancestors, and this was the pride of his second daughter, the subject of this notice. Her love for the whole Hebrew race amounted to a passion, which found its expression in the romance of "Charles Auchester."
As the Charles Auchester glided out into the stream, two young women with camp stools in their hands pushed through the crowd at the entrance to the hurricane deck an elevation I had succeeded in attaining and took their seats near a life-raft upon which I reclined, Cleopatra-like.
She went up to the shelves where Robert kept his novels, and began running her fingers over the books, with slightly knitted brows and a mouth severely shut. Langham, still standing, watched her and presently stepped forward. 'You can't reach those upper shelves, he said; 'please let me. He was already beside her, and she gave way. 'I want Charles Auchester, she said, still forbiddingly.
Miss Sheppard was my friend of many years; I was with her to the last hour of her existence; but this is not the time for other than a brief notice of her career, and I comply with your request by sending you a slight memorial, hardly full enough for publication. Elizabeth Sara Sheppard, the authoress of "Charles Auchester," "Counterparts," etc., was born at Blackheath, in England.
The people grow under her pen, whether you take Auchester, developing so when first thrown on himself in Germany, and becoming at length the rare type of manhood which he presents, or the one change wrought by years in Miss Benette, just the addition of something that would have been impossible in any child, a deepened sweetness, that completest touch of the perfect woman, "like perfume from unseen flowers, diffusing itself when the wind awakens, while we know neither whence the windy fragrance comes nor whither it flows."
The moment her hour of leisure came, she would hide herself with her best loved work in the quietest corner she could find; sometimes it was a little room in-doors, sometimes the summer-house, sometimes under a large mulberry-tree; and thus "Charles Auchester" and "Counterparts" were written, the former without one correction, sheet after sheet, flung from her hand in the ardor of composition, being picked up and read by the friend who was in all her literary secrets.
Disregarding the orchestral similitude of sound in his name, which, by the way, nobody pronounces as Aronach instructed, they chose to infer that Charles Auchester himself was the Herr Joachim, that Starwood Burney stood for Sterndale Bennett, that Diamid Albany meant Disraeli, that Zelter figured as Aronach, and that Jenny Lind, of whom Mendelssohn himself said there would not in a whole century be born another being so gifted, and whom the Italians, those lovers of fair pseudonymes, called "La Benedetta," is no other than Clara Benette.
A passionate impulse to labor was the law of his life. Many will recollect the brilliant novel "Charles Auchester," in which, under the names of Seraphael, Aronach, Charles Auchester, Julia Bennett, and Starwood Burney, are painted the characters of Mendelssohn, Zelter his teacher, Joachim the violinist, Jenny Lind, and Sterndale Bennett the English composer.
She went up to the shelves where Robert kept his novels, and began running her fingers over the books, with slightly knitted brows and a mouth severely shut. Langham, still standing, watched her and presently stepped forward. 'You can't reach those upper shelves, he said; 'please let me. He was already beside her, and she gave way. 'I want "Charles Auchester," she said, still forbiddingly.
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