Mary Boyle

IN herself, Mary Boyle had most of the good gifts which bring happiness to their possessor, — a bright intelligence, warm affections, unfailing cheerfulness, a large capacity for giving and receiving pleasure, for making and retaining friends. And a kind fortune attended the circumstances of her life. Well-born in every sense, the love and good comradeship she found in her own household extended outward to an exceedingly large circle of agreeable kinsfolk whose houses were her “extra homes.” “Mary Boyle is a cousin of mine,” said Lord Carlisle to Dickens. “I suppose so,” was the reply, “I have never yet met any one who was not her cousin.” It would be useless to attempt to enumerate the variously accomplished men and women whom she met in her London life, in her visits to great country houses, or in her sojourns in Italy, a country she fell in love with, early in life. Lowell speaking of her as he knew her, in her little house in South Audley Street, when she was verging on fourscore, says: “No knock could surprise the modest door of what she called her Bonbonnière, for it has opened and still opens to let in as many distinguished persons, and, what is better, as many devoted friends, as any in London. However long Mary Boyle may live, hers can never be that most dismal of fates, to outlive her friends while cheerfulness, kindliness, cleverness, contentedness, and all the other good nesses have anything to do with the making of them.”

One gift she possessed in so remarkable a degree that under other circumstances she might have become famous as a comedian. “She is the very best actress I ever saw off the stage, ” wrote Dickens to Bulwer, “and immeasurably better than many I have seen on it. ” Her dramatic reminiscences — beginning with an amusing account of the “romantic and tragical ” play she wrote at the age of seven, and successfully performed, with the aid of two of her small brothers, before a large audience, parts being doubled or trebled, with lightning changes of costume — are among the most entertaining portions of her book.¹ A friend of Mary Boyle declares that her conversation had a charm that was indescribable and perhaps unique. It is not difficult to believe this. Her gifts were preëminently social, and she would give her best in talk rather than with the pen. But her recollections, though dictated in old age, and when blindness prevented her from revising, rearranging, or supplementing what had been written, are pleasant to read and to remember. They will assuredly add to the number of her friends, so attractive in its gay good humor, its sweetness, and sanity is the personality revealed in these sketches for an autobiography.

S. M. F.