Cecilia Lucy Brightwell
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 56
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter vii. Mbs. Opie returned from her trip up the Rhine, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, in the month of November, 1835. This was her last journey; and, from this time, her absences from home were never of long duration, but limited to a few weeks in London, and occasional visits to her friends in the neighbourhood of Norwich. She did not continue many months in the lodgings in St. Giles'-street, but removed to Lady's-lane, where she had commodious apartments, and iu which she remained until her final settlement in the Castle Meadow house. In this home she established herself, surrounded by the portraits, which hung on the walls of her parlour, and appeared to great advantage when lighted up at night by wax lights in branch lamps. The most beautiful of them, the portrait of herself, is not described by her pen. It was painted soon after her marriage, and was engraved, though very indifferently, in "The Cabinet," a periodical of the day, at the time of Mr. Opie's death. This picture is certainly very charming, and is also admirable as a work of art. Bright colours Mrs. Opie delighted in, and she indulged this taste in a peculiar and ingenious manner. She had several prisms set in a frame, and mounted like a pole-screen; and this unique piece of furniture stood always in her window, and was a constant source of delight to her. "Oh! the exquisite beauty of the prisms on my ceiling just now!" she writes; "it is a pleasure only to look at it. I think that green parrots and macaws, flying about in their native woods, must look like that." Frequently she would move the frame in all directions, so as to throw the reflection now on one of the pictures, and now on the face of a friend who chanced to be sitting by; and then, with a...