Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/142

 more than a few broken sentences of conversation. She had what Miss Hannah More amiably called "plastic genius," which meant that she fidgeted perpetually; and what Miss Carter termed "a delightful spirit of innocent irregularity," which meant that she was inconsequent to the danger point. "She united," said Madame d'Arblay, "the unguardedness of childhood to a Hibernian bewilderment of ideas which cast her incessantly into some burlesque situation." But her kind-heartedness (she proposed having her drawing-room gravelled, so that a lame friend could walk on it without slipping) made even her absurdities lovable, and her most fantastic behaviour was tolerated as proof of her aerial essence. "There is nothing of mere vulgar mortality about our Sylph," wrote Miss Carter proudly.

It was in accordance with this pleasing illusion that, when Mrs. Vesey took a sea voyage, her friends spoke of her as though she were a mermaid, disporting herself in, instead of on, the ocean. They not only held "the uproar of a stormy sea to be as well adapted to the sublime of her imagination as the soft murmur of