Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/52

52 from the time I was fifteen, my life has been one continual struggle in some shape or another against absolute poverty, and I must say not a tithe of my profits have I ever expended on myself. And here I cannot but allude to the remarks on my dress. It is easy for those whose only trouble on that head is change, to find fault with one who never in her life knew what it was to have two new dresses at a time. No one knows but myself what I have had to contend with—but this is what I have no right to trouble you with."

These were her real feelings expressed to a real friend. Her acquaintances knew nothing of them; the world saw no change in her; for in no one respect could she be persuaded to put a curb upon her high spirit, to substitute reflection for impulse, or to set a guard over the free expression of her thoughts and opinions. She could not, however, at this time, surmise the whole baseness of the scandal. The knowledge of it was reserved for after years, when, her life and manners continuing what they had ever been, but the evil report never utterly silenced, it was discovered that a silent disdain of calumny is not always the best wisdom in the slandered; nor a reliance upon time and innocence for justice, the truest delicacy in an adviser. It was L. E. L.'s fate to suffer deeply during many after years of her life, from her own high-minded indifference to false reports, and her resolution to wear no false manner at any time. How pitiful and base if a shadow were to be cast on the name she has left, or her character were still exposed to the slightest misconception, by any false delicacy to the living, or any flinching from the truth, however painful, on the part of one whom she had in solemn terms charged with the task of