Letter from Anna Seward to John Saville, 10 June 1793

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

252–253

text excerpt

On Saturday I accompanied Mrs Sedley and Miss Greaves to the private parlour of a Mr and Mrs Wilkinson. We were entertained by a protegée of theirs—a Miss Stedman; a miracle of skill on the forte-piano and harpsichord. She is a little, pale, insignificant-looking girl, marked, even to seams, by the smallpox. From the light slenderness of her figure, and the childish smallness of a very white hand, she looks not more than sixteen, though she is twenty-two. About four years ago, she had the misfortune to perceive a growing deafness, whose progress the most approved aurists have vainly endeavoured to arrest. What pity if it should ever become total. Already she hears nothing that is said in mixed company. Astonishing that the great degree of it she feels, has not robbed her of the power of touching her instrument with matchless delicacy and expression, amidst the lightning rapidity of her execution, and the luxuriant grace of her taste; amidst cadences assuredly extempore, because always varied. From the most powerful fortissimo, she melts away her passages in, those gradatory shades of softness, which enable them to find their way to the heart. Your friend, Mr Holride, and some other gentlemen, met us there. All musical amateurs, they were all enchanted by this syren, who not only plays thus divinely, but sings with equal skill—perfectly in tune, and with the most touching expression, in a thin, weak, though sweet voice, “that,” as Ossian says of the spirit of the night, “comes, with its low tones, to melt and please the soul, like a gilded mist rising from the lake, that steals on the silent vale, and fills the young flowers with dew.”

excerpt from 'Letter from Anna Seward to John Saville, 10 June 1793' pp. 252–253 (290 words)

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