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CAROMNE PICKLER. 157
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Ojste Of Tlie Most Popular Novelists, An...
advantage , that , of course , whatever she said or did "was commended as something' extraordinaryand though her intellect seems to
, have escaped injury from this forcing process , her heart , she admitswas well nigh spoilt . Not only was vanity unduly fostered ,
, but being always held up as an example to her slower brother , and allowed even to ridicule him unreproved , she learnt to treat
him in a very unsisterly manner , and it was only his remarkable sweetness of disposition which saved her from becoming utterly
unamiable , and won her at last to acknowledge and emulate his moral superiority . It was the poet Haschka who exercised the
greatest influence over her early education ; for having attracted his notice by the attention she paid whenever he came , as was
his wont , to read his new works prior to their publication , he always requested that she might be present . On one occasion he brought
her a volume of Gellert _' s Fables , the perusal of which led her , between the age of six and sevento begin committing to paper her
, own thoughts and feelings , . poured out in a sort of rhapsody . On the death of her grandmother , Caroline's parents removed
to a larger house , where , with an elegant establishment , numerous domesticsequipagessaddle-horses & c , a still larger circle of
acquaintances , gathered , around them , , and Haschka , having at their request taken up his abode with them , they became intimate
through him with most of the other poets of the period . To please these guests the little girl often committed verses to memory , and
was rewarded by their reading to her in return passages from , celebrated poems ; these exercises rendering her so familiar with
versification , that at the age of ten she began herself to venture upon rhymeand though of course her effusions were but an
echo of what , she was daily hearing , they were forthwith lauded as marvels of precocious genius , some set to music , and others
inserted in a periodical , rather out of respect to her parents than because of their intrinsic excellence . Though forbidden by
etiquette to go formally to Court more than once a year , Madame Greiner visited the Empress not unfrequently at her various
summer palaces , often taking her children with her , so that some of Caroline's earliest associations were connected with that stately
old lady in silver-grey widow's dress , who would so kindly put aside her dignity to amuse the little girl with her descending sofa , a
piece of machinery which she had had constructed in order to spare herself the fatigue of stairsand on which her young visitor ,
seated beside her , loved to be taken , up or down . But this great and good sovereign was now passing away , to the
grief of all her people , and the special sorrow of the Greiner family _. Her death inaugurated a new epoch . The freedom of the press
proclaimed by her successor Joseph II . gave an extraordinary impetus to literaturethe works of Mirabeau and Volney wore
introduced from France ; ; liberty of opinion became fashionable ;
among the literary society of the Greiner salon were many free-
Caromne Pickler. 157
CAROMNE _PICKLER . 157
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Nov. 1, 1862, page 157, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01111862/page/13/
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