"I Positively Leave
India Next October, And Am Now Looking Joyfully To My Return."
The person and manners of Miss Roberts were extremely prepossessing.
In early life, she was handsome; and although latterly her
Figure
had attained some degree of fulness, it had lost none of its ease and
grace, whilst her pleasing features, marked by no lines of painful
thought, were open and expressive, beaming with animation and good
humour. She had not the slightest tinge of pedantry in her manner and
deportment, which were natural and affable, so that a stranger never
felt otherwise than at ease in her society. It was not her ambition
to make a display of mental superiority, which inspires the other sex
with any feelings but those of admiration - which is, indeed, tacitly
resented as a species of tyranny, and frequently assigned as the
ground of a certain prejudice against literary ladies. "It may safely
he said," observes a friend of her's at Calcutta, "that, although
devoted to literature as Miss Roberts was, yet in her conversation and
demeanour she evinced less of what is known as 'blue' than any
of her contemporaries, excepting Miss Landon." Another Calcutta
acquaintance says: "Though her mind was deeply interested in subjects
connected with literature, her attention was by no means absorbed by
them, and she mixed cordially and freely in society without the least
disposition to despise persons of less intellectual elevation. She
had a true relish of all the little pleasures that promiscuous society
affords, and did not underrate those talents which are better fitted
for the drawing-room than the study." Her warmth of heart and kindness
of disposition, which co-operated with her good sense in thus removing
all disagreeable points from her external character, made her the
sincerest of friends, and ever ready to engage in any work of charity
or benevolence.
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