The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-07-20
JEAN INGELOW DYING
CONDITION OF ALMOST FORGOTTEN
POETESS GROWING VI ORSE.
Sweet Singer of Three Decne sgO
Whose Popularity Gree -s4,uL-esi
with Tennyson'N.

LONDON July 19.-Jean Ingelow, the dis
tinguished poetess and novelist. now in her
Slxty-SeYenth year, is seriously i'll. 1t was
reported last January that she was dying
and her condition has been serious ever
since.
The report that the almost forgotten
poetess is dying would have created some
thing of a sensation in the literary world
thirty years ago. But Miss Ingelow like
other geniuses, has lived long enough to
appreciate the fickeness of the public
heart. and she who was once compared
to Mrs. Browning who ranked with Keats.
Tennyson and Longfellow, will die, pass
ing memory to the world in general.
Jean Ingelow was born in 1880 at Boston,
Lincolnshire, and was the youngest of the
eleven children of William Ingelow 1t
would seem that in so large a family one
could not be sad or lonesome, but it APP
pears that from her earliest years Miss
lngelow was of a melancholy disposition.
The Songs of Seven" are supposed to be
photographed, and when she wrote that
there was
mo dew left on the daisies and clover.
No rain left in heaven"
She was describing her lonely position in
the great world, She spent her childhood
watching the blue sea- dotted with white
sails; the ebb and flow of the tide was the
sweetest music to her ears, and one of her
greatest pleasures was a visit to the light
all during her life, her chum and boon COM
panion has been the brother next to her
in age, who has remained bachelor, and
with whom she lives in KenSington. Her
devotion to him reminds of Maggie
Tull1Ver, and she is supposed to be deScrib-
ing herself in off the Skelgs" when she
creates Dorothea Graham, character very
much like the heroine of the Mill on the
Floss" Miss Ingelow and her brother live
IN quaint little cottage which sinks into
insignitlcance beside the conservatory,
twice its size, which joins it. 1t is here
that she spends her happiest hours. She
loves birds and flowers and it is her great
pleasure to take her feathered friends in
the conservatory, liberate them, and drink
in their singing as they fly from plant to
plant.
1t was not until she was thirty-three
years old that her first poems We're pub
lished and it was generally believed at that
time that Jean lngelow was a nom de
plume for some old writer. OF these poems
High Tide Off the Coast of Lincolnsh hire
was the most popular. 1t is described as
ballad, cast in such strange form, so
musical that 1t sang itself; SO lyric in quail
ityity, so quaint in diction, so keen for
beauty, so tender of pathoS, so deep and
wide in religious feeling that there was
never a word for its defects" This volume
son had written nothing for a number of
years Longfelow's Tales of a Wayside
Inn were losing their popularity, and the
public was on the qui vive for something
new and original. Among her best known
poems are We Are Seven" Laurence"
Divided and ''Oh, Fair Dove, oh, Fond
Dove" which has been set to music. Be-
sides her poems, Miss Ingelow has written
four novels and several childrens stories,
but these never gained the popularity
which her poems attracted. 1t has never
been known whether Jean Ingelows habit
ual sadness is the result of an unhappy
love affair, or, indeed, whether she has
ever been in love. The silence with regard
to this part of her life has never been I'M
broken, and may always remain a secret
unless ii is revealed after Miss Ingelow's
death. She is now a sweet-looking old lady
of nearly seventy-seven, with a broad brow,
kindly eyes, and the same sad mouth that
marked her early years. Her pictures al
ways represent her wearing a thin lace cap
and dressed in plain, dark gown.